Clockwork Chaos (15 page)

“Impact in approximately five seconds,” von Karloff rumbled. “Four, three—”

His count was off. The deck slammed into the ground, spraying dirt into the air. Terrified sheep fled, bleating, some on fire. The ship skipped up again, then crunched back down, its forward momentum tearing a gash in the pasture behind it. Evangeline glanced ahead, saw the trees, and then they crashed headlong into them. Her head hit the railing and the world went dark.

Nearby, somebody groaned. Jeremy twitched, then pried his eyelids open. Around him, bits of burning sailcloth fluttered to the ground. Someone’s boot rested an inch from his nose. No sign of Miss Bell.

The boot’s owner groaned again. Jeremy levered himself up on an elbow to see better. He tried to twist over and realized that he couldn’t. A chunk of the engine had tipped over on top of him, and he couldn’t see anything below his waist.

For a moment he panicked. Had he broken his back? What if his legs had been completely crushed? Searing pain began to filter through the shock. Futilely, he beat at the machine with his bare hands. The heavy wreckage refused to budge an inch. He would never walk again. He would spend the rest of his days as a cripple, assuming that he didn’t burn to death here first. He dug in his right heel, straining to push his way out. What if his legs had been completely severed? His right toes curled in sympathy.

He blinked. Heel. Toes. He could still move his heel and his toes, at least on the right side. Which did imply they were all still attached. He swallowed, took a breath, and tried to take stock of the situation, this time with less panic.

He could tense each of the individual muscle groups on the right side. They felt sore, and cramped, but that limited the amount of damage that he could have taken. All the pain came from the left. He tried to concentrate. The upper thigh seemed all right. Then came the searing white pain. And somewhere below that, he could just twitch his toes. So they, too, seemed to be still attached. Which meant that the bone was probably broken. He had no idea how badly. And he knew very well that if a limb was broken badly enough, he could still lose it. But, assuming that he could escape the immediate situation, he might manage to keep at least a leg and a half. This didn’t seem like such a bad bargain, all things considered.

He suspected he would be more upset if he could think more clearly. He shook his head, trying to clear it. He didn’t know if the fuzziness was from shock or a head injury. Either way, he should not stay here.

“Lord Hilden?” He shook the boot. “Lord Hilden!”

The man groaned again, but did not come to full consciousness.

Jeremy felt distinctly ridiculous. What did one do, in this situation? Somehow, Miss Bell’s rudimentary etiquette lessons failed to cover this.

“Dr. Abrams? Beckett? Is somebody out there?”

He swallowed.

“Miss Bell?” No response. What if something had happened to her? Fear gripped his heart. “Evangeline!”

“Foolish boy,” replied a silky voice. “Giving away your position.”

A figure stepped through the smoke. His clothes suggested a gentleman dressed for an evening at the opera, until he drew closer. His top hat nestled on top of a pair of goggles, his face covered in grime except around his eyes. His black great coat had been fashioned from leather instead of cloth—Jeremy recognized the spark-resistant material from Lord Hilden’s lab crew. Instead of shoes, he wore heavy boots.

“And who are you?” the figure mused. “ Dr. Abrams, perhaps? No. Not the clothes of a gentleman. One of the assistants, then. Cabby? Bucket? Something like that?”

Jeremy stared at him, refusing to answer.

“Stubborn, are you? You’re probably the Scotsman’s, then.” He leisurely picked his way across the wreckage. Jeremy prayed for someone else to wake up and do something. From where he lay trapped, he could not see much more than Hilden’s legs. He wondered if the others had evacuated. Perhaps they left him here. Perhaps they thought he was dead?

No. Miss Bell never would have abandoned him.

“Ah,” the interloper exclaimed softly as he rounded the corner of the remains of the steering column. “And there’s Lord Hilden. Hiding behind the wreckage. How very typical.”

He nudged the unconscious scientist with his boot. Hilden’s head rolled.

“Well, this takes so much of the fun out of it, doesn’t it,” the interloper mused. Jeremy presumed him to be the infamous Ravenswood. “I wonder if you’re planning to wake up at all. After all, it’s not a proper triumph without an audience.”

Ravenswood shook his head in mock sadness and stepped right over the body. He bent down to examine pieces of the engine trailing along the ground.

With his enemy’s eyes temporarily off him, Jeremy struggled again to free himself. No good. He cast around for something to use as a weapon.

Ravenswood straightened again, propping up the sadly bent governor as he did so. He gave it a gentle push. The flyweights wobbled in a circle, with a shriek of protest. “Pretty. I look forward to presenting it to the Royal Society. A governor of some kind, is it not? For the engine, I presume? Ravenswood’s Flyweight Governor. Yes, I like the sound of that.”

Ravenswood gave Jeremy a calculated glance. Jeremy could feel the rage radiating off his own skin. Ravenswood merely seemed amused.

“Ah, is this your work? Your master’s idea, I suppose. It’s quite good, you know. A pity he—and you—won’t be able to present it yourselves.”

He propped the governor against the base of the boiler and crouched down next to the engine to examine it in more detail. Jeremy glanced around. One of the nuts that held the engine mount bolts lay just a few feet from him. The size of his fist, it weighed a good bit. Maybe he could chuck it at the bastard. He leaned as far as he could, stretching out his hand. The tip of his finger brushed the nut. He tried to drag it closer, but he could just barely touch it. He pushed down on the edge, hoping to tip it toward him. The far edge rose a hair. He pushed harder.

A boot came down on his hand.

“None of that, now.” Ravenswood glared down at him. The silky politeness in his tone had vanished, replaced by steel. “If you’re going to be trouble, I’ll have to dispose of you.”

He glanced over Jeremy’s body to where Lord Hilden lay. “It’s a pity to have to remove an opponent when he can’t even be aware of his defeat. But I haven’t all day, you know. Do you care which one of you goes first? No? Well, I suppose the sensible thing to do would be to eliminate the conscious one before the completely incapacitated. Not that you’re much of a threat like that.”

He pulled out the most complicated gun Jeremy had ever seen. Had it not been tracking toward his head, his fingers would have itched to take it apart. As it was, his curiosity took a more morbid turn.

Ravenswood casually checked a dial on the side. “Whose assistant did you say you were, again?”

“Miss Evangeline Bell’s,” Jeremy replied, raising his chin proudly. If he was to die in her honor, at least someone should know.

Ravenswood shrugged and aimed the gun squarely at Jeremy’s face. “Never heard of her.”

Clang.

Ravenswood dropped in a heap.

Evangeline stood behind him, panting, holding one end of the giant wrench.

“What do you know?” she said. “It
is
good for hitting things.”

It took nearly an hour to set up the block and tackle to get the wreckage off Jeremy’s legs. Evangeline reran the leverage calculations, suggested modifications, criticized the laborers’ angles, and generally made a nuisance of herself until von Karloff finally took her by the shoulders, steered her to a flat bit of wreckage, and said, “Sit.”

She sat.

She watched Lady Hilden’s calm organization of the salvage efforts. She saw to the bandaging of Bertrand’s wounds, the removal of Beckett from the tree he had been flung into. Evangeline could see the lines of worry around the older woman’s eyes as they moved her husband onto a stretcher, but the lady’s orders stayed crisp and clear. Evangeline vowed to try to emulate her composure in crisis. But when Hilden stirred, his lady literally dropped everything, leaving a trail of papers on the grass as she rushed to his side.

She caught his hand in its feeble attempt to rise. She whispered something. He smiled blearily. She smiled back, tears making their way unnoticed down her cheek. She stayed with his stretcher, calling orders over her shoulder, and never letting his hand go through all of it.

Evangeline felt a stab of jealousy.

The laborers called out and heaved. The engine tipped up, and more of the house staff rushed in and pulled Jeremy free before the engine could fall back. She caught von Karloff’s eye. He rolled his eyes and stepped back.

She rushed toward Jeremy’s side, only to hover awkwardly, with no idea what to say.

The doctor poked at the injured leg. Jeremy grimaced. Finally, the doctor stood up.

“It’s a clean break below the knee,” he said to Jeremy. “You’re quite lucky, you know.” He glanced at Evangeline. “We’ll have to set it. It’s not really the proper place for a young lady.”

She stared at him in the smoldering wreckage of a machine that defied God’s limits on man, her hands bruised from giving a gentleman a concussion with an oversized wrench. She raised her eyebrows.

“Then, again,” the doctor faltered, “the young man might find your presence comforting. Er.”

She looked down, wondering if her presence was comforting or not.

He smiled at her, and held up a trembling hand. She took it, and smiled back.

And deeply regretted that a moment later, when the doctor pulled at the bone and Jeremy damn well near broke her fingers.

Later, she tracked him down again. They had sent him off to be cleaned up, after they peeled his hand off hers. She reluctantly let herself be dragged off for a bath and a meal. She had to admit she felt a bit more human. But that did little to assuage her anxiety. She checked the servant wing, first, but he was no longer in his original room. Beckett gave her a sickly smile from the bed. He’d burned his eyebrows and the better part of his hair off, and his wrist was in a sling. He seemed in reasonably good spirits, though, and sent her back to the guest quarters.

Apparently, the Hildens thought his distraction of Ravenswood had been quite heroic. Jeremy was ensconced in one of the better bedrooms, far larger than her own. When she peeked in the door, he looked lost in the ocean of white bedsheets.

Her courage deserted her, and she tried to shut the door quietly enough that he wouldn’t notice.

No luck.

“We need to talk,” he said.

She trudged across the ornate carpet, not really daring to look up from her shoes. A stiff wooden chair sat near the bed; she perched on the end. He had seemed happy enough to see her in the wreckage of
Hilden’s Hope
; but to be fair, at the time she had just saved his life and he was in shock. Now, out of danger, she saw every reason why he would want to reconsider.

They sat in silence.

She summoned her courage.

“I never should have—”

“We didn’t—”

They both stopped.

“You first,” he gestured magnanimously.

She didn’t particularly want to go first. She gave him a pleading look, and his mirrored expression suggested he felt the same.

He sighed and relented. Taking a deep breath, he began, “I shouldn’t have kissed you. I’m sorry.”

Her heart plummeted below her stomach.

“It was unspeakably presumptuous, and entirely ungentlemanly. Not that I’m a gentleman, which is largely the point,” he said, stumbling through what sounded like a prepared speech. “Now that the crisis has passed, I offer my immediate resignation. And obviously, I will never mention it to a living soul. I can only offer my most profound apologies.”

She bit her lip. “Then I suppose you wouldn’t be willing to try again, then?”

He blinked at her in shock.

“I shouldn’t have slapped you—” she started.

“I love you,” he blurted.

“I think I love you, too,” she replied hesitantly.

His face glowed. “Then you’ll marry me?”

She stood up so fast her chair fell over. “No!”

He looked confused.

“Everything we just went through—all of it was so I would not lose the rights to my own work. But if I marry you, or anyone, for that matter—”

He slowly nodded, deflating. “Your husband automatically owns all of your property. Including your patents.”

“I can’t. I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

He turned to the wall. “Then I must tender my resignation after all. I’m sorry, Miss Bell—”

“Evangeline.”

“I don’t think I can bear to continue to work beside you and never be able to touch you. Not anymore.”

She took his hand firmly. “Who said anything about that? I just said I wouldn’t marry you, is all.”

He whipped his head around, shocked. And then blushed in comprehension.

She loved the way his fair skin blushed, she realized.

Evangeline smiled. “To hell with convention.”

A
tale of The Spellpunk

Patrick Thomas

––––––––

T
he livery horse and cab driver knew he had a customer by the crick of the door and the slight sinking of the back of his buggy as someone sat down.

“Evening Guvner, where to?” the driver said, craning his head behind him. As soon as he saw the bald man in the stovetop hat, he cringed. “Oh no, not you. Get out of my cab, Grimstone.”

“Careful there, Stevie, your cockney accent disappeared,” the passenger said, a mischievous grin on his face.

“Look, I have to put on a show to fit in here, but I don’t have to do it for you. Get lost. Every time I see you, it’s nothing but trouble. I wish I was back on Earth.” Stevie said.

“I don’t,” Grimstone said.

“Well, yeah that’s because you fit in here. Back home before we were taken, I pulled down six, almost seven, figures a year as a broker. I was on my way to a lingerie-model trophy wife. Instead of living the best years of my life drinking body shots and banging a beautiful woman every night before retiring at thirty-five to a tropical paradise, I end up here. Worse, I’m stuck with you and the rest of these backward cretins, none of whom even realize that they’re part of a stupid playworld. Back home I could have bought and sold you. What were you, a chemistry teacher in a high school?”