Teancum (7 page)

“Father!” the young woman gasped, and threw herself on the
gruff President’s arm.

“Get inside your room, Elizabeth,” he harrumphed at her.

“But…”

“I’ll explain at breakfast.”

She looked at Sam Clemens and Welker and Rockwell and the
midget Coltrane and their bristling guns, and hesitated.
 
She was a
slightly-better-than-plain-looking girl, Sam thought, strong enough to be some
frontiersman’s wife, and fair enough to have her pick of such rough men.
 
Here she’d probably end up as one of a
trio of girls on the elbow of some toothless, doddering old fart.
 
She met his gaze and he blushed again
and looked away, feeling vaguely embarrassed.

“Do you need help, father?” Elizabeth asked.

“The day I need help from one of my daughters,” Young
snapped, “is a dark day indeed for the Kingdom of Deseret!”

He moved on, Sam followed, and they left Elizabeth behind
them.

They passed a window and then another, looking out onto the
orchard between Young’s houses and the Tabernacle, and then Coltrane tagged at
Sam’s sleeve.
 
“Something’s wrong,”
he muttered.

Sam looked out at the orchard.
 
Other than the flare of gunshots off to the left, by the
Z.C.M.I., it was still, and quiet but for a faint wheezing and pumping
sound.
 
“Those glass bells,” he
agreed.
 
“The pumps, or whatever
they are.
 
They’re still
working.
 
Should they be stopped
for the night?”

“I ain’t sure that matters, but I figure it might.”

“I think they might be pneumatics,” Sam pondered.

“I ain’t sure,” Coltrane scratched his head slowly, “but I
reckon you must mean either rheumatic, or pneumon… pneumonic?
 
Pneumoneristic?
 
You mean they’re sick?
 
There’s something wrong with them?”

“I mean they’re pumps to create pressure.
 
I think it’s good they’re still going,
because the message system will work.”
 

“I don’t trust Welker.”

“I don’t either.” Sam considered.
 
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Jed, but I calculate that
you might be a touch more inconspicuous than I would be, if you were to go
missing from the party here.”

“Is there a
right
way
to take that?” Coltrane grinned.
 
“But I agree.”

The dwarf jogged back down the hall the way they had come
and disappeared.
 
Sam hurried and
caught up to the others.
 
They were
in the Lion House end of the two buildings, now, by the crenellated entrance
through which Sam had originally come.
 
Shattered windows and bullets in the plaster of the walls bore witness
to the Third Virginia’s using the room in their gun battle.
 
Outside, gunfire still flashed and
shoes echoed.
 

Young hammered at the door of George Cannon’s communication
room with the butt of one pistol.

“Go away!” called a voice, faint through the door.

“Is that Lindemuth?” Young roared.
 
“Open up, you maggot!”

“Is that…?
 
Who’s there?” Lindemuth called, the door still shut.

“Open up!” Young bellowed.
 
“Or I’ll seal you for time and all eternity to every fat,
man-hating shrew in the Kingdom!”

“President Young?”

“I’ll seal you to a man, Lindemuth!
 
I’ll kill two birds with one stone and
seal you to John Lee himself!”

Sam elbowed his way past Welker and Rockwell and raised one
of his pistols.
 
“With all due
respect, Mr. President, I worry we may not be able to wait.”

Bang!

The action of the pistol felt alien in Sam’s hand, but the
resulting progress was satisfying.
 
Sam’s bullet blew both the lock and doorknob off the door and kicked the
door open, revealing a thin man in suspenders and a knotted tie cowering at the
message table.
 
Behind him gleamed
the brass trap doors over the bank of circular glass cubbyholes that Sam
remembered from only the day before.

Young glared at Sam fiercely.
 
“Thank you,” he said, without softening his expression.
 
He turned and barreled through the
door.
 
“Lindemuth!” he barked.
 
“Pens and ink and a stack of blank
message slips!”
 

The clerk scurried to comply, and Young shoved aside papers
on the room’s central table, clearing the entire space.

“I trust you gentlemen all know how to write?” Young asked,
shrugging out of his jacket and rolling up his sleeves.

“So long as the writing’s short,” Rockwell said.

“I’d have said the same,” Sam agreed.
 
“But it would have been funnier.”

“
I am alive and John Lee is a traitor
,” Young dictated.
 
“I trust that’s short enough.”
 
He grabbed a pen and bottle of ink and stationed himself at
the end of the table.
 
“I will sign
my name to each.
 
Lindemuth will
shove them into the message transmitter as fast as we can create them.”

Chapter Eighteen

Jed Coltrane slipped out a window.
 
It was easier than trying to find a door; he just tipped up
a big pane and crouched in it like a gargoyle for a minute, checking his exit
route.
 
Outside the Lion House, or
the Beehive House, whichever it was he was now leaving, a man in a long coat
paced in the bushes, rifle in both hands.
 
He looked too alert to be a casual sentry—the man had obviously
been warned to expect something.

Jed’s uneasy sense that he was playing a gaffed game
ratcheted up a notch.
 
He was in
deep shadow, invisible to the guard (who was watching for people breaking in,
anyway, and not for people trying to break out), so he waited.

When the man passed, Jed jumped onto his back with the piano
wire looped between his fists.
 

The man fired his rifle twice, but he couldn’t get it
swiveled around tightly enough to get a good shot at Jed.
 
The sound of his shots was lost in the
general firefight noise, and then he was collapsing on the green grass,
unconscious.

You really ought to cut the bastard’s throat, Coltrane, Jed
told himself, but hell, the guy might have family, so he didn’t.
 
He put the wire back into his pocket
and crept out into the park to reconnoiter.
 
The bellows inside the glass bells still pumped up and down,
but unlike in the daytime, nothing whizzed through the glass tubes
overhead.
 
He wondered what the
bellows did—maybe they circulated the air inside the Tabernacle, or
powered the electricks?
 
Poe would
have a good guess.

Of course, if he kept coughing up blood like he had been
last time Jed had seen him, Poe might not live long enough to ever see the
bellows.
 

The area outside Brigham Young’s twin houses was well lit by
a series of Franklin Poles running up both South Tabernacle and North
Tabernacle, as well as Poles dotted throughout the open park space.
 
Ahead of Jed was the Tabernacle, the
gigantic plascrete egg that seemed to be the center of the Kingdom of
Deseret.
 
Faint lights shone
through its glass doors, lights that flickered a bit, if Jed was not mistaken,
and were yellow.
 
It was almost
like the enormous building might be on fire.

Off to his left, Jed saw the
ZIONS COOPERATIVE MERCANTILE
INSTITUTE
building and the gunfight that
enveloped it.
 
Men in gray on
clocksprung horses were leaping in through the front doors and windows now, shattering
glass and splintering wood as they went.
 
He didn’t see any of the Massachusetts soldiers in blue, and guessed
they must be running away, out the back doors of the building.

If they weren’t being outright massacred on the inside.

Jed felt very nervous, and armed himself with the
vibro-blade.
 
He didn’t know much
of a charge the weapon’s electricks carried, but as long as the juice lasted,
he’d be able to cut through just about anything.

To his right, where North Tabernacle Street crossed along
the edge of the glass bellows park, the
Jim Smiley
idled on the grass, in the shadow of a couple of big
cottonwoods.
 
Her lights were all
off, but Jed knew just where to look and could make out a wispy plume of steam
and smoke trickling out through the trees’ interlaced leaves.
 
It was like some kind of Indian trick
Clemens had pulled, making sure the truck’s vapors were sifted by leaves before
they went up into the open sky, and Jed admired him for it.
 
It might not be a bad life, being mate
aboard the
Jim Smiley
.

Clocksprung horses moved into view.
 
Six… seven… eight of them, Jed counted,
and there were real live horses, too, and men mounted on them.
 
They passed the
Jim Smiley
, without seeming to notice the big steam-truck, and
trotted to the first of the glass bells.

One of the men on horseback raised his arm, and the
clocksprung riders urged their mounts forward—

crash!
 
crash!
 
crash!—

shattering the bells.

“Jebus,” Jed muttered.
 
He crept through the trees along the side of the Beehive House for a
better look.
 
Why were the soldiers
and Danites (if that’s who the other men were, but hell, every man he met
seemed to be one) smashing up the bellows?
 
They did it roughly, too, not like rousties sloughing the
show to move on to the next town, but like cops letting you know that you
hadn’t paid them enough, and you’d reach a little bit deeper into your kitty if
you wanted to play in their town.
 

Jed growled involuntarily and tightened his grip on the Colt
vibro-blade.

Without meaning to, he realized he had come all the way to
the side of the
Jim Smiley
.
 
He hadn’t meant to—he’d intended
to creep back the other way, to watch what happened to Sam Clemens and the
other, make sure they weren’t walking into an ambush—but the action had
been irresistible.
 
He turned to
head back the other way—

and across the park, the Tabernacle’s doors burst open.

Three figures stumbled out, drawing with them huge puffing
clouds of smoke and the orange tongues of hungry fire.
 
From the top hat of the central
silhouette, the poofy skirt of the one on the right and the queer Striderman
getup of the third, Jed immediately recognized Absalom Fearnley-Standish and
his angels.
 
The Strider gunner (he
could tell her body from Ortiz’s a mile away) carried a bundle of bulky things
in her arms, like short poles.

“What happened to the Strider, then?” he muttered to
himself.

The horsemen in the garden stopped, saw Jed’s three allies,
and immediately opened fire.
 
Clutching his hat, Fearnley-Standish turned and dashed back into the
burning building, coattails flapping.
 
He and the two women hid inside the door, drew pistols, and began firing
out.
 
The horsemen took cover,
behind park benches, trees and the clocksprung horses themselves.

Jed looked left, to where he knew Sam Clemens and the others
had gone.
 
Who knew what was
happening to them now?
 
Jed had
basically abandoned his post, and they might be prisoners or dead.

On the other hand, maybe Welker was totally trustworthy and
they were just fine.
 
The fact that
he and Sam Clemens had had the same hunch didn’t mean the hunch was
correct.
 
Young had been confident
in Welker, and confident that he was about to get his message out and turn the
tables on the Danite insurrection.
 
And if someone didn’t step in to help Absalom Fearnley-Standish and the
two women pronto, they would be roasted alive or pumped full of lead.

Jed climbed the ladder of the
Jim Smiley
, up over the huge India rubber skirt, across the
metal deck and onto the rubber matting on the floor of the wheelhouse.
 
He had watched Clemens operate the
machine, and it had been no big deal—gear, wheel, and brake, Jed could
manage.
 
And he knew the furnace
was full of coal.

Jed sighted down over the front of the steam-truck at the
fifteen or so men whose backs were turned to him, shooting at his allies.
 
He needed a way to get them all, or as
many as he possibly could, and hand-to-hand fighting was not going to do the
trick, not even with his Colt blade.

But the
Jim Smiley
might—Jed started to laugh when he saw that Sam had left in its place the
lightning bolt key, the one that had activated the steam-truck’s defensive
electricks.
 
Jed flicked on the
lightning bolt switch, electrifying the vehicle.
 
Sparks
crackzed
off the deck and hull of the craft where stray hanging Cottonwood branches
touched it, and one of the trees caught fire.
 
Jed released the brake, shifted the steam-truck into gear,
and rolled forward.

The horses, the flesh and blood ones, saw him coming
first.
 
Two of them yanked up their
pickets and bolted before any of the Danites or the Third Virginia heard the
clank-and-hiss of Sam Clemens’s truck and turned around.

And then it was too late.

Bang!
 
Bang!

Crash!

Crack-ckz-ckz-ckz-ckz-ckz-ckz!

Bullets smashed out windows of the
Jim Smiley’s
wheelhouse, banged off her metal hull and sank into
her heavy rubber.
 
Jed stayed
low—easy enough—looking over the control panel of the steam-truck
just enough to be able to steer at the thickest knots of Danites and cavalrymen
he could find.

Men threw themselves on the
Jim Smiley’s
ladders and shrieked in pain as they were flung off
again, electrocuted.
 
The craft’s
ponderous tyres rolled over man and machine alike, crushing clocksprung horses
into their component parts and simultaneously turning them into lethal
transmitters of the steam-truck’s deadly lightning currents.
 
The heavy rubber reduced hollering,
struggling men into smears of goo on the grass.
 
The air reeked of ozone and blood and smoke, gunpowder and
otherwise, and the night rang with the screams of men and horses.

Just as Jed wondered how long the electricks would hold out,
he heard an enormous
SNAP!
and the
crackling sound that told him the deck was electrified ended.
 
He spun the wheel, aiming for a cluster
of four men who fired at him with rifles and pistols, and then he turned and
ran.

Across the deck he pelted, looking for a targets—

bullets cut the air around him—

Jed saw two men, one mounted on a clocksprung horse and the
other trying to mount up—

he thumbed the vibro-blade’s switch to
on
and hurled himself through the air.

Hummmmmmmm
, sang Sam
Colt’s deadly blade.

Jed landed in the empty saddle of one of the horses.
 
While the man whose mount he’d boarded
cursed and reached for a pistol, Jed swung the vibro-blade in a neat arc—

slicing through the head of the other horse—

and cutting off one leg of its rider.

Jed wasn’t used to fighting with knives that met no
resistance, and his own momentum pulled him forward and off the horse.
 
He scrabbled with his free hand at the
sculpted metal saddle horn and missed, tumbling to the ground and narrowly
avoiding impaling himself on the humming weapon.

The mutilated rider screamed and fell backwards onto the
ground in a spout of red blood.
 
His horse kicked aimlessly with its back feet, then kicked again, and
again, trampling its own severed head with its razor-sharp metallic front
hooves.
 
Jed rolled, narrowly
avoided being crushed by the clocksprung horse, and then the other cavalryman
got a bead on him with his pistol and started firing.

Bang!
 
Bang!

Jed threw the vibro-blade.
 
It wasn’t meant to be a throwing weapon, it wasn’t
especially balanced and it wasn’t weighted in the tip.
 
But Jed was a carny who had done his
time at every conceivable kind of joint, including throwing knives at beautiful
girls, and Jed knew the secret of throwing any sort of knife at all, even one
that would chop your finger off if you so much as touched its tip.

He threw the vibro-blade by the handle, overhand, so the
blade launched out from his shoulder in a straight line, and not tumbling like
a weighted knife.
 
He let his
extended index finger drag along the knife’s hilt as he threw, truing up his
aim at the center of the cavalryman’s chest by simply pointing at him.

Bang!

Pain lanced through Jed Coltrane as a bullet hit him in the
stomach.

Fhoomp!

The vibro-blade slammed straight into the center of the
man’s gray-breasted uniform, punched a hole right through his entire chest, and
hurtled straight away like a perfectly pitched baseball, into the air.

“Aaaagh!” One-Leg kept screaming, thrashing around in a
growing puddle of his own arterial spray.

The standing soldier dropped his pistol, stared down at the
bloody hole in the middle of his chest, looked at Jed with an expression that
was half-accusation and half-puzzlement and then toppled forward, crashing
face-first into the grass.

“Aaaagh!”

Jed grabbed the dropped pistol and turned on One-Leg.

“Shut up!” he yelled, and put the man out of his misery.

He almost vomited from the pain, and looked at his own
belly.
 
Black blood soaked into his
shirt from a neat little bullet hole.
 
Jed probed around his side and back and couldn’t find an exit
wound.
 
The bullet’s still inside
you, Coltrane, you idiot, he thought.
 
Not that it matters, because as soon as they can recover a teaspoon’s
worth of organization, these boys’ll jump on you and cut you down.

Jed cocked his borrowed pistol again and turned to face
whatever he had coming.

But the wave of attacking soldiers he expected didn’t
materialize.
 
Instead, through
blurring vision, he saw men in gray running away, and men in long coats chasing
down skittish, fleeing horses.
 
And
Absalom Fearnley-Standish, scalloped hat on his head and pistol held high,
charging in silhouette out of the inferno of the Tabernacle with an angel to
each side of him, blasting at the few holdouts among the Virginians and the
Danites and driving them away.
 
Behind them, grinding in the opposite direction and plunging into the
wall of flames, went the
Jim Smiley
.