Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables (36 page)

“Careful, now,” the professor said just loud enough for Algert to hear, nothing too exciting.

We got everything snapped and locked down, then stepped away. The slow
chug, chug, chug
of the suit began to build until it was as if the suit had been sleeping and suddenly woken up. Steam began to rise and the clockwork mechanism began to spin as Algert and the suit took a step. The clang of his footstep rang throughout the hall even over the noise of the steam engine.

He took another step, then another until he was walking around the hall in a halting, unsteady gait. Finally he stopped in front of the emperor and bowed, then clanged over to the heavy hand truck we had used to load and unload the suit. With one hand he lifted it over his head and tossed it across the hall. The emperor and his advisers cheered and applauded.

Then the professor, smiling wide, nodded to Algert and said, “Your Majesty, as I said, this is only a small portion of what the
Clockwork Suit can do. I hope it was enough to satisfy both your curiosity and your requirements for a positive evaluation.”

Russell and I ran over and began to release the snaps and locks so that Algert could climb out. The professor turned down the boiler and released some of the steam from the compression chamber. I’m sure he and Algert thought that the demonstration was over—I know I did—but just as Algert was climbing out, the emperor stood up and came down to the floor. His advisers followed.

“Tell me,” he asked Algert, “how do you make it work? From the inside, I mean. Is it difficult?”

“No, Your Majesty,” Algert said, bracing himself on my shoulder as he slid his left foot free of the suit.

The professor stepped up quickly. “You Majesty, if I may…” He pointed out the pressure plates and said, “You see those small plates there and there and there? They are designed to activate the cables and pistons automatically whenever you lift your leg or arm. And around back, we have a gyroscope, which helps to maintain balance.”

The emperor nodded, tapping his lips with a ringed finger. “Could anyone, for example, one of my average soldiers, learn to operate this Clockwork Suit of Armor?”

“Unless he is either too large to get in or too small to reach the plates, yes, certainly.”

The emperor nodded as he walked around the suit holding his chin and tapping his lips. “You and I are of the same size, are we not? Do you think I am smart enough to operate this suit?”

I saw the professor’s eyes widen and his mouth open. The one thing none of us wanted was to have the emperor climb inside the suit. But the emperor had laid his trap well, and the professor had to bite his tongue before smiling and saying, “Oh, absolutely, Your Majesty.”

“Good, then that is what I shall do.”

We were not the only ones who thought this was a bad idea. All his attendants and advisers suddenly surrounded him,
offering all sorts of reasons why the emperor could not possibility do such a thing.

“Silence!” The emperor gave everyone a dangerous look. “If I am to give this man such an enormous sum of money for his invention, then I will know all that I can know about it. I must be able to say, ‘Yes, I have actually worn a Clockwork Suit and I know what it can do.’ Now stand aside.”

Worried looks passed through the crowd of advisers, and from Algert to the professor and back. Everyone seemed to freeze in place for a moment, until the emperor took off his fancy coat and said, “Well, help me into this contraption.”

Russell and I automatically moved to stand on either side just as we had done with Algert, and before anyone could do or say anything, the emperor put his hand on my shoulder and stepped inside the Clockwork Suit.

Even as I was helping him get inside, I knew that it was the wrong thing to do. I started to tell the emperor that he shouldn’t get in, that it wasn’t safe, that something bad could happen, but Algert pushed me out of the way and began telling the emperor more about how the pressure plates and mechanisms operated.

I stepped back, my stomach twisting into knots, and watched as the professor hurried around to turn up the boiler and charge the compression chamber.

Finally Algert waved us over to close up the Clockwork Suit of Armor. As we fastened the chest plate, Russell looked at me and mouthed, “Do something!”

I wanted to, I really did, but it was too late. If I said anything now, the professor would know I had lied to him. He would beat me worse than Corbin had. I would just have to wait and hope the suit broke in a way that wouldn’t hurt the emperor.

Algert looked both worried and elated, and the professor’s face was practically glowing with excitement. I was sure he thought he had the commission in the bag.

I glanced at Russell. He looked as if he was about to cry, or run, or explode, and that made my stomach twist even more.
This was not what I had planned. The suit was supposed to fail, yes, but not with the emperor inside.

If the professor ever found out I knew about the axle, he would hurt me bad, but if I let the emperor get hurt, I might end up dead. I eased around back where the professor was watching the steam gauge. I took a deep breath, then reached out and tugged at the professor’s sleeve.

“Not now, Donny,” he said, his voice carrying a dangerous edge.

“But, Professor.”

“I said, not now, you little cretin! Can’t you see we’ve got the emperor in our suit!” His face looked as if it were lit with fire, bright and glowing, and hot. Beads of sweat rolled down his forehead, and he was in no mood to hear anything from me. “You and Russell get out of the way.”

I walked over to stand next to Russell. “Did you tell him?” he asked in a loud whisper. I shook my head, and we both crossed our fingers.

The
chug, chug, chug
of the boiler began to build until finally the professor nodded to Algert, then moved around in front of the suit. He put on his biggest false smile and gestured for the emperor to take his first step.

The first step was shaky, but the next was more sure. Soon the emperor was walking almost as well as Algert. He made it over to where Algert had thrown the hand truck, then bent over and tried to lift it into the air. Algert had failed to warn him about how the added weight would disrupt his balance, and the emperor had to take two quick steps to keep from falling.

There was a loud
ping!
and then some grinding, clanking sounds. The added weight and the quick motions were apparently just enough strain to snap the axle in two. The Clockwork Suit began to shake and tremble…and then the emperor began to scream.

“Help! Help! Get me out of here. Something is wrong with this infernal contraption. The machine is eating me alive!”

Everyone moved at once. All the attendants, advisers,
generals, all of them came boiling down onto the floor around the suit. Everyone was yelling and cursing and the emperor was yelling and telling them to hurry. The suit was shaking and clanging and pinging, and Algert was doing his best to shut the thing down, turning valves, venting pressure, until we were all standing in an enormous cloud of steam.

When they finally pulled the emperor free of the suit, he was completely shirtless and bleeding from some nasty-looking cuts and scrapes on his back. His trousers had gotten caught on something and they had to rip and cut at the legs just to get him out.

I looked inside the suit and saw that when the axle broke, the gear cluster had shifted forward, and one of the big sprockets of the clockwork mechanism had somehow slipped down, gouging into the emperor’s back, the points digging and twisting and winding around in the fine white cloth until the whole shirt was ripped right off his body.

The sprocket itself was covered in blood, and there were pieces of torn shirt and skin clogging up most of the clockworks.

The palace guards rushed in to surround the professor and Algert. There was a lot of shoving and yelling, the professor protested loudly that he was not to blame, that Schneider had sabotaged his creation, and that he still deserved the commission regardless of the emperor’s injuries. “My research must continue! Science must move ever onward!”

He was still bellowing at the guards as they tugged him and Algert out of the hall. Russell and I stood beside the Clockwork Suit for a while in a daze, not knowing what we should do. Nobody seemed at all interested in us. I guess we were just too small and insignificant for them to worry about. We watched the surgeon tend to the emperor’s wounds until a guard walked over and told us, “You lads run along home, now. We can handle things here.”

We slowly made our way over to where another guard stood holding open the big double doors leading outside. I think we were both a bit shaken, surprised and amazed that we could just walk away. I wanted to break into a run, feeling I should get away
before someone realized that we belonged with the professor, but I held myself back.

I could see it on Russell’s face that he felt the same, that we had lucked out, that we should run as fast as we could and never look back.

But I did look back. The Clockwork Suit stood in the middle of the hall, a mechanical miracle of polished brass, copper, and steel, full of all kinds of advanced scientific wonders. But ultimately it was nothing more than a fancy gewgaw, a shiny contraption that moved around and made a lot of noise, designed for only one reason…to cheat the emperor out of his money.

The moment we stepped outside, Russell began to snicker and snort. I looked at him in shock. “Shut up!” I rasped though my teeth. “You want the guards after us?”

“I can’t help it,” Russell said through his fingers, trying to hold back his flood of laughter. “Did you see what that suit did to him? The emperor had no clothes on!”

I
t was not so much the sound of the huge rats that awoke Stovepipe Montpelier as it was the
smell
of them, a foul, sickening, almost
burning
odor from the ragged fur of the three big rodents, their matted gray hair swarming with black fleas as they skittered past his bedpost. It stung Stovepipe’s nostrils so fiercely that he jolted upright in his hotel bed. The lumpy, coarse canvas mattress yielded and pitched beneath him as the weak network of ropes beneath it strained to support his shifting weight. Leaning quickly to one side, he wrapped his fingers around the cool smooth steel of his Winchester’s barrel and raised the rifle like a club.

Wham! Wham! Wham!

Through the threadbare sackcloth curtains of the hotel room’s small window, moonlight dimly illuminated the carnage. Two dead rats, heads smashed flat against the rough boards of the hotel’s bare pine flooring. A third rat wounded, bleeding, skittering for cover beneath the chifforobe across the room.

There was no time to fumble for a match and ignite the whale-oil lamp that tottered precariously on the rickety nightstand. Instead, Stovepipe flipped the Winchester muzzle-forward. He took a brief moment to daub some blood and chunks of rodent gore from its crescent brass butt plate, smearing them off with a corner of his bed’s woolen shoddy, before bringing the rifle up tight against his shoulder. Furiously he cranked a tiny pewter dial inlaid on the dark walnut of the rifle’s wooden stock. Blue sparks flashed from the dial’s edges. There was a sharp metallic hiss, and then the weapon fired.

What emerged from the muzzle, however, was not a bullet.

In fact, the firing mechanism of Stovepipe’s carbine had been hopelessly jammed for more than a week now. The soft shiny copper casing of a .44 rimfire cartridge, badly distorted, was still annoyingly visible atop the receiver where it had become stuck upon the closing of the lever. Instead, a beam of pure white light shot out from a narrow brass tube that paralleled the Winchester’s barrel. In an instant it lit up the room with the heat and intensity of the midday sun.

Two small beady eyes gleamed like campfire coals from the darkness under the chifforobe.

Stovepipe wished desperately that the carbine would still fire. A single squeeze of the trigger, and that rodent would be splattered dead against the wall. But although its telescopic sight and its light-beam generator still worked perfectly, the customized Winchester would not shoot again until some serious gunsmithing was applied. Besides, a .44 load would likely penetrate the hotel’s thin pine wall and cause unpleasantness for other guests.

Not that their sleep had been peaceful tonight.

Sounds of creaking doors and tramping feet came from the hall, heavy footfalls pounding along the corridor. They stopped outside his door.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

Without waiting for Stovepipe’s response, the hotelier entered. The door exploded inward, iron hinges screaming. Reflexively, Stovepipe swung the muzzle of his Winchester in that direction, directing its burning bright light at the intruder who, startled and unexpectedly blinded, added a
real
scream to the cacophony. The solid oak door banged hard against the wall. The oil lamp tottered and tipped off the nightstand, bursting on the floor with a shower of tinkling glass and glittering crystal particles.