Shadow Conspiracy (51 page)

The true Wili chose that moment to flow into the open mouth of the automaton. They had found a willing vessel to inhabit, to give them substance and power.

I struck the huge kettle drum with the padded stick with all my strength. Again and again, I pounded the instrument, setting up a deafening reverberation. The silver dancer stopped her dance in mid step, grabbed her ears and shrieked.

I dashed up the side steps to the stage.

“What is going on here?” Lady Ada demanded. She hastened on stage with long, angry strides. Charles Babbage approached from the opposite side of the stage.

Emma circled around behind Lady Ada. Her nimble fingers barely brushed the apron pocket containing the key.

The dancer continued to scream in pain.

I searched the array of levers behind the stage managers’ podium for a clue.

“Stop that! Give me back the key,” Lady Ada demanded.

“Oooh,” Emma moaned, swaying between Lady Ada and the automaton. She panted as if she’d laced her corset too tightly, holding the back of her right hand to her forehead. She swayed and moaned some more. “The Wili, they’re here. They’re hungry. Oh so hungry. They need men’s souls. They thirst for vengeance.” She spread her arms so that the shawl with its colorful embroidery of flowers and exotic birds flared out taking on the silhouette of wings.

A bit over-dramatic but Lady Ada and Babbage hung back.

Deftly Emma pocketed the golden key inside her bodice. They’d not get it away from her easily.

The automaton began to revive as the echoing drum beats faded. I had to hurry.

The levers presented a puzzling array, different coloured handles, different lengths. I’m sure the stage manager knew them all intimately. Where would he logically reach for an emergency bleed of steam in an overheated boiler?

The third one from the left that stuck out an extra inch from the others. The one with a red silk twist of thread tied to it. The thread matched the fringe on Emma’s fabulous shawl. I leaned all my weight onto it.

Steam escaped through every vent, hissing and whistling loud enough to wake the dead.

Or crush a silver dancer.

It ran right and left, forward and back, circling and tearing at the mechanical ears. It howled. Its knees locked. The spine bent at the hips and froze.

Lady Ada’s newest creation stared blankly at the floor. Temporarily dead.

“Give me the key!” Lady Ada demanded of Emma. “I have to reactivate the dancer.” She had to shout to be heard over the whistle.

“Myrta, Queen of the Wili stole it,” Emma stated, still in her breathy vision voice. She acted her role so well, I wondered if she truly communicated with a Wilis.

I had to hurry, before the ghostly spirits overcame the codex and restarted the dancer on their own, with souls that wanted violence. I fixed a hook on the release lever so that the screaming whistle continued to plague us.

In a flash I was across the stage and fumbling with the back panel of the automaton.

“No, Magdala,” Lady Ada cried. She ran to my side. Her hands covered mine. “If you remove the codex now, before she’s been properly deactivated you will ruin the internal structures.”

“Good.” I wrenched open the panel.

Steam rose up to fill my mouth and nose. Foul stuff smelling of sulphur and rotting wood.

Was it steam, or the Wili trying to choke me?

Lady Ada tried to force the panel closed again. I gave her an indelicate shove with my elbow to her mid section. She doubled over with a loud exhalation, too well bred to allow a minor hurt to show as more than surprise.

In the seconds Lady Ada took to recover, I yanked out the first golden card of the codex to reach my fingers. The sulphurous mist thickened. I coughed it out of my mouth and held my breath. Then I grabbed a second card and a third, throwing them toward Emma who neatly tromped on them, her heel gouging the delicate punch holes that guided pins and gears.

The mist tried to gag me. Or possess me. I cupped my hands and drove it back inside the automaton and slammed the back panel shut. It jerked and flailed as spirits tried to make the gears and joints move. It began a desperate St Vitus dance of death, rocking off balance, stumbling, circling blindly. Trying to find the music that would lead it back to life.

With one last jerk back, it toppled, and crashed to the stage, all joints locked. Inert, dead, merely a lump of useless parts.

I breathed a sigh of relief and fell to my knees, coughing out the last of the Wilis effluvia.

“What have you done?” Charles Babbage screeched. “You’ve ruined my experiment.”

“I have no doubt you will try again, to prove that souls can inhabit machines, in hopes of resurrecting your wife and children,” Lady Ada said. She breathed heavily, eyeing me warily. “I presume you have an explanation, Madame Magdala.”

“Of course I do. A tale best told over a cup of coffee. But until then, I must inform you that Lord Reedstone is proposing a law in the Lords that will classify a soul as property. Theft or involuntary relocation of a soul will be punishable as larceny.”

Charles Babbage blanched. Lady Ada drew a deep breath and schooled her features, no doubt hoping this would be the end of attempts to bring her depraved father back into this world.

But it wouldn’t. She and I both knew that.

“Come, Emma, we will retire to the nearest cafe and allow Madame Carlotta to resume her rightful role of
Giselle
. She needs to finish this rehearsal, and we need to return to the Book View Café. Tell me have you ever ridden a Pegasus? It’s quite an adventure.”

“Oh, I look forward to it. When do we leave?”

Irene Radford and her husband make their home on Mt. Hood in Oregon. They frequently hike on the mountain and in the Columbia River Gorge. They share their home with a psychotic Lilac Point Siamese.

Irene trained in classical ballet, dancing with the acclaimed pro-am company
Ballet du Lac
in Lake Oswego, Oregon.

Join Irene on her Live Journal blog
www.livejournal.com/users/rambling_phyl
and share her latest hiking adventures, progress reports on her books, and gushing over wildflowers.

Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls

The mind tells the story—but the heart inspires it with dreams of what might be waiting Out There. With evocative stories of lost comrades, alien first contacts, and strange, often unexpected confrontations with evolving science,
Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls
embraces both our pulp-dream past and cutting-edge future.

Thirteen authors (fifteen if you count pseudonyms) from the Book View Café got together one rainy Saturday afternoon with a big bowl of popcorn and reruns of Buck Rogers. They started comparing short stories and a new anthology took form.

Rare reprints, hard-to-find favorites and new tales all combine in this one-of-a-kind story collection, available exclusively from Book View Press.

What happens when thirteen authors get to giggling over implausible titles for the collection? They choose the most illogical and then they have to write something to go with it. So, yes, there are three flash fiction versions of
Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls.

Stories by: Vonda N. McIntyre, Brenda W. Clough, Katharine Kerr, Judith Tarr, P.R. Frost, Pati Nagle, Madeleine Robins, Nancy Jane Moore, Sarah Zettel, Amy Sterling Casil, Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, Jennifer Stevenson, Sylvia Kelso, C.L. Anderson, and Irene Radford.

$4.99

Read a
Rocket Boy
sample story
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.

The Shadow Conspiracy

Tales from the Age of Steam

Edited by
Phyllis Irene Radford
and
Laura Anne Gilman

Published by Book View Press

www.bookviewcafe.com

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