The Apex Book of World SF 2 (42 page)

was
her home.
Sometimes there was no grease and she had to wind her husband, lubricating his
gears with butter or fat stolen from the communal depot. And sometimes there
was no food, which meant no leftovers for her roots. That was the siege, the
embargo, the seldom-run blockade. As when they had arrived on the Nassau. But
still, they enjoyed a normal couple's routine. He worked as a carabineer at the
front, and she'd patrol the streets on foot with her Luger. Both came back home
at the end of the day, sharing the little stories that filled up their
quotidian days. A routine that included almost daily visits to the basements of
Hotel Florida.

 

She lay on a wooden
table, an improvised stretcher with one foot shorter than the other three.
Dozens of lenses and manipulators hung from coils and wires tied to the
ceiling, all of them pointing at her body, analysing, accusing her.
You're
an empty vase, a dead tree
. The smell of ozone and gaslight unnerved her,
especially after two hours of breathing electrical air and smoke, half-naked
under the holophotes. Not to mention the fear she had of falling from the
table. Every time she breathed a bit too deeply, the table bent to one side,
stopping with a sudden
thump
, a sound that served as an exclamation mark
to the many, omnipresent
tick-tocks
in the room. Some of those sounds
were strange to her, but some were not. Inside the wall of darkness, Chaya
could only see the blue poltergeist inside Dr Cavalcante's eyes; Emilio, who
had his goggles bolted to his face. It could be just fashion, or something far
more sinister.
He can see in the dark?

Suddenly, the
clattering stopped. The lights came back on slowly, along with calmer, lower
tick-tocks
.
Chaya could see the doctor walking to and fro in front of the analytical
engine, exhaling gusts of white steam. He had some punched cards in his hands
and was murmuring something to a machine hanging from his shoulders, a trump
with a rubber tube linked to a rattling stenograph on his waistcoat, spitting
metres and metres of hollowed-out paper.

"So?" Chaya sat up,
relieved that the examination was over. "What does your oracle say?"

Emilio spoke over
the brass trump, as he looked at the end of the room, at a table covered by a
ziggurat-shaped tarp from which came the low sound of boiling water. "It says
you ate chocolate today," he said rather casually.

"Just a tip," she
smiled.

"It's quite toxic
for golems."

"Just like a shot of
cachaça
, Emilio." Chaya was putting on her dress, careful not to let the
dark chocolate bar fall from her pocket.

"And just as hard to
get these days." Emilio turned off the stenograph and unfastened the apparatus
from his torso. "You been smuggling? Look, Chaya, if people know you've been
getting stuff from the Mauritzes, you're gonna be in some serious trouble,
especially if the committee hears about it. The way things are, this could end
with an execution."

"If I can't eat chocolate,
I don't want to be part of your revolution," the golem said, a defying hand in
her pocket. "I bought it at the station. Before I got here. On Earth."

The doctor shook his
head and gave a short, dry laugh. "Okay, then. But you'll have to quit if you
want to have a baby. That thing messes with your ecosystem, you know." He
finally rolled up the paper and attached it to the feeder's tiny hooks on the
calculator's rear. As soon as he did so, the engine re-initiated its mad
rattling: the sound of a thousand clocks speeding up to the end of time. The
analytical engine ate hole after hole, a data banquet digested by coiled guts
and dented wheels, calculating, calculating, calculating.

"What's the deal
with this committee?" She still couldn't understand the politics of the strike
in Catalonia very well. She knew there was an area controlled by three or four
anarchist trade unions, but each city block contained many different groups.
Left and right wing communists, or whatever name they called themselves, everything
depending on whoever their leaders were. There were other groups she'd heard
the communists call republicans, but they could also be divided into those who
wished independence and those who wanted to be part of some Earthly empire. Of
the anarchists, Chaya could only see the difference between those who wanted
action without much discussion and those who sought consensus for every single
thing, be it the restoration of a house or the fair distribution of rations.
Anyway, the uprising made some areas in the factory free from the consortium
that used to run the mining and aether processing.

Emilio sighed,
looking worried. He cleaned his insect's eyes with a ragged piece of red cloth
and it seemed the blue that used to live in his goggles had dimmed. "Some
far-off quarters have decided to form a ruling committee. The unions' and the
parties' militias have been blended together and now they're like a regular
army."

"Hey! That's
fantastic. They could send some people here so Fritz wouldn't be so lonely at
the front. Maybe he could take some time off." Chaya bit the bark in her nails.
That was excellent news, wasn't it?

"Except they won't."
He suddenly stopped cleaning his goggles. "It's been a month since they formed
the army and not a single man has been sent to the front. And they have guns.
Lots of guns. Too many guns, actually, but not even a blunderbuss has made it
to this side of the war." He took a long pause to clean his mechanical fingers,
using the same handkerchief he had used to clean his goggles. "People are
saying there are spies killing anarchists."

The tick-tock
stopped, and in its place, the sharp sound of a siren filled the air. Emilio
turned to the analytical engine, already spitting out another bunch of
hollowed-out paper. He picked up the paper and brought it close to his face,
carefully reading the data in those empty lines.

"So?" Chaya panted.

Emilio lowered the
paper roll. He had a smile on his face. "Call Fritz. We're ready."

 

"Hey, Beans. Message for you."

 

Fritz pretended he
hated it when the guys called him names but, deep inside, he liked it. Beans
was the only meal available on the front and to the militia's fanfare, it came
locked up in a rusty can. He couldn't eat, of course, because of his mechanical
physiology, but his camaradas in the troop said he had solidarity with the
cans. Sometimes, a fat Yankee called Ernest would point a tin opener at him,
saying he was hungry. Everybody would laugh. With the clocks inside his mind,
he calculated that this attitude wasn't prejudice, or mockery, but banter. He
was the exhaust valve for the tedium, the tension at the barricades, the long
wait for an enemy that never came despite the news of troops manoeuvring some
miles ahead. He finally calculated, with some fair bit of precision, that he
was one of the guys, too. After all, he had the same black and red kerchief
round his neck.

They sat behind the
barricade mounted in front of the old Chateclair casino, a well-conserved
building by the war's standards. His mates felt triply happy to see it still
standing. The spot close to the neighbourhood's limits used to be the
entertainment district for the factory's technicians and administrators. It'd
be a shame if the next generation of workers couldn't have access to that
architectonic marvel. Besides, the docking tower for personal dirigibles made
an excellent observation post. Fritz was fighting against a loose piston in La
Sigaretta, the steam-powered machine gun guarding the brothel's entrance, when
he heard his name being called at the building's foyer. This was the soldier's
third reason for being happy. The place was part of the postal service network,
and its pneumatic tubes winding their way underground still carried, brought,
and sometimes intercepted messages from all over Catalonia. He dropped the
piston and hurried to the building.

"It's from your
babe." Buenaventura winked, a letter in one hand and a wooden tube on the
other. The boy was barely sixteen and was proud of spending his days watching
the comings and goings of messages travelling in the pipe cathedral behind the
counter.

In the message,
Chaya said to come back quickly, everything's ready. Obviously, he understood
the message, as did Buenaventura and other two or three militiamen with whom
the motolang had shared his hopes. He smiled, showing off the letter, trying to
explain to those hardened men alchemical processes he could hardly understand.
But they did understand the joy of that moment and would've opened a nice
bottle of wine if they'd had one.

The first bomb
destroyed the casino's wall.

Fritz tried to free
himself from the human wreckage over his body, tried to adjust his sensors, but
there was only dust around him and a humming sound coming from the back of the
room. It took him several seconds to recalibrate his optics and phones, but now
he could listen to the shots and screams outside, and the moans of the
survivors inside. He saw young Buanaventura crawling to the back of the
counter, alive and in one piece. He decided to run to the street.

The second bomb
exploded past the barricades, in the middle of the street, but Fritz couldn't
see if anyone had been hurt. He threw himself behind the mountain of sacks,
between La Sigaretta and Ernest, who had just crouched after shooting through
the wall of dust covering their position.

"Make this damn
machine gun work, Beans." Ernest roared, as he knelt and shot his carbine along
with three militiamen.

"What's happening?
Where are they?" Fritz crawled closer to the machine gun. Bullets whistled over
their heads. He was afraid the bullets would ricochet off him, hitting his
comrades' hearts. On his left, a soldier's gun jammed and backfired, tearing
the boy's brass face apart.

Ernest reloaded his
hunting rifle and looked up. "They just popped up and opened fire. They closed
the passage down the street with floating trucks and then started throwing
their mortars at us." He locked the crank and closed his eyes as if praying. "For
fuck's sake, where's that damn sentinel?"

Fritz managed to
light the boiler, but he knew it'd be a long time before the high-pressure
system could start working. Another bomb exploded, but he didn't know where.
If
You look after the atheists, too, please make the water boil faster
. He
picked up his janizary-carbine lying close to the sacks, calibrated his optics
and the pulleys in his arms and, jumping over the barrier, aimed at the enemy.
Beyond a blood-red haze in front of the church, there were three black floating
trucks blocking the end of the street. It seemed the trucks had their paintings
rasped off. Those weren't men from the Consortium, he was sure, nor from any
other army he knew of. But there was something familiar about the soldiers
throwing pulse grenades at them, holding brand-new, shining rifles.
Tick-tock
.

"Beans! Shoot!"

As soon as he got
the lay of his gun, Fritz locked his aim at a soldier crossing the street
towards a Stanley parked on the corner.
Tick-tock, tick-tock
. There were
two more soldiers entrenched behind the automobile, a moving shield that could
easily reach the Chanteclair.

"Shoot! Now!"

Tick-tock,
tick-tock, tick-tock.

His instincts were
part animal, part clockwork, and both made him keep the running lad in his
sights until he got close to the steamer. The boy had his head low, his right
hand covering the ear, protecting his head or praying it could hide him.

"Shoot!"

His first shot at
something mortal.

He pulled the
trigger a second before the soldier could leap to safety. There was a report
and a blast at the boy's neck. He fell dry, no screaming, his face crushing the
car's bumper.

Fritz crouched down
an instant before a bullet hit the camarada next to him.
Ticktockticktockticktock
.
He pushed the dead soldier away and once again bent himself over the sacks. He
shot once, twice, thrice, suppressing every possible movement of the enemy
line. He was covering Ernest, ready to throw another grenade, when he heard a
low whistling noise. Another bomb exploded close to trucks, but the rise of the
high-pitched sound made the troops freeze for a second.

"Fritz," Ernest
yelled.

"I'm coming, for
fuck's sake, I'm coming." He dropped the carbine and almost threw himself over
the steamgun. "Cover me!" The dangling piston insisted on slipping from his
fingers, all damp thanks to the vapour leaking from the gun's opened valve.
Even with suppressive fire, enemy bullets kept coming in his direction. He had
to keep his head low like the boy he had just killed. After infinite seconds,
he managed to fix the piston into position, but it took him another eternity to
find a wrench amongst the corpses. The whistle grew louder and louder and, as
soon as he turned the screw nut, the machine gun's long muzzle started to spin,
steaming.

Ticktockticktockticktockticktock…

Fritz pulled the
trigger, wishing someone had already placed the ammo belt into the feedway. The
noise was so loud every soldier this side of the battle was thrown to the
ground. It was the sound of a jackhammer crushing the wall of sacks, cars and
people standing less than three hundred metres away. Drifting his range, Fritz
watched the Stanley dissolve under La Sigaretta's fire. The car was torn to
pieces: wheels, chassis, seats. Bullets of hell-knows-what calibre pierced its
hull as if it were made of paper. He slowly turned the gun to the enemy's
central position and thrust the black trucks away with the violence of a
thousand lead wasps. He lost connection with time.

"Stop it, Fritz!"

The ventilation
system had been down for more than two weeks now, so the steam had already
turned into a muddy cloud made of smoke, dirt and blood. The troops behind the
trucks broke up and ran away. Two soldiers trying to hide behind the blockade
were torn apart by the hellish gun.