Fiendish Schemes Read online

  “We must away from here.” Having regained my feet, I reached down and grasped Evangeline’s hand, bringing her upright as well. “The farther we proceed from the midpoint of the city, the likelier we are to secure a degree of safety from such eruptions, whatever their cause might be.”

  “No!” She shook her head with a dismayingly fierce determination. “There is still too much at stake—if not for you, Mr. Dower, than surely for myself. Flee if you wish, but I must yet find a way to my beloved’s side.”

  This struck me as an ambition unlikely to be achieved, no matter the strength of her devotion to Captain Crowcroft. I was at first greatly tempted to take the young woman up on her admonition to preserve my own skin—but found myself worrying but a moment later on the dangers she would certainly face in whatever course she rashly chose to follow. Beyond the already sufficiently hazardous fire, hissing gouts of steam, and crumbling buildings, there were also the dark hearts of man to be figured into one’s calculations. Once the anarchic spirit has seized hold of men’s minds, it casts aside all limits upon its attentions. The mob filling the streets had been urged on by the devious Scape’s engines of whispered suspicion and shouted rumour. These rioters might have initially directed their wrath at all things related to what they now considered to be their great enemy Steam—but now, caught up in their spiraling fury, they were unlikely to cavil at any other target catching their eye. Were a young maiden of seemingly wealthy bearing be foolish enough to intrude upon their torch-lit revels, her murder would be the kindliest of the fates likely to befall her.

  To which I felt unusually reluctant to abandon her, even if by doing so I might save myself from harm. Though never one given to inordinately chivalrous impulses, I nonetheless considered it incumbent upon myself to dissuade Evangeline from an undertaking as self-destructive as any I might have once considered.

  “That rise—” Shouting to convey my meaning to her, I pointed to the highest point of the landscape beyond the perimeter of the demolished Featherwhite House’s gardens. “We will be able to see what is happening from there.”

  Taking Evangeline by the hand once more, I led her up the hill’s steep slope to its crest. Doubtless, she considered there would be some advantage in accompanying me there, so that she might conceive of a route into the midst of the turmoil, there to somehow locate her beloved Captain Crowcroft. My own calculation differed, in the hope that so terrifying a scene might be revealed to us, that she would yet be dissuaded from her announced intent.

  In the event, as we stood gasping for breath in the smoke-filled air at the hill’s summit, I was not disappointed—at least as far as terror was concerned. Certainly my senses were thrown from their normal channels of comprehension by what quickly ensued as we directed our gaze toward the burning distance.

  No more than a heartbeat passed before an even more appalling sight greeted our eyes. Featherwhite House had been so closely situated to the centers of the nation’s wealth and government, and the hill upon which we stood was of sufficient elevation, that Evangeline and I were afforded a clear perspective along the Thames toward the Houses of Parliament. Or what had been such—for even as we watched, the ornate façade of those ancient buildings sheared away, impelled in their collapse by the fiery surge upwelling from their center. Great quantities of brick and stone fell en masse to the river below; yet more clouds of steam billowed from the waters as the heated rubble struck their roiling surface.

  If I had not already embraced a fervent desire to escape from this newly demonized London as quickly as possible, this would have been enough to plant such a sensible wish within my breast. But yet more ensued, to my mounting horror—

  The fire-reddened smoke churning from the ruins obscured an entity of daunting proportions, rising upward as though awakened from chthonic slumber. I could discern only elements of its construction— hard-edged and rigid, propelled by inhuman strength—but enough to evoke the dread of witnessing some mechanical construction of more massive proportions and wicked intent than all I had previously seen.

  In this, too, I was not disappointed, though I soon wished I had been. Grinding, clashing noises of deafening pitch and amplitude hammered the night air, as the apparition thrust itself up through the smoke, unfolding and revealing the greater portion of its bulk above the soot-weighted clouds.

  “It’s her—” Little chance that Evangeline was able to hear my stricken whisper through the accumulating din. “The Iron Lady—”

  But not as she had been. A more thorough transformation had been wrought, in both size and substance. Intimidating as Mrs. Fletcher had appeared before, as though she were a railway engine bearing down upon oneself, there had still been some human, fleshly element remaining to her, incorporated into the prow of the assemblage of boilers, hissing valves, thrusting pistons, and spoked driving wheels. That relatively softer element had been discarded, as might some black-winged creature, unfurling itself to its full dimensions, spurn the lowly chrysalis that had incubated its swelling form. All was iron now, no mortal scrap retained. Even the planes and angles of her broad, overbearing face, expanded to vastly larger dimensions, were forged of that sullen metal, each segment riveted and hinged to another, fire flashing from the apertures of its eyes.

  In truth, the transmogrified Prime Minister seemed to embody as much fire as metal. Furnace doors gaped open at numerous points about the appalling construction’s torso, as flames and airshimmering heat poured out from iron-doored apertures twice the height of the sweating, half-naked figures frantically shoveling coal into them. As this embodiment of Mrs. Fletcher, magnified and made yet more horrid by the total transformation from flesh to machine, reared itself higher into the smoke-occluded sky, more than one of her strenuously engaged attendants were toppled off balance, falling with shovels still at hand into the furnaces and consumed as quickly as moths fluttering about a lantern wick—all while their blackened comrades hastened at their toil.

  A soul-crushing gaze swept across the city beneath the apparition. The searing flames visible behind the Iron Lady’s eyes, like the fireholes in a blast furnace door, seemed to represent all the nation’s power, swept up and embodied in but a single entity.

  As appalled as I was by the genderless Titan rearing up from the ruins of Parliament, the effect upon those nearest to it was understandably even more fearful. The shrieks and cries of the mob changed tone, from the sheer enjoyment of setting torches to shop fronts and houses to the panicked haste of those perceiving the immensity of that which now stood towering above them. A great, concentric wave of Humanity, each desperate member tearing at the others surrounding it, fled through every available street and alley, seeking whatever implausible refuge they might be able to secure.

  Which was a desire I shared as well, even at the distance from which I was able to observe these events. The sloping rise on which Evangeline and I stood trembled beneath our feet, as the pounding and grinding of the Iron Lady’s component machinery was transmitted through the underlying rock to us. Those vibrations urged on the increasingly rapid beating within my own chest.

  “Come along—” I pulled at the arm of the young woman beside me. “Before it is too late—”

  It already was, though that which straitened our already dire circumstances came from a wholly unanticipated quarter. As we looked along the course of the Thames, unable to divert our joint gaze from the monstrosity unhindered before us, a shriek of steam mingled with the awesome industrial clamour of devices beyond all human scale and comprehension. The deafening sounds came from somewhere closer to us, and behind—

  I turned about, thereby beholding what new and calamitous factor had entered upon our our precarious lives.

  Or to be precise, I discerned some partial element of it. The sight of immense metal appendages, like those of a mechanical crab enlarged to daunting dimensions, evoked memories within me. For a moment, I seemed to be upon the Cornish shore once more, observing as that ambulatory lighthouse, the launch part o
f which I had attended, made its ponderous way to the wave- swept rocky crag of its destination.

  As my gaze moved upward, along the tapering flank of the structure above the riveted iron legs, a more recent image swept the previous from my thoughts. It came from the soirée I had attended shortly after my arrival here in London, upon Lord Fusible’s invitation. That had been when I had first laid eyes upon that culminating production of Phototrope Limited’s ingenuity and finances, albeit in diminished form, the walking light to which Fusible had referred as the Colossus of Blackpool.

  My first glimpse—but evidently not my final one. For what I beheld now, as I tilted my head farther back in order to fully encompass the form before me, was that very same Colossus, now in its vast and completed state, a monstrosity transported by its own locomotive systems from that grimly industrial facility in North London where it had been housed before. Even as I realized that this was the reality of that which I had seen but as a model on that previous occasion, one of its legs, jointed and clawed as some monstrous crustacean, swivelled about from the tower’s base, its curved point thrusting with tremendous force into the ground but a few yards from where Evangeline stood, frozen with surprise.

  Regaining some capacity to react, I grasped the young woman about her shoulders and drew the two of us back to the relative safety of the rounded boulders at the side of the hilltop. The ground shook with even greater violence as the Colossus crawled its way past us, heading toward some farther destination with unstoppable force.

  As we gazed awe-struck at the towering machine in its passage, I heard a voice cry out my name.

  “Dower!” A man’s voice, familiar to me, came from behind the Colossus’ clawing tread, as though the person had been following it close behind. “The key! Do you have the key?”

  I realized who it was even before my own arm was hurriedly grasped by the individual. “For God’s sake, Scape—” I gazed upon him with a combination of scorn and amazement. “Have you no capacity to set aside your paltry concerns?” With my outflung hand, I indicated the immense form moving but a few paces away from us, every synchronized movement of its clawed appendages shaking the ground about us. “Surely there are more pressing matters than whatever daft scheme upon which you have fixed yourself.”

  “Actually, there isn’t.” He grabbed me by the front of my shirt, pulling me away from Evangeline. “So just tell me—do you have it or don’t you?”

  I was not greatly astonished at the man’s sudden appearance in this environment of general chaos. Both he and his companion, Miss McThane, whom I glimpsed but a few paces farther away, seemed to me like storm crows, inevitably in attendance upon whatever scenes of ruin fell upon the general body of mankind. If I had been of quicker apperception, I would have known from the beginning that they were somehow involved in all the various conspiracies that had flocked so densely about me.

  There was scarcely a moment now in which I was able to reply to his hurried enquiry. So desperate had been the escape of myself and Lord Fusible’s daughter from the burning Featherwhite House, that I had paid little attention to the matter of that object which I had come there to procure from my own luggage. Within an instant, Scape had pushed aside my coat and found what I had once assumed to be my father’s clockwork pistol, where I had tucked it inside the waistband of my trousers. With a gleam of wild, avaricious triumph in his eyes, he snatched the device away from me, holding it up before himself with both fists clenched tightly about its handle.

  Scape had but a split second in which to revel in his long-desired possession of that instrument, before we were both cast from our feet by the clawed tip of the last of the Colossus’ jointed legs striking the ground immediately before us. Thrown once more upon my back, I managed to raise my head, just in time to perceive the iron claw rise from the hole it had dug in the ash-covered earth. As the Colossus shifted its balance, preparatory to taking another of its cumbersome steps forward, the claw swung about in the orbit of its range. Its riveted mass hurtled directly toward me with sufficient force to separate my head from the shoulders below.

  There was not time to do aught but close my eyes, not wishing to see more of the instrument of my certain doom. I winced and braced myself, anticipating its impact—

  Which either happened with such merciful swiftness as to be absolutely painless, or did not happen at all. I cautiously opened one eye, then the other, and saw that the claw had stopped in its horizontal arc a few inches from my face. Shifting my position upon the ground, I beheld that the immense tower had halted in its tracks. From deep within it still came the clanking sounds of its propulsive machinery, disengaged from those elements by which the construction made its way from place to place.

  I could also see, some yards away, Evangeline still standing erect. Her eyes widened as she gazed upward to the crowning level of the Colossus, the back of one hand pressed against her mouth as though to stifle a cry of astonishment.

  Turning about, I brought my own sight in line with hers and spied that upon which her vision had seized. Even at the lofty height above us, Captain Crowcroft’s face was unmistakably apparent behind the curved glass windows of the walking light’s bridge, his hands taut upon those controls which guided its progress. I could discern as well his gaze directed correspondingly downward—not to me, of course, but upon the visage of his beloved.

  Even at this distance and inconvenient angle, the man appeared as distraught as when I had last seen him, in that small, supposedly bloodsoaked room in East London. What change there was, consisted of a fierce, even maniacal, glint of determination in his eye, as though in his mind he had launched upon some great endeavour that would rectify all the world’s injustices, or at least those immediately to hand.

  “Now what?” Another had gained the same impression as I. Having scrambled to his knees, Scape looked upward at the tower and its commander with evident irritation. “What’s he doing? He’s going to screw the whole thing up!”

  Miss McThane came to her companion’s aid, grasping his arm and pulling him erect, with the Vox Universalis key still clutched to his chest. “Look—” She pointed to the curved flank of the Colossus. “He’s shut down the pressure relief valves.”

  “Crap, you’re right.” Scape’s expression shifted to one of alarm. “Crazy sonuvabitch—”

  I could see that which she indicated, though I was yet ignorant of its significance. All along the length of the Colossus, various brass appendages protruded, appearing similar to barnacles encrusted upon the smooth hull of an ocean-going ship that had been tilted on end. I had some vague understanding of their function, that they facilitated the operation of the machine by expelling the surfeit of steam built up in the compressors within. I had witnessed much the same with the smaller lighthouse in Cornwall, in the form of continuous plumes of vapour escaping from the valves. On this occasion, however, no such emissions were visible. Indeed, the devices studding the exterior of the Colossus could actually be seen trembling and shivering, as though barely capable of restraining the swiftly mounting forces behind them.

  Indeed, as I stood and gave greater scrutiny to the Colossus towering before us, its entire structure seemed to vibrate with an increasingly urgent tension. The conviction struck me that if I were to reach out and lay my hand against it, the sensation would resemble that of touching an animate creature, trembling with the destructive power contained inside.

  “But does that not mean,” I spoke as I looked toward Scape and Miss McThane, “that some terrible consequence is close upon us?”

  “You got that right,” a grim-faced Scape replied. “Not enough the guy has a walking lighthouse to stomp around in—he’s gotta turn it into a bomb as well.”

  “Did I hear you correctly? A bomb?”

  “Yeah—a steam bomb.” Scape nodded toward the hissing construction. “You know how much pressure builds up in something like that, when you shut down the relief valves?”

  “Not precisely,” I said. “But I assume rat
her a lot.”

  “You’re assuming right, pal. When that thing hits the overload point and it goes off, there’s not going to be any of it left. Or anything around it, either.”

  “But—” I looked from him, up to the top of the Colossus, then back to Scape again. “What conceivable intent would Captain Crowcroft fulfill by initiating a cataclysm such as that?”

  “If you’d been around when we were all talking”—Scape pointed to the smouldering ruins of Featherwhite House—“then you’d know he’s got a thing going on in his head, about the stuff that’s been going on.”

  “You mean all these various conspiracies? Fusible and his companions’ gambling, then Stonebrake and his mad scheming on top of that—”

  “Gotta admit, that was pretty stupid of your buddy Stonebrake, to rub Crowcroft’s face in the way he’d been jerked around.” Scape shook his head. “No wonder he flipped and punched Stonebrake’s lights out.”

  “This was something you witnessed?”

  “The whole thing,” said Scape. “Wouldn’t have surprised me if Stonebrake had been dead even before he whanged his head on that mantelpiece in there. Crowcroft’s a big guy, plus he was really worked up. Way not smart, to egg somebody on like that.”

  “But if Stonebrake is now dead—then why this?” I again indicated the enormous bulk of the Colossus, hissing and vibrating close to us. “Surely the captain, whether he intended the death of his tormentor or not, has had sufficient satisfaction thereby?”

  “Sure, if that’d been all that Crowcroft was bugged about. But it wasn’t just that he was going on about—”

  “It was everything,” chimed in Miss McThane. “The whole bit. Including Mrs. Fletcher—”

  I wished to hear no more. Their joint dissertation on whatever motives prompted Captain Crowcroft’s actions, rational or otherwise, had already continued at too great a length, given the perilous circumstances of a powerfully destructive device standing close to hand.