Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables (38 page)

Huge metal letters, painted gold and bolted onto the sides of its cabin, spelled out the name of this remarkable conveyance: The S
TEAMPIPER.

The great ironclad bleated one final time, its whistle pitched lower now as the internal pressure of its steam decreased. Then it let out one last immense reptilian hiss, releasing a massive curdling cloud of white condensation, before its huge engine fell silent.

Several dogs continued to bark, but the canine cacophony quickly concluded. Wind whipped through the street, stirring the steam cloud. From within its white mists came the crunch of footfalls. Then the gust changed direction and lifted the white curtain, revealing a strange figure standing beside the machine.

He was short and portly, nearly as wide as he was tall. He wore red-brown Wellington boots and a knee-length beige coat whose heavily waxed surface glistened with condensing steam. Around the waistline of the coat was a heavy leather belt ringed with oversized cartridge loops, each of them carrying a corked glass tube in place of rifle ammunition. In each of these tubes were small crystals of green and blue, which sparkled as they caught the light.

The stranger’s coat collar was folded up high, partly concealing his wide, puffy, beardless, and toadlike face. His eyes were
hidden by heavy goggles, secured to his head by a black India rubber strap. Atop his head was a strange oversized flat cap, its upper surface sectioned off in triangular wedges, like great slices of pie, each decorated in a different brilliant color and beaded with glittering gemstones.

A circle of townsfolk advanced cautiously, surrounding the stranger and his machine. Standing closest to him was their apparent leader, Herr Kauffmann, still wearing his kitchen apron and holding his serving fork. He took a tentative step forward.

The stranger loosened the strap on his goggles and let them fall to his neck, revealing a pair of searing blue eyes. He extended his hand in greeting to Kauffmann. “The name’s Crossley…Cruces Crossley,” he said pleasantly, “and I have come for your children.”

A nervous murmur rippled through the crowd.

“I have come
for the sake of
your children, that is,” he chuckled. “I am here
for their benefit
. New Hamelin’s vermin problem is the talk of the territory. You don’t want to raise your progeny with
all these rats
capering about, do you?” He gestured grandly, making a complete circle. “Unhealthy! Foul! These rodents must
go
!”

The murmuring became louder.

Crossley raised a hand to silence them. Shaking his head with exaggerated theatricality, he added, “Allow me a moment to prepare my machine, and I shall gladly offer a demonstration of my services.”

Turning, Crossley stepped back toward the Steampiper and seized hold of the handrails that extended down from its cabin. With surprising agility he propelled himself upward and swung himself atop the ironclad, landing with an acrobat’s grace. The cabin was open at the rear, with the pipe organ mounted on a platform above the depleted cordwood stacks that served as the machine’s fuel. Crossley scrambled up to the organ platform, turned a series of valves, and then flipped a small lever. With another hiss of steam, a metal panel retracted and slid into a hidden cavity, exposing a large semicircular keyboard surrounding a gold-framed, red-cushioned swivel chair.

Crossley bowed to the crowd and unbuckled the wide leather belt that cinched his coat. He unfastened the coat itself, swirling it in the air before draping it carefully over the back of the golden chair.

A murmur rippled through the crowd as the townsfolk beheld the garment Crossley wore beneath his coat. A perfect match for his pied hat, it was a grand tunic of many colors, assembled from triangular bolts of cloth dyed in varying hues, from the bright green of New Hampshire forest moss, to the sparkling blue of a Louisiana tidal pool, to the searing orange blaze of a Texas sunset.

Taking his seat before the keyboard, Crossley flexed his fingers and gently applied them to the ivories. At first there was just a hum, a great stirring from deep inside the instrument’s mechanism, as he powered it up. Small trails of white steam began to fountain from exhaust vents on its sides. Then he struck a note, a single lingering organ note that wafted mysteriously in the air. Smiling with satisfaction, he began to play. For a moment he treated the crowd to a Mendelssohn overture, amply demonstrating both the organ’s mighty sonics and his precise command of it, before easing seamlessly into a playful reading of an Irish novelty song, “The German Clock-winder.” After two verses and two choruses, he stopped and returned to the single note with which he had begun.

The crowd applauded eagerly, many of the men whistling and cheering. Several women, staring from upper-story windows, shouted names of other tunes, pleading for Crossley to play them.

The strange little man raised his free hand and waved them to silence. Then he pressed it back to the keyboard and altered the held note, expanding and reshaping it in a curious manner so that it seemed to
bend
in the air. The crowd was so absorbed that it was some moments before anyone noticed the rats.

From every crack and crevice, every hole and hollow along the entire street, they came. Large ones and small ones, brown ones and black ones, old ones and young ones, rat mothers nursing rat pups. Every rodent in New Hamelin crept slowly from
concealment and moved toward the Steampiper, transfixed by the odd sound Crossley coaxed from its pipe organ.

The townspeople stood, looking about in wonder, astonished by the strange tableau.

With his left hand, Crossley twisted a large knob on the instrument in a clockwise motion and then released the fingers of his right hand from the keyboard. The bent note continued to be played, as if his hands had never left the keyboard. The chubby little man made a great show of flexing all of his fingers high in the air as he walked a full circuit of the ironclad’s upper deck, looking down proudly at the hordes of stunned rodents gathered on every side and the masses of equally dumbstruck townspeople. Then, with a flamboyant flourish of his arms, he stepped back to the organ and twisted the knob counterclockwise. The organ fell silent.

With their musical trance broken, the rats skittered quickly back under cover, completely disappearing.

Crossley stood up and lifted his voice high. “Ladies and gentlemen,
Dammen
und Herren
of New Hamelin!” he shouted. “I can end this insidious infestation in a single day! The pipes of my mighty machine can clear these streets of all rats, ridding your town of their foulness once and forever!”

Stovepipe’s voice cut through the ascending hubbub of the crowd, instantly bringing the townsfolk back to silence. “
Sure
,” he shouted, “but at what
cost
, Mr. Crossley?”

Crossley bowed in Stovepipe’s direction. “A most prudent question, sir. For my services I shall require…” He paused, smiling. “I shall require wood—
much
wood and
much
water—to fuel my machine.”

He paused again, emitting a nervous chuckle before he resumed. “And, beyond that, of course, I should like a generous fee…in an amount…an amount to be negotiated
after
I’ve had a good meal. Can your fair hamlet accommodate me in
that
small request?”

The murmuring turned to cheers as Herr Kauffmann
beckoned Crossley toward his hotel. A mob of townsfolk crowded around as the hotelier ushered the stranger into the first-floor dining room, some of them pressing their faces against the window glass. Everyone else slowly drifted off.

Stovepipe studied the immense land-ironclad for a moment. A crowd of small boys was gathering around the machine, daring each other to climb aboard. Something seemed suspicious to him about Crossley and his gigantic transport. Actually,
everything
seemed suspicious about them, but it was none of his affair. He was a stranger here himself.

Onward,
he thought.

His goal this afternoon was to visit the beer hall at the far end of town, but he stopped briefly at the livery stable to check on his horse, a dapple gray he called Thursday. The mare’s unusual name was always good for the same question, to which Stovepipe always gave the identical response.

Because that’s how far she’ll kick you.

New Hamelin’s modest livery stable contained little more than two rows of undersized stalls, all of them stinking of wet hay and horse manure, and it seemed to be a favorite haunt of the town’s rodent population. However, Stovepipe had no other options for housing Thursday. He found her about halfway back on the left. She seemed alert and in good spirits, blowing her lips as he approached and whickering eagerly, letting him know she was ready for the trail.

Stovepipe stroked her dense, soft mane as he leaned into her stall, giving the space a quick inspection. He was alarmed to discover bloodstains on his animal’s hooves but quickly realized the blood was not her own. The flattened carcasses of a half dozen trampled rats attested to its origin.

Her kill count is higher than my own.

“Ziss one is a vine, vine horse,” came a voice behind him.

Stovepipe turned and found himself staring into the eyes of Rittmeister Schell, the odd little fellow who ran the stable. Schell was middle-aged but had grown an especially long beard. He
carried a pitchfork and wore a floppy straw hat, a white cotton blouse, and an enormous set of leather overalls that hung loosely about his small frame.

“She is, indeed,” Stovepipe replied confidently.

“But I must ask you, Herr Montpelier, vat are zose strange scars on her zides? Each of her flanks has ziss small burnt zircle, where hair grows no more.”

Stovepipe smiled. Turning both of his feet heels-inward, he deliberately formed a bow with each leg, pointing his boot heels’ protruding metal spurs so that they nearly touched each other. “Watch closely now,” he instructed Schell. Hoping there was still a sufficient charge left in both boots, he clenched his teeth tight and clicked the spurs against each other.

A shower of bright white sparks fountained from the intersection of the metal, smelling of sulfur and overheated steel. Schell leaped backward in fearful surprise, his straw hat flying off his head. Stovepipe leaped upward as the searing hot crackles of incandescence came uncomfortably close to his crotch. He had definitely overestimated the charge.

Schell was wide-eyed. “You haff spurs made of the lightning!”

Stovepipe composed himself, discreetly running a hand across the intersection of his trouser legs to verify nothing had been burned. No worries. His dignity was intact. “Lightning, yes,” he said proudly.

The Rittmeister retrieved his straw hat. He regarded Stovepipe with an especial curiosity now, furrowing his brow and stroking his beard, as if contemplating a mystery.

“You look as if you may have another question for me, Herr Schell,” Stovepipe observed.

The little man nodded. “Venn you vurst come into
mein
stable, you haff a large device vich you ask me to keep zafe for you. Vat is zee strange device vich your horse carries?”

“That’s gear for walking underwater,” Stovepipe volunteered. “Not much call for it out here, but it was plenty useful back East. Hope you’re keeping it away from the rats. It wouldn’t work well with holes chewed in it.”

“Vawkink underwater?” asked the Rittmeister with disbelief. “I haff never heard of zuch a tink.”

“I was with the Ohio Volunteers, back during the conflict,” Stovepipe explained. “When word got to us about those Rebs in South Carolina who sunk a ship with a torpedo boat that traveled underneath the waves, it got some of us thinking. And once a man knows something’s
possible…
”

“Vawkink under zee water,” Schell repeated skeptically, shaking his head. He turned and headed off into the depths of the stable, his pitchfork propped on his shoulder.

Stovepipe gave Thursday a little good-bye pat and then headed to the street once more.

His hunger had been sated at breakfast and he was wide awake from the potent effects of Kauffmann’s coffee, but now he felt a craving for a stronger libation. Besides, he had other questions about this little settlement and, based on previous travels, knew the best place to get answers was an ale house.

The Old Bamberg Beer Garden stood near the far end of New Hamelin’s main street. The pub’s outdoor garden was hardly that, just a sandlot outlined by a low flagstone wall that surrounded a shabby collection of round wooden tables, warped and bleached from the Texas sun. However, it afforded an excellent view of the distant snowcapped peaks of the Glass Mountains, with a winding bend of the Pecos River spread out in the foreground.

Several elderly couples and a few old men sat silently in the garden, sipping foamy beer from gray crockery mugs. Stovepipe trudged past them, nodding and tipping his bowler hat. One long-bearded fellow raised a mug with a brief, polite salute before hoisting it to his lips. Stovepipe smiled at the stranger and kept walking, quickly reaching the wooden steps that led to the interior of the saloon.

His left boot was on the second of the four steps, the fresh pine bending slightly beneath his weight with unexpected springiness, when a young serving girl came backward through the tavern’s batwing doors. Both of her hands were gripped securely around a large tray laden with sloshing beer mugs. Clearing the
doorway, she turned on her heel and ended up face-to-face with Stovepipe as he reached the top step.

The girl was Greta Freiburg, from the hotel dining hall.

Stovepipe grinned. “Hello again, Greta.”

Strangely, she showed no signs of recognition. Looking away from him with mild annoyance and shaking her head, she eased past and carried the tray toward the customers.

Stovepipe watched. He started to call after her but thought better of it and turned back to face the saloon. At that moment he found himself almost nose-to-nose with another blond girl, considerably younger but similar in appearance, who stared straight into his eyes.