Gears of a Mad God: A Steampunk Lovecraft Adventure (4 page)

Colleen
nodded.

"I'm part of a
team composed of members of the Bureau of Investigations in the
United States. We report directly to President Harding. If the
general public found out about this cult and their mad gods, there
would either be widespread ridicule of our efforts, or widespread
panic. So we operate in secrecy.

"Last year, the
president contacted your Prime Minister Meighen to discuss the
creation of a Canadian force to deal with cult activities on this
side of the border. Mr. Smith here is our Canadian liaison."

Smith
nodded.

"The rest of
the team is on their way from Washington," Carter continued. "We
expect them on the evening ferry."

A worldwide
cult of religious fanatics? It seemed too fantastical to believe.
Colleen fingered the cut in her sleeve, and thought of her gentle
uncle taking an axe and attacking a school. There was no mundane
explanation for what was happening. She might as well accept that
it was true.

"So tell me
about your uncle," Carter said.

Colleen
shrugged. "I don't think I know anything that will help. I hadn't
heard from him in years. I went to his house, but it was a
shambles. I have no idea if anything was missing. It was a disaster
area."

The men went
silent, and Colleen replayed her visit to the house in her mind.
Nothing there had reminded her of Uncle Rod. There were none of the
things she associated with him. No ancient relics, no maps, no
souvenirs of his travels. No tools, either.

"Where were his
tools?" she said. The men looked at her. "For that matter, where
did he work?"

Carter's
eyebrows rose. "I'm not sure your uncle was employed."

"Uncle Rod
wouldn't have a regular job. That was never his style. He might
have repaired things, designed things, to make money. He was very
good with his hands. A natural born engineer, my dad called him.
But that house was tiny. There was no place to work."

Carter said,
"Are you sure he-"

"The last time
I saw him," Colleen interrupted, "he was drawing up plans for a
flying machine with a propeller on the top, lifting it up. The time
before that, he gave me a brooch he made from brass gears and
silver wire. He was always tinkering. Always. He must have had a
workshop. I guarantee it."

Smith and
Carter exchanged glances. "This is excellent," Carter said. "The
cult may not know about the workshop. Perhaps we can get a jump on
them. If we can find it."

They spent most
of the day on the telephone, and hit paydirt in mid-afternoon.
After dozens of calls to every place of business they could think
of that used complex machinery, they reached a John Roebuck who ran
a tailor shop with half a dozen sewing machines powered by a
central spindle. He'd hired Rod to repair the equipment, and he'd
picked up the parts at Rod's workshop. He gave them an address.

They caught a
taxi in front of the hotel, Carter declaring that the convertible
was too conspicuous. The taxi took them to the outskirts of
Victoria, where they found a run-down warehouse at the end of a
dirt road. Carter asked the taxi driver to wait, and they walked
forward to investigate.

The warehouse
was ivy-covered brick, the windows filthy, rust streaking the brick
under the window frames. There was a door for trucks, padlocked
shut, and a man door, standing ajar. Smith drew his pistol as the
three of them approached.

Carter yanked
the door open, Smith sprang inside, and the taxi driver, clearly
alarmed, drove away. Carter watched him leave with a shrug.

"It's clear,"
Smith said, and they followed him inside. The interior was gloomy,
poor light trickling in through the grimy windows. A large boiler
filled the space before them. Ancient, rusted machinery, wreathed
in cobwebs, lined the walls. They moved around the boiler and
looked into the rest of the warehouse.

Colleen
immediately felt at home. Long benches lined one wall, dozens of
tools racked above them. There was a treasure trove of machinery,
metal lathes and drill presses and punches. She saw gears of every
size, and brass and steel stock waiting to be made into parts or
tools.

Machines
littered the floor, in various states of repair or disassembly. She
saw automobile engines, a washing machine, and something designed
for stamping metal. It was all dirtier and messier than her
father's workshop had ever been, but somehow delightful. Colleen
gazed around the room and felt as if she had finally found
something of Uncle Rod.

A cot in one
corner showed that he sometimes slept here. That was where they
began their search. There were few personal possessions, just
dishes and a change of clothes. They expanded their search outward,
examining every piece of equipment, every tool, every cabinet.

It was Carter
who made the discovery. "Uh oh," he said, and Colleen turned to
find him kneeling in front of the wood stove by Uncle Rod's cot. He
had the front door of the stove open, and he brought out a charred
strip of leather. "The good news is, it looks like he found a book.
The bad news is, he burned it."

"Maybe it's for
the best," Smith muttered, but he joined them at the stove. Carter
lifted burned chunks of wood from the stove, setting them on the
floor. Then he took a deep breath, reached in, and brought out a
thick sheaf of blackened paper.

Most of the
book had been destroyed, but a little bit remained. The back cover,
blackened and bubbled, was essentially intact. On top were sheets
of fire-damaged paper. Carter did his best to lift the top sheets,
but they crumbled to ash at his touch. Undiscouraged, he kept
going, delicately lifting away layers of ash, working his way
deeper.

There were
partial remains of perhaps a dozen sheets of paper. The top sheets
were mostly gone, just a few words of Latin still legible on the
fire-darkened paper. Smith drew a notebook from his black coat and
took careful notes.

As Carter
worked his way deeper the legible parts of the pages grew larger.
Finally he came to the last page.

"This one's
different," he said. I don't think it's part of the book. I think
someone tucked this into the back."

"What is it?"
Colleen asked.

"I'm not sure."
The paper was badly fire-damaged. Nearly half of it was gone, and
the rest was blackened, with large sections completely eradicated.
The top of the page contained some sort of diagram, with curving
lines in a pattern that meant nothing to any of them.

The bottom of
the page held text, most of it gone. Carter drew a pair of
spectacles from his pocket and peered at the sheet. "Tana," he
said. "I can't make out the next letter. But it starts with
T-A-N-A." He shook his head. "I suppose it could be anything."

It was a long
walk back into the city. Eventually they reached downtown, and took
a table at a small cafe. Colleen felt drained and spent. The three
of them drank coffee and discussed what they'd found, making no
progress.

"You should ask
Jane what she knows," Colleen said. The men looked at her
blankly.

"Jane," she
repeated. "Uncle Rod's friend? You didn't know about her? That
reminds me, she's coming by my hotel this evening. What time is
it?"

It was nearly
seven. They paid the bill and walked to the Queen Anne. There was
no sign of Jane, and no message.

There was a
knot of worry in Colleen's stomach as she asked at the front desk
for directions to Mrs. Rosebottom's boarding house. The three of
them walked through the darkening streets, grim and silent.

The knot of
worry bloomed into cold, sharp fear when they saw a crowd of people
gathered in front of the boarding house.

The crowd was a
mixture of policemen and rubberneckers. Colleen, Smith, and Carter
stayed on the fringe of the crowd, avoiding the police and picking
up gossip. A woman had been attacked, less than an hour earlier, as
she came up the steps of the boarding house. Several men had
dragged her into a sedan and raced away.

When they had
learned what little there was to know, the three of them returned
to room 304 of the Empress Hotel. There they held a grim
council.

"Well, that's
too bad," Carter said. "Poor woman."

"We lost a good
source of information," said Smith. "I hope she can't tell the
other side too much."

Colleen stared
from one man to the other, getting more upset with every word.
"What are we going to do?"

They looked at
her blankly. "What CAN we do?" Carter asked. "We don't know where
they've taken this woman. It's probably too late to save her
anyway. We need to focus on figuring out our next move. What does
'Tana' mean? How can we figure out what this diagram is?"

Colleen wanted
to scream. Jane was out there, suffering God only knew what
tortures, in mortal danger, and they wanted to write her off? Just
give up and move on?

"We can only do
what we can do," said Carter gently. "Believe me, I would help your
Jane if I could."

Colleen glared
at him, unconvinced. She stood up, unable to keep still, and paced
back and forth in the small hotel room. Finally she opened the
door.

"Colleen, where
are you going?" Carter sounded alarmed.

"I don't know,"
she snapped, and walked out.

She paced the
corridor, then stomped down the stairs and paced back and forth in
the hotel's elegant lobby. The hotel was vast, and the room she was
in was huge, light, and airy, but she felt constricted, closed in
by the walls around her. She gave a longing glance at the front
doors. She wanted to go outside, but she was afraid. The cult was
out there. So long as she stayed inside the hotel she felt
reasonably safe.

Her illusion of
safety was shattered when a hard, cold hand closed on her upper
arm. She turned and found herself looking into a familiar face. It
was the cultist with the red coat. He stood close beside her,
sneering. He was unshaven and not particularly clean. She could
smell sweat and alcohol on him, and some other scent, something
bitter and dark that made her skin crawl.

"Where is it?"
he said.

She looked
wildly around the lobby. No one was paying the slightest attention
to them. She wanted to scream for help, but her lungs seemed
paralyzed.

"Where is
Tanathos?" His voice was low, but it had a manic edge. His eyes
glittered, and his fingers dug into her arm.

She gasped,
"What- what-"

"Don't play no
games!" His fingers twisted deeper into her arm. "You all left this
morning in a taxi, and you came back looking like cats that got
into the cream. You found something. You know where Tanathos
is!"

She stared into
his face, feeling the sour taste of panic on the back of her
tongue. He was mad! How could she persuade him that she didn't know
anything?

He gave her arm
another twist, and it occurred to her that he thought he was
hurting her. His pointless arm-twisting was supposed to keep her
terrified. With that thought her panic vanished, and she grinned
into his face. Men were always underestimating how strong she was.
It wasn't their fault. Well-brought-up young ladies didn't spend
their days in machine shops, after all. Most of the women Colleen
knew would have been helpless in this man's grasp.

Not Colleen.
She closed her hand on his wrist. He tightened his fingers, twisted
again at her arm, and she chuckled. "Is that the best you can do?"
she asked. Then she squeezed his wrist with all of her strength and
twisted.

His hand tore
away from her arm, his body rotated as she moved his wrist, and she
brought up her free hand, grabbing him by the elbow.

He lifted onto
his toes, his other hand went under his coat, and Colleen marched
him forward, across the lobby. People were turning, staring,
gasping, and she heard a woman say, "That man has a knife!"

Colleen chose a
sturdy-looking pillar near the front door. The cultist, dancing on
his toes, could only scurry beside her as she drove him forward.
She didn't give him a chance to brace himself or use his knife. She
marched him toward the pillar, and as she got close she picked up
the pace. She was running by the time he crashed into the
pillar.

There was a
thud of impact, and she let go. He fell onto his back, the knife
clattered onto the floor, and she drove her foot, hard, into his
lowest rib. He grunted and curled up, his hands going up to cradle
his bloody forehead.

Colleen knelt
over him. "Where's Jane?"

He stared up at
her, his face scrunched up with pain, mute.

She caught his
hand, bent his index finger back until tears filled his eyes. "Tell
me where she is, you-"

A man knelt
behind her and to one side. Colleen caught a whiff of cologne and a
glimpse of his knee, clad in elegant pinstripe trousers. A smooth
voice with a British accent said, "All right, then, I'll take care
of this ruffian." A hand rested on her shoulder. "Let him go, miss.
I'll take it from here."

"You don't
understand," she said, "This man-"

The tip of a
knife pricked her back and she went silent.

"I said let go
of him." His voice was pitched low, for her ears only. "You will,
one way or another."

"You wouldn't
dare. In front of all these people?"

"Not unless you
force me," he said. "I'm taking Jimbo with me. One way or
another."

The knife
pressed against her a tiny bit harder and she released Jimbo's
finger. In a moment the newcomer hauled Jimbo to his feet and
hustled him out the door, holding his arms as if he were a
prisoner. Colleen watched them go, the scruffy thug and a
well-dressed man with greying hair. The Englishman kept his back to
her as they hurried out of the hotel. Jimbo looked back, though. He
gave her a glare full of hate and rage as his comrade dragged him
out.