Hot and Steamy (37 page)

Hot and steamy.

And yet, all was still and pleasant on the day Genevieve's life changed forever. No explosion reverberated through the mine office when the collapse of the North Sea adit first occurred. No voices were raised above conversational tones as the critical moment came and went. No shaking of the earth or subsidence of the ground beneath grimy Newcastle hinted at what was occurring miles away in the gloomy depths of the North Sea mine.

No doubt all of that occurred beneath the ocean when the bedrock encasing the coal-seam burst, however. No doubt a deafening crack rang out as the roof collapsed. No doubt the bellow of the earth subsiding joined with the thunderous roar of the ocean depths flowing into the shaft to blot out the full-throated screams of alarm and agony of the miners in the midst of the watery chaos engulfing them. No doubt the frigid water of the North Sea hit the hot rock and the hotter steam-powered machines with an angry, shattering hiss. No doubt the men ran and fell and drowned or dove into pockets still sufficiently air-tight to hold back the water, although instantly pressurized to a nearly lethal level, to wait for death.

Up above, however, all Genevieve saw at first was a broad dip in the pressure of the Pressure-Sensitive Steam Fixed-Communicator as the cold water far below surrounded and cooled a considerable length of sturdy pipe. A moment later, the steam engine outside whined as it ramped up to maintain the prescribed pressure. She knew instantly something was amiss.

Once the pressure level of the device re-attained its specified mark, Genevieve frantically pulsed the release regulator to inquire.

No response.

She tried again, then again.

Nothing.

She tried yet again—barely forcing herself to wait between pulses, to give Trevor a chance to respond.

Finally, a pulse came. “Ocean breach. Trapped.”

She ran to the wall near Father's desk and pulled the alarm cord. A mournful wail of steam-powered anguish drowned out all other sound across the offices and the workings and the mines and the town. She let go of the cord and rushed back to her desk to reply, looking up for only a moment to shout “North Sea” when Father and a few others came in to find out why she had sounded the alarm. They immediately rushed back out to organize help and she was left alone.

“Help coming,” she pulsed.

“Not possible,” came the reply. “Under pressure.”

She was an educated woman, one of the few in this working-class town. She understood the physics, the math. If Trevor was under pressure, there could be no hope of rescue. The North Sea had flooded the shaft, forcing its way both directions along the shaft from the point of breach. Moving shoreward, the water pushed air ahead until the pressure dissipated as it found the ventilation shafts and vast, interconnected underground workings of the older portions of the mine, above the level of the sea. Seaward, the water had flowed through the shaft, obliterating everything in its path (except a study copper pipe too small to create much resistance and too strong to be overcome by the external pressure), until the column of air before it had compressed to an equalizing pressure.

Even if someone could somehow drill down from above to the pocket of life beneath the floor of the ocean, releasing the air pressure would allow the sea to move in. And even if completely unblocked, there was no way to move through miles of submerged tunnel to escape. There was no hope.

Only life.

Tears flowed unabated down her cheeks, wetting the high, starched collar of her maroon and white gown. “I understand.”

She received no immediate response, so continued after a few moments. “What can I do?”

“Send for their families. I will send the names of those men still alive here.”

She ran to the door and called for one of the messenger boys to gather his counterparts and report back as soon as he could. Ten minutes later, there were ten boys waiting outside the office, and twice that in family members who had already headed for the mines when the alarm had sounded.

When Trevor finally transmitted again, she could almost feel the tremble in his hand from the way the gauge quivered as it dipped and dropped as he pulsed the names. Six. Only six, including Trevor, were still alive. As the names came in, she wrote each one on a separate piece of paper and waved for one of the boys at the door to come forward and take it. By the time the last had been given out, the wife of the first miner named had arrived, physically supported on the arms of Father, who was pale and disheveled and who seemed to have aged twenty years in the past twenty minutes.

Genevieve explained in simple, stark terms to the frightened woman that her husband, Daniel, was alive, but not for long. They should say their goodbyes. She would transmit the words to the mine and Trevor would transmit back the words of her husband from the other end.

The woman started to wail and cry. Father moved to comfort her, but Genevieve cut him off. “There's no time for that, you understand. There's no time. Mourn him when he's dead. Cherish him while he still lives. Tell him you love him while you still can be heard.”

The woman nodded dully and composed herself enough for a brief farewell. Each of the other four women did the same in turn. The conversations were heart-wrenching, though unsurprisingly simple and similar to one another.

When the goodbyes of the women were finished, the vicar came in and Genevieve dutifully transmitted the words the Church required to see to the care of the doomed men's souls, along with a few private words from the vicar to Trevor about how the investment in his education had been paid back a thousand-fold.

And then it was Genevieve's turn to speak with Trevor. She asked the vicar to wait outside and sent Father to deal further with the grieving widows-to-be and shut the door.

“Alone,” she pulsed.

“How I wish that word could be ‘together,'” he replied.

“We have been. We will be. We are.”

“From afar,” came Trevor's shaky reply. “Same country, same town, same office, yet always and only from afar. I have spent hours coding I wish I had spent cuddling.”

She wished the same, but now was not the time for recriminations. She had to remain strong. “No regrets. Sight, sound, touch. Merely signals our brains interpret to convey reality. We have made our own signals, our own reality. We have known love, even if we have never spoken it aloud.”

His pulsed reply came quickly, as if afraid there was no time for even a few brief dots and dashes. “I do love you. I have loved you since we first met. Know that. Remember that.”

“I always will.”

She received no reply for more than a minute and she feared time had run out, but finally an increasingly shaky signal returned. “Daniel has gone unconscious. Pressure, CO
₂
. Not long now.”

“I will always be here,” she answered.

“I've nowhere to go,” he pulsed.

She looked up at Father's desk and the mine plans and the business ledgers and all the mundane trappings of life, suddenly hating what progress and business and commerce had done to Trevor, to her, to them. “I'm sorry Father sent you into the mines,” she signaled.

“I'm not,” he replied. “I never could have told you I loved you except online.”

“I know.”

“One last thing.”

Her throat caught. “Anything.”

“Marry me.”

She was so adept at coding that her hands reacted at the speed of thought. “Marry you?”

“I know you are educated, rational, scientific. So am I. But I was also raised in an Anglican orphanage and I believe there is nothing irrational about forever. And if there is any chance at a forever with you, I will do anything in my limited time and power to assure it.”

“So will I.” She smiled at him through her tears, though she knew he could not see. She let her hands try to convey her mood, her love through a quick dance of dots and dashes. “Yes.”

Genevieve rushed to the door and called for the vicar, asking him to marry them as quickly as possible. She could see the hesitation in his eyes, hear the theological wheels turning in his mind as he considered the implications.

There was no time for this. She would transmit her own words of marriage regardless of what the vicar said if he did not respond. “Now,” she pressed. “Don't desert him in his last moments.”

The ancient Anglican nodded and came inside. For a few moments the regulators pulsed and the gauges twitched and dipped.

“I do,” she said.

“I do,” he replied.

“Husband and wife,” said the vicar, who then retreated discreetly out of the office.

“Alone,” he coded. “Everyone else has fallen.”

“Together,” she replied. “Forever.”

“Now what?” he signaled back, the letters coming more slowly as dots and dashes became longer and more irregular.

“We consummate the marriage,” she pulsed, “as best we can, in our own signals.”

“My invention was never meant for that,” he answered, the last words almost indecipherable.

“I can see the possibilities, though,” she pulsed. “Just lie back and watch the dial on the gauge and I'll do the best to bring you heaven until the real thing arrives.”

He did.

She did.

And they were together. Hot and steamy.

Jean Rabe is the author of more than two dozen fantasy and adventures novels and more short stories than she cares to count. She relishes editing anthologies . . . this is her seventeenth . . . almost as much as she likes tugging on old socks with her dogs (and she likes that a lot). She resides in Wisconsin, where the winters are too long, the summers are too short, and the football and steampunk are just right.

 

Martin H. Greenberg is the CEP of Tekno Books and its predecessor companies, now the largest book developer of commercial fiction and non-fiction in the world, with over 2,250 published books that have been translated into thirty-three languages. He is the recipient of an unprecedented four Lifetime Achievement Awards in the Science Fiction, Mystery, and Supernatural Horror genres—the Milford Award in Science Fiction, the Solstice Award in science fiction, the Bram Stoker Award in Horror, and the Ellery Queen Award in Mystery—the only person in publishing history to have received all four awards.