Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories (37 page)

Not everyone on Mars liked the newcomers. The king's son, Prince Zennobal, seemed to resent their popularity, especially after Steam Girl rejected his amorous advances with a well-placed right hook. And the Royal Oracle hid in her laboratory when they were in town. But everyone else was having too much fun to notice.

And then there are the gadgets. The Motion-Powered Wrist-Mounted Monodirectional Lantern (a tiny metal box that faintly glows if you jump up and down for long enough), the Audioscopic Motion Capture Device (a tin cup full of wood chips and wax that supposedly records sound), the Portable Kitchen (actually a beat-up old gas cooker covered in rubber tubes), and my favorite: Steam Girl's Spring-Motivated Vertical Propulsion Boots. These last ones turn up in a story involving giant bloodsucking insects who live in a deep canyon called the Mariner's Valley. Steam Girl was trapped at the bottom of a pit, listening to the buzz of the thirsty insect swarm getting closer and closer. But then, at the last moment, she reached down to flick a tiny lever on her lace-up boots and . . .

"And what?" I say as she slips into one of her long teasing pauses, gazing up at the sky. We're sitting as usual on the low concrete wall behind the incinerator. "Come on . . . !"

A lazy smile spreads across her face, and she slowly slips down from the wall. There are a couple of tiny metal clips on the soles of her boots. She spends a moment fiddling with these, then straightens up and grins.

"A little modification Steam Girl made to her boots back on the moon," she says. "Very useful on low-gravity planets like Mars. . . ."

She bends her knees and jumps. At first I think the soles of her boots have come right off— but then I realize they're still attached by thick round springs that stretch and bounce as she leaps into the air. I laugh pretty hard at that—and even harder when she lands flat on her bum.

She glares at me, brushing off her skirt. "Like I said, they work better in low gravity."

We spend a half hour mucking around with the crazy spring boots. She even gets me to try them on, though they don't really fit, and I fall over straightaway. I scrape my knees and get a bruise on my chin, but I'm laughing too much to care. It's the first time I hear her laugh, and I like it. She kind of giggles — but not a high-pitched girly giggle, like Amanda and her friends. It sounds almost dirty.

Anyway, in the story, Steam Girl's boots got her out of the pit to safety. And in a way, I guess they've helped me escape from the dreariness of school — at least for an hour or so, while it's just me and her and the gadgets and notebook.

But then the bell rings and we have to go back to class and real life. And let's face it: real life sucks.

It doesn't take long for people to notice I've made a new friend.

"How's your girlfriend?" they say.

"She's not my girlfriend," I reply, again and again. For all the good it does.

Michael Carmichael seems to find everything about her personally insulting. And he apparently blames me.

"You're disgusting," he says, shoving me into walls and chairs and shelves and desks. "Makes me sick."

Even Amanda makes gagging faces when she sees us together. And once, in the hallway after English, she grabs at Steam Girl's flying helmet and tries to pull it off. I don't see what happens next, but everyone hears Amanda screaming like a scalded cat.

I ask about it over lunch, but all I get is a chilly glare and silence.

"From the noise Amanda made, I thought you'd ripped her face off," I say.

She rolls her eyes. "I hardly touched her. She's worse than the Shrieking Vines of Venus."

"The shrieking what?"

And then she gives me a little smile and starts to talk, and before long I've totally forgotten about Amanda and Michael and everything else.

But the next day I don't see her in the morning, even though I get to school early and wait by the gate till the bell rings. She isn't in class either. At lunchtime I check by the incinerator. There's no one there. So I give up and go sit in the library, where it's peaceful and private.

That's where I find her, sitting on the floor between two shelves, sniffing like a little girl.

"You OK?" I say.

She's covering the left side of her face with one hand. I kneel down beside her but don't know what to say. So instead I just sit there saying nothing while she sniffs and gulps and keeps hiding her face, till finally the bell rings and we get to our feet and go to our separate classes without a word.

So anyway, here's what she tells me about the Shrieking Vines of Venus, the day before Michael Carmichael gave her a black eye:

When Steam Girl and her father had been on Mars for a few months and had already ticked off most of the items on King Minnimattock's places-to-see list, someone had the bright idea of going to Venus. Actually, it was Prince Zennobal's idea, which should have tipped them off straightaway, but everyone was too excited to be suspicious. Steam Girl's father had always wanted to see what the mysterious green planet was like, and the king couldn't wait to travel to another world. The preparations were made at lightning speed, and within a week, the
Martian Rose
was on its way to Venus, with Steam Girl and her father and a handful of passengers, including the king and the princess. Zennobal had pulled out at the last minute, much to Steam Girl's relief.

"Venus was beautiful!" she says, eyes shining. "Like the greenest, thickest, most luscious jungle you can imagine. The forest rose hundreds of feet into the thick warm air. And there were flowers everywhere: huge orange blossoms the size of a house, with pools of sweet nectar where you could swim and drink at the same time. Millions of birds and tiny playful monkeys, who chattered and giggled and danced through the trees. It was paradise. For six days they flew over that vast green ocean of leaves, landing now and then to explore under the canopy. All their worries fell away, and they felt more relaxed and happy than ever before. They strolled through endless orchards munching on all kinds of fruit, swam in fresh clean rivers, and lay in giant palm fronds, watching as sunset turned the whole sky red.

"Everything seemed peaceful. There were no giant monsters or angry natives or dangerous traps. The only slight annoyance was a particular kind of vine that gave off an earsplitting shriek whenever you came near it."

"Aha!" I say. "The Shrieking Vines of Venus!"

She grins. "Luckily they were covered with bright-pink blossoms that gave off a sickly sweet scent, so they were easy enough to avoid."

There are drawings, too, in her notebook. My favorite shows Steam Girl and the princess doubled over with laughter, pointing at a puzzled King Minnimattock. A bright-red monkey the size of a kitten has made a nest in the king's beard and is curled up, fast asleep. Behind them the jungle is a dense tumble of leaves and flowers and vines. Tiny bluebirds fly overhead.

Over the page is a very different scene: a view from the airship with the jungle spread out below. A dark column of smoke rises into the sky from somewhere near the horizon. It's a disturbing picture.

When I ask about it, she stops smiling and goes quiet. I've never seen her look like that.

"Sorry," she says at last. "I was . . ." She trails off. "You see, this is where it all went wrong. . . ."

"How do you mean?" I ask.

She shakes her head. "Never mind," she says. "I'll tell you tomorrow."

But the next day is when I found her crying in the library, and after that things begin to change.

Around this time, Mrs. Hendricks shifts the seats around so Amanda and Michael aren't sitting together. Instead, Michael ends up next to me, and Amanda gets to sit with Steam Girl. Maybe Mrs. Hendricks thinks I'll be a good influence on Michael, which shows just how much she knows.

Day after day, I stare at them. The two girls, I mean. Amanda wears tight tops that show a lot of skin. Her spine is one long graceful curve, and when she leans back and yawns, it's like a slow-motion movie. She knows Michael is watching, so sometimes she puts on a show, with plenty of stretching and hair tossing and brief stolen glances. Of course I get to see it all, too.

Next to that, Steam Girl's flying helmet and jacket seem even sadder than usual. She hunches over her notebook, like a big, shy bear trying to hide. The only skin that shows through all the dark worn leather is an occasional glimpse of the back of her neck. It looks pale and cold.

Some nights when I lie in bed, I try to remember Amanda's latest performance — her soft slim arms, her narrow waist. . . . But after a while all I can think of is a tiny sliver of cool-white skin.

It's a whole week before she mentions Steam Girl again.

I get to the incinerator first that day. There's a fire going and thick white smoke keeps drifting into my eyes. Even the concrete seems to be sweating. When she finally shows up, I don't notice till she's right in front of me. It's like she's come out of the smoke, like she
is
smoke. For a moment nothing seems solid, nothing's real. Then she reaches out and puts a hand on my arm.

"Are you all right?" she says.

"Uh . . . yeah." I shake my head. "Let's get out of here."

We sit under some dying trees by a chain-link fence. Scraps of rubbish have blown among the roots, and the earth feels damp. I spread my sweatshirt out for her to sit on so she won't get wet. For a moment she hesitates, looking at the sweatshirt and then at me. No one's ever looked at me like that before. Her eyes wide open and her lips not quite closed. Her neck is slowly turning pink.

"Thank you," she says, and smiles.

We share my lunch, as usual. I have some chocolate cake from Dad's birthday, and she carefully eats half before handing me the rest. Then she leans back on the tree while I flick through her notebook. When I reach the picture from Venus with the green jungle and the black smoke, I hold it up.

"So . . ." I say. "You were going to tell me about this one?"

She swallows, then nods.

"OK," she says. "I guess you've waited long enough.

"The rising smoke came from a chimney—from
dozens
of tall fat chimneys that loomed over a vast line of buildings, like giant factories and warehouses, made of stone and concrete and iron and tin. There was a gaping hole in the forest, where the trees had been cut and the ground opened up. Huge machines were tearing at the earth, pulling up tons of soil and rock and carrying it into factories. Stacks of tree trunks were piled outside, for fuel, Steam Girl supposed. There were no people to be seen, only thousands of strange gray robots shaped like men, who bustled about among the buildings and machines, like a hive of worker bees.

"When they first saw all this, Princess Lusanna began to cry. Her father's face went dark.

" 'Take us down,' he rumbled. 'I would find out who has done this thing.'

"Steam Girl and her father, along with the king and three of his bravest warriors, landed in the forest about a mile away. They crept to the edge of the clearing and watched as several robots marched stiffly by. The robots carried guns of a kind Steam Girl had never seen before. Steam Girl hated guns more than anything, and she never, ever used them.

"As soon as the robots had gone past, Steam Girl whispered to her father, 'Back in a minute.' And before he could argue, she left their hiding place and ran across the open ground to the nearest building, where she crouched behind a low wall of crates and then slipped in through the door.

"It was a factory, all right. There were machines and conveyor belts and cables and tubes. There were workers, too — hundreds of robots, pulling levers and turning cranks and carrying wood to the giant furnace at one end of the room. She noticed more robots lying half assembled on the conveyor belts, and guessed that's what the factory was for. Robots building more robots.

"But that was only part of it. There were other production lines, too, making machines she'd never seen or even heard of. Heavy iron engines that smelled of fire and oil — some with wings and some with wheels. Ugly big guns and bombs with fins like sharks. There were boxes and tools made of a strange artificial material — unnaturally smooth, light, and dull. And flat glass screens like empty mirrors, and long snaking rubber-coated wires that hung around the room and over the floor.

"Steam Girl's head was spinning, but she was determined to solve the mystery of this infernal factory. As quietly as she could, she made her way across the factory floor, ducking from woodpile to conveyor belt, avoiding the robots and looking for clues.

"Near the middle of the room was a raised platform with a commanding view of the whole operation. There was no one there—just a desk and two chairs, a vase of bright-pink flowers, and one of those curious machines with row upon row of buttons and a blank glass screen. And all over the desk — the chairs, the floor—stood piles of paper, covered with printed text and diagrams and handwritten notes. Quickly and carefully, Steam Girl crept to the edge of the platform and glanced around to see if she had been noticed. Then she reached up to the desk and snatched an armload of paper.

"A high-pitched scream filled the air, cutting through the constant roar of the factory. Robots looked up from their work and stared at the platform where Steam Girl crouched clutching her stolen papers.

"'Shrieking Vines,' she muttered, realizing too late that the vase on the desk wasn't merely decorative.

"Then she leaped to her feet and ran as fast as she could — leaping over conveyor belts and darting between the quickly converging robots—until finally she was out the door and sprinting for the cover of the jungle. Behind her shots rang out, louder and faster than any firearms she knew of. The ground around her feet spat up fistfuls of dirt. But somehow she made it to the trees unharmed.

"'Run!' she yelled, and her father and the Martians took off through the forest, with bullets splintering trees and cutting leaves to ribbons all around them. But Steam Girl paused a moment to catch her breath, then reached down to her belt and pulled out a gadget she'd never tried before."