The Calorium Wars Read online

  Liam grinned appreciatively: “I bet Phineas T. was thrilled to hear that one after sailing around Cape Horn with a bunch of seasick elephants.”

  “Actually, the way I heard the story, it was a for-real Mexican standoff till Edison finally managed to electrocute Vasquez in his bath. Maybe true, maybe not, but one thing’s for sure: Edison City barely had gas-lights when it was still what the old-timers called ‘Los Anga-leece,’ but nowadays Barnum is Governor of the Bear Flag Republic, Edison was elected Mayor of L.A., and everything in the city runs on electricity. They don’t even bother with steam power, except for the generators that make the electricity.”

  Liam looked intrigued. “You mean to tell me they don’t have Acmes out here?”

  “Not a one,” Crazy Horse answered with a laugh. “The old families that ran Los Angeles and Santa Monica turned their noses up at everything modern from Back East: too dirty and noisy. But when Edison started boosting electricity over coal all the ordinary folks went for it in a big way because it was clean and quiet, and they ended up voting to re-name the town Edison City. Still—the handful of old white families that call the town Los Anga-leece are the people who really call the tune out here, and that’s probably why Barnum put the government headquarters right here in Santa Monica. Even though Edison City runs right up to the Santa Monica city limits on every side but the ocean, Santa Monica always had its own government and its own police force, and that gives Barnum a little bit of an edge on the ‘Old Los Anga-leece’ boys.”

  Not far ahead of them, the Santa Monica Pier jutted out into the Bay, its brilliantly lit deck fitted out like a circus midway with rides and sideshow attractions and swarming with merrymakers. Liam stopped walking for a moment to enjoy the sight and listen to the cheerful piping of a merry-go-round’s calliope before he nudged Chen with his elbow:

  “Look at that, will you? That beats Coney Island all hollow, and it’s all thanks to Edison’s electricity. Now that’s magic for you!”

  Chen gave Liam a long-suffering look. “Mr. Edison is a brilliant engineer,” he said, “with a genius for taking bits of mechanical rubbish and turning them into machines that let everyone do things that seem magical, like lighting a room or recording their voices. But like it or not, a talent for magic is something quite different—an inborn power that works on the natural world in a way quite unlike Edison’s. No one without that natural gift can do magic no matter how many spells they recite. But if you do have it, the only real question is: how much power do you have? And what are its limits?”

  Liam growled something under his breath, thinking that all that talk about power was a laugh. Instead of making him feel powerful, magic made him feel vulnerable, like he was a little kid again and had to keep asking the grownups what the rules were. He wasn’t some dumb greenhorn, he was the King of the Cracksmen, a veteran of the Battle of Gettysburg and the New York Tombs, and by God there were no flies on him!

  With an eloquent snort, Liam turned and started up the long flight of wooden stairs that climbed to the pier from the beach, stomping on the boards with unnecessary vehemence.

  Crazy Horse and Chen followed, Crazy Horse chuckling as he watched his friend’s petulant display. “Don’t be so silly, Lyovushka,” he said to Liam’s back. “You’re just upset because your sword strike opened the gate to the ley lines and you don’t understand it. It’s really very simple, your family has a heritage of magic and your grandmother’s fairy circle sparked it to life. It’s in your blood. You might as well get cross about your hair being curly!”

  Liam stopped as they reached a platform half-way to the top, spreading his hands with a look of total exasperation: “Dammit, Zhenya, I’m the King of the Silk-Stocking Cracksmen—the best burglar since Little Adam, and he said so himself. On top of that, I’m co-chairman of the most successful gang in New York City and a crack shot and the best jiu-jitsu fighter in New York after Harry the Jap. I don’t need to be a sorcerer, any more than I need to have an udder like a cow!”

  Crazy Horse laughed. “And I’m a Sioux war chief and Ambrose is an Oxford classics scholar, but none of us can change our basic natures any more than we can change the color of our skin. Relax! Learn to enjoy it!”

  Chen took up the thread, speaking more gently than he had before. “Magic is nothing more nor less than the energy of the universe, McCool. You may call it God instead, if you like, or the Great Spirit, or gravity or electricity—it really doesn’t matter. Humans connect with that energy in different ways, and you won’t have any idea of the nature or the limits of your abilities for a long time.”

  “How am I supposed to know what I can do with them?” muttered Liam with genuine anguish.

  “You’ll know it when you do it,” laughed Crazy Horse. “Come on, let’s go buy new clothes and get some dinner!”

  Liam answered with a noncommittal grunt and resumed his climb, speeding up as he neared the top and the lights and the music and the sound of people having fun (not to mention his curiosity) grew more intense with every step. But nothing he heard could have prepared him for the wonderland at the top of the stairs …

  The first shock was the sheer explosion of light, from batteries of enormous carbon-arc searchlights sweeping back and forth across the night sky to what seemed like a Milky Way of tiny, brilliant light bulbs strung in ropes and garlands on stanchions above the pier and around the front of every establishment and dangling from every possible framework that could hold a few more lights.

  And a moment later, the impact of the sounds: music blaring from every side; polka bands, strolling accordion players, a Mexican trumpet and guitar band in mirror-decked costumes, a cigar-chomping black man banging away at ragtime tunes on a baby grand with rubber wheels pulled by a team of donkeys in top hats and dark glasses, an impossibly-contorted India-rubber man playing hymns on a kazoo clutched between his toes …

  … and the languages—Liam had an ear for them and had learned Russian and French and German on the streets of New York, but he was hearing sounds now that were so unfamiliar they might as well have been from some other planet. Human languages nonetheless, being spoken energetically by a crowd more varied than any he had ever seen in one place before: impossibly tall Africans swathed in brilliantly colored wraps, bearded Asians in what looked like white nightshirts with hats made of swirls of white bed sheet, their womenfolk walking behind them in black draperies that covered everything but a slit for their eyes, a troop of surly-looking black pygmies in American children’s clothes, gnawing hungrily at deliciously brown whole roasted chickens …

  … and oh, yes, the smells of food: more kinds of food than Liam had ever seen at any street fair in Five Points: Italian sausages and onions sizzling on a grill, barbecued beef and lamb, hot knishes and cold ice cream, roasted peanuts, an unrecognizable animal being turned on a spit, wreaths of bread, mysterious Chinese concoctions being stirred furiously over a fire in concave steel pans …

  … which were finally the straw that broke Ambrose’s resolve, pulling him irresistibly towards the booth as Liam and Crazy Horse followed hungrily. The proprietor grinned and flipped his pan’s contents into the air, catching them on the fly as Ambrose patted his suit absentmindedly for money.

  “I thought you said you weren’t eating till you got out of those yellow checks,” Liam jibed.

  Chen growled inarticulately and Crazy Horse chimed in: “Careful, Lyovushka, if you push him too hard he may strip off right here.”

  “Insufferable yahoos!” Chen snapped, turning on his heel and striding away through the teeming crowd towards the shore end of the pier as Liam and Crazy Horse followed, laughing.

  Ahead of them, beyond an ornamental-iron arch festooned with still more lights, rose an assortment of tidy brick buildings, themselves illuminated by arched street lamps and signs bordered by colored lights wired to create the illusion of an endless rainbow stream. Ambrose and Liam slowed down as they took in this implausibly neat, clean and glowing urban panorama, gawking like a
couple of rubes as they took it all in. Crazy Horse, who had seen it before, took off northwards on a street which a signpost declared to be Ocean Avenue, gesturing to the others to follow.

  “Come on, fellows,” he called, “let’s get out of our borrowed finery and into something presentable.”

  Here on the primly clean and quiet streets of Santa Monica, the character of the crowd changed sharply from the hurly-burly of the merrymakers on the pier. Now, the pedestrians seemed to be almost exclusively white, with a sprinkling of light-brown Latins, all of them respectably attired in suits or dresses, all of them speaking quietly, their rare gestures well within the bounds of Anglo-Saxon seemliness, their laughter polite and hushed enough to be acceptable in church.

  Liam looked around uneasily and turned to Crazy Horse: “Did somebody die?”

  Crazy Horse laughed: “Santa Monica is the stronghold of the old California aristocracy and that’s them out for their evening promenade, showing the foreign scum how to behave like white men.”

  “What do you know?” muttered Liam as they turned the corner onto Santa Monica Boulevard, which stretched straight and glittering into the remote distance. On a corner a couple of streets away stood a four-story brick building topped by a sign whose colored light bulb lettering proclaimed it to be “Henshey’s.”

  “There it is,” Crazy Horse said with a chuckle, “the best department store in town, and they have readymade suits almost good enough to let us pass for civilized folk.”

  But before the others could comment, a loud, commanding voice thundered behind them:

  “YOU THREE! HALT!”

  Liam and his companions froze where they stood, their hearts sinking.

  “HANDS UP! DON’T MOVE!”

  “What the hell?” Liam murmured in Russian.

  “Don’t say anything,” Crazy Horse murmured back, “just let them do the talking.”

  An odd, high-pitched whine approached from behind them and a moment later a small, electric-powered vehicle, lacquered in white and blue and bearing the shield of the Santa Monica Police Department, circled around them and came to a stop as two officers in sparkling white uniforms stepped out and approached them cautiously. One of them was holding a long scroll of paper, looking back and forth from it to the three strangers with their hands up.

  “By God, Horace,” said the one with the paper excitedly, “it’s them, the ones in the bulletin.”

  “Sure enough, Jimmy,” said the other policeman, approaching Liam with a sardonic grin. “We really ought to thank you boys, you’ve made our fortunes—the Commissioner’s office just got a telegram from Stanton’s HQ in New York telling us to be on the lookout for two fugitives from justice, a tall, skinny Chinaman and a curly-haired Mick with a beat-up mug. Looks like you birds fill the bill to a T.” He turned to Crazy Horse with mock politeness: “And if you don’t mind, I think we might as well arrest you too, I expect we’ll get a bulletin on you before long.”

  Chen was grinding his teeth with pent-up frustration. “Now see here, my man,” he began, but before he could go any further, the one named Horace pulled a Colt Peacemaker out of his holster and shoved the muzzle against the side of Chen’s head with a jarring thunk!

  “Uh, uh, Chink, you see here! We just plain don’t like your kind in Los Anga-leece, and I haven’t shot me a Chinaman since the riots. So unless you want to spring a couple of leaks before we haul you in, you’d better shut your yap now. Savvy?”

  He turned to the other officer: “Jimmy, why don’t you use the voicewire in Henshey’s and tell the Chief we’ve got guests. And if Secretary Stanton don’t want ’em back, why, maybe we can have a necktie party for them right here in Palisades Park!”

  In the Air

  October 31, 1877

  Chapter Thirteen

  The room Ada Lovelace had chosen for them was on the second floor, and as airy and spacious as any Becky had ever slept in. With its tall, multi-paned windows facing west across Little Peconic Bay, she and Liam could let the sun be their alarm clock, celebrating the dawn with happy lovemaking and then dozing off again as the sun rose behind the house and moved steadily across the sky until it was shining directly into the room and cooking their bare legs till it woke them for good.

  But today she really wanted to drowse on for a bit. Her eyes were heavy, and her thoughts were sluggish with the winy languor that goes with dining too well the night before … the night before? Before what? She could feel the sunlight heating the skin of her face until it began to feel uncomfortable, but when she tried to open her eyes, tried really hard, she could barely make the lids twitch. In fact, it felt like something was pressing against them, preventing the lids from raising altogether.

  Becky groaned. Liam! Where was Liam? She groaned again, then tried to open her mouth to call for him and discovered that she couldn’t speak—some kind of awful, sodden rag was pulled back between her teeth, preventing her from moving her tongue freely or bringing her teeth together. What in God’s name was going on?

  She tried to speak again, her thoughts struggling desperately to shake off their deep-sea heaviness and push their way to the surface. She groaned again, louder, until the only thing that was keeping back a full-throated scream was the horrid gag in her mouth …

  “Aha!” said a cheery, familiar voice from somewhere in the darkness beyond her blindfold. “There she is, awake at last! Here, let’s get that blindfold off …”

  And a moment later she felt fingers at the back of her head, untying the blindfold and pulling it away … Dear God! A bank of powerful electric lights almost directly overhead was pouring its illumination down on her and its impact after the darkness of her blindfold was like having a spike driven through her skull!

  She jammed her eyes shut again to gain a moment’s respite, then opened them warily to a narrow slit, letting memory flood back along with the glaring light. She should have guessed from the muted but constant vibration and the sonorous hum of the engines under her feet that she was aboard the battleship Delta where—just minutes after Liam and the others had left with Captain Billy—Capt. Ubaldo had lured her with the cruelest imaginable lie …

  “I was just doing an instrument check in the battleship Delta when a message came in for you on the Tesla Vex … I’m terribly sorry to break it to you this way, but I was told that the Secret Service has arrested your father!”

  How could he have said such a thing? She had regarded Ubaldo as a friend ever since he had piloted the flyer that took her and Liam to Little Russia. She had told him more than once what a razor’s edge Papa had to walk between Willie Pilkington’s Secret Service and the group of fellow New York jurists with whom he risked everything by reminding the Stanton government of its duty to the rule of law. There wasn’t a day when she didn’t half expect to receive a real message just like the false one that Ubaldo had given her. It was hard to imagine what had been in that treacherous pig’s mind when he did it, but she promised herself that he would be very sorry he had. She opened her eyes, ready now for anything.

  There was Capt. Ubaldo in the flesh, dressed to the nines in his sky-blue Aerial Navy uniform, smiling solicitously, his familiar trim little moustache and neatly brushed black hair suddenly hateful to Becky’s eyes.

  “Dear Becky,” he murmured with obvious sincerity, “I do hope you’re feeling better now.”

  Becky groaned and tried to grind her teeth despite the gag that kept them apart. Better? Better than she had been before her captor stifled her with chloroform and trussed her up like a Thanksgiving turkey? What in the name of all that’s holy was this fool talking about?

  Ubaldo answered her groans with a jocular little chuckle: “I know, dearest, the gag is uncomfortable and irksome, but believe me you’ll be grateful in the long run that I kept you from saying something you’d regret before I had a chance to share my thoughts about our future together.”

  Becky closed her eyes so he couldn’t see her rolling them. Had he actually lost his mind? It o
ccurred to her with sudden vividness that she had better tread carefully.

  “My darling,” she heard him say, “I know your expressions so well, believe me it’s easy to tell that you’re getting impatient with me. But do hang on for just a little bit longer, and I’m sure you’ll be glad you did.”

  She opened her eyes again, keeping her expression carefully neutral.

  “There,” he said eagerly, “that’s better!”

  There was a muted chime from the control panel behind him and Ubaldo moved briskly to see what it was about.

  “Hah!” he exclaimed, rubbing his hands cheerfully. “Almost there! Before long we’ll be close enough to New Petersburg that we can expect to run up against pickets of the Little Russian Aerial Navy. Then, my dear, you will see just what metal your suitor Arturo Ubaldo is made of!”

  Becky uttered a strangled gasp, her eyebrows shooting upwards with incredulous emphasis as Ubaldo turned, drawing himself up with military dignity: “That is the lesson I learned from my forebears, dear Becky, the legacy of Rome’s imperial glory: man is a creature perpetually at war, and only those who meet the challenge bravely can achieve true nobility!”

  Becky stifled an urge to laugh as an unwelcome touch of hysteria crept into her thoughts, no doubt thanks to the unfamiliar sensation of complete helplessness in the face of danger. What made this wretched loony think that the Regent of Little Russia, Prince Yurevskii, who had actually designed many of the battleship Delta’s improvements in the days when he had been an advisor to Secretary Stanton under the pseudonym Dr. Lukas, wouldn’t simply order his aerial gunners to blow the ship out of the sky the moment it was spotted? She hoped very much that she and Ubaldo would both end up in the same part of Hell so that she could pitchfork him till he squealed bloody murder.

  Capt. Ubaldo stroked his little moustache with a look of intolerable self-satisfaction.