The Calorium Wars Read online

  But if the Control Center itself was a genuine marvel of up-to-date science and technology, the troops who stood guard outside it—men of the 4th Imperial Brigade of Dragoons—were ordinary, government-issue flesh-and-blood. And who could blame a red-blooded Little Russian soldier for being ravenously hungry after hours of standing guard in the numbing winds of an autumn cold snap?

  “Pirozhki, your Excellency, delicious pirozhki stuffed with juicy mushrooms and savory steak and fresh hard-boiled eggs, nice and hot from the oven!”

  The grandmotherly old babushka, round as a polar bear with layers of skirts and shawls, stood in front of the Dragoon manning the guardhouse outside the main gate of the Control Center and held up her wares for him to inspect. The mouthwatering smell that wafted up from the basket she was carrying, strong enough to penetrate even the warm towels that covered the pastries themselves, was more than enough to make the sale, and as the soldier mentally crossed his fingers that none of his superiors was watching, he pulled off a glove and fumbled a ten-kopek piece out of his overcoat pocket.

  “Mmmmm!” he groaned in ecstasy as he ate half the pirozhok in one bite. “Akh, bozhe ty moi!”

  “It wasn’t God who made these pirozhki, young man,” she reminded him tartly, “and if you’re going to gobble them like that, you’ll need to pay me more for my labors!”

  “How much for the lot of them?” he asked as he licked his fingertips hungrily. “My mates would skin me alive if I didn’t buy enough for everybody.”

  “Weeell,” she said, pursing her wrinkled old lips thoughtfully, “I suppose I could find it in my heart to offer a discount to men who serve God and the Tsar … what do you say to five paper rubles or three silver ones?”

  “Done!” he said with a big grin, and handing over the coins he took the basket from the old lady and gave a piercing whistle for someone to come and get the pirozhki.

  “Thank you, fine sir,” the babushka said, “I’m sure you’ll all find yourself dreaming of home when you eat those little darlings,” and with a grandmotherly curtsy she took off in the direction she’d come from, thinking that her promise was one of those rare cases when advertising and reality agreed.

  “Dear God,” Tikhomirov said as he watched the babushka’s progress through binoculars from a suite on the third floor of the Hotel Evropeiskaia, “I am so besotted with that woman that my heart would be in splinters if I had one. As it is, my brain is hurting quite enough to do the job.”

  Plekhanov watched his friend—for it was truly just as much Lev Aleksandrovich Tikhomirov speaking through the rubber vocal cords of that metal monster as it had been when he inhabited the familiar lanky, bearded body back in Russia—and felt his own heart twinge in sympathy. Materialist that he was, he still hoped there was a Hell, and in it, special circles of suffering where someone like Yurevskii could be sent to roast on a spit for his cruelty.

  “I don’t blame you,” he said to Tikhomirov. “We’ve had some of the most remarkable women in Russian history as comrades in the struggle, and yet Becky Fox is the superior of all but a few. A rare combination of heart and brains,” he said, adding with a grin: “and not terrible to look at, either.”

  “No, not intolerably so, anyway,” Tikhomirov said, and his tone let Plekhanov imagine the wry smile that would once have accompanied it.

  Setting the binoculars on a table, Tikhomirov turned away from the window and checked the clock that sat in the center of the mantelpiece.

  “Almost noon,” he said in a worried tone. “According to our informant the automatons who are still responsive to the Control Center should be staging their counterattack in the next hour or so, which means that we don’t have a lot of time to disable the Control Center.”

  Plekhanov picked up the binoculars and peered down at the sentry in his guard box, adjusting the focus until he could see the man’s face clearly enough to count his whiskers. Suddenly the man held his hand up to cover his mouth and yawned rackingly. A good sign.

  “Becky has the dynamite under that umbrella of skirts,” he said, “enough to bring down the whole building. And by now she will be waiting with Frol and Semion Lazarich, who will guard her as she places it. The moment they see the signal they’ll be off, and at the same moment we must begin our mobilization.”

  Behind him, he heard the clanking taps which told him that even after all they had been through, Lev Aleksandrich still crossed himself when the moment of action approached. As if in answer, the guard collapsed slowly in his box, his helmet askew and his mouth wide open in a drugged snore. Moments later, Becky—now wearing her newsboy uniform—and two men in equally nondescript dress started diagonally across the Square towards the Control Center. Plekhanov turned towards Tikhomirov:

  “They’re on their way. Time to begin!”

  With a hasty embrace, the two old friends picked up their valises and left the room.

  Prince Yurevskii—in full military regalia now, with medal ribbons and a holstered Smith & Wesson Model 3 revolver—was listening to someone on a voicewire receiver as Stanton and Pilkington—sharing the slightly rumpled look of men who have overstayed the fresh changes of clothes in their suitcases—stood by looking impatient and uneasy.

  “No opposition at all?” he asked. “What happened to the Apache rebels?”

  He listened for a moment and then smiled: “Excellent! If they have the temerity to come out of hiding and show their faces again kill enough of them to set an example, mount their heads on poles around your camp and then put the rest of them back to work in the mines.”

  He put the handset back in its cradle and turned to the others. “Well, gentlemen, it looks like our assault on the Arizona calorium mines will prove to be a success. Once our joint force has secured the area completely, I propose that we transport them at once to the Saskatchewan calorium mines. As usual, the British think no one would dare bother them, so the diggings are guarded only by a handful of old-age pensioners. If we can strike while the iron is hot it will take but a handful of days to make us lords and masters of all the calorium deposits outside the continent of Africa and we shall thus gain a head start that will make our two nations the leaders of the world.”

  “By George, I like the sound of that,” said Stanton heartily. “What do you think, Willie, should we go for it?”

  “Oh, yes sir,” Pilkington said earnestly, “oh, absolutely, sir!” Thinking to himself that if he could discover some way to escape from these madmen and go to ground in the south of France, he might be able to lose himself entirely, become a country schoolmaster or a chef or paint watercolors …

  “Meanwhile,” said Yurevskii, rubbing his hands briskly, “we must put down these insurrectionist scum and see them all hanged from the nearest lamp-standards. The leader is said to be that Land and Freedom swine Plekhanov, the one who blew up my brother, but his two Lieutenants are said to be one of my rebel automatons and a newsboy!” He snorted contemptuously: “A newsboy! C’est à rire, n’est-ce-pas?”

  Stanton grimaced, feeling a totally unexpected shiver of … what? Guilt? Conscience? Preposterous, he hadn’t time for either. And yet he couldn’t quite drive away the sharp image of the boy who’d been distributing that rag Freedom in Union Square and the intensity with which he’d wished the boy’s death, which had arrived moments later at the hands of one of his agents …

  Yurevskii took out his revolver, inspected it meticulously and spun the cylinder to make sure it was moving freely. Then he slipped it back into its holster and gave Stanton a querying look:

  “Would either of you gentlemen care for a revolver? This is the new ‘Russian’ model from Messrs. Smith & Wesson and it’s quite impressive.”

  Stanton shook his head irritably, thinking that there was no earthly reason to dirty your hands if you could hire people to shoot guns for you. Not that it would be quite polite to say so to Yurevskii. As for Willie, he blenched so sickly a color at the thought of more violence that a verbal reply was unnecessary.


  “Very well,” said Yurevskii with a grim little smile. Don’t say you weren’t offered one when the shooting starts. Come along now, I want to show you the little surprise I’ve prepared for the insurrectionists. According to my informers they will be launching a counterattack in the next hour or so, and you’ll have a box seat for the show I mean to put on for them.”

  “Where the devil are Yurevskii’s troops?”

  The anxious thrum of Tikhomirov’s rubber vocal chords underlined the disquiet Plekhanov was feeling himself as the two of them stood at their forward observation post in the shopping arcade on the south side of the palace square. They had expected to see a show of force, with cannons being dragged into strong points and Gatling gun emplacements being erected with sandbag walls. Instead, there was no sign of life except for one of their own men standing in the Control Station sentry box dressed as a dragoon and a stray dog urinating on the palace gate.

  Plekhanov shrugged. “We can assume they’re getting ready for our next move,” he said, “and Yurevskii’s too clever to show his hand early. However, he doesn’t know that we have already seized the Control Station since Becky and her helpers surprised the technicians and tied them up along with the drugged soldiers—the whole lot are safely under lock and key in the stables behind the main building. The Control Station will continue to operate as Yurevskii expects it to until the very last minute—we even have one man guarding the Station’s voicewire terminal in case of a call from the Palace, and he’ll stay on his post until he sees our signal rocket. Then he’ll light the fuse and get out.”

  “Hmmm …” thrummed Tikhomirov. “And all our forces are in place and well hidden?”

  “Don’t be such an old woman,” teased Plekhanov, “we’ve all been over this so many times by now that the only real danger is falling asleep from sheer boredom before the signal rocket goes up.”

  Tikhomirov slowly swiveled his great steel head back and forth: “It sounds as if there’s nothing that can go wrong.”

  Plekhanov laughed with genuine amusement: “Am I speaking with Lev Aleksandrovich Tikhomirov of Land and Freedom and the People’s Will, seedbeds of a handful of successful political acts and a thousand failed ones? Something will go wrong; we must simply be ready for it.”

  “It’s true,” rumbled Tikhomirov in a gloomy pedal tone, “I’m getting too old for this.”

  “There,” said Yurevskii with a proud gesture, “what do you think?”

  The Prince and his U.S. guests were standing on a balcony at the north side of the Palace, looking down onto a parade ground which seemed to be absolutely packed with hundreds of android fighters, every last one of them armed with a Gatling gun.

  “How do you know that none of these are rebel automatons?” Pilkington asked curiously.

  “A good question,” Yurevskii said with a grim smile, “and one which you may imagine exercised my thoughts to no small extent. When the dimensions of the problem became clear I quarantined all those which had not yet gone over to the rebel side and discovered that a small error had crept into the manufacturing process making some of the newer models incapable of responding to wireless commands from the Central Control Station. Each of the ones you see here has been vetted thoroughly to make sure that error is either not present, or is fully corrected. Either way, the android troops you see before you will now respond to my commands as if they were a single automaton. Observe!”

  “ANDROIDS!” Yurevskii called out in drill-sergeant tones. “ATTENNN … SHUN!”

  Instantly, the ranks of metal giants came to attention with a thunderous, synchronized clang of metal feet.

  “Eh?” asked Yurevskii, grinning ecstatically. “Impressed?”

  Stanton was almost speechless. “My God,” he said in a hollow voice, “nothing will be able to stand up to them!”

  Pilkington gripped the balcony railing and nodded wordlessly, wondering where he had gone wrong. Probably, he thought, when he had decided to stop being the drunken wastrel he’d been through four years of Yale, and show his father—the Pilkington Agency’s Old Man—that he was as good as any operative in the Agency’s stable. Fool! He could have cashed in his bonds and opened a brothel in Montparnasse, by now he would have become a happy and respected member of Paris society!

  “And did you take note of their armaments?” Yurevskii asked Stanton.

  Stanton peered down towards the androids, squinting and shaking his head. “I can see that each of them has some sort of contraption under his right arm, but I can’t quite make out what it is.”

  Yurevskii chortled and rubbed his hands with glee. “That happens to be my very latest invention. Each of them is carrying a standard Army-issue Gatling gun in .45-70 caliber, adapted for use by an android. On his back, each of them is also carrying a pack containing two thousand rounds of belted ammunition, which will feed into the gun for as long as the android turns the crank. If you multiply that times the 600 androids you see below you, the total firepower of which they are capable is almost beyond imagining!”

  Stanton simply shook his head, finally speechless; Willie swayed and considered throwing himself from the balcony.

  “ANDROIDS,” bellowed Yurevskii again, “FORWARD, MARCH!” With a thunderous clank, the metal men moved forward in perfect unison, following the road that led around the back of the Palace towards the Palace Square. Yurevskii turned back to Stanton and Willie with a look of smug satisfaction:

  “We could actually sit down and have a cup of tea if we felt like it,” he said, “from this point on they will simply follow the orders which I have already issued to the Central Control Station. However, I’m sure you’d hate to miss the fun, I know I certainly should! Come along, then, let’s head back to the other side.”

  And, humming a little tune, he trotted back into the Palace towards the reception area, leaving Stanton and Willie to follow at a much less buoyant pace.

  By now, Becky and her two bodyguards had joined Plekhanov and Tikhomirov in the shopping arcade, waiting tensely for the moment to fire the smoke rocket and blow up the Control Station. When the androids started marching around the Palace towards the Square, they all jumped at the noise, even Tikhomirov, whose brain retained memories of moments like this all too vividly.

  “My God,” he thrummed, “what’s that?”

  “Lots of automatons on the march,” said Plekhanov in a grim tone, “fire the rocket!”

  Instantly one of the men with them fired a military smoke rocket into the air, and moments later, a man tore out of the inside of the Control Station building and ran across the square towards his comrades with the fake “dragoon” guard right on his heels. Meanwhile, the pounding of metal feet grew louder and louder, enough that the watchers began to feel the vibrations through the soles of their feet.

  “Well,” said Becky with a slightly strained grin, “now we find out just how good Little Russian Ordnance Corps fuses really are.”

  Plekhanov grimaced tensely. “This is a bad failing you Anglo-Saxons have,” he said. “Is it really necessary to make such a fetish of showing your sang-froid in moments of mortal danger?”

  Just then the phalanx of giant automatons rounded the corner of the Palace and set forth inexorably on the last two hundred yards of pavement between them and the waiting rebels. The ground was definitely vibrating now.

  Becky gave Plekhanov a slightly uneven smile: “If you really prefer, Georgii Valentinich, it would be no trouble at all for me to throw myself on the ground and have a fit of hysterics.”

  Abruptly, with a thunderous, simultaneous crash of metal feet, the phalanx of Gatling gunners came to a halt and raised their guns at a 45º angle.

  “FIRE!” bellowed their leader.

  Immediately a deafening storm of heavy-caliber gunfire broke out, followed by the merry tinkle of thousands of brass cartridge cases hitting the pavement.

  “CEASE FIRE!” the android bellowed.

  Instantly, a deafening silence reigned, broken after a moment by a
nother bellow:

  “REBELS! THROW DOWN YOUR ARMS AT ONCE IF YOU WISH TO LIVE!”

  “Damn it,” said Plekhanov a little tremulously, “the dynamite should have blown by now!”

  There was one more beat of silence, and then Becky grabbed the spool of fuse and blasting caps that one of her two bodyguards was holding.

  “Save my place,” she said with a grin, and took off towards the Control Station at a run.

  “Becky!” Plekhanov shouted. “Stop!”

  Becky waved her free hand without slowing down, and a moment later disappeared through the front gate before the enemy could respond.

  “Dear Heaven,” groaned Plekhanov, “she’ll never make it!”

  “Oh, yes, she will!” rumbled Tikhomirov, and a moment later he was clanking across the pavement at furious speed, right behind Becky. Now the phalanx of loyal automatons woke up, and started firing in earnest, but Tikhomirov had too good a start, and he disappeared through the gate after Becky.

  “Bozhe moi!” murmured Plekhanov. Without even thinking about it he crossed himself and murmured a prayer.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Is anybody shooting back at those people?” Custer asked.

  He started to raise himself on his elbows, but a good-sized rock chip whined by almost close enough to part his hair and he dropped to his stomach again, cursing under his breath.

  “I thought they taught you soldier boys to save your ammunition,” Liam said in an aggrieved tone. “Those birds aren’t even slowing down.”

  As if to emphasize his complaint a second Gatling gun started up from the attackers’ position, filling the air above their heads with a hail of rock chips and bullet fragments.

  “Why should they slow down?” asked Chen acerbically. “They came here in airships; they probably have enough ammunition to blast this mountain into gravel.”

  Crazy Horse was feeling bitter, thinking that the other fellows were blaming this whole thing on him, which was manifestly unfair. He thought his discovery of the spirit lines inside the Camera Obscura was a really pretty nifty bit of magical serendipity, and instead of patting him on the back his pals were just moaning and feeling sorry for themselves because of a little gunfire. It was petty, that was what it was, and …