That reprobate was selling the foreigner the Paganinicon! The nerve. Where was Creff? Almost the moment that thought crossed my mind, two stalwart fellows emerged from the cellar gloom, carrying Creff, trussed up and gagged just as I was. He was thrashing about.
“Just put him there, next to the others,” said Miss McThane. She addressed Creff. “Quit yer bellyaching.”
Others? I wondered. There are others? And then I realized that there was a cage by my side, and in it was faithful Abel, also trussed and muffled. No wonder he hadn’t barked.
“You fiends!” I said to Miss McThane.
Somehow my meaning transcended the gag. “Watch yer mouth,” she said. “Don’t get yer dander up. This won’t take long, and there’ll be a bit of something in it for you.”
Upstairs, the conversation continued. It seemed likely the visitor was skeptical of Scape’s promises. “Let me see the internal gears,” said Mr. Gardner.
“No problem,” said Scape eagerly. I heard the creak of the Panaginicon’s access panel being opened.
“Exquisite,” said the visitor. “What a remarkably complex mechanism. Cross-oriented helical gears, hypoids, harmonic drives, an especially ingenious epicyclic system.” He seemed to have an appreciation for the sort of thing my father did best. “This will be the greatest steampunk movie of all time,” he declared, “starring a working clockwork android. Billy Wilder, eat your heart out! Christopher Nolan, step aside! David Bowie, maybe now you’ll return my calls!”
“Yeah, what you said, buddy,” said Scape. “Now, about the moolah….”
“I’ve got it right here.”
“I’ll just close him up….” There was a scuffling sound, and Scape cried out. “Son of a bitch! You slammed that right down on me finger! Bleeding, I am.”
“Sorry,” said Mr. Gardner. “Here you are. A thousand pounds. I’ll just set the bag down here for you.” There was a light thump.
“Frickin’ finger,” said Scape.
“Don’t get blood on the money, Mr. Scape. That’s bad luck! Now, can we turn it back on and walk it out of here? My time is almost up.”
“Can’t send it through the machine in operating mode. Blow it all to hell. My men will take it out to your carriage. After that, it’s your lookout.” Scape shouted, ”Hey! Over here!” and I heard the sound of heavy feet, signaling the arrival of, no doubt, the same minions who had bound and gagged myself and Creff. And brave Able, I thought, glancing over at him.
To my surprise, I noticed that Able had chewed off the gag and was nibbling surreptitiously at the ropes that bound him. I looked away, concerned that I might draw attention to him.
But Miss McThane never gave Abel so much as a glance. She cared not for dogs, those loyal and intelligent friends of man, but she was very much attentive to what was going on upstairs, and she didn’t seem to like the way events were unfolding. When Scape didn’t open the hatch door, she became suspicious.
“Not gonna let that bastard fly the coop with my share of the dough,” she muttered. “You guys stay here,” she said, unnecessarily, and hurried off into the dark.
How dastardly, I thought, to leave us tied up. How unworthy of you, Miss McThane. Truly, life on the road has hardened you.
As soon as she was gone, however, Able leaped out of the ropes that had constrained him and came directly to my assistance. Once freed, I liberated Creff, and together the three of us dashed upstairs.
As we burst through the door into the workshop, we could hear Gardner’s wagon roll off down the street, clattering noisily on the cobblestones, my infelicitous doppelganger off to who knows where.
In my workroom, we came upon a remarkable tableau. Scape was poised with the rucksack of money over his shoulder, his bleeding hand wrapped in a rag from my worktable. Miss McThane was pointing a small but professional-looking gun at him. And, across the room, the two burly henchmen assessed the scene.
The taller one addressed Miss McThane. “ ’E were runnin’ off wizzout paying, were ’e?”
“Save me from that crazy dame, you dumb gorillas!” bellowed Scape.
Able ran over to Scape and tugged at the rucksack, pulling it off his shoulder. It fell to the floor, spilling packets of five-pound notes. The larger of the two ruffians reached down and picked up a packet.
“This ’ere will do for me an’ my mate,” he said. “We hain’t greedy. ’Onest day’s work.” The two of them quickly thundered out the door.
Miss McThane nodded to Scape. “Toss me the sack,” she said.
Scape threw it at her ill-humoredly. Still holding Scape at gunpoint, she reached down to pick it up. Suddenly, clever Able leaped again from the shadows and, with the advantage of surprise, knocked the gun from Miss McThane’s hand, dragged it off to a corner, and, giving a few sharp warning barks, stood guard over it.
“Okay, okay,” said Scape. “The jig is up — you got the cabbage. Toss me my share, and we’ll call it even.”
Miss McThane laughed as if she were genuinely amused.
“Will someone kindly tell me what has just transpired?” I asked.
“Well,” said Scape, “Gardner’s a Texian whose old man went yours one better — invented a time machine, for moving back and forth, y’know. He wanted a mechanical man, and, well, I knew you had that useless can of brass — ”
Scape’s words were interrupted by a scream of agony from Miss McThane. We all of us — Scape, Creff, Able, and myself — turned to look at her. She was pulling the bundles of bills from the bag, fanning them open, and throwing them in the air. “Crap! What a load of shit! Your chump worked a grift on us.” She pitched an unopened bundle at Scape and hit him on the side of the head.
“Calm yourself, my dear Miss McThane,” I said. “Whatever is the matter?”
But Scape was way ahead of me. “He’s pitched us the snide, has he? He’s left us the green-goods? He seemed like such an honest bloke.”
“No wonder we’re always strapped. You can’t even put the flimp on a frick from the other side of time!” Miss McThane seemed caught between anger and despair. “You can gimme the gat back,” she said to the dog. “It’s no use even shooting him.”
I picked up one of the flash notes that were blowing about the room. The same appearance as our honest British banknotes, they were adorned not with our beloved Queen, but with a mustachioed fellow sporting a bowl haircut. Who on earth was this, I wondered.
Then I noticed the banner underneath. “William Bradford,” it read, “Governor of the Plymouth Colony.”
The Armies of Elfland
Eileen Gunn and Michael Swanwick
It was the middle of the night when the mirrors came out of the elves. With a sound like the cushioned patter of an ice storm, the tiny mirrors fell to the ground, leaving a crust of glitter behind the marching elf army. They bled, of course, but the elven blood restored the dry land, undoing the effects of the drought, and moss emerged green from the ground in the troops’ wake.
The sight of the moss brought forth the drought-starved humans and their pathetic get to the mouths of their caves.
“Stay here!” the new father commanded. Not one of the children was his. But all the real fathers were dead, so they had no choice but to obey him or be beaten.
“Don’t go,” Agnes wanted to say. “Don’t trust them.” But Richard gently touched her lips to silence her. Richard was the oldest of the children, indeed almost an adult himself, and he did what he could to protect the others.
The adults fell on the damp moss, tearing it up by the double-handful like so much bread dough. They sucked the moisture from it and crammed its substance down their throats. Briefly, all seemed well. One of the new father’s wives was raising an arm to beckon the children down when the minute mirrors they had ingested suddenly expanded to ten, a hundred, a thousand times their original size. Jagged shards of mirror erupted from their flesh as horns, tusks, and spines. Blood fountained into the air and pooled on the ground, glimmering in the moonlight. The adults splashed through it, lurching grotesquely, writhing and howling in pain.