A week later, Morgan found himself in the gondola of a dirigible.
It turned out that Lacy had had a lot of friends in Laramie. Though none was rich enough to afford passage to the High Frontier on their own, and none was mad enough to shoot it out with a clockwork, Morgan was able to scrape together enough money for his passage.
The balloon above the gondola was shaped like a fancy glass Christmas tree ornament, all covered in gold silk. A steam engine powered the dirigible, providing a steady thump, thump, thump as pistons pounded and blades spun.
The gondola swung beneath the huge balloon, connected by skywires. Its decks were all hewn from new cedar and sandalwood; their scent complimented the smell of sky and sun and wind.
City slickers and foreigners sat in the parlor cabin, toasting their good fortune and dancing while bands played.
Morgan could hear their music, smell their roast beef, sometimes even glimpse them dancing. But he wasn’t a railroad tycoon or a mining magnate or a politician.
He’d taken passage in the lower deck, in the “Belly of the Beast,” as they called it, and had one small porthole in his cabin to peer through.
Still, the sight was glorious.
The dirigible reached the High Frontier at sunset, just as the sun dipped below the sea, leaving the clouds below to be a half-lit mass of swirling wine and fuchsia.
One could only find the High Frontier at that time of day—when the sun had set and the full moon was poised to rise on the far side of the Earth. It was a magical place, nestled in the clouds.
Down below the skyship, a silver city rose—elegant spires like fairy castles, with windows lit up like gemstones. The colored glass in those windows made it look as if sapphires, rubies, and diamonds were scattered over the city.
The skyship landed amid glorious swirling clouds, and the rich folk marched down the promenade, arm in arm, laughing and joking and celebrating their good fortune. On the deck, the band came out and played soft chamber music.
Women oohed and aahed at the spectacle, while men stood open-mouthed. Morgan imagined that saints might make such sounds as they entered heaven.
The High Frontier had only been discovered four years back. Who had built the silver castles, no one knew. How the cities of stone floated in the clouds was also a mystery.
Angels lived there—scrawny girls with wings, ethereal in their beauty. But they were feral creatures, barbaric, and it was said that when the first explorers had entered the silver city, the angels were roosting over the arches—little more than filthy pigeons.
Some thought that it had once been an outpost, that perhaps angels had once been wiser, more civilized, and that they rested here while carrying messages back and forth between Heaven and Earth.
One guess was as good as another. But a new territory was opening up, and folks were eager to be the first to see it. Morgan couldn’t figure how a man might make a living here. The sky was always twilit, so you couldn’t grow crops. The clouds were somehow thick enough to walk on, but there was nothing to mine.
Just a pretty place to visit, Morgan thought.
When the rich folk were mostly gone, Morgan made his way down the gangplank. A fancy dude in a bowler hat stood at the top of the gangway, smoking a fine cigar that perfumed the air.
He glanced at Morgan, smiled, and said, “Das ist schön, nicht wahr?”
Morgan grinned back. “Sorry,” he apologized. “I don’t reckon we speak the same language.”
Morgan walked down the gangplank, his spurs jangling with every step, and trundled through the city. He imagined that madmen had fashioned the soaring arches above the city gate, now planted with vines and lianas that streamed in living curtains.
Maybe a fellar could grow crops up here after all, he mused, though the light is low. Butterflies and hummingbirds danced among the flowers.
As he entered the silver city, spires rose up on either side. There was something both strange and yet oddly organic about the tall buildings, as if some alien intelligence had sought to build a city for humans. Perhaps dove-men had designed it, or termites. He wasn’t sure.
People filed off in a number of directions. It was rumored that many a tycoon had bought houses here—Cornelius Vanderbilt, Russell Sage, along with royals out of Europe and Russia. Even Queen Victoria had a new “Summerhouse” here.
All the high-falutin’ folks sauntered off to their destinations, and Morgan felt lost.
One fairy castle looked much like another. He searched for an hour, and as he rounded a corner, he found what he was looking for: the wing doors of a Western saloon. He could hear loud piano music inside, and smell spilled beer on its oak floors.
He walked into the saloon and found a madhouse.
On either side of the door were golden cages up over his head, and angels were housed there—small girls, perhaps eight or nine, with fabulous wings larger than any swan’s. Their hair was as white as spun silver, their faces translucent.
But their dark eyes were lined with a thick band of kohl, as if they were raccoons. They drew back from Morgan and hissed.
Unbidden, a dark thought entered his mind. When he was a child, Morgan’s mother had always told him that when a man dies, the angels come to take his soul to Heaven.
He could be walking to his death.
A verse from Psalms came to mind, one of his ma’s favorites: “Lord, what is man, that thou art mindful of him? Or the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels . . .”
As if divining his thoughts, one of the angels hissed at him and bared her teeth. She scooped a turd up from her cage and hurled it. Then grabbed a corn cob and tossed that, too.
Morgan dodged and hurried past.
Inside, the place was alive. Dancehall girls strutted on stage to clanking pianos and catcalls. Men hunched at tables, drinking and telling jokes. It was much like a saloon, but it suffered from the same miserable clientele as he’d seen on the dirigible—European barons in bright silk vests and overcoats. Eastern dudes. Moguls and robber barons.
The beer wasn’t sold in glass jugs, but in decorous tankards, inlaid with silver and precious stones.
The place smelled more of gold than of liquor. Pipe smoke perfumed the air.
But the clockwork gambler was surprisingly easy to spot. In fact, Morgan gasped and stepped back in surprise when he saw him.
The clockwork was obviously not human. His face had been sculpted from porcelain, like the head of a doll, and painted in natural colors, but there were brass hinges on his jaws. When he blinked, copper eyelids flashed over glass eyes.
He wore all black, from his hat to his boots, and sat at a card table with a stack of poker chips in front of him. He had a little gambling kit off to one side. Morgan was familiar with such kits. They held decks of cards for various games, dice made of bone and ivory, and always they held weapons—a pistol and a throwing knife.
The clockwork gambler sat with three wealthy men. By the piles of solid-gold coins in front of him, he was winning.
Morgan steeled his nerves, walked up to the table, and said, “You gentlemen might want to back away.”
The patrons scattered aside as Morgan pulled back his coat to reveal the star on his chest.
Some men cried out as they fled, and others ducked as if dodging imaginary bullets. The clockwork gambler just leaned back casually in his chair, as calm as a summer’s morning. His mouth seemed to have little porcelain shingles around it that moved to his will, so that when he smiled, it created a crude approximation of a grin. The creature’s teeth were as white as shards of ice.
“Here to try your luck?” the clockwork asked.
“Your name Hellfire?” Morgan replied.
The gambler nodded, barely tipping his hat.
Morgan felt his hands shaking, and his mouth suddenly dried. He’d neve
r seen a man face death with equanimity the way that this clockwork did. It was unnatural. Almost unholy.
I’m betrayed by my humanity, Morgan thought. Flesh and blood, gristle and bone—they undo me.
In that instant, he knew that he was no match for the clockwork gambler.
“Tell you what, stranger,” the clockwork said. “Let’s draw cards for your life. You get the high card, you get the first shot at me.”
Morgan shook his head.
“Come on,” the gambler said reasonably. “It’s the best chance you’ve got. Your flesh was created by God, and thus has its all-too human limitations. I was made to draw faster than you, to shoot straighter.”
“You might be a better killer than me, but that don’t make you a better man.”
“When killing is all that matters, maybe it does,” the clockwork said.
The silence drew out. Morgan wasn’t sure if he should let the clockwork draw first. He didn’t know where to aim. The creature’s chest provided the biggest target, but it was the best protected by layers of metal. The joints where its neck met its head might be better. But what was a head to this machine? Did thoughts originate there, or elsewhere? The head looked no more serviceable than that of a poppet.
The gambler smiled. “Your human sense of honor bothering you? Is that it?”
“I want justice,” Morgan said. “I demand justice.”
“On the High Frontier?” the gambler mocked. “There is no justice here—just a pretty tomb, the ruins of a grander civilization. This is Rome! This is Egypt!”
He waved his hands wide, displaying the ornate walls carved with silver, the golden cages with captive angels. “This is what is left of your dead god. But I am the future.”
Morgan had heard a lot of talk about God being dead over the years, from the beginning of the Civil War. But the discovery of these ruins proved it to the minds of many.
“Tell you what,” the gambler said. “Your legs are shaking. I won’t shoot you now. Let’s try the cards. I’ll draw for you.”
The gambler placed a fresh deck on the table, pulled a card off the top, and laid it upright. It was a Jack of Hearts. He smiled, as if in relief.
“I didn’t come to gamble,” Morgan said. “I came for justice.”
“Seeking justice is always a gamble,” Hellfire answered reasonably. “Justice doesn’t exist in nature. It’s just the use of force, backed up by self-righteous judgment.”
The gambler cut the deck, pulled off the top card, flipped it: the Ace of Spades.
“You win!” the gambler grinned.
Morgan was all nerves and jitters but pulled his piece anyway, took a full quarter second to get his bearings, and fired. The bullet ripped into the gambler’s bowtie, and there was a metallic zing as it ricocheted into the crowd.
Someone cried out, “Mein Gott!” and a woman yelled, “He’s been shot!”
Morgan’s face fell. He hadn’t meant to wing a bystander. He glanced to his right, saw a fat bloke clutching his chest, blood blossoming on a white shirt.
Morgan ducked low and tried to aim at the clockwork, but faster than the eye could move the gambler drew, aimed, and fired. The bullet took Morgan straight in the chest and threw him backward as if he’d been kicked by a horse.
Morgan fell and wheezed, trying to suck air, but he heard blood gurgling from the hole in his ribs. His lungs burned as if someone had stuck a hot poker through them.
He looked right and left, hoping someone would help him, but all that he saw were frightened faces. He had heard that there was no law on the High Frontier, only money.
No one would stop the killing. No one would avenge him.
As he lay on his back and felt blood pooling on the floor, he fought to stay conscious. The clockwork gambler strode toward him, smiling down, his porcelain face a mockery of flesh.
Morgan realized that he’d been charging dead, from the moment he’d started this hunt. When he’d missed the skinwalker, he should have seen it as a sign.
“Your human tinkermen have made me well, have they not?” Hellfire asked. “You humans, in such a hurry to create. It was inevitable that you would fashion your replacements.”
ROB HASSAN
Over the clockwork’s shoulder, Morgan saw his angels—leering from their cages. One was grabbing at the lock on its golden door, trying to break free, as if to come for him.
But Morgan was on his way out, like the buffalo, and the Indians, and thunderbirds, and all the other great things in the wide world.
The gambler aimed at Morgan’s head. There was no shaking in his hands, no hesitation. He pulled the trigger.
Thus, a new wonder in the world supplanted an old.
Squalor and Sympathy
written by
Matt Dovey
illustrated by
Adrian Massaro
* * *
about the author
Matt Dovey lives in a quiet market town in rural England with his wife and three children. Despite professing to be a writer, he still hasn’t found the right words to properly express the delight and joy he finds in this wonderful arrangement. His surname rhymes with “Dopey”; any other similarities to said dwarf are purely coincidental.
He does boring stuff with computers for a living. Thanks to the tireless and loving efforts of his wife, he has time not only to write but also to brew wine, photograph everything, and run around a field with a pretend sword and a silly accent in the name of live roleplay. He is very English and often has arguments over when one should add the milk to a cup of tea. For the record, this is before the boiling water, not after, despite George Orwell’s claims to the contrary.
He has presently completed thirty-one consecutive orbits of the Sun (a personal best) and hopes to extend this record so that he will have time enough to get through his Ideas That Need Writing list. He looks forward to the day when AI snapshots can be spun-off, set loose, and later reintegrated back into one’s core personality as a method for actually getting around to everything that needs doing. It’s his last hope.
This is his first publication, though others are already following.
about the illustrator
Adrian Massaro was born in 1989 in the small tourist city of Bariloche, situated in the foothills of the Patagonian Andes in Argentina.
He has drawn ever since his hands could hold anything that could leave a mark, and his mind could picture what a tree or dinosaur looked like. His older brother, a very talented artist, was always his inspiration.
Adrian went on to study Visual Communication Design at the National University of La Plata in Buenos Aires.
After spending most of his life drawing with graphite pencils and lead holders, he started his journey with digital painting using a small Wacom Bamboo. The online community, through numerous forums, magazines, articles, and blogs provided the help and tuition he was looking for to push his craft and imagination to the next level.
Adrian continues his independent studies and works doing freelance jobs for private clients. He is currently living in Neuquén, Argentina and is always in search of new experiences and roads to travel.
Squalor and Sympathy
Anna concentrated on the cold, on the freezing water around her feet and the bruising sensation in her toes. So cold. So cold. So cold, she thought. A prickling warmth like pins and needles crackled inside her feet. It coursed through her body to her clenched hands and into the lead alloy handles of the cotton loom. Each thought of cold! kindled a fresh surge of heat inside and pushed the shuttle across the weave in a new burst of power. Anna’s unfocused eyes rested on the woven cotton feeding out of the back of the machine. It looks so warm.
The constant clacking of looms that filled the factory changed tempo, quieted slightly. Anna glanced to her right, where Sally White worked.
Sally
was standing, her feet still in her water bucket, and talking to herself. “Sodding thing, gone and jammed on me again. No wonder I can’t meet numbers.” She was peering into the loom at where her shuttle must have caught.
“Here, let me help.” Anna took her bare feet out of the bucket and stepped over. Her own shuttle slowed and stopped as she released the handles.
“You can’t, Anna. If Shuttleworth sees you’ve stopped work, there’ll be hell to pay. I’ll get it sorted. Don’t you worry about me, you look after yourself.” Sally’s fingers were deftly picking at threads of cotton, darting in and out like a chicken pecking for seed. She had good reason to be so delicate: when the jam cleared, the tension in the threads would launch the shuttle across the loom, even without power, and any fingers in the way would be ruined.
“Don’t be daft,” said Anna. “It’ll take no time with two of us.” She tucked her dark hair behind her ears then reached in and held the shuttle, letting Sally unpick the knots and tangles more easily.
“Oh you’ve a good heart, you have, Anna. I do like you. Ain’t many folk like you around no more. The world’s a selfish place these days, and always looking out for itself. I’m glad you’re in it to look out for others still.”
Anna stared up at Sally. Her hair and skin were so pale as to be almost white, especially in the weak sunlight of the factory. She was only twenty-two, Anna knew, only five years older than Anna herself, but she looked worn through, like milk watered down too thin. “Why don’t you say something about this shuttle?” asked Anna. “It’s near worn out!”
“I can’t say owt about it. If I say I need a new shuttle, it’ll get docked from my pay, and I can’t afford that. I’m already having to work double shifts since my George shipped off to India with the Company. A new shuttle’d cost me a week’s pay, and I can’t have my Charlotte going hungry all that time, little angel.” Sally unpicked the last knot and pulled her fingers back quick like. Anna released the shuttle and it flew across the weave, sliding to a rest.