Steam City Pirates (32 page)

“All right, so it’s now 5:15 PM. Let me have your eyes, and you can synchronize the transmitter so it sends the power to me at exactly 7 PM. Is that possible?” I asked, my voice rising in fear and expectation.

“Yes, it is. Good luck, Detective. Do you need any help?” Manette asked.

“One other thing. Could you send the
Mocha Dick
out into the waters off Coney Island again? If all goes well, I will have another target for you at about 8:30 PM,” I said.

“I don’t suppose this target will appreciate the baptism,” said Manette. The little puffs of circular steam coming out of his Nemes was the closest act I had ever seen him make, which appeared to be a humorous reaction. “I shall control your nemesis, and he will be sent by me to the Coney Island rendezvous at 8 PM,” Manette added.

“Right. Now I must be off. I have to ride back up to Central Park on your underground steam bullet train. I hate that contraption! Then, it’s back to Fifth Avenue and the fun and excitement. Please remember, Mister Manette, after this has concluded, I shall return your eyes, but we will then become enemies once more. You are still pirates, and I am still a member of the legal establishment.”

“Oh yes. I realize this, Detective. I rather enjoy our little forays, so I will look forward to your efforts.”

Manette reached up to his face with his two hands and extracted the still-pulsing red eyes. They were about five inches in circumference, and when he handed them to me, I could feel their vibrating power throughout my entire body.

“Here. Use this, O’Malley. It will make transporting them a bit easier,” said Jane Haskins, handing me a small black box lined with red velvet. There were two indentations that were shaped to perfectly fit the two eyes. It seemed this trick had been done before.

“Thank you, Haskins. We will also be meeting again, I trust,” I told her, and she nodded her top hat gravely and pointed down to the clock inside her chest.

“Watch your timing, Detective. Time and tide wait for no man,” she said.

“I shall keep that in mind,” I said, closing the lid on the box and putting it in my inside wool coat pocket.

* * *

It took me a while to get Manette’s eyes securely installed inside Michael’s head, but Doctor Adler assisted me. By the time I was able to lumber out of the warehouse on 42
^nd
Street, I had mastered the basic controls inside Michael the Archangel’s steam-powered insides. The most important control, however, was now glowing outward at the passing automatons who were doing Biggs-Pemberton’s bidding throughout New York City.

The steam man Michael’s body vibrated as he lumbered down Fifth Avenue toward the Steam City Ale House, and I was vibrating right along with him. I could feel my teeth rattle inside my mouth, and my legs were jostling up and down. If this were the future steam age miracle, then I could do without it. After this mission, I was going to park my Michael forever and learn to be a married man. Come to think of it, perhaps I should think this over some more.

Up ahead, between the thousands of citizens who were going about doing the will of one Doctor Biggs-Pemberton, I could see the villain, in all his reptilian glory, as he danced in the center of Fifth Avenue. His green scales were shimmering under the gas lights, and both Bessie and Becky were waving their dresses and dancing a Virginia reel around his disgusting serpent body. His tail lashed back and forth in rhythm to the two women’s steps, and I could also see Seth flying above his mother in frantic circles.

I saw Biggs-Pemberton glance up and focus his gaze upon my approaching form. His midget eyes narrowed, and he took several steps toward me in the street. I could see his poisonous spines spurting yellow on his back as he looked up at Michael the Archangel and his pulsing red eyes. I looked over at my brass pocket watch hanging on the side of the lever I used to manipulate Michael’s arms. It was exactly five minutes to 7 PM. I pushed the button that projected my voice out into the street.

“Doctor Biggs-Pemberton, you were wrong about many things. You are not possessed by a Network official. You are not trying to save our world from totalitarian control. You are simply a cheap tyrant from a future prison colony on our moon. Are you prepared to meet your doom?” I asked, expecting the lizard to use his poisonous spines.

He did not. Instead, he laughed. “O’Malley! The mick and pot licker detective. Is this all you have? The mechanical invention of some retarded
mazikeen
and holy Joe rabbi? Where is the great Master Inquisitor Manette? Has he succumbed to my crystalline persuasion?”

At that moment, the reptilian figure of Biggs-Pemberton began to grow. Larger and bigger, the green monster became, until he was standing about fifteen feet higher than Michael’s ten. If I looked through the holes next to Michael’s red Manette eyes, I could see his huge midget face staring down at me.

It was my turn to laugh. “Wrong again, my midget-brained doctor. Manette is not a cyborg, as you believed. He is all electronic and all powerful. At least, for the likes of you!” It was exactly 7 PM, and I watched the red eyes from the inside of Michael. They grew increasingly stronger, their round orbs glowing and pulsing, sending out their powerful, mind-controlling forces toward the figure of the giant reptile in front of me.

Manette’s transmitter must have been in complete control because the figure of the giant Biggs-Pemberton began to amble slowly down Fifth Avenue. Around him, all the citizens began to follow the giant dinosaur lizard, like the Pied Piper’s mice.

* * *

It was 7:49 PM when we all reached the south end of the borough of Brooklyn. Coney Island’s Steam City Amusement Park was not open for business. I supposed its master, Doctor Biggs-Pemberton, did not appreciate such entertainment. Thousands of New Yorkers were entertained, it seemed, by watching their lord make his reptilian way into the surf of Coney Island Beach. The monstrous reptile’s feet splashed into the waves and began to amble out to sea.

In the distance, I could see the shining white oval of the
Mocha Dick
submarine. I pictured the little inventor, Narcis Monturiol, squinting into his periscope and lining up his sights. Inventors, I knew, needed freedom to exist, and this reptile was the opposite of freedom. He was everything inventors hated. He was prideful, dishonest, greedy and ugly.

As Biggs-Pemberton stood alone out in the ocean, we all could see the torpedo headed for his huge body. I knew what was going to happen next, so I turned around and watched the thousands of New Yorkers, whose faces were staring out at their master. They looked unconcerned, as if every day of their lives was spent under some kind of mind control or other, but when they heard the explosion, and the green body parts of Biggs-Pemberton came raining down over them, they quickly became cantankerous humans once again. They began to argue amongst themselves about a complete range of topics. How had they arrived at Coney Island in the middle of the evening? What had they been staring at? What was that disgusting green and slimy material floating out in the surf?

Doctor Franklin Biggs-Pemberton was the Master Dreamer, and he had lost the battle to me. He was now suffering the consequences of his defeat. He was now returning to that first moment that Homo erectus walked upon the Earth. His was the dream within a dream.

I began to run toward the only place I knew my friends would be gathered. It had been established as our sanctuary under the ground, just as Abraham Toky Manette and his Steam City Pirates had their sanctuary under Central Park. We had become allies to stop the prison warden from the future, but what would happen after we became enemies once more? I had a respect for Manette, and I even understood his purpose for being here, in 1869 New York City. What I did not understand were his methods. Those glowing red eyes could turn into mind-control devices as powerful as any ever invented, but I knew I would also be returning them to their owner. We had to remain civil and fair, even if our future seemed to reveal a much harsher world wherein distant, computer-guided weapons could annihilate us at any second. What was it the Society members told me before I had left them?

We are stardust. We are golden. And we must get ourselves back to the garden.

I now needed to embrace the moment by returning to Rebecca, the golden woman of my dreams, and back to my friends, so we could mourn the loss of one of our own, Walter McKenzie. Then, with any Irish luck, I could proceed to the first wedding I will have ever experienced in this, my very own universe.

As I ran, I looked up in the sky above Central Park. A huge airship with the words
World Scientific Advancement Society for Progress
on the side of it was floating in the air. Now that we were no longer allies, the Steam City Pirates were bringing out their toys to begin a new adventure. This was, most likely, von Zeppelin’s device, as it was a mammoth balloon, at least 800 feet long and over 100 feet high. I would need to talk to Professor Lowe to see what we could do to counter this air piracy vehicle.

The adventures with the Steam City Pirates were just beginning, and we were the only ones who could stand up to them. Should the world remain in the Steam Age, or does it need to evolve under its own power into a more dynamic and perhaps more frightening era? As the Society instructed me, I just needed to live in my moment. And that’s exactly what I planned to do.