Part 4 (1/2)

Tom Edison stared out the viewport at the rolling hills of the Iowa territory, just within Missouri country. The horizon moved with a lurch-and-swoop not unlike the boats on the Great Lakes in choppy weather, though today's brilliant sun and flawless sky belied the comparison.

The steam ram City of Hoboken moved like a drunken bear in all weathers, pistons groaning with the pain of metal as the great machine walked the prairies.

Behind him, his printing press chunked through another impression, Salmon Greenberry grunting with the effort. Salmon, Tom's freedman friend and colleague in experimentation and business alike, though they were both barely sprouting beards yet.

Boys in arms, adventuring together across the West. He resolved that he would someday write a book. If one could ever send communications across this benighted country.

”The problem with the telegraph,” Tom said slowly, the idea unfolding even as he spoke, ”is that one cannot run the lines west of the Mississippi. Those d.a.m.nable Indians, or worse, Clark's Army, just pull the copper down again.”

There was a freshet of ink odor in his nostrils, and barely audible, the damp tear of a sheet from the stone. Tom's ears were never the best.

Salmon said something unintelligible, grunting with his labor, then the words segued into meaning: ”... help what they are. It's the West, Tom.” There was a familiar warmth in his friend's voice, in which Tom sometimes to his secret shame found comfort amidst the clanking, heaving darkness of the steam ram during prairie nights.

Tom snorted away the reverie and Salmon's suggestion together. ”People have been using that excuse since Jefferson's day. Apologists for spiritualist madness, with no understanding of or interest in Progress. This is a better world than that, amenable to logic and sweet reason.”

Another thunk of the press. Another grunt from Salmon. ”As you'll have it, Tom.”

Though he still had not turned to face his friend, even with his failing ears Tom could hear the grin. He smiled back. Another secret shared.

A shot echoed from above, in the watchman's post, followed by the clang of valves as the captain shunted power to the turrets.

”Attack,” shouted Salmon.

Tom whirled to help his friend latch down the printing press, then they both grabbed the repeating rifles racked by the hatch of their little work-cabin, heading for battle stations. Tom thought he heard the crackle of distant gunfire, but it might have been his own pulse.

The weather deck of the City of Hoboken was a good forty feet above the solid Iowa earth. ”Deck” was perhaps too kind a word for what was really just the plank ceiling of the bridge deck below, surrounded by a low railing with built-up firing points for p.r.o.ne riflemen. It was perhaps nine feet wide and twenty feet long, and featured only the watchman's post, like a preacher's lectern set amids.h.i.+ps with no congregation but the distant horizon and the wheeling sky.

Tom and Salmon took up their firing points on the starboard rail, up top with the other useless supercargo and oddlot apprentices. Those with real worth in a battle manned the boilers, or the turrets, or worked the bridge deck. The City of Hoboken's eight dragoons, eternally dissolute masters of pasteboard wagering, were certainly down in their lower balcony, ready to leap, shoot, or toss grenadoes as circ.u.mstances dictated.

The weather watch was for anyone with hands to shoot and nothing else to offer in defense.

”Where?” shouted Salmon. Tom watched his friend, waiting for the other boy's eyes or rifle barrel to move in response to whatever the deck watch advised.

Then Salmon rolled onto his back, snappy as a scalded cat, and stared skyward.

Oh, no, thought Tom, but he did the same.

Something very big was silhouetted against that perfect prairie sky. It was shaped like a man, without the wings of one of the angels of the mountain West, and appeared to be carrying a cannon.

”What ... ?” he whispered aloud. Tom had read the dispatches, those that were made available in Port Huron and Chicago, to a fast-talking young man like himself. Not much was published about angels, but he'd even seen the Brady daguerreotypes from the Battle of St Louis the previous year.

Angels had wings. Everything that flew had wings. Save one rumored monster out of the deepest Western mountains.

Tom brought his rifle up to point skyward, stepping it against his body like a boat's mast. He pulled the trigger, thinking, Nephilim. The great avengers. Nothing can kill a Nephil. And he's above the elevation of any of our big guns. It was an offense against man and nature, this flying thing, and Tom swore out the measure of his fear. He had not come West to die at the hands of an impossibility.

His shot was the harbinger of a hailstorm of firing, the weather watch loosing its useless bullets at a thing above which laughed in a voice made of thunder, earthquakes and simple, gut-jellying terror.

The captain made a quick, hard turn, taking the City of Hoboken toward the dubious shelter of a tree-lined watercourse. After their initial orgy of firing, the weather watch calmed down a little as the Nephil banked above them.

It was definitely carrying a cannon, Tom realized. Something long and sleek, perhaps one of the new Parrott rifles. He couldn't imagine what need a supernatural being would have for such a thing. Supposedly the Nephilim could call lightning from the summer sky and break the backs of angels.

Did he have anything below that would entice it, entrap it, somehow save this day from the bloodbath which was surely coming?

In addition to hosting his half-penny newspaper, The Trans-Mississippi Monitor, the City of Hoboken was also home to something of a laboratory which Tom had acc.u.mulated. The captain tolerated Tom and his equipment in exchange for mechanical services rendered and the cachet of having his own newspaper on board. The prestige of a working press allowed him to charge higher fares for pa.s.sengers heading for Des Moines, Council Bluffs and other points on the City of Hoboken's usual routes westward toward the distant riches of the Front Range in the Colorado country.

As part of his laboratory, Tom had on board a store of chemicals, machine tools and curious items of his own devising. But what could dispatch one of the Nephilim? Legendary as they were, there were no whispered tales of the mighty monsters' defeat in battle.

The attacker circled lower, lazy and slow, following the City of Hoboken through the great steam ram's course changes. At least it had not set to killing them yet.

What could he do? Tom ran through a rapid mental inventory of acids, caustic chemicals, electrical jars, sharp tools, mechanisms.

There was the harpoon, he realized. The watchman's post had a pintle mount and a steam valve for that implement designed originally for fighting off the mastodons, which sometimes crossed the Missouri River to range the Iowa prairies.

He could surely devise a suitable load to burst on impact with the attacker.

Tom handed Salmon his rifle and jumped to his feet. ”Bannock,” he shouted to the day watch. ”We need to uns.h.i.+p the harpoon rig. I can fight this thing!”

”You're b.u.g.g.e.red as a limehouse rat,” said the watchman, peering at the Nephilim through a telescope. But as Tom scrambled down the hatch, he saw Bannock whispering into the speaking tube.

Tom was trying to quickly, very quickly, a.s.semble a caustic load fit to drive off something as great and terrible as a Nephil. Tom didn't believe for a moment that G.o.d had sent the terrible creatures to the Mormons, but nonetheless they were here in the world. Even Nephilim had eyes. And he had a number of nasty acids fit to burn even the most resistant membrane. His science would defeat this treacherous superst.i.tion.

Then his gaze lit on the Plante-Faure battery cell. It was a new device, recently s.h.i.+pped out at great cost from New Jersey. Tom had made some modifications to it by way of acc.u.mulating ever more electrical potential, hoping to produce a fearsome spark from the thing as part of his ongoing investigations into the practical applications of such energies.

What would a great electrical discharge do to the flying menace? It might be as good as a strike by lightning.

Tom abandoned his acids and grabbed the loose cable end off a spool of telegraph wire. It was four-stranded copper, coated in gutta-percha then wrapped in sealed hemp yarn the best his limited money could buy, all the way from Buffalo. He dragged the end into the pa.s.sage, letting the cable unspool, and shouting for Bannock or Salmon to come help as he worked to pa.s.s the copper cable up top.

Once the weather watch had hold of the cable, shouting and excited, Tom grabbed a ball-peen hammer and a set of staples, along with his tool bag. He nailed down the loose end off the spool center, allowing himself some slack, then scrambled up the ladder, past the writhing snake that was his cable.

On the weather deck the breeze was stiffer. Cottonwoods swayed around the steam ram as the captain took them further down into the creekbed. Tom knew their search for cover was in vain the City of Hoboken was over four stories tall. Nothing could hide such a magnificent machine, such a stout work of Dame Progress. And certainly not out here on the Iowa prairie, where their pursuer circled high above, a vulture waiting to descend.

He set about las.h.i.+ng the free end of the cable to Bannock's harpoon, again leaving himself slack. A copper point on the head would be perfect, but Tom figured he could make do with the steel.

When the line came up short and the nervous weather watch huddled around him, Tom pulled himself away from his work on the harpoon shaft.

”It's like this, men,” he shouted. He hated speaking, hated rousing men like this that was the job of officers and shop foremen, not a thinker like himself. Especially when he was the youngest man on the deck.

Salmon gave Tom a big wink.

”That up there's one of the Nephilim!” Tom pointed at the sky. ”Some folks say the Mormons raised 'em from a Bible. Some folks say they're Chinee magic, brought across the sea by the Russians. Well, I don't care!” His voice was a bellow now. ”It's here a-hunting us, and we're fixing to drive it away. But you each have a part.”

Eight frightened men loomed in closer. A voice squawked from the cupola's speaking tube, but even Bannock, the day watch, ignored the captain in favor of whatever spectacle Tom was about to put on in the face of life and death.

”Very shortly I'm going below,” Tom said in a normal voice. ”I'm going to hook this harpoon up to a cell battery. Once I done that, don't n.o.body but me or Bannock touch nothing here. When I give the word, you all each start shooting again for all you're worth. We must draw that thing down close, so's Bannock can shoot it with my wires. Then ...” His hands slammed together. ”Boom.”

There was a ragged cheer. Tom took a simple knife switch from his tool bag and hammered it into the deck next to the hatch coaming. He cut his cable at the taut end, and wired it into the switch, careful to leave the switch open.

”Don't touch nothing,” he said, wagging his finger with a significant look at Bannock, then ducked below again.