Elizabeth Bear: Karen Memory

I hoped they all caught pneumonia.

And there, hulking in the center of the room, was Madame’s battered sewing machine.

Maybe it was the darkness, but the armature looked better than I had anticipated by a considerable.

The straps were hanging loose and the hasps were open, like they hadn’t moved a thing since they pried me out of it. It still smelled like a fire in a cathouse, too. But I stepped inside and with Tomoatooah’s help got it strapped on tight — and actually fitted properly this time. We’d decided we would fire up the steam engine first, and then once it came up to pressure we’d crank up the diesel, what with the diesel being louder.

Of course, that’s when we discovered that the reservoirs was dry. Fortunately, there was a kerosene stove in that same room and a pump handle in the kitchen just one hall over. We filled the thing up with kero and water and we primed it and lit it. And then settled in to try to wait real quiet while the water began to heat.

The good news was it didn’t make much noise while it was just coming up to a boil, and to pressure. Tomoatooah took advantage of the twenty minutes or so while I was trapped inside the thing in a rising state of anxiety to sit down in the corner with his rifle across his knees, fold his arms over the rifle, and take a nap. I just tried to stand still and concentrate on my breathing.

Finally the pressure gauge edged up into the green. I turned the valve, and the hiss of released steam and the thump of pistons wakened Tomoatooah. Shaky or not, he was on his feet in an instant.

A good thing, too, because that noise had carried far enough to alert the constables. Their boots was thudding down the hallway toward us while he turned the crank to spark the diesel engine. Their voices echoed through the empty house. We wouldn’t make it to either door without stomping over the lot of ’em.

Just as well that had never been our intention.

I took three running steps toward the full-length windows and crashed through a pair of them, then out onto the porch. Boards splintered under the weight of the armature, so I kept moving, running, bursting through the rail. Tomoatooah was hot on my heels, and we thudded across the frozen ground toward the nearest hedge and a line of safe deep shadows before the first bullets started to cut the air.

Either a sergeant arrived or a cooler head prevailed, because there were only a few gunshots before the constables seemed to realize they were shooting toward a garden party full of rich folk and quit. First time the bourgeoisie ever did much for me.

By then Tomoatooah and me was among the trees, and by the time the constables actually got themselves organized to chase us I was flat out running and he was back up on Scout, leading Adobe — and we was long, long gone.

* * *

We expected a pursuit. But it didn’t materialize immediately, and then we took to side alleys and thought maybe we’d eluded ’em for a bit. Not for long, though, because it turns out sprinting through the streets of Rapid in a sewing machine with one busted, stiff, grinding knee joint and a Red Indian for an outrider does draw something of a crowd. Fortunately, we was moving so fast that we stayed ahead of the interest, and inside of twenty minutes we had made it back to Chinatown.

Just in time to catch up to the gun battle outside the jailhouse. And — not too much later — for the gun battle to catch up to us.

I don’t know whether one of our folk started proceedings prematurely or if Bantle and Standish and their boys looked out the window at the wrong minute and caught the Marshal and Crispin and Miss Francina and Merry and Priya slipping up on them. There wasn’t exactly time to get a straight story out of anybody.

Tomoatooah and me came running up — well, he came running; I came thudding — and we heard the sound of gunfire from three blocks off, just where the plain brick facades started to give way to ornate wrought iron painted in brilliant reds and blues and greens and oranges, marking the boundary of Chinatown. We slowed down, then, under the big banner with the bright gold characters I’d have to ask Priya to read to me, someday.

If we both happened to live through this.

People was sheltering in doorways, huddled behind the corners of buildings, and scrunched down at the bottoms of the walkway wells. Trying to stay out of the line of fire. I could just make out the gray-painted clapboard of the jailhouse up ahead and the bright licks of muzzle flash from inside it.

I figured the odds were good that they hadn’t seen us yet through the dark, and in the noise of that firefight they sure hadn’t heard us. It looked like at least some of our friends had taken shelter in a side street opposite, and I couldn’t tell if they were returning fire. Or even who was over there: from this side, all we could tell was where the people inside the jailhouse were concentrating their fire.

Tomoatooah reined Scout back, which seemed like a good idea to me. I wouldn’t ride down a street toward shooters inside a building if I had any choice at all, either. He sidestepped her into Passage Street, Adobe following, and I went with ’em. We stopped by the side door of a block of apartments, with five or six trash bins lined up beside it. The horses, I will say, was damned calm about that hissing contraption I was piloting, too. They seemed more nervous about the drop down to sidewalk level.

I looked down at my arms, shielded under the steel plates at the front, and sighed. This one was going to be up to me.

I was grateful for all the time Miss Lizzie had put into tinkering with the thing, also. If I made it off this waterfront alive, I was going to pay for an inventor’s license and set her up in business as a Mad Scientist.

But right now, Priya and close to half of everybody else I had ever cared about was down there somewhere being shot at, and unless I was much mistaken, it was my plan to bust out Madame that had gotten them into that position. I looked at Tomoatooah. He scowled back and unlimbered his Colt.

I said, “At least the constables ain’t gotten here yet.”

“I’ll go around back,” he offered. He hooked a thumb over that black rag mask and pulled it up to cover his eyes. When it was settled to his liking, he unhooked Adobe’s reins from his saddle biscuit and dropped them on the curb. The horse snorted and dropped her head, like she didn’t think much of this turn of events but was willing to play along.

“Well, I guess that makes me the distraction,” I said, and picked up a metal trash bin lid in each one of the Singer’s dented hands.

* * *

It would have been nice if I could have used those sunken sidewalks to stay out of the line of fire, but there was one more drawback of them not connecting to one another underneath the roads. As it was, well, the darkness was my best advantage, and I was going to use it. And going to use every other thing I had at my disposal to get the attention of the defenders inside the jailhouse away from my friends.

Surely they couldn’t be pinned down. If nothing else, that side street that was drawing all the fire opened out on the waterfront at the back.

Would have been nice to have had a firearm, anyhow.

“So much for a nice quiet jailbreak,” I muttered. Hefting my bin lids, I pumped up the pressure in the Singer again, and started to run.

For the first time since I can’t remember when, luck was with me. At least for the next thirty seconds or so, as I bolted the length of that street in the dark, inside the shuddering armature of that sewing machine.

I blessed Lizzie and Priya every step of the way. These things ain’t built for running — or climbing walls, or punching out of burning houses, for that matter — but their tinkering had turned it into the next best thing to a one-woman ironclad. The gyroscopes meant all I had to do was keep the feet rising and falling, which given the dark and the uncertain footing was a blessing and a half. And in that dark, I was three-fifths of the way down the block to the Chinatown jail before anybody inside it realized where that clanking and thudding was coming from and that they should be concerned about it. Bullets commenced to rattle and spark off the stones around me, and one or two ricocheted off my galvanized trash bin lids.