The steam man clanked and hissed on, and finally they broke from the trees, and in the distance they could see a great, white sphinx, and near it another building of green stone. Though run down and vine-climbed, both had a majestic air about them.
Beadle said, “If I were the Dark Rider, that would be my den.”
John Feather made a grunting noise. The others nodded. The steam man pushed on.
*****
Then the ground opened up, and the steam man staggered and fell in. His knee struck the rim of the trench and he was knocked backward, then sideways, came to rest in that position, one leg deep in the hole, the other pushed up and behind him and on the surface. His left shoulder and head leaned against one side of the trench.
The fall caused logs and flames to leap from the furnace, and Blake’s pant leg caught on fire. He came out of his chair with a scream, lost control of his levers and valves, and the steam man faltered even more, its hands clutching madly at the edge of the trench, tearing out great clods of soil. Wads of steam spurted from Steam’s hat and his metal body heaved and screeched at the grinding of machinery.
John Feather leaped forward, shut the furnace, threw the guard latch in place. Beadle, thrown from his chair, standing on the side of the steam man, since the floor was now askance, wobbled to the controls, turned off the steam.
“We seem to have stepped into a trap,” Beadle said, slapping cinders off his pants.
“Goddamn it,” Blake said, from his position on the floor. “It’s my fault. I let go of my controls.”
“No,” Beadle said. “You had no choice, and beside, Steam was already falling. It’s the Dark Rider’s fault. Let’s not brood. Let’s assess the damage.”
They went up the winding staircase to the steam man’s hat and used the emergency opening over his ear. They threw open the door and lowered the flexible ramp.
Outside, in the midday sun, what they saw upset them. But it was not as bad as they had feared. Steam’s left leg lay on the back side of the trench, while his other leg and lower torso were in it. His head and chest poked out of the deep ditch, and he was leaning to port. The leg that was bent behind him looked to be solidly connected, stretched a bit, but serviceable.
“Maybe he can climb out,” Blake said.
Beadle shook his head. “Not with his leg like that. He may pull himself out, but I think there’s a chance he’ll twist his leg off, then where will we be?”
“Where are we now?” Blake said.
“In a hole,” Hamner said. “That’s where we are.”
“The tripod and winch,” John Feather said.
“Yes,” Beadle said. “The tripod and winch.”
Inside the steam man, stored in a number of connecting parts, was a tripod and winch device. It was there for moving large trees when heating materials were needed and small wood was unavailable. So far, it had never been used, but it was just the ticket.
They unloaded and fastened the device together, set the tripod up over the trench, fastened the cables to the steam man, then set about lifting him.
The sun was past noon and starting to dip.
*****
By late day, they had lifted the steam man three times, and each time his great weight had sagged the crane, and he had fallen back into the pit, straining the leg even more.
Finally, in desperation, they cut some of the smaller trees from the forest behind them, and used them to reinforce their apparatus. This was hard business, and the four of them, even with the smaller trees trimmed and topped, had a hard time moving them, pushing them upright and into place, lodging them tight against the ground.
When they had a tripod of trees to reinforce their tripod and winch, John Feather climbed to the top with Hamner, and they bound the trees tightly to their metal tripod with cable.
All set, they checked and tightened the cables, made sure the steam man was solidly fastened, and set about lifting him once more. Shadows spread across the ground as they worked, filled the trench and cooled the air.
Beadle, dirty and sweaty, an itch in his ass, looked up from the winch lever they were working and saw that the sun was falling down behind the sphinx and the building of green stone. “Gentleman,” he said. “I suggest we hasten.”
(3)
The Dark Rider Awakes
Beneath the green rock museum, in the darkness of his grave, the Dark Rider stirred, removed the plastic and sat up. Almost at the same moment, the Moorlocks removed the wooden cover.
Effortlessly, the Dark Rider leaped from the pit, landed at its edge, straightened and looked out at the mass of red eyes around him. When he looked, the red eyes blinked.
In a corner of the dark room sat the Time Machine, draped in spiderwebs. All except the saddle, which the Dark Rider used as his throne.
The Dark Rider took his place on the saddle and a Moorlock brought him his black hat. He sat there, and for a moment, astride his old machine, he felt as if he were about to venture again into time and space. A wave of his old self swelled up inside of him and washed him from head to foot. There were warm visions of Weena. But as always, it passed as immediately as it swelled.
His old self was gone, and venturing forth in his machine was impossible. The machine had worn out long ago, and he had never been able to repair it. Certain elements were no longer available. For a while, he searched, but eventually came to the conclusion that what he needed would never be found.
And besides. What was the point? Time and space were collapsing. Not more than a month ago he had come upon men and women from the Stone Age killing and eating a family in a Winnebago.
He and his Moorlocks fought and impaled the prehistorics, and he only lost ten Moorlocks in the process. Once upon a time the loss of the Moorlocks would not have bothered him at all, but with the death of most of the Moorlock women through sheer chance and his own meanness, there were only a few females left. He kept them in special breeding centers in caverns beneath the ground. But though the Moorlocks loved to fight, they did not dearly love to fuck. Oh, now and then they’d rape some of the women they came across, before they impaled them, but it just wasn’t the way it used to be. When they got home they weren’t excited like they had been once upon a time; so excited they’d mate with the Moorlock women, impregnating them. Nature was trying desperately to play them out.
Thinking on this, the Dark Rider frowned. It wasn’t that he cared all that much for the Moorlocks, it was simply that he liked servants. He supposed he could enslave others, but the Moorlocks were really perfect. Strong, obedient, and not overly bright. Other races had a tendency to revolt, but the Moorlocks actually thrived on stupidity and control, as long as they were allowed their little delights now and then.
But he had more immediate worries tonight. The steam man and the fools inside it. But the whole operation might cost him a kit and caboodle of the Moorlocks.
Sighing, the Dark Rider concluded that their loss was one of the necessities of business. Which was, simply defined, fear and destruction and a good solid meal.
One of the Moorlocks waddled up to the Dark Rider with his head held down.
“What it is it, Asshole?”
Asshole was the Dark Rider’s favorite of the Moorlocks.
Asshole leaped about, slapped his chest, made some noise.
“They are near?” asked the Dark Rider.
“Uh, you betcha,” Asshole said.
“Then, I suppose, we should go greet them. Get Sticks.”
*****
Just about everything that could go wrong, had gone wrong. The tripod had turned over. Blake had fallen and sprained an ankle, but was otherwise all right. They cut him a crutch from an oak tree, and he hobbled about, tugging on ropes and struggling to free Steam.
Eventually everything was in place again, and Steam was lifted just enough to free his leg. Beadle climbed back inside and stoked up the dying embers. John Feather climbed in after him and handed him new wood from the stockpile. Beadle put it in on top of th
e meager flames, then they worked the bellows. The flame flared up and the logs got hot, and still they worked the bellows.
When the fire was going good, Beadle went out on the ramp under Steam’s ear and called down to Blake and Hamner. “Crank the winch up tight, then stand back.”
When Beadle disappeared back inside Steam, Hamner and Blake took hold of the winch crank together and set to work. They managed to lift Steam even more, allowing his trapped leg to slip into the pit with the other. It was hard work, and when they were finished, it was all they could do to keep standing.
Inside, Beadle and John Feather worked the controls, and Steam climbed easily out of the pit. When he stood on solid ground again, Hamner and Blake cheered, and inside Steam, Beadle and John Feather did the same.
But it was a short-lived celebration. John Feather pointed at one of Steam’s eyes, said, “Bad shit coming.”
“My God,” Beadle said. “Lower the ladder, let them in.”
(4)
Sticks A’Steppin’
The Dark Rider’s contraption was a man made of sticks and it stood at least twenty feet higher than Steam. The sticks had been interlaced with strips of rawhide, woven and strapped, tied to form the shape of a man. There were gaps in the shape, and through the gaps you could see the apes in trousers, as well as flashes of metal. It made cranking and clanking sounds. And the damn thing walked.
John Feather lowered the ladder in Steam’s butt, and Hamner scrambled up, followed by the not so scrambling Blake and his crude crutch.
Once inside they took their seats and ran their hands over their controls.
“Steam is bound to be stronger than a man of sticks,” Hamner said.
“Don’t underestimate the Dark Rider,” Beadle said. “We have before, and each time we’ve regretted it.”
Hamner nodded. He remembered when their team had consisted of several others. Mistakes and miscalculations had whittled them down to this.
“What’s the game plan then?” Blake asked.
“We approach him cautiously, feel him out.”
“I don’t think we’ll have to worry about approaching him,” Hamner said. “He seems to be coming at a right smart clip.”
And indeed, he was.
*****
Sticks and Steam approached one another. From the rooftop of the museum, the Dark Rider watched. He hoped a kill could be made soon. He was very hungry. And he dearly wanted Beadle. The bastard had been chasing him forever. He would impale the others, but Beadle he would have some fun with first. To humiliate him, he would fuck him. Maybe fuck a wound he would tear in his body with his hands, then he’d torture him some, and drink his blood of course, and call him bad names and pull out his hair, and maybe fuck another wound, then he’d have him impaled after boiling his feet raw, coating them with salt and having a goat lick the soles until the skin stripped off.
Well, he might have to lose that part with the goat. He’d already killed and sucked dry every damn goat in these parts, not to mention sheep, a lot of dogs, a good mess of cats, deer, and of course there wasn’t a human outside of Beadle and his bunch within a hundred miles. Not a living one anyway. That was the problem with having his kind of urges. You soon ran out of victims. Rats were plentiful, of course, but even for him they were hard to catch.
Then a thought occurred to him. He could get Asshole to do the foot-licking part. He could be the goat. Asshole, like all the Moorlocks, had a rough tongue, and dearly loved salt any way he could get it. With this in mind, the Dark Rider began to feel content and confident again.
*****
Up close, Beadle and his boys could hear machinery inside of Sticks, and they could see into the huge, open eyes, and there they saw the apes in trousers, howling, barking, running about, the moonlight illuminating their little, red peepers.
Inside Sticks, the Moorlocks worked furiously. Most of their equipment ran on sprockets and cables and bicycle gears, and in the center of the stick man, and at the back of his head, were bicycle seats and pedals, and on the seats, peddling wildly, were the Moorlocks. The pedaling engaged gears and sprockets, and allowed the head Moorlock, Asshole, who sat in a swinging wicker basket, to work levers and guide gears.
As the steam man and the stick man came in range of one another, Asshole pulled levers and yelled and barked at his humanoid engines, and Sticks reached out and grabbed Steam by the head, brought a stick and wicker knee up into his tight, tin stomach.
The clang of the knee attack inside of Steam resounded so loudly, Beadle, without thinking, jerked both hands over his ears, and for a moment, Steam wobbled slightly.
Embarrassed, Beadle grabbed at his gears and went to work. He made Steam throw a left, and Sticks took it in the eye, scattering a handful of Moorlocks, but others rushed to take their place.
Blake, who worked the right arm, tried to follow with a right cross, but he was late. Sticks brought up his left arm and wrapped it around Steam’s right, and they were into a tussle.
Beadle realized quickly that from a striking standpoint Steam was more powerful, but in close, Sticks, with his basket woven parts, was more flexible.
Blake tried to work Steam’s right arm free, but it was a no go. Sticks brought his right leg around and put it behind Steam’s right, kicked back, and threw Steam to the ground, climbed on top of him and tried to pummel him with both tightly woven fists.
Great dents jumped into Steam’s metal and poked out in humps on the inside. Sticks used a three-finger poke (he only had four fingers on each hand) to knock out one of Steam’s stained glass eyes. The fingers probed inside the gap as if trying to find an eyeball, touched Beadle slightly, and disappeared.
Lying on his back as he was, Steam rocked right and left, and inside of him his parasites worked their gears and valves and cussed. Finally it came to Beadle to have Steam’s right leg lift up and latch around Sticks’s left leg. Then he did the same with the other side, brought both knees together so Steam could crush Sticks’s ribwork and the Moorlocks inside.
But the ribwork proved stronger and more flexible than Beadle had imagined. It moved but did not give. He decided it was Steam’s turn to grab Sticks’s eye sockets. He called out orders, and soon Steam’s hands rose and he grabbed at the corners of Sticks’s eye sockets with metal thumbs, shook Sticks’s head so savagely Moorlocks flew out of the eyeholes.
Moorlocks began to bail through the eyeholes onto Steam’s chest, poured in through the busted left eye of Steam.
John Feather leaped out of his harness seat, drew his knife and went at them. Blood flew amidst screams of pain. John Feather slashed and stabbed, killed while he sang his death song. The Moorlocks leaped on top of him. Hamner started to free himself to help John Feather, but Beadle called, “Work the controls.”
Sticks’s head began to tear and twist off, came loose in a burst of basket work and sticks that flipped and scattered Moorlocks like water drops shaken from a wet dog’s back.
Bicycle parts went hither and yon, crashed to the ground. One Moorlock lay with a bicycle chain wrapped around his head, another had a fragment of a pedal in his ass.
Inside Steam, John Feather still fought while Beadle and his crew worked the gears and made Steam roll on his right side. In the process, John Feather crashed about, along with the Moorlocks.
Then Steam stood up. John Feather and the Moorlocks fell back, past the seats and the controls and down the long drop of the left leg to the bottom of Steam’s left foot. Beadle heard the horrid crash and winced. It was unlikely there were any survivors, Moorlocks or John Feather.
Beadle steeled himself to his present task, began to walk Steam, stomping fleeing Moorlocks with the machine, spurting them in all directions like overstuffed jelly rolls.
*****
From his position atop the museum, the Dark Rider watched and grew angry. Damn dumb Moorlocks. Never give an ape a vampire’s job.
The Dark Rider rushed downstairs with a swirl of his cape. He went so fast, the front of hi
s hat blew back.
Near the anterior of the museum stood the Dark Rider’s clockwork horse. It stood ten hands high and was made of woven wooden struts and thin metal straps, and at its center, like a heart, was a clockwork mechanism that made it run.
The Dark Rider took a key from his belt, reached inside the horse, inserted the key, turned it, wound the clock. As he wound, the horse lifted its head and made a metal noise. Lights came on behind its wide, red eyes.
The Dark Rider pulled himself on top of his horse, whom he had named Clockwork, sat in the bicycle seat there, put his feet on the pedals, and began to pump. Effortless, the bicycle horse moved forward at a rapid gait, its steel hooves pounding the worn floor of the museum, knocking up tile chips.
Two Moorlocks who stood guard at the front of the museum jumped to it and opened the door. With a burst of wind that knocked the Moorlocks down, the Dark Rider blew past them and out into the night.
*****
(5)
Things Get Pissy
“The Dark Rider,” said Hamner.
Beadle and Blake looked. Sure enough, there he was, bright in the moonlight, astride his well-known mechanical horse. Its hooves threw up chunks of dirt and its head bobbed up and down as the Dark Rider pedaled so furiously his legs were nothing more than the blurs of his black pants.
“He looks pissed off,” said Blake.
“He’s always pissed off,” said Beadle.
Beadle set the course for Steam, and just as the old metal boy made strides in the Dark Rider’s direction, a Moorlock, bloodied and angry, came hissing out of the stairway in the left leg of Steam and leaped at Beadle.
Beadle lost control of his business, and Steam suddenly stopped, his left arm dropping to his side and his head lilting. This nearly caused Steam to tip over, and it was all Blake could do to shut down his side of the machine.