Gods of Chicago: Omnibus Edition (21 page)

Chapter 35

Madame Tibor motioned to Brand again and he followed out into the main room of the speak. The piano was quiet and the musicians were going down the ladder to the cellar, carrying their smaller instruments close to their chests and helping one another hand the larger cases down.

“Where are they headed?” Brand asked.

“To railroad. In tunnels. Old city lines are buried after fire. We find them, rebuild them for exploring old city. Now we use them to escape.”

“Are we joining them or do you have an airship hidden in those scarves?”

The fortune teller turned dark eyes on Brand and he felt regret rise in his chest.

“Come, Mitchell Brand. Is now you see what your story is really about.” As she spoke, her scarves lifted away from her neck and swirled around her head like the arms of a marionette. Brand could see no strings, and the shuddering air around her head gave him a good idea of what would come next. He held his booze through a force of will and let the room lift aside like a curtain, revealing again a thousand memories on top of a thousand more. Furniture and firelight swam in and out of focus around indistinct figures, then the room itself faded from view to be replaced by stretches of farmland and cattle.

Madame Tibor took Brand by the hand and took a step to the side. In the space of that step they crossed the city, her stride covering miles in half a second. Brand’s vision blurred and his head spun. He only kept his liquor down this time because he’d forgotten he had a body to be sick with. All sensation and sound was reduced to a single feeling, a calm like he’d never felt. For that split second, Brand knew what it meant to be
in
a city, to truly exist within a city and be a crucial part of it.

Then Madame Tibor let go his hand. He came to a sudden halt in a top floor hotel room downtown, far from the old Village neighborhood. Brand’s vision came around to register a tall white-haired man standing by a window, looking out at the city below. A satchel hung off his left hip. The man turned around as Brand’s gut caught up with him and sent him stumbling for the washroom. He came back out when he was finished and looked the tall man in the eye.

“You’re Tesla. Aren’t you.”

“Yes. And your surprise is not unexpected, Mr. Brand. That is, if it is surprise and not revulsion that is responsible for your nausea.”

Brand took it all in. The hotel room, the gypsy fortune teller who’d just spirited him here from a speak halfway to the other side of the city, and now Tesla. Old and withered after years of proving to the world what no other inventor had dared try. Brand had heard the stories, about the man who never slept or took companionship, despite the many offerings he’d received. Brand knew what the man could do. Without Tesla’s radio power station and the devices he’d rigged up, Brand wouldn’t have had a career as Johnny-on-the-spot with crime scene photos.

But this man, this frail and almost quaintly pathetic old man with a whispy voice and frills of white hair sprouting from his liver-spotted scalp. This was Tesla.

“No, it’s not revulsion. I wouldn’t call it surprise either, but then I don’t know what to call it when a gypsy hauls me off my feet and flies me across the city in one step. What would you call it?”

Tesla seemed taken aback, but then chuckled softly through rounded lips.

“What do you know about gods?” he asked.

“Gods? Not much. They’re good for when you need to ask someone for help. They’re better when you need someone to point fingers at for not helping you.”

Tesla barked a short laugh and his smile widened, though his weathered and wizened face drooped around his mouth, betraying his disappointment. “Your opinion may change shortly.”

“I’ll lay even money you’re wrong, but go ahead. Try to win me over.”

“Mr. Brand, certainly a man of your skepticism can agree. Humanity can be its own worst enemy.”

“Certainly. So why do we need gods in the first place when it’s all on us to make things better or worse?”

Tesla kept hush, seeming to consider Brand’s question before speaking again.

“Mr. Brand, humanity needs the gods as much as the gods need humanity,” he said, warming to the conversation now and stepping closer to Brand, moving his hands as he spoke, seeming to grasp words from the air around him. “Each is beholden to the other for existence, and for influence.”

“Influence? I think you mean power. That’s how it’s been told to me by your mailmen anyway.”

“Yes, Mr. Brand. Power. The power to act without restraint, to see one’s influence expressed in the world, widely and with purpose. With results.”

“So where do I fit in here? I’m guessing the gypsy didn’t fly me here to show up the air transport service.”

Madame Tibor spoke then and Brand turned to face her.

“When gods find mortals who match influence, then gods emerge.” Her scarves swam around her head in a whorl now, violent ripples of burnt orange, deep passionate red, blazing sunlight yellow, a swirl here of emerald or sapphire. In each band of color, Brand saw tools and around them the products of their use. Hand tools intermingled with utensils. Around these were pieces of furniture, then rooms to house the furniture, then houses full of rooms. Outward the scarves spun, creating an aurora behind Madame Tibor’s head. Beyond the houses grew cities, and then roads connecting these, forming a web of human activity that stretched into infinity as Brand stared, and wondered.

“Gods come out from curtain. Possess the mortal and live on earth.”

Tesla picked up the thread now, leaving Brand to stare between them. “On earth, in possession of a mortal, the gods may act on the world however they so choose. It is the most powerful position a god may claim. It is as close to immortality as either human or god may ever know.”

Brand stood frozen in place between Madame Tibor’s and Tesla’s words. Nothing they’d said rang true in the way that a gunshot told you a bullet was on the loose. But the gypsy’s scarves kept up their light show, and as the inventor stared at Brand, his face took on a haunted look. His eyes burned with a blue fire. Images floated in the air around Tesla’s head. Spiraling conduits of electricity orbited the cross hatch of schematic diagrams. Ghostly machines operated and revolved around one another, performing anonymous tasks in a smooth cadence, all in time to their movement. Formulae spun about as well, the numbers and symbols danced as they were calculated and recalculated time and time again. At the end, Tesla faded behind the curtain, flickering like a gas jet and then re-emerging, his figure filling in like an electric lamp ablaze with the warm glow of light. Madame Tibor did the same, emerging from the curtain to stand before him with a potency Brand could not deny.

“
Ingenuity
, Mr. Brand,” Tesla said.

“And
Necessity
,” the gypsy added.

“The gods guide and advise us these many years,” Tesla went on.

“How long?” Brand asked.

“Since last World’s Fair is held in Chicago City,” Madame Tibor replied.

“The fair? What’s that got to do with it? And why here? Why not Philly or San Francisco? They’ve hosted fairs before.”

“Chicago City is the natural seat of this nation’s power,” Tesla said. “This city is centrally located on all major shipping and transportation lines. It is the heart of manufacturing and production in the American Territories. Chicago City
is
the nation with its mix of peoples and enterprises. Raw materials are funneled through her ports and along her rail lines. When people do travel across the territories, they must pass through Chicago City. To control the city is to have every branch of the nation wrapped up like a bundle of sticks held tightly in one’s fist.”

“And one of these— One of
you
wants to do this, is that it?”

Tesla and Madame Tibor nodded.

“Which one?”

“
Hubris
,” the gypsy spat.

“His influence is legendary in Chicago City,” Tesla said. “He aims to have his insulating self-righteousness invade every heart. Worse, we have learned he is in league with another member of the pantheon, a god whose influence is unmatched by any other in your city or in any of the American Territories.”

“Who would that be?”

Tesla answered. “
Industry
.”

“Sounds like they want to take us back to presidents and vice-presidents. Somebody should tell them that didn’t work out too well. Lincoln was the last president this country had, and he didn’t exactly leave office. Not on his own.”

“There are not so many of us here beyond the curtain, Mr. Brand. The reach of the gods extends only as far as humanity allows with their worship and reverence. You can no doubt appreciate that our colleagues, for better or for worse, are willing to do anything for the freedom to walk the earth as we have. Many of them, like
Vice
and
Corruption
already enjoy a degree of freedom. Others, like
Pride
and
Shame,
would see themselves exalted higher even than
Industry
. And if he succeeds…”

“Succeeds at what? You still haven’t told me what we’re up against, and what I saw back in the Village didn’t look like the greatest scheme on the books. What good is a war to a god of indu—” Brand stopped himself as his mind filled the picture in.

Tesla nodded again. “It is
Industry’s
wish that the entire nation be devoted to the cycle of production and consumption. Even when a need is lacking, the people will consume. Even when resources have been exhausted, they will produce, sacrificing what they truly need. They will sacrifice even to obtain what is wholly unnecessary. But they will believe otherwise, and so they will exhaust themselves in the pursuit of falsehoods.”

“Is he out here? Like you?”

“Yes. The Governor. His army has taken over my factory. Stolen my designs and my inventions. All for his little game of soldiers.”

“Can’t you get it back? You’ve got to have some way of—”

“Of what? Fighting a war? That has never been my concern.
Ingenuity
will leave me soon. He will find another host, or he will wait behind the curtain. Society is run amok with wealth and power now. Humanity has too little time for a man whose truest love is for the power of having ideas, rather than what can be done with them.”

Brand wanted to sniff at that, but he couldn’t deny the inventor his due. “I’m sorry, then. You deserve better after what you’ve given the world.”

Tesla acknowledged this with a nod.

“You said there were two gods working this play. What about the other one?
Hubris
? Who is he?”

“I do not know, but it would be someone able to command the sway of the people through coercion, force, or deceit. He will promote his ideas as undeniably just while being, in reality, nothing more than a braggart making a prideful attempt at gaining power.”

Brand’s mind called up what he’d seen on the street. Soldiers marching lines of helpless citizens like cattle to the slaughterhouse. Bulletins notifying the people. Bulletins marked with a seal like the one he’d read in a broadcast booth the day the Governor came to town.

“So what’s the play? Where do I come in and how do I help?”

“You must again be the voice for Chicago City. You must speak for the people, tell them the truth. Tell them what the Governor’s airships and soldiers are doing while the people hide inside their homes. Insulated. Believing themselves unaffected. Believing lies.”

Tesla reached into the satchel hanging off his hip and pulled out a microphone rig. A coiled cable linked the square mic to a small box mounted on a thick leather belt.

“This microphone is connected to the transmitter on top of the building you used to work in, Mr. Brand. You may use it to give your broadcasts. I have configured it to interrupt any signals being sent from the building itself, so you may rest assured you will be heard tonight.”

“How’d you manage that? This thing’s smaller than my shoe shine kit. Where’s the power come from?”

“My Wardenclyffe towers, Mr. Brand. The Governor may have stolen my factory from me, but the knowledge of how my inventions work remains mine.”

Brand weighed the device in his hands, then slipped the belt around his waist and fastened it. The mic dangled from the cable until he lifted it and hooked it onto a clasp hanging from the belt. The power box sat at the small of his back and forced him to stand upright with his back slightly arched.

“Didn’t think about comfort when you made this, did you?”

Tesla chuckled and placed his hand on Brand’s shoulder. Looking the inventor in the eye, Brand nodded and gave a quick salute. Tesla smiled in return before fading out of sight, leaving only a thin veil of darkness to fall closed behind him.

A rolling thunderclap shook the city, sending Brand diving for cover by the bed. Madame Tibor instead walked to the window and stared into the gathering night.

“It starts now.”

Brand moved to join her, caution and fear sending his every nerve into a riot of alarm. Outside the hotel the streets were quiet. The city had gone indoors in the middle of the afternoon because of the early curfew. Across the river, in the old neighborhoods they’d just left, Brand saw a burst of firelight, and then another. A stippling of gunfire peppered the sky and Brand saw gunships convening on the old neighborhoods. Fireballs blossomed up from the ground moments later as more gunfire punctuated the darkening sky with deadly starlight.

Chapter 36

Emma peeked out from her hiding place. She’d come onto this porch because she saw someone twitch aside a curtain in the house. Then two soldiers had rounded the near corner, just one house away. Emma ducked down and prayed she could escape while the soldiers searched the first house. She watched them go up the steps to the porch. One of them kicked the door in and the other shouted for anyone inside to come out.

An engine cranked to life nearby and Emma’s heart jumped. Who would be crazy enough to drive through this neighborhood now? The soldiers turned as one to watch the street. A jeep came around the corner and pulled up in front of the house. The driver hailed the two on the porch.

“Just got word. It’s time to clear out.”

The two soldiers stepped fast down to the curb and climbed into the jeep. The driver worked the gearshift and the jeep peeled away with a roar and burst of smoke. Emma sat on her haunches until the jeep was well out of sight. The neighborhood felt quiet as a grave, but she knew people remained hidden indoors. She glanced behind her at the curtained window. A child’s eye held her gaze for a moment before a mother’s or father’s hand flicked the curtain shut. Emma heard hissed reprimands retreat into the house and out of earshot.

Emma’s ears rang with dread. The quiet streets, the hushed voices of people too frightened to come out of their homes. Soldiers talking about orders heavy with the promise of portent. She had to find Eddie. Whatever was coming next, she had to be by his side when it happened.

Stepping as fast as she could, Emma left the porch and the side streets, making straight for the main stem where everyone had been marched out of the neighborhood. She could follow the trail of belongings and carts back to Biros’ shop. The wagon would still be there. Eddie would still be there. She kept telling herself that as she ran.

Emma let her eyes roam over porches and windows along her path. Here and there a curtain would drop into place just as her gaze passed over the house. But she saw nobody on the streets, neither soldier nor citizen. Overhead the dark clouds threatened rain or snow, but no airships sailed in menacing circles. At the street that led to Biros and Nagy’s shops, Emma halted and caught her breath while she examined the neighborhood around her. The street had been cleared a bit. Wagons were pushed off to the side. The livestock were all gone though. Emma saw tire tracks in the slush. Trucks and jeeps had driven through here.

The thought of driving reminded Emma of her car. Would it still be at Nagy’s? If it was, then maybe she and Eddie had a way out of this fix. She saw the wagon up ahead, only two blocks away. Fighting the urge to charge down the street, she kept close to the storefronts and houses, ready to duck into hiding if she needed to. Before she knew it, she stood beside the wagon where Eddie had hidden, wrapped in heavy wool and tucked beneath a bench.

He wasn’t there now. The wool was gone, too, making Emma feel hope and worry at once. Had he waited until the street was quiet and then fled, keeping the wool around him for concealment and warmth? Or had soldiers found him and used the fabric to wrap his body before dumping it in an alley?

Emma followed a stumbling path back to Biros’ shop. Her coat was still there. At least she hoped it was. And that meant her father’s revolver and Wynes’ pistol were still there, waiting for her to claim them.

#

Biros’ house looked different now. The whole neighborhood did, quiet and abandoned as it was. But Emma knew it wasn’t empty. She knew people hid in their homes still, and she worried for them. On her path from the wagon to the house, she’d heard the heavy thrumming of airship motors, and the repeated alerts about curfews, fugitives, and internment protocols. Emma cast a final glare at the sky behind her before stepping into Biros’ back room.

The first thing she noticed was that her coat was gone. She let it be a blessing. Guns hadn’t helped her avoid trouble so far, just escape one kind and get into another that was worse.

She stared around the room, looking first to the chair she’d sat in when Eszti had transformed her into a member of Biros’ family. Emma’s curls had been swept up and put in a pail beside the bench in the center of the room. She let her eyes roam the bench and then the others around the room. Spending only seconds on each item, Emma forced herself to remember the scene, to take in all the possessions Biros and his family had left behind. Bolts of fabric, tools, scissors, measuring tapes and sticks, a dressmaker’s dummy standing in the corner. Beside the dummy, a low bench was piled with cut out pieces for coats and pants and shirts. The uniform of the Village residents. Plain and gray, but made to withstand the harsh weather and the hard work these people performed every day. Emma lifted a section of a skirt, the needle and thread still in it where Eszti or her sister or cousin had left it.

When they stopped working. Right before the soldiers came.

Emma heard a shuffling sound from the cellar and her ears grew hot with alarm. She stepped slow and careful to the nearest bench and lifted a long pair of shears, maybe the ones Eszti had used to cut her hair. A gunshot exploded in the small space and Emma cried out as the bullet whipped by her head, embedding itself in the rafters above her.

“Don’t shoot! I’m not a soldier.”

“Lovebird? That you up there?” Eddie’s voice came to her. Then she saw his face, worried as sick as she felt, and she fell into his arms and cried. Eddie let out his own set of sobs. He pawed the hat off her head and she felt his hand roam around her scalp, brushing the tufts of blond hair this way and that. She crushed herself against him, held him close and shook the tension from her body in the safety of his embrace.

“Thought you was gone, Lovebird. Thought they took you and Nagy and them. All of you gone.”

Emma let her tears fall and listened to Eddie tell her about how he’d stayed put until all the soldiers had left. When the street was quiet, he’d snuck out of his hiding place and come back here to get her guns, then hid in the cellar, wondering if he should go after them or go back to Nagy’s or someplace else.

Eddie handed her one of the guns and tucked the other into his belt.

“Didn’t know if you’d be coming back. I didn’t know a damn thing and truth is I didn’t care to know. I just wanted to get out of here. Get somewhere felt more like home. If a man’s going to die he should do it at home.”

Emma pocketed the gun Eddie had given her. It was her father’s revolver, the only thing he’d ever passed along, even if he hadn’t meant to. She stared around the room again at all the tools and fabric.

“We should take them. Take their things so they can have them again.”

“How we going to do that? You hear that man talking out there, don’t you?”

The bulletin had been broadcast repeatedly since Emma got back to Biros’ house, and if anything had changed it was the urgency of the speaker’s voice.

“My car might still be at Nagy’s. Do you think—”

“I think you got the same idea I did. Might be a long shot, but it’s the only one we’ve got. Let’s go.”

They took the crank torch and made their way back through the tunnel to Nagy’s basement speak. The room had been ransacked and all the booze from the bar was gone. Emma knew she owed these people a debt that may never be repaid. For now, she’d remember the help they gave her and the kindness they’d shown her.

Eddie led the way up the cellar steps and through the trapdoor. Emma’s car was still in the alley outside Nagy’s house and shop. Her bag and clothes were strewn about in the slush and mud next to the garage. She picked up the bag, now scuffed, stained, and torn, nothing like the fine piece of luggage she’d bought at Macy’s a year ago. The clasp still worked, so she brought it inside.

She and Eddie picked out some shoes from Nagy’s supply, and grabbed as many extra pairs as they could carry, in case they did meet up with the other Villagers or anyone else running from the soldiers. Emma stuffed her case with extra lacing, grommets, and the tools Nagy was using. They went to her car and checked it over. One of the tires had been shot flat.

“Wynes getting his revenge,” Emma said. “I doubt we’d get far anyway.”

“Where we going to, Lovebird?”

“Someplace with a way out. Someplace. . .I don’t know, Eddie. Madame Tibor said we’d escape by flying. Where are we going to find a safe airship in this city now?” Emma’s tears fell slow and steady, in time to her heartbeat. Eddie put his arms around her.

“I heard them soldiers talking about a yard. All the stuff they took from around here supposed to be going out by the lakeshore. They said cars are out there, too, and airships. All the private ones, even that one the newsman had, where you—”

“Where I shot Archie Falco and got us into this mess,” Emma said, feeling the weight of her failure like a leaden blanket. Remembering the night she shot Falco put Emma’s mind into thoughts of escape again. The fortune teller may be crazy, or maybe she really could read the future with those cards of hers. The idea of flight and escape tugged at Emma’s gut and lit a fire inside that she was surprised to find couldn’t be stopped.

“What else did the soldiers say about that yard, Eddie? Did they say why everything was going out there?”

“Yeah. They said it was the fair site.”

The day’s events added up in Emma’s mind. An old neighborhood evacuated and probably not two days from being put to the torch. Livestock, private cars, and airships, all hauled away to the World’s Fair marshaling area. It was four years off, but the Governor had pushed hard for Chicago City to stay on the ball and churn out the goods for the Century of Progress. Emma’s father had been in on those talks not more than a year ago, when the Eastern Seaboard Governor had nearly convinced the fair committee that New York should have the honor of hosting the event.

Now the Great Lakes Governor was here, and he was going to make sure Chicago City lived up to his expectations. He’d start by giving the city a gift. A new neighborhood, shiny and clean and fresh as can be. Emma and Eddie turned their faces to the sky at the first sound of gunfire. He dropped the shoes he was carrying and she set her case down. Explosions sounded in the near distance and the neighborhood shook beneath their feet. Eddie grabbed Emma’s hand and they ran, darting between houses and always moving away from the oncoming airships.

As backdrop to the sounds of war, a bullhorn continued to broadcast alerts about fugitives and vandals, and cautioned all citizens to remain indoors.

“They’re doing it now,” Emma said.

“Doing what?” Eddie asked, panting as they ran.

Emma forced him to halt. “They’re demolishing this neighborhood. The Governor wants to build a new one in its place, to make sure Chicago City looks good when people come here for the World’s Fair.”

“That’s what the old gypsy said. I know. Now come on.”

“No, Eddie. No. This neighborhood isn’t empty. There are people still hiding in their homes. Families with children.”

Eddie stared into her eyes, and she knew he understood what she was asking. She also knew he didn’t want any part of helping people escape unless their names were Eddie Collins and Emma Farnsworth. She begged him with her eyes. Eddie gripped her hand and shook his head. He turned and pulled her to follow. She let him lead her along, the two of them fleeing the neighborhood by the quickest route they could find. Off the main stem, down a quiet street, Emma forcing herself not to look at the windows, to ignore the curtains that dropped into place as she and Eddie swept by in the growing night while machine gun fire and explosions crackled and roared behind them.

At the neighborhood’s edge Eddie pulled up short and stepped into hiding beside a house. He yanked Emma to his side. She peered into the dusk and saw soldiers standing across the street. Teams of two and three stood with rifles at their sides, their visors reflecting pinpoints of firelight.

Emma reached a hand into her pocket, feeling the gun. Her fingers curled around the cold metal as she stared at the soldiers. “They’re waiting for something,” she whispered.

“I see that,” Eddie said. “But what?”

A whistle sounded from somewhere in the line of soldiers. As one they lifted their weapons and stepped into the street.