Mechanized Masterpieces: A Steampunk Anthology Read Online Free PDF Page A

not make me your confessor. Let me believe you made her happy. Leave me with my delusions and I shall leave you with yours.”
    Rowland nodded his agreement, swallowed hard, and blinked back a tear. I deposited the letters in the safe. “If you will wait just a moment, I need to get these papers ready for the packet for London.” I nodded toward the window looking into the hangar. “Fancy a tot? Or have you had enough on the trip over?”
    Rowland snorted and moved to the étagère. “Light?”
    “The lamp’s electric—there at the base.”
    His nightcap forgotten, Rowland flipped the switch like a toddler. “Fancy that. Electricity? Here?”
    “I’ve worked up a magneto—no steam; only a sunlight-dynamo array and wind-power. It will power Spanish Town and Kingston both with the cable run.”
    Rowland’s brow twitched as he processed the idea, then redirected his attention to the range of bottles and carafes on the étagère. “I wish Father would have lived to see this.” He held his snifter before the light, and the liquid glowed like molten gold. “The best rum to be had. He would have been proud.” He snorted. “He would have been rich . . . er .”
    “ ‘Anything doing is worth doing right.’ . . . How is Herr Professor?”
    “Well . . . Heartbroken. She was light, Fairfax. She was heaven on earth—an angel—a pure angel. Everyone loved her . . . She wanted a child so badly.”
    I pretended not to hear Rowland’s morose self-indulgence. I tried not to blame my brother; I knew firsthand Yvette’s determined nature, but three miscarriages in four years exceeded all decency. The fourth time . . .
    He should have left her be. He should have loved her enough to deny her. He should have . . . something—not allowed her to die . . . not had a hand in her death.
    “Those are sinister-looking things. What the devil are they?”
    I looked up. Rowland waved his snifter at the window. Below, a dozen eight-foot behemoths lurked in the dark, ranked along one side of the hangar floor. “My new automatons—an improvement on steam-driven mechanoids. Mine are made of the same material as our airships. I made them to harvest the cane.”
    “Still working on them, eh?”
    “No. I just can’t use them. With the unrest in Haiti, it is not wise.”
    “Why the devil not? It looks like one of those would replace five human workers.”
    “Ten, actually. But, I refuse to force that many men out of work. Haitians are starving for lack of employment. The oppression there is terrible. The French use their mechanoids to literally crush any uprising. The colonists will be murdered in their beds one day. I will not have it spread here. Until I have other jobs for the men, I will not use the automatons.”
     “Then what do you mean to do with them?”
    “The war is finally over in the States. There is no one left to fight.”
    “So bad as that?”
    “They have had terrible—obscene—loss of life. The Gatling guns, the rail cannon. The airship bombings devastated the cities—tens of thousands of civilians buried in the rubble, burned alive with the incendiaries. Washington was leveled. Richmond, Philadelphia—even New York. What matters now is survival, not who retains control.”
    “And so?”
    “The provisional government is desperate to stave off invasion by the British. They need to recover quickly. We donated this lot to help rebuild the infrastructure. We have others for farms and factories and such. We will not be displacing workers, but providing a desperately needed workforce.”
    “Not as soldiers?”
    “After Father ?”
    Rowland ducked his head, abashed. I moderated my tone. “The Americans have gone off wholesale mechanized murder for the moment . . . We will rebuild the right way, on sunlight dynamos and wind-power, perhaps harness the energy of flowing water, or even tap into the earth’s internal furnace. If we could do in the New Alliance what we have done