Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

ready to fire. Chief Coolidge fixed his brass goggles over his eyes and took 'er out to the firing range. She vaporized the target and blew a hole clean through the wall behind. Chief Coolidge stared at the Decider, then at me.
    "Made a few changes to her, sir," I said.
    "So I see, Miss Jones."
    "Hope that were all right."
    "Indeed it is. Gentlemen, whatever needs fixing, please deliver it to Miss Jones tomorrow morning."
    I give Mr. Meeks a right nice curtsy on the way out.
     
    For six months, I worked at that gear-strewn table. The fellas and I came to a peaceable understanding, 'cept for Mr. Meeks, who took to wearing his goggles all the time so's he didn't have to look me in the eye none. I got to know the other divisions. Most agents was field types who made sure the mines were lawful and that the miners didn't rough up the Chinamen or get too drunk and cause a ruckus. They left the brothels alone for the most part, under the idea that the whores weren't hurtin' folks none and ever'body needed a little company from time to time—usually the agents themselves. They kept a close eye on the saloons and boardinghouses, where some enterprising folks had taken to peddling the new machine-pressed Poppy, with names like Dr. Festus's All-Seeing Eye, Tincture of Light-Smoke, Mistress Violet's Glimpse into the Immortal Chasm, and Lady Laudanum's Sweet Sister. Plenty of people left the Church still searching for that first taste of eternity they got in the Pitch, and they'd chase it in the petal, even if it came out of a secret mill that might also be pressing mine dust or crimson floss. I'd had Poppy exactly twice — during my baptism and just after. I weren't eager to try it again.
    Mostly, I kept myself to myself and worked hard to understand the way a Turkish Oscillating Orphanage Builder were different from an Armenian Widow Maker, though near as I could tell, they both went about the same business. In my resting hours, I worked on watches, finding comfort in the way they tidied up the world and kept it moving forward with a steady tick. I even fixed the chief's old pocket watch, which had been running three minutes slow for a year. I joked with him that he'd probably lost about four months of his life and he should put in to the Office of Restitution for it. Chief Coolidge scowled and handed me the plans for a new code breaker. He weren't big on jokes.
    Then one hot summer day, the Glory Girls rode in like the Four Horsemen, robbing trains and airships. No one knew where they'd come from or how they done what they did. The witnesses couldn't remember nothing, 'cept for seeing a blue light before they'd wake some time later to find their jewels and lockboxes gone and the Glory Girls' calling card left on a table all polite and proper. Wanted posters hung on every post-office wall, till folks knowed the girls' names like the saints: Colleen Feeney. Josephine Folkes. Fadwa Shadid. Amanda Harper. There'd always been a troublesome balance between law and lawlessness, and the Glory Girls done tipped the scales into a pretty mess.
    At a town meeting, Chief Coolidge assured everybody that the Pinkertons would put things to rights. "We are the Pinkertons, and we always catch our man."
    "But Not Our Girl" was the headline of the next day's Gazette. The chief were in a mood then. "Without law and order, there is chaos," he bellowed to us, reminding me a portion of Reverend Jackson. He thundered that he didn't care if the miners killed one another and the Poppy turned half the planet into blithering idiots; the Pinkertons was now in the Glory Girl business. Capturing them become our sole purpose.
    Chief Coolidge asked me to follow him. In the corner of a paneled library were a beautiful Victrola with a crank on the side. The chief give it a few turns, and presently, a wispy shaft of light appeared with ghostly moving pictures inside it. The chief called it a Holographic Remembrance. The pictures showed riders running alongside a great