Iolana opened her eyes to see another pair of eyes, these deep brown, staring back at her from a distance of six inches. She blinked twice and then leaned her head back far enough that her seven-year-old cousin’s face could come into focus.
“What are you doing in my room?”
“I want you to play with me.”
“I can’t play with you. I’m not allowed to interact with you until 11:00.”
Iolana had been placed on restriction. She wasn’t allowed to leave the house without permission. She wasn’t allowed to see any of her friends. The only time she could interact with Augie and Terra was during their tutoring sessions. And she had not been allowed to take meals with the family. She had endured this punishment for nine days, spending her time writing long letters to Dovie and Willa and reading everything she could on the early days of the colony in preparation for her book. She had even written to Sherree Glieberman, though that had only been to politely decline an invitation to a slumber party. She wouldn’t have been allowed that, even had she wanted to go.
“I don’t want to wait and I don’t want to do my times tables,” said Terra’s scratchy little voice. “I want to play Argrathian checkers.”
“I’m sorry, I’m not allowed.”
“Yes you are.”
“What?”
“You’re not on restriction anymore.”
Iolana sat up and looked toward her desk.
“I gave your mother the letter,” said Terra.
“You what?”
Iolana’s father had made it very clear. She wouldn’t be allowed back to resume her life until she had apologized to her mother. Two days earlier, in a week moment, she had composed the required document.
Mother,
I regret my actions of last week.
Sincerely,
I. Staff
Mr. Staff would have never accepted such a letter, but Iolana knew that her mother would find it adequate. She had decided though not to send it. She would endure her punishment until her father broke down and gave in. Iolana expected him to crack any day now. She was surprised he had lasted this long.
“You little bint! I’m going to fix you.”
Terra squeaked, jumped from the bed, and ran from the room. Iolana climbed out of bed and stomped around in a circle for a minute, not remembering that she could have chased after the girl if she wanted. Then she stopped and placed her hands on her hips. Well, what was done, was done. No sense moping about it.
“Esther!”
The young lizzie entered through the still open door.
“Help me get dressed.”
The clothing that young girls wore in traditional Brech society was almost as heavily layered and almost as complicated as that worn by grown women. Though she was able to eschew the double layer of brassieres, a bustle, and a corset, most of Iolana’s dresses required at least four petticoats and more usually six. She also wore a shift and a double set of bloomers. Once all the underwear was on, it was time to step into the dress. Her charcoal day dress, like almost all of her dresses, fastened up the back with dozens of small buttons. She could almost reach them all using the fermeture, a magical button fastener, but let Esther use it on her. It was simply a matter of running the device up the row of buttons, which magically jumped into their hooks. Running it downward likewise unfastened them.
“Have they served breakfast yet?”
“In ten,” replied the lizzie.
“Good. Let’s go down.”
The only diners in the Dechantagne Staff home that morning proved to be the three children of the house. Each took their traditional spots, widely spaced around the table, despite the many other empty places.
“Where is everyone?” Iolana wondered.
“Your parents are both working,” said Augie. “Mother is doing some charity work this morning with her friends from shrine.”
“Honor McCoort, do you mean? She doesn’t have any other friends. None of us really have many friends.”
“I do,” said the eight-year-old boy. “I’m quite well thought of.”
As one of the lizzies set down a plate with eggs, sausages, and beans in front of her, Iolana looked carefully at her cousin. He seemed to have grown just since she had seen him three days before. Of course it might have been the khaki gear he was wearing.
“What have you been up to then?”
“I just went for a walk in the woods across the road.”
“You’ll get yourself eaten. There are velociraptors and who-knows-what in those woods.”
“I need some soldiers here,” Augie ordered the servant, and then looked back at Iolana. “Not to worry. I took two of the lizzies with me, and I took my rifle.”
“Your mother will have a fit if she finds out you were using a weapon without father there.”
“Then don’t tell her,” he replied calmly, before stabbing a sausage.
“I won’t.”
“I’ll tell her,” said Terra, her little voice almost shouting.
“Don’t,” said Iolana. “It will only upset her for nothing. Besides the three of us should stick together. We’re the three heirs—like my mother, and your father, and Uncle Augie.”
“Then you have to play with me,” said Terra.
“I will, but after lessons.”
“And I don’t want eggs. I want porridge.”
“Get my sister some porridge,” Augie ordered another servant.
Iolana looked at him only to see him staring at her as if she was some kind of strange creature that he had only just now discovered.
“We’re going to Grandpa’s house after lessons,” he said. “Would you like to come with us? You know he said you were always welcome.”
“I think I will, thank you.”
A lizzie stepped up behind Augie’s right shoulder and bent over to hiss quietly in his ear. “No ssssereal.”
“Kafira damn it!” he shouted. “What kind of kitchen are you running in there? Hiss Terra tonahass ack ssssereal, ssiss oooastu zat tassta. Bring her one of those sticky buns you have in the pantry for today’s tea. In fact bring us all one.”
Iolana raised an eyebrow.
“Well, aren’t I the man of the house right now?”
“Indeed,” she said.
Lessons that day went better than Iolana had ever experienced. Augie read the passage from his primer and wrote his essay without voicing the least objection. This gave her a chance to spend time with Terra and the multiplication table, which should have been memorized by now. At 12:05, Egeria Korlann, the wife of Augie’s and Terra’s grandfather arrived in her steam carriage. Her only reaction to seeing three youths approaching the car rather than two was a radiant smile.
The Korlann residence was not far from the Dechantagne’s, easily within walking distance, but Mrs. Korlann had only recently purchased her steam carriage from Sawyer and Sons, and had apparently decided walking was no longer called for. The white columned, two-story structure looked far more deserving of the title mansion than Iolana’s home, despite its smaller size. And it was filled with ornate furniture and antique artworks the likes of which could seldom be found outside of a royal palace or a museum. The front door opened into a foyer, with a large arched walkway into the parlor. Hand-carved wooden moldings trimmed the walls. Golden drapes decorated the large windows. Beaded chandeliers looked down over each room. Birch and cherry wood chairs and marble-topped accent tables were spaced around the parlor, which was dominated by a beautiful grand piano, the open lid of which was graced with a painting of angels in the clouds. On the wall above the piano was an eight-foot-tall painting of the same angels in different poses. Everywhere were vases filled with cut flowers.
“Come and sit down with me in the parlor, children,” said Mrs. Korlann, untying the bow beneath her chin and taking off her hat, which she handed to the waiting lizzie servant. “Would you like some biscuits and milk?”
“No thank you,” said Augie, hopping into a cushioned but firm armchair. “I’m still full from breakfast.”
“I had sticky buns, ‘cause there wasn’t any porridge,” explained Terra.
“How wonderful,” said Mrs. Korlann, sitting down on the sofa and pulling Terra into her lap. “What else?”
“Not much else,” said Augie. “Mother is busy and Uncle Radley has been working.”
“And I didn’t get to play very much because Iolana has been on restriction,” said Terra.
Iolana felt her cheeks turn warm as Mrs. Korlann gave her a raised eyebrow.
“There’s my lovely grandchildren,” said Mr. Korlann stepping into the room from the back hallway.
Zeah Korlann was a tall, stately gentleman, whose hair had recently gone completely grey around his ears and noticeably thin on top of his head. He stood as straight as a flagpole in his dark grey suit with a forest green waistcoat, but held both arms out in an invitation. Both Terra and Augie jumped up and rushed to him, almost knocking him over.
“This is the way a man should be greeted,” he said, bending at the waist to plant a kiss on the top of each brown-haired head. “Hello Iolana. I’m so happy you could join us.”
“Thank you Mr. Korlann.”
“No, no. What did I say?”
“Um… Grandpa.”
“Come over here and get your kiss.”
Iolana felt pulled to the older gentleman like iron filings to a magnate, but she managed to look as though she was unenthused. She held out her hand to be shaken, but was pulled into a kiss on her blond hair, which made her blush for the second time in a scant few minutes.
“Children, Grandpa has just finished setting up the croquet hoops. Are you ready to try and beat me?”
“We always beat you,” said Augie, grinning.
“Brave words, Master Augustus Marek Virgil Dechantagne,” said Mr. Korlann. “Let’s see if you can live up to them, or that name.”
Augie laughed and sprinted out of the room. Mr. Korlann bent down, picked up Terra and followed.
“I get to be green!” the little girl shouted.
“Are you coming, Iolana?”
“Thank you, sir,” said Iolana, “but I think I shall stay and talk to Mrs. Korlann a bit.”
“Join us when you’re ready.”
Turning, Iolana stepped back and sat down in the armchair that Augie had vacated.
“What did you want to talk about?” asked Mrs. Korlann. “Does it have anything to do with why you were on restriction?”
“No. Well.” Iolana looked up at the white, hand-painted fluffy clouds on the sky blue ceiling. “Only very indirectly.”
“Do you mind if I play the piano while we talk,” asked Mrs. Korlann, getting up. “I find that it relaxes me.”
“No.”
The woman took her place behind the keyboard, carefully fluffing out her dress behind the piano bench. “Any requests?”
“Lately I’ve been enjoying Bankett’s Sixth Symphony.”
“It’s not the same without a male choir, but I’ll do my best.”
The woman’s hands moved deftly across the keyboard in as close of an imitation of Iolana’s Royal Philharmonic’s recording as could be achieved on a single instrument.
“So what did you want to talk about?”
“You knew Professor Calliere very well, didn’t you?”
“Yes. We worked together for years.”
“Did you know he wasn’t my father?”
Mrs. Korlann’s fingers stopped in midair and it seemed as though she was finished, but then she started playing right where she had left off.
“Yes, I knew that.”
“So you know that my mother wasn’t a virgin on her wedding day?” Iolana frowned and crossed her arms.
Egeria’s laugh seemed timed to the music.
“What?”
“And she held her hand up and said to them ‘Let him who is without sin in this world cast the first stone.’ Zaeri 8:7.”
“Figures you would know that one,” said Iolana. “How about this: ‘Let your marriage be held in all honor, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the adulterous.’ Egeria’s Epistle to the Pavir, book 13, verse 4.”
The redhead stopped playing and turned around on her seat to face the girl.
“You have a lot of questions, clearly, and you live in a house of secrets. So, go ahead and ask them. I’ll answer all that I want to, but you need to do it quickly.”
“What was Professor Calliere like?”
“A brilliant mind—somewhat cavalier. He loved research and learning simply for knowledge’s own sake. A few of his inventions will continue to change the world for decades. He was a pleasant enough man, much more so before we came here to Birmisia. He was clearly infatuated with your mother, as many men were, and are.”
“But he sold magic to the Freedonians.”
“Yes. I never did really understand that. He didn’t need money. I don’t think he favored them politically. He was never much of a political animal. He might have been trying to impress Iolanthe… or to get back at her.”
“Why would he want to… oh. Because of me, you mean.”
“Maybe,” said Mrs. Korlann. “It’s just a hypothesis.”
“You worked with Professor Calliere on the Result Mechanism?”
“Yes.”
“Do you still work on it?”
“No. You’re mother has had it locked up. I don’t know if she has anyone working with it, but I certainly haven’t been invited to do so. That’s fine with me. I have my own projects now. Coming to Birmisia has been wonderful for me. Here I’m able to work without being overshadowed by others simply because of my sex.”
“How can you make a machine do magic, do you suppose?”
“It’s not really my field of expertise.”
“Well I’ve been reading up on it,” said Iolana. “Sorcerers have an innate magic ability they say. You either have it or you don’t. But wizards use mathematics to harness the same magical energy. They say anyone can learn to be a wizard if you are good at mathematics.”
“What exactly is your question?”
“Can you do magic? Do you think I could?”
“I couldn’t say. I could only say that I never have, and I don’t really want to.”
“Well, thank you for telling me about it all… about him, I guess,” said Iolana.
Egeria nodded, and turned back around to continue playing.
Iolana joined the other children and their grandfather for several games of croquet, all of which Augie won. Though Mr. Korlann might have lost on purpose, Iolana certainly didn’t. After a delicious tea in the garden, Mr. Korlann took the three children home on the trolley. Unlike his wife, he was not keen to learn steam carriage driving.
Back home, Iolana went directly to the library. She had neglected her reading that morning. Scanning the shelves, she spotted a book. It was a paperback, something she usually avoided, but for some reason it called to her. It was The Wild Woman by Rikkard Banks Tatum. She knew of the author, of course—a writer of pulp adventures, but she had read none of his work before. By the dinnertime announcement, she had finished the book and had scoured the library for other Tatum novels, none of which could be found. Looking at the inside cover, she found the name of Saba Colbshallow written in pencil and vowed to ask the chief inspector about it when next she saw him.
As it turned out, Saba Colbshallow, his wife, his mother, and his daughter were guests that evening and were already seated when she entered the dining room. The entire family was present and so the Colbshallow family was seated in the center of the table, two on each side. Little DeeDee was next to Iolana. She was perched atop a large stack of books just as Augie, Terra, and Iolana herself had been before the arrival of the child booster seat that Terra still used.
“How lovely to see you joining us today,” said the elder Mrs. Colbshallow over DeeDee’s head.
“Yes, my parole came through this morning.”
A line of lizzies filed into the room and around the table, setting salads of apple, nuts, and wine vinegar before each diner.
“Are you a tutor?” DeeDee suddenly asked Iolana, looking up at her with two-toned eyes.
“What?”
“DeeDee, we were going to discuss that with Iolana’s parents later,” said Mr. Colbshallow from across the table.
“I want to go to school!”
“Is it that time already?” asked Mr. Staff. “It seems like just yesterday she was a baby.”
“Well, she’s still only three,” said Mr. Colbshallow. “But we’ve had some discussions.”
“It’s that she’s so precocious,” said Loana Colbshallow. “We think it’s time to give her some direction.”
“I still don’t see why we can’t wait a while,” said the elder Mrs. Colbshallow.
“She wants to have school,” said Mr. Colbshallow. “We’ve talked about a tutor, but honestly, I see how Iolana is tutoring her cousins and they seem to be getting on better than any other children in the colony.”
“Oh, Iolana is a wonderful teacher,” said Mrs. Staff, glancing at her daughter. “That is if you don’t mind your child being subjected to socialism.”
“Mother, you think anyone who votes Labor is a socialist,” said Iolana.
“As indeed they are.”
“Well, we can discuss it later,” said Mr. Staff.
“Iolana is a fine teacher,” said Augie suddenly, from the far end of the table. He looked just as suddenly uncomfortable when everyone turned toward him. “Well she is.”
“Speaking of education, Inspector,” said Iolana. “I believe I found a book that belongs to you in the library—The Wild Woman?”
“I remember that one. I liked it,” he said excitedly, oblivious to his wife’s elbow in his ribs. “How did you find it?”
“I quite liked it. Do you have any more Tatum books?”
“Only everything he ever published. I have to keep them in a trunk in the motor shed, because Loana thinks they’re too scandalous to be kept in the house.”
“Really?” Iolana turned to the police inspector’s beautiful wife. “I found it quite mild.”
“The wild woman in that book runs around the forest completely naked,” she replied with a shiver.
“I suppose that once you’ve read Sable Agria, everything else seems mild,” opined Iolana.
Mr. Staff cleared his throat. When Iolana looked at him, he nodded toward the far end of the table, where Auntie Yuah’s face had turned bright pink.
“Of course I wouldn’t let children read her novels,” said Iolana, as if she were three score ten, rather than eleven years of age.
“I must have eighty Rikkard Banks Tatum books,” continued Saba. “I’ll have Risty bring the whole lot over for you, if you’d like. That will be plenty of reading material.”
“You don’t mind parting with them for a few months?”
“A few months? How many do you plan to read a week?”
“I read two books a day,” replied Iolana solemnly. “I’ll read these books in the morning. That will give me time to read the Gazette afterwards. I try to save my evenings for non-fiction or serious literature.”
Mrs. Staff leaned toward Mrs. Colbshallow. “You say your child is precocious, do you?”
The next morning, Iolana finished her second Rikkard Banks Tatum book and her daily copy of the Birmisia Gazette before breakfast. The previous evening, the Colbshallow lizzie had delivered the trunk full of books just as had been promised, and she chose The Cannibal Women. She found it less engaging than The Wild Woman, though it followed a similar formula.
After breakfast she grabbed her hat and found Walworth Partridge, sitting on his usual stool in the kitchen, watching the lizzies clean up while he ate black sausages.
“Fancy driving me to a friends house, Wally?”
“That’s what they pay me for,” he said, shoving the last sausage into his mouth and hopping to his feet. “Willa Tice?”
“No, I have a new friend named Dovie Likliter. She lives on Marigold Avenue near Pine.”
“Whole family of redheads?”
“Yes.”
“Sure, I know them. Let’s go.”
The entire distance was less than ten miles, but it took more than forty-five minutes to reach Marigold. It would have taken longer had not Walworth made a sizable detour through Lizzietown and away from the area of the train station. While Lizzietown was full of slow-movie reptilian pedestrians lining the narrow, winding streets, the area five blocks in any direction of the station was filled with steam carriages and lizzie-pulled rickshaws, vending carts manned by both humans and lizzies, and long stretches of road construction. Once Wally had dropped her off at the edge of the gravel road in front of the brownstone, she dismissed him. Striding up the cobblestone walk, Iolana entered the front door and examined the directory for the correct apartment. It was only one flight up, in the back. When she knocked on the door, it opened to reveal two red-haired boys about Augie’s age.
“What do you want then?” said one of them.
“I was led to believe Dovie Likliter lived here. Would you be her pet monkeys?”
The door slammed shut. This was followed by several loud shouts. Then the door opened again, this time revealing Dovie in a simple but pretty outfit.
“Iolana!” she beamed. “What a lovely pin-striped dress.”
“It’s a bit much for daywear, isn’t it?” said Iolana, looking down at herself.
“Nonsense. Won’t you come in?”
“Just for a moment. I’m off on an adventure and I wondered if you wanted to come with me.”
“Do I? Do I?”
“Do you?”
“Yes, of course I do. I just have to get my hat and pop next door to ask Mrs. Typaldos to look in on the boys now and then.” She raised her voice and called toward the back room. “And they’d better behave themselves if they know what!”
Ten minutes later the two girls were climbing aboard the trolley. The trolley car, in good repair despite its well-worn condition, was pulled by an enormous triceratops. While the passengers took their seats, the driver fed it large pieces of shrubbery from a bin beside the tracks. Iolana put two pfennigs in the glass box behind the driver’s seat and they sat down in the front. By the time the driver took his station and rang the bell, the carriage was standing room only.
It was a long ride northward through town, with many stops along the way. Dovie asked a thousand questions about the sites they saw from the Church of the Apostles to the 203 foot tall Victory Obelisk. Iolana answered each question easily, her already prodigious knowledge of Port Dechantagne recently augmented as it was by her studies of the early days of Birmisia Colony. As they passed the Gurrman Building, several passengers shouted and pointed at what turned out to be Iolana’s mother getting into a steam carriage. Iolana made no effort to get herself seen.
They traveled all the way out onto the peninsula before stepping off the dinosaur-powered vehicle at Seventh and One Half Avenue. Walking up the gently sloping street, they came to a massive two-story structure, with a half-raised roof and large, dirty windows all along the upper level. The only interruption of the brick wall on the ground level was a single door. Though sounds carried from the nearby dockyard and the even nearer dinosaur pens, there seemed to be no one in the immediate area.
“What is this place?” asked Dovie.
“This is our destination,” said Iolana, pulling out a large brass key.
Quickly looking around, she unlocked the door, stepping inside and pulling Dovie along with her. It was surprisingly bright inside. Dust covered everything from the tools and workbenches along the walls to the massive piece of machinery in the center of the huge room. The size of a railroad car and looking something like a cross between a steam engine and the inside of a clock, the device stood mutely. The side was covered with pipes and pressure tanks, gauges and valves, but there were also thousands of gears and levers, pulleys and pendulums. On the right side was a bank of controls, including a series of large buttons and a pair of levers.
“What is that?” wondered Dovie.
“It’s the great machine,” replied Iolana, straining to make her voice deep for the last two words. “Come on. There should be a furnace on the other side.”
They found a firebox, not all that different, except in size, from one found on a steam carriage. A bin stood against the wall here. It still had a few inches of coal in it, and a shovel. Opening the firebox, Iolana shoveled what coal remained into it. Looking around, she found several old pieces of paper and stuffed them into the coal, lighting them with a match she had stuck in the brim of her boater.
“Do we need water?” asked Dovie.
“Here,” replied Iolana, spying a pipe coming from the floor and connecting to the machine. She found a round flow control and turned it, hearing the sound of water suddenly rush through the pipes. Then they went back around to the front.
They waited several minutes, but there was no whistle of steam.
“This might take forever.”
“You might not have enough coal,” said the redhead.
Not wanting to wait any longer, Iolana pressed the sixteen large buttons across the control panel and then pulled the first of two levers. The depressed buttons popped back out. Then she pressed every other button—the even ones, and pulled the lever. She then pressed the buttons she hadn’t pressed the last time—the odd ones, and pulled the lever. Once again she pressed all of the buttons and pulled the lever, but this time she then pulled the second lever. Gears ever so slowly turned. Pulleys moved slowly up and down. Then everything stopped.
“It’s not going to work,” said Iolana, rubbing her chin and unknowingly leaving a large coal-black smear.
Suddenly they heard what sounded like a typewriter on the other side of the room. Stepping round to the far side of the machine again, they saw a sheet of paper emerging from a slot in the side. Iolana grabbed it before it was completely ejected. She carefully read the paper.
Result Mechanism.
Serial Number: 000001
Data Format: HXD
Location:
Environment: EWL 1.0
Version: 1.001f
If you can read this, help me.