Beyond the Pale -Part 133
Jan. 13th, 2009 04:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
secret_historyHola, faithful readers!
I am behind schedule once again. Fear not! This shall be remedied soon. This weekend was full of other activities, and Other Writing, which unfortunately had to take precedence over Beyond the Pale. Shocking, I know.
There may, I am sad to say, be additional delays this coming week. I just realized belatedly that an upcoming section needs a lot of research, and I didn't have the materials to hand. I have since ordered them, but now we have to wait. I'm going to be able to manage at least one or two more episodes before I hit the OMG-I-haven't-researched-this wall, but after that if I haven't got my source material, we may have to wait a bit.
On the plus side, we're about to get to the good stuff. So yay!
*****
Victoria got to her feet, shaky from her nightmare. It seemed to her that the ground was still trembling, the floor of the passenger car unsteady beneath her feet. Stone caught her by an elbow when she tripped and nearly fell.
“What’s the matter with you?” he snapped irritably.
She jerked her arm away, glared, and didn’t bother to answer. Monroe looked pale and unsteady on his feet as well, and the image of him standing in the wind-swept plains while lightning forked above them flashed through her mind. What the hell was going on? Whatever tricks her mind was playing on her these days, she didn’t appreciate it in the slightest.
It was quite dark in the train car, although she was certain it ought to be daytime by now. A quick query to a man with a gold watch in his waistcoat pocket confirmed that it was well after sunrise. She glanced out one of the windows, but the angle of the window and the station building prevented her from seeing the sky. When they stepped from the train, she and Monroe looked up at the same time, seemingly following the same impulse.
“I can see why the call it the City of Gloom,” he muttered.
Above them, the sky seemed to hang only a few feet above their heads. A thick layer of something that looked like a mix of fog and dirty smoke spread like a noxious blanket over the city, stretching farther than the eye could see, and casting a permanent pall over Salt Lake City. Vicky looked around in amazement at what little she could see of the surrounding streets: thanks to Dr. Darrius Helstromme, Salt Lake City was the first city in the world to be endowed with electrical lighting in almost every neighbourhood. It was Brigham Young who was originally responsible for the Mormons’ independence (even though the state of Deseret had officially cast its lot in with the Union during the war, it was a well-known secret that the Mormons considered themselves separate from the laws of the other States, and neither the Union nor the Confederates had the time, resources or manpower to dispute Deseret’s de facto independence), but it was Dr. Helstromme who had brought the Mormons into the modern age and had allowed them to prosper. He’d joined the community in the early seventies, and had won them over almost immediately with his horseless carriages, powered by ghost rock, which allowed them to cross the Salt Flats at a speed great enough to outrun the rattlers. The salt rattlers were nowhere near as big as the Mojave rattlers, but they were plenty big enough to eat a team of horses or a couple of unwary pilgirms, and at first the Mormons had suffered terrible losses because of them as they tried to survive the Utah territory’s harsh conditions.
Vicky had been in her early teens when Helstromme’s inventions were first widely publicized, and although she and her mother and brothers had been more concerned with keeping themselves clothed and fed after her father’s death, her imagination, like that of countless others, had been sparked by these incredible new machines. Only a few years after the first horseless carriages had begun screaming their way across the Salt Flats, Helstromme had announced his intention to wire the entirety of Salt Lake City, and to provide natural gas to all. His huge factories belched smoke into the skies day and night, and provided heretofore unsuspected riches to his adopted community. The Mormons were acknowledged to be the most technologically advanced people in the world. Helstromme’s only real rivals were Smith & Robards, the inventors made famous by their catalogue of fantastical gizmos, which had everything from gyrocopters to the rocket packs used by the famous Flying Buffaloes that Vicky had caught only a glimpse of while they had been in Area 51 only a few days before. Rumour had it that Smith & Robards also provided much of the equipment used by the Pinkertons (or the Agency, as they now apparently preferred to be called). Rumours and accusations of industrial espionage flew left and right, and it was well-known that the Smith & Robards compound, located higher in the mountains above Helstromme’s factory, was extremely well-protected in the event of attempted sabotage.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Monroe nudged her as they began sorting through their baggage.
She shook her head. “I’ve never been anywhere like this before, is all,” she said. “It’s a strange place. I’m not used to not being able to see the sky when I look up. It’s incredible.”
“It is, at that,” Monroe agreed, looking a little dubious.
Vicky knew how he felt. “It feels… wrong, somehow. Like the whole place is sick, or something. Does that sound crazy to you?”
He shook his head. “No. Not crazy at all. It isn’t natural, what’s here. You and me, we’re used to clear skies and green pastures, and there ain’t none of that here.”
There hadn’t exactly been clear skies and green pastures in the recent past, either, she thought wryly, but didn’t voice her thoughts aloud. She had done enough moping to last her a lifetime already. She slung her new Bullard Express over her shoulder, and saw with a degree of satisfaction (and maybe just a twinge of envy) that Monroe had recoverd his Paterson revolving rifle which was now hanging on its sling off his shoulder. It was a truly beautiful weapon, although getting ammunition for it was going to be problematic. Stone gave her a baleful look when he saw her rifle, but said nothing. Blanton, on the other hand, was not nearly so tactful or discreet.
“Oh, wow! Where’d you get that, Victoria? It’s a beauty! It looks like the one Rufus Abelard had back when he ambushed us in the desert! Is that what it is?”
“Hush, child,” she rolled her eyes as she sorted through her small pack. “You’re louder than a pair of wildcats squabbling over a kill.”
Blanton subsided, his cheeks flaming. “I ain’t a child,” he said, making a very obvious effort not to pout.
“It’s just a figure of speech, Elijah. I didn’t mean to insult you. You just do jabber on like a magpie!”
“But is it the same gun?”
She nodded. “I figure he’s not using it anymore, so it may as well get adopted by someone who’ll give it a good home.”
Stone snorted. “It’s not a puppy.”
She glanced up and gave him a wicked grin. “It’s better than a puppy. This one shoots bullets and doesn’t widdle on the rug.”
“Don’t torment the man, Vicky,” Monroe said gently. “After all, I believe he’s the only one with the vaguest idea of where we’re going. I don’t feel like getting lost in the Junkyard, or whatever they call it.”
“Junkyard,” Stone confirmed. “We likely won’t be going in there much, if at all. If we do have to go in for whatever reason, steer clear of the Danites.”
“That’s what Fran– Courvoisier said,” Vicky stumbled over the name, and felt her heart skip in a peculiar way as she did so. She recovered hastily, before any of them could comment. “Who are these people, anyway?”
Stone shrugged. “I don’t know much about them, to be honest. Only that they’re a secret society devoted to protecting Brigham Young, and that they don’t take kindly to outsiders poking around in their affairs.”
Behind them came the sound of hundreds of hooves clattering against wood, accompanied by the shouts, whistles and whoops of the cowboys as they worked to unload the cattle from the cattle cars. Vicky felt herself quail a little bit as she remembered her terrifying nightmares from the previous nights, and she saw that Monroe, too, was throwing uneasy glances at the cattle cars, where planks were being slid up to the doors so that the cows could walk down to the platform. After a few moments of trying to ignore the goings-on, she gave up and turned to watch the proceedings.
“Keep ‘em goin’! Keep ‘em goin’!” she recognized Curtis from the previous day’s encounter, standing at the foot of one of the ramps and directing the other cowboys. “Nice and easy, now. Easy, easy! Easy, I said!”
The cattle were pouring out of the cars, far more quickly than they really ought, and soon there was shouting coming from several places along the platform as the cowboys sought to corral their wayward ciws. The lowing and bellowing grew louder, more insistent and panicked, and Vicky could see the beasts’ eyes rolling in their heads, the whites showing around the liquid brown irises. As the cattle grew increasingly restless, the pounding of their hooves grew to a thunderous roar, and she felt the ground begin to tremble beneath her feet.
“Stampede!”
Someone yelled the word, and with cries of alarm the people on the platform began scrambling away, trying to get to safety. Before Vicky’s horrified gaze the wooden cattle cars seemed to come apart at the seams as the herd kicked them down in their frenzy to escape their confinement. The cattle streamed onto the platform, and a moment later Victoria found herself staring head-on into the red eyes of the two most enormous bulls she had ever seen, towering over the other cattle on the platform.
Los Diablos had come to Salt Lake City.
*****
I am behind schedule once again. Fear not! This shall be remedied soon. This weekend was full of other activities, and Other Writing, which unfortunately had to take precedence over Beyond the Pale. Shocking, I know.
There may, I am sad to say, be additional delays this coming week. I just realized belatedly that an upcoming section needs a lot of research, and I didn't have the materials to hand. I have since ordered them, but now we have to wait. I'm going to be able to manage at least one or two more episodes before I hit the OMG-I-haven't-researched-this wall, but after that if I haven't got my source material, we may have to wait a bit.
On the plus side, we're about to get to the good stuff. So yay!
Victoria got to her feet, shaky from her nightmare. It seemed to her that the ground was still trembling, the floor of the passenger car unsteady beneath her feet. Stone caught her by an elbow when she tripped and nearly fell.
“What’s the matter with you?” he snapped irritably.
She jerked her arm away, glared, and didn’t bother to answer. Monroe looked pale and unsteady on his feet as well, and the image of him standing in the wind-swept plains while lightning forked above them flashed through her mind. What the hell was going on? Whatever tricks her mind was playing on her these days, she didn’t appreciate it in the slightest.
It was quite dark in the train car, although she was certain it ought to be daytime by now. A quick query to a man with a gold watch in his waistcoat pocket confirmed that it was well after sunrise. She glanced out one of the windows, but the angle of the window and the station building prevented her from seeing the sky. When they stepped from the train, she and Monroe looked up at the same time, seemingly following the same impulse.
“I can see why the call it the City of Gloom,” he muttered.
Above them, the sky seemed to hang only a few feet above their heads. A thick layer of something that looked like a mix of fog and dirty smoke spread like a noxious blanket over the city, stretching farther than the eye could see, and casting a permanent pall over Salt Lake City. Vicky looked around in amazement at what little she could see of the surrounding streets: thanks to Dr. Darrius Helstromme, Salt Lake City was the first city in the world to be endowed with electrical lighting in almost every neighbourhood. It was Brigham Young who was originally responsible for the Mormons’ independence (even though the state of Deseret had officially cast its lot in with the Union during the war, it was a well-known secret that the Mormons considered themselves separate from the laws of the other States, and neither the Union nor the Confederates had the time, resources or manpower to dispute Deseret’s de facto independence), but it was Dr. Helstromme who had brought the Mormons into the modern age and had allowed them to prosper. He’d joined the community in the early seventies, and had won them over almost immediately with his horseless carriages, powered by ghost rock, which allowed them to cross the Salt Flats at a speed great enough to outrun the rattlers. The salt rattlers were nowhere near as big as the Mojave rattlers, but they were plenty big enough to eat a team of horses or a couple of unwary pilgirms, and at first the Mormons had suffered terrible losses because of them as they tried to survive the Utah territory’s harsh conditions.
Vicky had been in her early teens when Helstromme’s inventions were first widely publicized, and although she and her mother and brothers had been more concerned with keeping themselves clothed and fed after her father’s death, her imagination, like that of countless others, had been sparked by these incredible new machines. Only a few years after the first horseless carriages had begun screaming their way across the Salt Flats, Helstromme had announced his intention to wire the entirety of Salt Lake City, and to provide natural gas to all. His huge factories belched smoke into the skies day and night, and provided heretofore unsuspected riches to his adopted community. The Mormons were acknowledged to be the most technologically advanced people in the world. Helstromme’s only real rivals were Smith & Robards, the inventors made famous by their catalogue of fantastical gizmos, which had everything from gyrocopters to the rocket packs used by the famous Flying Buffaloes that Vicky had caught only a glimpse of while they had been in Area 51 only a few days before. Rumour had it that Smith & Robards also provided much of the equipment used by the Pinkertons (or the Agency, as they now apparently preferred to be called). Rumours and accusations of industrial espionage flew left and right, and it was well-known that the Smith & Robards compound, located higher in the mountains above Helstromme’s factory, was extremely well-protected in the event of attempted sabotage.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Monroe nudged her as they began sorting through their baggage.
She shook her head. “I’ve never been anywhere like this before, is all,” she said. “It’s a strange place. I’m not used to not being able to see the sky when I look up. It’s incredible.”
“It is, at that,” Monroe agreed, looking a little dubious.
Vicky knew how he felt. “It feels… wrong, somehow. Like the whole place is sick, or something. Does that sound crazy to you?”
He shook his head. “No. Not crazy at all. It isn’t natural, what’s here. You and me, we’re used to clear skies and green pastures, and there ain’t none of that here.”
There hadn’t exactly been clear skies and green pastures in the recent past, either, she thought wryly, but didn’t voice her thoughts aloud. She had done enough moping to last her a lifetime already. She slung her new Bullard Express over her shoulder, and saw with a degree of satisfaction (and maybe just a twinge of envy) that Monroe had recoverd his Paterson revolving rifle which was now hanging on its sling off his shoulder. It was a truly beautiful weapon, although getting ammunition for it was going to be problematic. Stone gave her a baleful look when he saw her rifle, but said nothing. Blanton, on the other hand, was not nearly so tactful or discreet.
“Oh, wow! Where’d you get that, Victoria? It’s a beauty! It looks like the one Rufus Abelard had back when he ambushed us in the desert! Is that what it is?”
“Hush, child,” she rolled her eyes as she sorted through her small pack. “You’re louder than a pair of wildcats squabbling over a kill.”
Blanton subsided, his cheeks flaming. “I ain’t a child,” he said, making a very obvious effort not to pout.
“It’s just a figure of speech, Elijah. I didn’t mean to insult you. You just do jabber on like a magpie!”
“But is it the same gun?”
She nodded. “I figure he’s not using it anymore, so it may as well get adopted by someone who’ll give it a good home.”
Stone snorted. “It’s not a puppy.”
She glanced up and gave him a wicked grin. “It’s better than a puppy. This one shoots bullets and doesn’t widdle on the rug.”
“Don’t torment the man, Vicky,” Monroe said gently. “After all, I believe he’s the only one with the vaguest idea of where we’re going. I don’t feel like getting lost in the Junkyard, or whatever they call it.”
“Junkyard,” Stone confirmed. “We likely won’t be going in there much, if at all. If we do have to go in for whatever reason, steer clear of the Danites.”
“That’s what Fran– Courvoisier said,” Vicky stumbled over the name, and felt her heart skip in a peculiar way as she did so. She recovered hastily, before any of them could comment. “Who are these people, anyway?”
Stone shrugged. “I don’t know much about them, to be honest. Only that they’re a secret society devoted to protecting Brigham Young, and that they don’t take kindly to outsiders poking around in their affairs.”
Behind them came the sound of hundreds of hooves clattering against wood, accompanied by the shouts, whistles and whoops of the cowboys as they worked to unload the cattle from the cattle cars. Vicky felt herself quail a little bit as she remembered her terrifying nightmares from the previous nights, and she saw that Monroe, too, was throwing uneasy glances at the cattle cars, where planks were being slid up to the doors so that the cows could walk down to the platform. After a few moments of trying to ignore the goings-on, she gave up and turned to watch the proceedings.
“Keep ‘em goin’! Keep ‘em goin’!” she recognized Curtis from the previous day’s encounter, standing at the foot of one of the ramps and directing the other cowboys. “Nice and easy, now. Easy, easy! Easy, I said!”
The cattle were pouring out of the cars, far more quickly than they really ought, and soon there was shouting coming from several places along the platform as the cowboys sought to corral their wayward ciws. The lowing and bellowing grew louder, more insistent and panicked, and Vicky could see the beasts’ eyes rolling in their heads, the whites showing around the liquid brown irises. As the cattle grew increasingly restless, the pounding of their hooves grew to a thunderous roar, and she felt the ground begin to tremble beneath her feet.
“Stampede!”
Someone yelled the word, and with cries of alarm the people on the platform began scrambling away, trying to get to safety. Before Vicky’s horrified gaze the wooden cattle cars seemed to come apart at the seams as the herd kicked them down in their frenzy to escape their confinement. The cattle streamed onto the platform, and a moment later Victoria found herself staring head-on into the red eyes of the two most enormous bulls she had ever seen, towering over the other cattle on the platform.
Los Diablos had come to Salt Lake City.
