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    The Baby Killers
    The Baby Killers
    The Baby Killers
    Ebook85 pages1 hour

    The Baby Killers

    By Jay Lake

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    About this ebook

    A fast-paced, critically acclaimed steampunk adventure set in an alternate Philadelphia, chronicling the intersection of ancient Russian vampires, firesetters, a mad scientist and a most unusual French secret agent. From award-winning science fiction writer Jay Lake.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJay Lake
    Release dateFeb 24, 2011
    ISBN9781458050366
    The Baby Killers
    Author

    Jay Lake

    Jay Lake was a prolific writer of science fiction and fantasy, as well as an award-winning editor, a popular raconteur and toastmaster, and an excellent teacher at the many writers' workshops he attended. His novels included Tor's publications Mainspring, Escapement, and Pinion, and the trilogy of novels in his Green cycle - Green, Endurance, and Kalimpura. Lake was nominated multiple times for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the World Fantasy Award. He won the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer in 2004, the year after his first professional stories were published. In 2008 Jay Lake was diagnosed with colon cancer, and in the years after he became known outside the sf genre as a powerful and brutally honest blogger about the progression of his disease. Jay Lake died on June 1, 2014.

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      Book preview

      The Baby Killers - Jay Lake

      The Baby Killers

      by Jay Lake

      Smashwords Edition by Jay Lake

      Copyright © 2010, 2011 Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

      Cover photograph copyright © 2006, 2011 Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

      Originally published by PS Publishing, Hornsea, UK, 2010.

      This ebook text varies slightly from the original edition.

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      The Baby Killers

      by Jay Lake

      Consider the simple glove. Dr. M.T. Scholes reached out and snapped the elbow-length object of his disquisition. His audience consisted solely of three small children with large, pale eyes, lambent amid their grubby faces. An underling had strapped the tots to an examining table with tight-laced webbing and stout leather buckles. Small metal hooks pinned their eyelids open.

      No one’s attention was permitted to wander when the good doctor was speaking.

      He rolled down the cuff to expose a complex internal construction. This is sheathed in caoutchouc for basic protection against laboratory spills and inconvenient bodily fluids. Scholes paused to admire his reflection in the glove’s near-liquid finish. The glossy black of the rubber also lends a certain desirable aesthetic, the effect of which cannot be underestimated in the unlicensed medical trades. Scholes cleared his throat and continued. Below that we find a close-woven mesh of lacquered muslin. This deflects blades or edges that might penetrate the outer layer. The muslin is in turn formed atop a coarser canvas mesh interwoven with fine copper and gold wires to ground unwanted electrical currents. Finally, beneath that is a layer of spiderweave silk that complements my excellent complexion and preserves my skin.

      The doctor let the glove slip back into place. The children just stared. They had no other choice.

      So you see, the simple glove, like everything in the modern laboratory, must be perfectly designed to perform many functions. He leaned so close that their sour-milk breath disturbed his delicate nose. Much as you soon will be.

      Scholes laughed. Not a proper laugh, more was the pity, though he’d practiced for hours in his chambers. A good, ripping cackle merely sounded deranged from his mouth. He was forced to settle for the sort of polite titter that a Member of Parliament might have found apropos.

      The children’s only answer was an unblinking regard.

      Really, the doctor said quietly to no one in particular. I must find a better quality of audience.

      ‡

      Philadelphia is one of the most modern cities on earth. Pneumatic skyways link the major districts in a most commodious fashion. The visitor will be quite pleased with the AA trains in particular. A modest fare premium assures the discerning traveller of the quiet luxury of club appointments, a tended bar, cabins trimmed in the finest Texian cowhide and Arizonac silver, and an unparalleled view of this sprawling seat of American commerce, government and culture.

      Wireless towers with their transmitting cones and enormous ears rise above the city like the titans of Greek myth. The steam plants that drive cabling and magneto-electrical generators add their roiling breath in great clouds that serve to screen the sun’s rays and enhance the city’s salubrious climes. An efficient network of surface and tube railways has been modified to burn Dr. Sansom’s patented health-coal, those life-giving rocks soaked in an admixture of vitamins and stimulants so the smokes of the locomotives will have an improving effect on the populace.

      In all, the city would be the envy even of a European power. Other races and regions can only aspire to a metropolis so indicative of the very forces of progress — the Asiatic may have his Tokyo, the Latin his Saõ Paulo, the African his Cape Town — but not even the most prosperous colonial economy can match the glory that is Philadelphia.

      Consider now this jewel of the Schuylkill. Our view dives past the buzzing wireless towers. Gleaming underslung carriages travel the cables and viaducts of the skyways as we pass. We then are brought low among the red brick colonial residences and Greek Revival temples of commerce, to skim along cobbled streets amid towering elms and the rushing feet of newsboys shouting out the latest headlines of the hour.

      Imagine that we travel with one of the new reductive kineopticons. The small machine’s pressure tanks hiss as the device follows its punchtaped program and records all before the bowed lens from a dog’s-eye view. Our vision would be rushed, the peripheries blurred and sliding kaleidoscopically as the streets unroll before our line of travel until shadow overtakes us with the suddenness of a mugger’s cosh behind the ear. There we pass through a corroded brass gate to tumble in splashing darkness amid the groaning of pipes and the rumbling of boilers, finally to fetch up at the rubber-booted feet of an acid-scarred wretch known only as the Gollinoster.

      Far from a champion of freedom, no suffragist for the poor and disenfranchised, the Gollinoster picks up the reductive kineopticon. She stares into the wide-curved lenses for a moment before hurling the doomed device into the red-running maw of a nearby furnace. All we see in the end is a flare of mechano-electrical death, accompanied by a hanging sense of bitter laughter.

      This, then, is Philadelphia, layered from the highest fliers of wealth and privilege down to the pox-ridden scavengers of the steamways beneath the streets. This city of grandeur, seat of government in the Dominion of the Americas, harbors within its brick-lined core crimes so great and terrible that the stout heart of a Sunday churchgoer can scarcely compass their perfidy. No responsible broadsheet could print these sordid tales without closing its doors from shame.

      The gears of justice grind slowly, and must oft be greased with the blood of innocents. The Gollinoster is unconcerned with the peruked barristers of Lawyers Row, and finds judges a nuisance, especially when their headless corpses clog the drains. Still, rumor

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