The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirtieth Annual Collection

Steamgothic SEAN MCMULLEN

There is something special about things that changed the world. I cannot say what it is, but I can feel it. I have stood before the Vostok capsule that carried the first man into space. Influence glowed from it; I knew where it was even with my eyes closed. In the Spurlock Museum I saw the strange, twisted, lumpy thing that was the first transistor. The significance that it radiated was like the heat from a fire. The Babbage Analytical Engine of 1871 had no such aura, yet the whole of Bletchley Park did. There was no doubt in my mind about which of them had really launched the age of computers.

The Wright Brother’s Flyer had no feeling of significance for me either. This made no sense. It was the first heavier-than-air machine to fly, it proved the principle, it changed the world, yet my strange intuition said otherwise. Then I saw the Aeronaute, and everything should have become clear to me.

There was an 1899 Daimler parked across the road from my flat when I arrived home from work. Admirers were milling around it, and a security guard was making sure that nobody took any liberties. I knew early model cars fairly well after being dragged along to countless car shows by my father, but cars are not my thing. Pausing only to admire the Daimler as something Art Nouveau that actually worked, I opened my front door.

On top of several packages of things ordered online was a large envelope. I seldom get letters. Anything that can be turned into text or pixels comes over the Internet. The address on the envelope was handwritten, and the handwriting was clear, elegant copperplate. A genuine penny stamp was at the top right-hand corner, but there was no postmark. This had been delivered by hand. Who writes copperplate in the second decade of the twenty-first century? I wondered. Picking it up was like stepping back in time, and it begged to be opened by something with more class than my front door key.

Going upstairs, I found a real letter opener in the shape of a medieval sword, bought on some trip to the British Museum. The covering note merely said “Dear Mr. Chandler, can I have your opinion on the enclosed photos? Yours sincerely, Louise Penderan.” There were four photographs with the note, all color prints on A4 paper. They were of the wreckage of an aircraft that had never existed.

Take a modern ultralight, describe it verbally to a mid-nineteenth-century engineer, have him build one, then crash it. That was the subject of the first photo. Unlike most nineteenth-century machines, this aircraft seemed not to have an ounce of excess weight. The background suggested that it was in a barn.

The second photograph showed four lightweight cylinders that were connected in a spiral pattern to a crankshaft. This was a steam engine, and it was also built to minimize weight. The next photograph showed a propeller that resembled a windmill with two blades. The last picture featured what was left of a cloth panel with the word AERONAUTE painted in silver.

The doorbell chimed while I was still examining the photos. It was 6 p.m., not the usual time for people pedaling telco plans or religious salvation, and my friends always texted me before coming over. As I walked down the stairs I had a feeling that whoever was outside was connected with the envelope. It had been just five minutes since I had arrived home. Perhaps they had been waiting in the café over the road, giving me those minutes to examine the photographs. Perhaps they even owned the 1899 Daimler.

I opened the door to a couple dressed in matching brown ankle coats and wearing motoring goggles on their foreheads. I am six feet tall, yet they were both tall enough to look down at me. The woman gleamed with silver jewelry, mostly in the shape of electroplated cog wheels, dials, and piping.

“Are you Leon Chandler?” she asked, giving me an overwhelmingly broad smile.

Her eyes were large, intense and just a little sly. They did not match her smile. I held up the photos.

“Yes, and you must be Louise Penderan,” I replied.

She nodded. “That’s me, and this is my partner, James Jamison.”

James Jamison managed to sneer while smiling, then slowly, reluctantly, extended his hand. I registered the slight, ignored his hand, and gestured up the stairs.

“Won’t you come in?” I said, moving aside.

My flat is above a shop, but it is quite large. I showed them into the living room, where they paused to look around. Their eyes lingered on the model steam engines that were on the bookshelves, and mantelpiece, and were crowded into the display cases and crystal cabinet.

“Did you build all these?” asked James, making the question sound like an accusation.

“Yes, I specialize in steam engines by the pioneers: Newcombe, Papin, Heron, Trevithick, Watt, and so on. They all work.”

“Yet you dress in black and have a signed Alice Cooper poster on the wall,” he observed.

“Cool music.”

“Your furniture and all your walls are black.”

“Black is relaxing.”

“So you’re a goth?”

“You may have noticed the sign on the door: SteamGoth Models.”

I like to keep people guessing. Those who are too cool for school think that all steamheads wear anoraks and stand about on railway platforms spotting trains. After surviving a childhood of ridicule and bullying because I made models instead of playing online games, I had opted to dress cool, make models, and generally be a bit peculiar as an adult.

“Your models are quite beautiful,” said Louise, who was caressing the boiler of a Newcombe engine with an ochre fingernail cut to a talon shape.

“It’s just a hobby, but it pays.”

“We actually need a professional,” said James, rather abruptly.

Suddenly I had their measure. James was abrasive, but Louise followed him with praise. I was being conditioned to be sympathetic to her. She wanted something from me, something related to the wreck in the barn. I decided to force the issue.

“Well then, you might as well leave,” I said, gesturing to the stairs.

James had actually reached the stairs before he realized that Louise was not with him. There was a hostile exchange of glances between the two of them.

“Perhaps James expressed himself a little awkwardly,” she said. “We need a professional, and you are perfect.”

James capitulated. Now I knew who had paid for the Daimler.

While I rather like the theory of steampunk fashion, I keep my distance from it. I prefer cogwheels to turn each other, not just be on display. I think that nothing is truly beautiful unless it works. For my real job I customize engines for an ultralight aircraft company, and my flat contains not a single painting or decorative vase. My Alice Cooper poster once advertised something, so it passed my functionality test. It was Dad who made me this way. He had bought an old Mini Minor a year before I was born, and a quarter of a century later the little car was still scattered all over his garage floor, supposedly being restored. From a lifetime of watching him obsessively wipe, oil, and polish parts that were never reassembled, I had developed a love of things that actually do something.

I spread the photos out on the coffee table and we seated ourselves around them.

“What do you think of the Aeronaute?” Louise asked.

I had decided that the aircraft was a modern steampunk sculpture, something from a pretend history. I dislike sculptures; they are form without function.

“It looks like some retro steam-powered aircraft that never was,” I replied, already thinking about what to have for dinner, and wondering if a well-crafted insult might send them storming off down the stairs.

“The date stamped into the engine is 1852.”

That was a shock. My pulse quickened as I picked up the photos and looked at them more closely. The engine was very lightly built, and the Aeronaute’s frame was all thin spars, wire, and wicker. Even a moderate wind would demolish it, but on a calm day it just might have struggled into the air.

I began to trawl my memories for steam aircraft. The Besler brothers had flown a steam-powered biplane in 1933, and the first balloon propelled by a steam engine had flown in 1852. Steam engines are external combustion machines, so they have low power-to-weight ratios. They are not ideal for aviation, but neither are they out of the question.

The Aeronaute might not be a hoax, I realized. Aviation history might have to be rewritten. The temptation to babble hysterically was almost overwhelming, but I forced my voice to remain level and spoke slowly.

“Where were these photos taken?” I asked.

“On my family’s estate, in Kent,” said Louise.

“When?”

“Yesterday.”

I arrived at the estate the very next morning, riding my black Vespa. One of the groundsmen told me to be off or he would call the police.

“Let me guess,” I said as I removed my helmet. “Louise Penderan’s boyfriend told you to chase away any visitors wearing black.”

He pointed to the gate and opened his mouth to shout—then apparently realized that what I had just said was true, and remembered who was paying his wages. Without another word he went into the house, then Louise came out and welcomed me. She was now wearing black overalls, a bandolier of chrome-plated tools, and a technogoth hairpin-screwdriver. Without her high-heeled laceup boots she was barely my height. James followed her, dressed in immaculate Belle Epoch motoring gear and looking unhappy.

The barn where the Aeronaute had been kept for over a century and a half was in a field behind the house.

“My family knew about it for generations, but they treated it as a bit of a joke,” she explained as we crossed the field. “Nobody ever bothered to tell me, because I think countryside stuff is only for driving past, you know? James and I came here yesterday to check if the barn was okay for our big steampunk wedding reception.”

“We’re getting married!” declared James, like a sentry challenging an intruder.

“I can hardly believe the Aeronaute’s condition,” I said. “After a hundred and fifty years of corrosion, dry rot, and borers, it ought to be a pile of rust and sawdust.”

“The daughter of the man who probably built it, Lucy Penderan, was obsessed about preserving it in memory of him. A family tradition of looking after it had developed by the time she died in 1920. The field hands give it a new coat of wax every year at midsummer.”

The doors of the barn had been pushed wide open, and the aura of something that had changed the world was so strong that I began to tremble. I walked in slowly, feeling like an astronaut taking his first steps on the moon. As I got closer I saw that the Aeronaute’s wreckage really was in remarkably good condition, given its age. The engine and broken airframe were preserved under coats of wax, and the silk on the wings had become like waxed cardboard.

Weight was not an issue for nineteenth-century steam engines, because they powered big things like trains, ships, or machinery in factories. By contrast, the Aeronaute’s engine had not an ounce of excess weight. The fuel was oil sprayed into a furnace chamber to heat a coil boiler, and the steam was recycled through an air-cooled condenser. What alarmed me was that the fuel tank was heated by a naked flame, so that the oil would spray out under pressure. That saved the weight of a pump but increased the danger of an explosion.

“Could it have flown?” asked Louise after I had spent some minutes pacing around it with my mouth open.

“By modern safety standards it’s an unexploded bomb,” I said, tapping at the fuel tank. “That said … yes, perhaps.”

“Could it be repaired and flown?”

“Restoration, no problem,” I replied, then shrugged and shook my head.

“So you don’t think it can fly?”

“It’s bound to be grossly underpowered for its weight, but with a long enough takeoff run and a very light pilot, it just might get above stall speed.”

“You mean fly?”

“Yes. For a few minutes.”

“Why only minutes?” asked James, desperate to disagree with me about anything.

“Extra fuel is extra weight. Carry enough fuel for a long flight and it would be too heavy to get off the ground.”

“But it can definitely fly?” asked Louise.

“Possibly, not definitely. Until the engine is restored and tested, we won’t know if it’s powerful enough to be useful. The Aeronaute may be a failed experiment, even if it’s genuine.”

The manor house was a mixture of Regency, Victorian, and Edwardian architecture, with a few more modern enhancements that had probably not been cleared with English Heritage. Coffee was served to us by a Romanian maid. Louise’s parents had the easygoing manner of people who were so rich that they did not have to prove anything to anyone.

“Firstly, who built the Aeronaute?” I asked once introductions and pleasantries were out of the way.

“Nobody knows,” said her father. “The estate registers show that our farm workers have painted it with wax every year since mid-1852. That was just after William Penderan died in a riding accident, so my money is on William.”

“The date is far too early,” I began, then paused and thought about it. “Actually, perhaps not. William Henson designed his Aerial Steam Carriage in 1843, and John Stringfellow flew a steam-powered model in 1848. George Cayley built a glider in 1853, and his coachman flew it over Brompton Dale.”

“So the Aeronaute’s age is not, er, impossible?”

“1852 is not only possible, it’s unnervingly likely. That was an exciting decade for British aviation.”

“Just think, all these years and we never knew,” he said with a sigh.

“Another question,” I said, turning to Louise. “Why me?”

“I found you with Google. You build historical steam engines and work for an ultralight aircraft company. The combination seemed perfect.”

I already knew the answer to my third question, but I asked it anyway.

“So what do you want me to do?”

“How much would you charge to restore the Aeronaute?”

How much would I charge? I very nearly burst out laughing. It was more like how much would I pay to be allowed to work on it.

“I can do the engine,” I said, struggling to sound cool. “That would not cost much, but the woodwork and fabric will need specialist restorers and materials.”

“So you can’t help?” asked James eagerly.

“Oh I can help,” I said as I took out my phone. “The director of Ultralights Unlimited has had experience restoring World War One fighters. I’ll give him a call now.”

Giles Gibson made the journey from London to Kent on his vintage BSA motorbike in less than an hour. James’s reaction upon meeting him was one of instant hatred. Giles not only wore period motoring gear, he was a real pilot. He made things worse by complimenting Louise on her neo-industrial outfit, while ignoring what James was wearing.

Our inspection took about an hour. The Aeronaute had been in storage for a century and a half, so in spite of nearly thirteen dozen coatings of hot wax, even some of the undamaged wood needed replacing. The wax had saved the engine from corrosion, however.

“Well, steamgoth, how long before we have steam?” Giles asked, tapping the engine with a knuckle.

“The engine will have to be stripped down, checked for damage, cleaned, and reassembled. With big-budget help, a few weeks.”

“Hey, I run Ultralights Unlimited, not NASA. Big-budget help is not an option.”

“No, it’s our first option.”

Giles blinked at me.

“What do you mean?”

“This is Britain, Giles. Once word gets out that a genuine mid-Victorian, steam-powered aircraft has been discovered, there’ll be a queue of steamheads stretching from Kent to London, all volunteering to work on it.”

“Could it fly?” asked Louise.

“It’s underpowered, overweight, and aerodynamically unstable,” said Giles.

“Is that a no?”

“It’s a don’t know. While we’re restoring the Aeronaute, we can find out by running computer simulations, then build a full-scale mockup with a petrol engine. If the mockup can take off, we have a yes.”

“You can use the barn,” said her father eagerly.

“But what about the wedding reception?” exclaimed James.

“We haven’t fixed a date for that yet,” said Louise, to Giles rather than James.

“Man, we’ll need to work hard and fast, or this could be like Stonehenge,” said Giles. “You know, left as a glorious ruin, not restored. There’s always going to be heritage airheads who want that.”

“That’s terrible!” exclaimed Louise.

“I’m right with you,” said Giles, putting an arm around her shoulders and gesturing to the aircraft. “Leaving Stonehenge like it is just glorifies what some frigging vandal did in the past. I’ve worked on World War One fighters. Try to patch an original bullet hole and some tosser will scream that it’s historically significant.”

“So what are you suggesting to us?” asked James, hastily grasping Louise by the hand.

“I’ll call the workshop and get my staff to drop everything and drive down here with the truck and some equipment. While they’re on the road, Leon and I will start marking the woodwork and wire that needs replacing.”

A strange tug-of-war for Louise had developed between James and Giles. I picked up a roll of masking tape and deliberately tagged an undamaged spar.

“No, no, steamgoth, only tag what I point to,” said Giles, releasing Louise and hurrying over.

I had the engine into the back of the Ultralights Unlimited truck by mid-afternoon, and away to the London workshop that very night. The dozen restoration volunteers that I had phoned were already waiting outside. I did not have the heart to send them away until morning, so we carried the engine inside and spent the next two hours cleaning off the grubby coating of wax with a steam jet. My fingers tingled every time I touched the engine, so much so that I had to wear gloves to work on it. At midnight we were ready for the first test. Very gently, I grasped the crankshaft and applied pressure. It turned smoothly; it had not been damaged by the crash. The cheering went on for a very long time.

In the days that followed we stripped the engine down to the very nuts and bolts, recording every detail with a video camera. We cleaned each part until it gleamed, then made laser scans for my components database. Only the leather seals and washers had perished, and my assistants made the replacements with more love and tenderness than when they had made their wedding vows.

Louise was waiting outside my flat in a late-model BMW when I got home one evening. This time she was dressed in black lace under a black leather coat, and wore high-heel boots. She seemed angry yet vulnerable all at once, as she invited me to the café over the road. Here she explained that the BBC had contacted her about the Aeronaute. We never discovered the source of the leak, but someone probably spoke too loudly in some pub, and someone listening then pitched an idea to an executive at Channel 4.

“They want to run it as a reality doco,” she concluded.

“I’ve done work for television,” I said. “Camera crews mean light stands, reflectors, first and second cameras, multiple takes of spontaneous incidents, staged arguments to raise the dramatic tension, makeup artists and hair stylists. Allow that circus into our workshop and you can triple the restoration schedule.”

“But Leon, we need them. They can keep the Heritage people off our backs.”

“So Heritage knows?”

“Yes, but the BBC is on our side. You’re a big deal for them.”

“Me? A big deal?”

“All of us. Instead of technerds in t-shirts and jeans, the producer has seriously cool people in great clothes doing a sensational restoration. You’re the goth engineer, Giles is the dashing steampunk pilot, I’m the glam girl patroness, and James is…”

Her hesitation said more than words.

“James is?” I asked innocently.

“James has studied costume design and history, and he’s a very well-paid model. In steampunk costuming circles he’s also a big name, but he can’t help with the Aeronaute. It’s causing him issues.”

That all made sense. Louise was from a rich family with old money, and she liked to dress retro. She was a sensational catch for someone like James. Enter Giles, who not only dressed retro, but could restore the Aeronaute and probably fly a mockup. James was arm candy. Giles was genuinely heroic arm candy.

“So what do we do about the BBC?” I asked.

“The camera crew only needs to be there when you’re doing something important. That way nobody has much time wasted.”

“Who decides what’s important?”

“You do.”

I agreed. The cat was out of the bag, so we had to be nice to the cat. There was one more question.

“Do you feel a bit strange when you are near the Aeronaute?”

Louise’s head snapped around at once. “Why do you ask?”

Why, not what, I thought. That’s significant, she does feel something.

“I’ve got to confess, I get an odd feeling from it, like it’s haunted. I was wondering if Lucy Penderan got that feeling too, and that’s why she went to so much trouble to preserve it.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” said Louise tersely, but her tone said otherwise.

We had to dismantle the partly reassembled engine, then put it back together for the cameras while pretending to talk spontaneously. Louise played the role of an anxious client being briefed by me, the suave engineer. She wore enough pewter cogwheels to build a dozen or so clocks, along with fishnet gloves, and a magnifier on a brass chain. However, her lipstick had morphed from wholesome steampunk scarlet to goth black.

“So no other quadricycle engine is known from the 1850s?” she asked on cue.

“That’s right,” I replied. “There was no demand for hyper-light engines back then.”

“So whoever built this one was a genius, like Brunel?”

“Not necessarily. It’s not a revolutionary design, just very light. Any 1850s engineer could have built it as a one-off.”

“Do you think the Aeronaute ever flew?”

That question again.

“We’ll know that after we finish restoring the engine and run it to measure its horsepower. The Aeronaute is right on the border of being workable. Its wingspan is fifty feet and the takeoff weight is about seven hundred pounds. Two hundred and fifty pounds of that is this engine, which may deliver as little as twelve horsepower. The propeller is not very efficient either. The Aeronaute is an underpowered version of the Wright Brothers’ Flyer.”

“But isn’t that good?” asked Louise, ignoring the next cue card. “The Wrights’ plane flew.”

“The Flyer did manage four flights, but it was not very stable. The Aeronaute will be even less stable. It will be harder to get into the air, difficult to control while it’s up there, and a total nightmare to land.”

A week later I got the engine working, powered by the workshop’s steam-cleaning unit. It functioned perfectly, but the verdict of the calibration instruments was not encouraging. It could deliver only nine horsepower.

The furnace was next, and that was a definite challenge to modern health and safety regulations. Try putting some kerosene into a very flimsy tank, then light a fire under it to force the fuel out under pressure. It’s a simple, efficient, lightweight, and mind-numbingly dangerous source of inflammable vapor. I tested the tank and pipes with compressed air, then the BBC arranged for pressure tests with real fuel to be done at an army firing range.

We produced some seriously impressive plumes of burning fuel for the cameras, but to everyone’s surprise, the furnace did not explode. The final, crucial tests were also done at the firing range. With the engine attached to the furnace, we ran the system at full pressure from the safety of an observation bunker. Again the producer seemed disappointed by the lack of an explosion. I was also disappointed, because once again it only delivered a fraction more than nine horsepower. However, these disappointments were nothing compared to the findings of an air crash investigation team that the BBC had recruited.

I watched the third episode of The Aeronauteers at home, alone. A computer graphic of the Aeronaute sat at the end of a computer-generated runway, the propeller turning slowly. Numbers flashed onto the screen as a wireframe pilot lay out flat on the flight bench.

“The problem appears to have been the weight of the pilot,” said a voiceover as the propeller spun up to full speed and the simulation Aeronaute began to roll forward. “If William Penderan was the pilot, he was just too heavy. Estimates made from a contemporary photograph put his height at six feet three inches, and his weight at two hundred pounds.”

The graphic Aeronaute raced along its virtual runway. After a mile, its speed leveled off at twenty-three miles per hour.

“Penderan may have just cleared the ground, because he did not throttle back as he reached the end of the private road that he probably used as a runway. The road ended at a ploughed field. Perhaps he thought he was a few feet off the ground, when in reality his altitude was only inches. Traces of grass stains and dirt found on the wreckage indicate that the front wheel tore through grass, then hit a ploughed furrow side-on.”

The graphic of the aircraft was shown crashing in slow motion. The wireframe pilot was thrown clear.

“Because of the risk of an explosion or fire, Penderan needed to get clear of the aircraft quickly in an emergency. For this reason he did not strap himself to the flight bench. He would have been thrown forward by the crash and struck one of the ploughed furrows. The death notice states that he died of a broken neck, sustained in a riding accident. This is also consistent with being thrown headfirst from the Aeronaute at about twenty-five miles per hour.”

The virtual reenactment now showed how the damage to the Aeronaute was consistent with rolling off the end of the road and into a ploughed field.

“Several questions remain unanswered,” the investigator concluded. “Why was William Penderan’s death disguised as a riding accident, why was the wreckage taken to a barn and hidden, and why did Penderan’s daughter, Lucy, preserve the wreckage for so long?”

The image switched to an interview with Giles and Louise, who were standing beside the partly rebuilt Aeronaute. Both of them looked gaunt and pale, but I put it down to their workload.

“I think it came down to patent violations,” said Giles. “The propeller is identical to the one used on Stringfellow’s model of 1848, and the main wing is a lightweight version of the one in the patent drawings for Henson’s Aerial Steam Carriage of 1843.”

“So Penderan was a great innovator, but he borrowed other people’s ideas as well?” said the investigator.

“That’s only part of it. Put yourself in Lucy Penderan’s position. Her father dies testing an aircraft that could have changed history if he had weighed fifty pounds less. If she had gone public, somebody else could use his design, recruit a lighter pilot, and get all the glory of the first flight.”

“Maybe one of his rivals.”

“Precisely.”

“Then why did she go to so much trouble to preserve the wreckage?”

“That I can’t say.”

Louise began to look like a defrocked goth who was studying to be a steampunk engineer. Her cheeks were pale and sunken, her hands were scratched and stained with paint and oil, and she moved slowly and deliberately, as if almost drained of energy. Both Giles and James seemed to think she was looking goth because she had something going with me. Because the engine needed little work, and most of that was in London, Giles made me the acting manager of Ultralights Unlimited. That kept me away from Kent, and thus Louise … except when she visited London.

Goggles became a major issue as the Aeronaute’s public debut approached, as did the entire subject of fashion. Steampunk costuming and Victorian fashion overlapped, but did not match. Louise wanted steampunk, James wanted Victoriana. The BBC sided with James.

Louise and James were in the Ultralights Unlimited workshop, waiting for the camera crew to arrive for a shoot, when one of their many arguments flared. Louise wanted goggles to be part of Giles’s 1852 aviator’s costume for testing the mockup Aeronaute. James insisted that goggles were not used until the early twentieth century.

“Charles Manly wore them when he tried to fly an early aircraft in 1903,” James explained. “They were developed about then for early motoring. Swimming goggles came even later.”

“But there are engravings of Venetian coral divers wearing goggles in the sixteenth century,” said Louise.

“Okay, but people like coachmen or train drivers didn’t use them back in 1852.”

“We’ll see what the Web says about that.”

Louise took out her iPhone. She wanted a steampunk look, and would not be deterred.

“Goggles, the word is derived from the Middle English gogelen, to squint,” she said presently. “The word goggles came into use around 1710, to describe protective eye coverings that were short tubes with fine wire mesh over the ends. Masons used them as protection against flying stone chips.”

“Well your goggles have glass in them,” said James.

“Give me the goggles, I’ll run up some wire mesh disks,” I called from my workbench. “Nothing simpler.”

The warmth in Louise’s smile could have ended an ice age, but I suspected that it was only to antagonize James. I wondered if his scowl was meant for her or me. Premarital divorce seemed to be looming like a summer thunderstorm. Meantime I had all the grief of being a romantic interloper with none of the benefits.

Giles and his team of restoration volunteers took two months to strip the wax and old fabric from the Aeronaute, then replace the broken or rotten spars. All the piano wire bracings had to be replaced, then the wings were covered with new black silk. The engine had been restored long before that, but was kept in London so that the Aeronaute could be symbolically made complete in a single dramatic scene for the cameras.

When I arrived in the company truck with the fully restored quadricycle engine, champagne and chicken had been laid out on trestles, and everyone was dressed in Victorian costumes. The camera crew was also in costume. This was definitely a ‘significant event.’ To dress goth is to dress timeless, so I just borrowed a top hat from the BBC costume van and fitted right in.

James was arguing with the producer about Victorian fashions, Giles was striking poses for the BBC cameras in front of the mockup Aeronaute, and Louise was posing for a photo before a period camera. She was wearing a voluminous period green and black brocatelle day dress over crinoline, and was looking very unhappy about it. Once the reality television opportunities had been exhausted, and people began making sure that the chickens had died for a good cause, Giles took me aside.

“The mockup is ready to fly,” he said.

“What?” I exclaimed. “Already?”

“Jock, Janice, and Otto ran it up in a week. It’s basically just a modern ultralight with a strange design, and we installed a petrol engine with a variable governor. What’s the best power you got from the 1852 engine?”

“Nine and a quarter horsepower is all I could get with optimal tuning.”

“Nine and a quarter!” he exclaimed, losing his smile for the first time. “That’s still a bit marginal.”

“Or just plain not enough.”

He looked across to Louise, who was now posing in her wire mesh goggles.

“It’s probably enough to work with,” Giles decided.

“In a bleeding computer!” I exclaimed. “The Aeronaute is on the very border of being flight-capable. It’s seriously overweight and underpowered, but I can make a few improvements—”

“No! It must fly with the exact 1852 config. My computer models confirm that it could get just above stall speed at nine horsepower, with enough fuel for ten minutes and a one-forty-pound pilot.”

“One-forty pounds!” I exclaimed. “Even a pigeon-chested tosser like me weighs more than that.”

“I’ve been dieting.”

“What? You’re joking! What a great source of reality drama: will he die of anorexia or die in a crash?”

“Be serious.”

“I am being serious.”

“Louise is dieting in sympathy with me.”

“That explains why she looks as crap as you.”

“And she’s stopped sleeping with James.”

“What the hell has that to do with…”

My brain caught up with my tongue.

“Yes, that has everything to do with me flying the Aeronaute mockup,” said Giles. “Sorry to be so suspicious of you; I’ve only just realized that she’s actually dressing goth to tick off James. I’m her real hero.”

In other words, Back off, steamgoth, the rich girl is mine. At the time it seemed like the obvious conclusion, but we were both about as wrong as it is possible to be.

The stretch of straight, level, private road was three miles in length. A very thorough, three-day investigation by Time Team confirmed that it had been built around 1850. It would have been ideal as a runway, providing a firm, smooth surface that would give the Aeronaute’s wheels minimal friction when taking off. The local council had restored the surface to 1850s standard, and the mayor was rewarded by time in front of the television cameras.

Giles had learned to fly the Aeronaute with a computer simulator. Getting off the ground was only part of the problem. The Aeronaute was a flying wing without a tail, so by definition it was quite a challenge to control. When flying, the simulation was balanced precariously above disaster.

“Don’t worry, I’m only going to take it up a couple of feet,” Giles said as I adjusted the governor to give another quarter horsepower to the mockup.

“Good enough to kill William Penderan, good enough to kill you,” I replied.

There was a great cheer as the mockup’s engine was started. I was ready with my Vespa and followed the mockup as it rolled away along the road. At the suggestion of the camera crew, Louise was sitting sidesaddle behind me, her dress and crinoline billowing like a failed parachute. It took nearly a mile, but at last the mockup wallowed into the air, lumbered along roughly five feet above the road for about a hundred yards, then descended.

Unfortunately it had drifted just a little off center while airborne. The rear left wheel caught the roadside grass and the mockup slewed around, ripped off its own undercarriage, and partially disintegrated.

Giles was unhurt because he had strapped himself to the flying bench. For his trouble he got Louise’s arms around his neck and a kiss full on the lips before the cameras of the BBC—several times, to get the lighting and background correct. The achievement of the mockup’s flight, the drama of the crash, and a dash of romance sent ratings soaring for The Aeronauteers.

Giles blamed the crash on a gust of wind. Later, in private, I learned the truth.

“The controls are bad, bad, bad,” he confessed. “You can’t steer without dipping the wings, so you need to be at least twenty feet up first. Landing will be a disaster if there’s any wind at all.”

“But you’ve done as much as the Wright Brothers already,” I pointed out.

“That’s not enough. I want to do a circle, then land.”

“It’s still underpowered and too heavy,” I said.

“I can carry even less fuel, and diet off a few more pounds.”

“You should test it with a radio control unit first.”

“No! We’re not just refurbishing the Aeronaute, we’re putting ourselves in William Penderan’s position.”

“Which was a ludicrously dangerous position, and which got him killed. I can hear the beating of the wings.”

“Er, sorry?”

“John Bright, 1855. The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land. One may almost hear the beating of his wings. Death will be flying beside you if you take the mockup any higher.”

“It’s worth the risk. When I’m up there it will be 1852, and I’ll be proving that steam-powered flight is serious tech.”

“Losing control a couple of hundred feet up, then smashing headfirst into a field is going to really hurt.”

“I fly ultralights, I know the risks. You stick to engines.”

“Speaking of engines, do you want me to service the mockup’s engine?”

“No, no, you have to go back to London today and look after the company. Everything is under control here.”

For Giles I was somehow still competition in a love quadrangle, but I worked for him so I was a problem easily solved. Being safely away in London did not mean I was safe, however.

Six episodes of The Aeronauteers had been broadcast on Channel 4 when the scandal broke. I have Saturday nights off, and it is always for the same reason. I had reached the stage entrance of the Midnight Noon Club when the portable lights came on and the camera crew appeared. It was not the crew for The Aeronauteers.

“Mister Chandler, we understand that every Saturday you come to Midnight Noon to be the master of ceremonies,” declared a voice from behind the lights.

I had been caught by surprise, but I have great reflexes.

“I do, and it’s the best amateur goth burlesque club in London,” I said cheerily. “My stage name is Feelthy Pierre, the Naughty Gendarme. Come in, come in, you’re just in time.”

The interviewer had expected a cornered rat, not an invitation to the show. He could not decline because I was also recording him thanks to that wonderful invention, the phone camera. I recorded a performer named Furry Paws dragging him onto the stage, sitting on his lap, then stripping off most of what little she was wearing. As an exposé of my personal life, it flopped more heavily than the mockup of the Aeronaute.

“I’m an engineer, and I do this for fun,” I said as I was interviewed later in my gendarme’s uniform. “Now then, what do BBC journalists do for a few laughs in their spare time?”

The item was broadcast the following evening on a current affairs show, heavily edited. My recording was already on YouTube. Louise staged a big party for the broadcast and insisted that I be there. The entire restoration team watched it in the manor house. For a rare moment I was a big hero, then the serious drinking began.

“It was either James or Giles who ratted on you,” Louise declared as we stood together, our words blanketed by the babble from everyone else.

“They think I think you’re cute,” I replied.

“Do you?”

“Thinking you’re cute and being competition for James and Giles are entirely different things.”

“Those girls in the club,” she said slowly. “Do you ever, er…”

“Get laid? Occasionally.”

“I was wondering why you never made a move on me,” she admitted. “I thought you were gay or A, but now I know. I’ve never been so totally outclassed.”

“Outclassed? You? You’re so far out of my league that even fantasies about you are a waste of time.”

“Crap, I’m really nothing. Everyone thinks of me as a trophy. My parents, James, Giles, my whole steampunk social scene. You don’t care about trophies because they don’t do anything. That makes you special.”

“Er, thanks.”

“Did you know that we’re part of a love triangle?”

That was a shock. I glanced about. Giles was nowhere to be seen. James was standing nearby, talking to Louise’s mother and looking a bit morose. There was a red wine stain on the sleeve of his coat but he seemed not to care. Perhaps he had given up on Louise. I now felt like a rabbit caught by a spotlight. Rich girls are dangerous to be around, especially when one’s boss has aspirations involving them.

“I … don’t think so,” I replied. “You, Giles, and James occupy the corners already.”

“Wrong lovers, Leon. It’s you, me, and the Aeronaute.”

“The Aeronaute?”

“You love the Aeronaute because it’s genuine and it works. I love the Aeronaute because…”

She hesitated. Perhaps this was becoming too personal.

“Because the Aeronaute is an accessory that any steampunk fashionista would die for?” I prompted.

“At first, but not any more. Now it’s because the Aeronaute makes me real.”

Suddenly I could see where she was coming from. The Aeronaute was dreams made solid. The Aeronaute very nearly changed history; it was a more powerful agent for change than the Napoleonic Wars. For me, power radiated from it. If Lucy Penderan had flown the Aeronaute instead of her father, what might the world look like today? For Louise, putting the Aeronaute back into history meant becoming part of history herself.

The party was brought to an abrupt halt by Otto, who announced that the barn had been broken into. By the time I reached the barn, Giles was checking the aircraft for damage, the producer of The Aeronauteers was recording everything with a phone camera, and the security guards were shouting that it was a crime scene and that everyone should stay outside.

“Otto stepped out for a romantic moment with one of the volunteers,” said Giles. “He saw lights in the barn and raised the alarm. I can’t see any damage to the Aeronaute, though.”

“I can see a problem from here,” I said. “The lid of the fuel tank has been put back without being screwed down. Someone must have left in a hurry.”

There was sand on the rim of the fuel tank.

“I don’t understand why whoever it was did this,” said Giles as I detached the tank to clean it out. “The sabotage would have achieved nothing. This is the original Aeronaute. It’s not going to fly.”

“He may have got the original mixed up with your flying mockup.”

“Talk sense,” said Giles. “The mockup is in the tent outside.”

“I wonder if he sabotaged both?”

Giles hurried away to check the mockup, leaving me with the original Aeronaute. Up close, the sense of its brooding power made my head throb. It was like an avalanche about to fall, not dangerous because its fuel tank could explode, but for some more subtle reason. This was a machine that could have changed the world in 1852, yet it felt like it actually had.

“The bastard!” shouted Giles, dashing back into the barn. “The mockup’s got sand in its tank too. Someone’s trying to kill me.”

“Sand in the tank would kill the engine before it was even warmed up.”

“Someone who doesn’t know engines wouldn’t know that. It must have been James. That airhead fashion jock doesn’t understand anything that isn’t held together with buttons.”

“Nobody likes competition.”

“It’s sheer spite! James is out of the race. Louise is sick of him, he’s been acting like a tit. If I can prove that William Penderan’s design beat the Wright Brothers by half a century I’ll be a class-A hero. Heroes get the girls, steamgoth.”

I doubted that James had done the sabotage. He had had a very crushed look during the party, and had probably given up on Louise already. Giles should not have been a suspect, because engine failure would have put him in danger, yet that danger would only last until he conveniently noticed a little sand on the side of the mockup’s fuel tank. Perhaps I was meant to be the suspect.

Every series needs a climax, and the climax of The Aeronauteers was to be a glorious celebration of Victoriana. Hundreds of recreationists and BBC extras in costume converged on the estate, there to eat nineteenth-century food, dance to authentic bands playing period music, and play contemporary games. The camera crew was again in costume, with their video cameras disguised as the old glass plate variety. I had discarded my black jeans and black leather jacket for a top hat, black suit, and black coat. Tents and stalls covered the grounds, but a wide expanse of lawn to the east of the house was roped off for no apparent reason.

The plan was that the fully restored Aeronaute would be rolled out and put on display, then Giles would take the mockup for a five-minute flight around the estate. The Aeronaute had not been outside the barn since it had crashed, so this was to be its first outing since 1852.

There was only one anachronism. Actually there were eight anachronisms: one air safety inspector, one industrial safety inspector, and six police. Giles was posing for the cameras beside the repaired mockup when they arrived.

“We have reason to believe that you intend to operate an aircraft that does not conform to safety standards, and which will endanger public safety,” the air safety inspector announced.

“What do you mean?” demanded Giles. “This is private property.”

“This is a public event on private property.”

Tempers flared, hands were waved, and the spectators and cameras crowded around. I was of interest to nobody, so I was able to mingle with the crowd that was gathering, then back away. The takeoff road was being kept clear by security guards dressed in Crimean War uniforms. A backup camera crew had been stationed beside the road. All my suspicions were being confirmed.

I made straight for the barn. It was locked, but a large piece of firewood applied to the side door with all the force that I could manage had it open in one hit.

Louise was inside, wearing only dark brown tweed trousers and cloth slippers, and frozen in the act of putting on a white shirt with puffed sleeves. She was emaciated, as if close to starvation. In a medical sense, I suppose she really was starving. Her hair was plaited and coiled tightly at the back of her head, and of course the mesh goggles were on her forehead. Her mid-Victorian dress of green silk with black velvet patterning and navy blue fringing lay on the ground. Beside it were her laceup boots.

“You guessed,” she said, then turned away to button up her shirt.

“Not hard,” I replied. “You stopped sleeping with James. That was not because you fancied Giles or me, but because you had practically stopped eating, and had lost so much weight that you were afraid to be seen naked by anyone. Now why would you want to lose so much weight? Moral support for Giles?”

“Bastard.”

“What do you now weigh?”

She snatched up a brown leather waistcoat. Buttoned up, it disguised the appalling condition of her breasts reasonably well.

“Dressed like this, I weigh one twenty-one pounds,” she said.

“You called the inspectors and police, didn’t you?”

“Yes. It got Giles out of the way.”

“While you fly the real Aeronaute.”

“Yes.”

“What Giles wants to do is borderline dangerous. What you intend to do is almost suicidal.”

“And I suppose you want to stop me.”

“No.”

“No?” she exclaimed, then gave a smile that was all hope against despair. “Why not?”

“Because I love beautiful working things, and the Aeronaute will not be truly beautiful until it flies. Do you know how to fly?”

“No. In 1852 nobody did, so why should I? This has become 1852, and I am meant to be Lucy Penderan, flying the Aeronaute instead of her father.”

Her words made sense as reenactment, but were devoid of common sense. On the other hand, I have never been very sensible either.

“Best to stay clear until I get steam up,” I said. “When you get into the air, keep the engine on full throttle the whole time. Only power down when you want to land.”

“Leon, about the landing—”

“It will be on the roped-off lawn.”

“You guessed?”

“Yes. It’s a large, wide area, so wind drift will not matter. The grass will also slow you down quickly.”

“How long have you known?” she asked, now taking me by the hand.

“Quite some time. For James and Giles you were just something to be fought over, but I could see that you had dreams. Brave, noble, beautiful dreams.”

She kissed me on the lips, and I hugged her starved body very gently.

“Leon, when this is all over, I owe you a date,” she said.

“I know a fantastic goth theater restaurant and bar. I’ll dress as Feelthy Pierre.”

“And I’ll be sure to wear black.”

There was clear and present danger from being anywhere near the Aeronaute when the engine was running. Louise stood well clear while I heated the fuel tank with a blowtorch to get pressure up. It was like having a smoke while sitting on a barrel of gunpowder. First I ignited the little tank flame, then opened the valve to the combustion chamber. The boiler flame caught with an alarming bang, then the steam pressure built up quickly. The propeller began to spin. The great thing about the quadricycle engine is that it is far quieter than an internal combustion engine. The sound was a pattering hiss, overlaid by the whirr of the propeller. I knelt behind the Aeronaute, holding it by the rear axle.

“Open the doors, then get aboard!” I called.

Louise pushed the barn’s doors open, then returned to the Aeronaute and lay down on the flight bench.

“All good!” she called back. “Let go.”

“Remember, full throttle until it’s time to land, and you only have fuel for a half-circle of the estate,” I warned. “Good luck.”

The Aeronaute rolled out of the barn in near silence, but there was a ragged cheer as the people who had been watching Giles arguing with the inspectors realized that something far more entertaining had begun. The inspectors had a moment of indecision. There was the Aeronaute, but Giles was not on it, yet someone was on the pilot’s frame. As the Aeronaute turned onto the road, the inspectors and police suddenly broke off and ran after it, shouting and blowing whistles. I ran too.

The crowd cheered the pursuing police and inspectors, thinking they were part of the show. Suddenly the Aeronaute rose into the air. Just like that. After all that fuss and anxiety over lift, drag, and power-to-weight ratios, it was up there, flying. It gained height steadily, then Louise put it into a shallow, wobbly turn. It was not fast, it was not efficient, and it was certainly not very stable, but there was absolutely no doubt that it could fly.

All around me there was wild cheering. People in period costume swarmed onto the road, jumping up and down, clapping, pointing, and throwing hats into the air. There was not a soul on the airfield or in the surrounding countryside who was not cheering, with the exception of the inspectors and probably James and Giles. Suddenly Giles was standing before me.

“You’ll never get away with this, steamgoth!” he shouted in my face. “You’re fired, as of now!”

“Whatever, but meantime all those people are on the landing strip, you clown!” I shouted back. “You have to get them off or she can’t land.”

Giles ran off, shouting orders. The six police understood crowd control, so they also focused on clearing the road. The inspectors joined them, and I was left alone. Louise was about three hundred feet up, executing a wide, leisurely turn.

This was a machine that had changed a history that never was, this was the very first heavier-than-air flight. Louise did nothing fancy, she knew that she was on a technological tightrope. I looked at my fob watch. She had been running the engine for seven minutes, so she would have to come around for a landing very soon. Did she have a watch?

A feeling of elation at having beaten impossible odds mingled with a strangely potent foreboding. Something was wrong, even though everything was fine. The Aeronaute was underpowered, unstable, and liable to explode in a ball of flames at any time, everything was against it, yet it was flying. Something ought to have gone catastrophically wrong, yet—impossibly—the Aeronaute was defying gravity and Louise was defying death.

Of all those on the ground, I alone knew where she was going to land, so it was to the roped-off lawn that I now ran. Because the Aeronaute was virtually silent at a distance, I did not hear any change in sound as Louise throttled back. The distant black shape began to descend. I could barely force myself to watch. Landings are my worst nightmare; I hate them because so much can go wrong. Louise was coming down too fast, she needed a little more thrust to gain lift and slow her descent while increasing her forward speed a trifle, but she did not have the training or experience to know that.

I was biting my knuckles, tasting blood, as the Aeronaute approached the lawn. The back wheels slammed down too hard, it bounced high, and I saw that Louise was only attached to the aircraft by the levers that she was gripping. There was a second bounce, then it was rolling along the grass, slowing, as I sprinted after it.

“We did it!” she cried as I reached the Aeronaute. “You and I, we did it.”

“That’s great, but get out, get clear!” I shouted. “I need to secure the fuel heater before it explodes.”

Louise scrambled off the flight bench as I twisted valves to kill the tank and boiler flames, then I vented the pressurized fuel. Only now did I allow myself to admit that we had a major triumph on our hands. The Aeronaute had proved itself.

I now glanced around, expecting to see the six police closing in, hoping to get another hug from Louise before we were arrested. Instead I saw dozens, hundreds of police in uniforms dripping with gilt, silver, and braid holding back thousands of cheering onlookers. What had been a Victoriana reenactment crowd only moments before had become a horde dressed in burgundy, brown and black leather, and silk, with a gleaming starscape of silver buttons and chains. Every woman’s waist was laced tightly, and every man had a top hat and a cane with a silver handle. Enormous cylinders like submarines encrusted with metal lace, latticework, and gantries floated in the sky above us, and metal humanoid figures at least fifty feet high loomed behind the crowds, with camera crews standing on observation platforms where the heads should have been.

A few people were allowed past the police, people in top hats wearing dark blue calf coats encrusted with gold braid, and holding jeweled metal rods capped with woven copper wire and trailing coiled cables that ran to gleaming brass backpacks covered in filigree. They were all calling out to us as they hurried over.

“Baroness Penderan, that was a brilliant reenactment.”

“Masterful landing, baroness.”

“Ladyship, were there any bad moments?”

Louise, a baroness in her own right? Like everything else, this was clearly wrong. She was the daughter of a knight, but that was as far as it went. I glanced in the direction of the manor house. A new wing had been added, built mainly out of brass lattice and slabs of turquoise glass, all surmounted by green domes and fringed with silver lace.

“The king and queen are watching, be so good as to wave to them,” said a woman wearing a golden helmet upon which crouched a winged lion. She also wore a violet cloak over gilt plate armor inlaid with vines, leaves, and flowers, and inset with garnets. Suddenly a word caught up with me. King? Until a few minutes ago, Britain did not have a king as well as a queen.

We turned in the direction that the guardswoman indicated. At the edge of the lawn was a carriage of gilt, silver, and scarlet. There was a steam engine at one end, polished until its parts gleamed like mirrors. It was tended by a man in a black ankle coat and top hat … and goggles. Flanking it were guards, all wearing gilt armor and holding weapons that were mainly brass coils and bronze tubes mounted on rosewood stocks, apparently powered by spheres that glowed with a silvery light. There were steps at the middle of the carriage, and at the rear was an open cabin with a tiled roof fringed with gold tassels. Within the cabin was a couple dressed in matching white shirts with puffed sleeves, brown leather waistcoats, and goggles, presumably in honor of Louise. They were waving to us. Louise and I waved back.

By now my mind was urging me to run away and hide, but I had the good sense to distract myself by draining the Aeronaute’s fuel from the hot tank and releasing the steam. Cameras like brass lanterns on articulated tentacles stretched over the shoulders of the newscasters from their ornate backpacks to follow what I was doing, but I did my best to ignore them. I seemed to be known to everyone, and was probably in charge of the engine.

“Doctor Chandler, how did the quadricycle engine bear up?” someone asked, and several people thrust their metallically organic microphones at me.

Doctor? Try as I might I could not remember doing a Ph.D., yet that is not the sort of thing one easily forgets.

“The engine’s performance was as flawless as her ladyship’s flying,” I responded.

Giles arrived, and I discovered that he was now Sir Giles. Ignoring me, he began to tell the phalanx of surreal cameras and microphones about how good his restoration of the 1852 airframe had been.

I found a leaflet on the grass, dropped by some onlooker. It explained that the Aeronaute had first flown in 1852, with Lucy Penderan at the controls. It had changed history. Once the principle of a steam-powered, heavier-than-air machine had been proved, dozens, hundreds, then thousands of progressively larger steam aircraft had been built. They had established air mail services, carried the first commercial airline passengers, and dropped bombs during the Crimean War.

Now we are being herded together in front of the Aeronaute; Louise, Giles, myself, James, and the restoration team. Palace flunkeys are breathlessly briefing us about what we should and should not do when we are presented to the royal couple. After that, there will be a celebration, no doubt, and as a fellow celebrity I shall be able to speak with Louise. What to say? Perhaps it will be: You know, it’s probably all the excitement, but ever since you landed, I can’t remember getting my PhD. Do you remember being made a baroness? I am afraid to ask her, but ask her I shall.

If she just laughs, well I can cope with having a psychosis, it’s very goth. What a strange delusion I had, living in a dream world in which Victorian style gave way to fantasies like Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Modernism, Post-Modernism, and Minimalism.

However, if she looks very fearful and asks to speak with me later, in private, then … then all along, back in our timestream, the Aeronaute had been the key to a different history, waiting for someone to turn it. If that history has become real, then Louise and I are the only people who remember one hundred and fifty years that never were.

I rather hope that she doesn’t laugh.