A Stranger Comes to Town Read online

  A Harvest of Men

  An aetheric chain-reaction sends a wave of death rolling around the world, warping living beings and aether-based technology alike. In one afternoon, trains go from being the power that pushed civilization out to the frontier, to being very expensive sheds of scrap metal, filled with rotting produce and dying cattle. Cities go hungry.

  The farmers are in hardly better shape than their former customers in the city. Some trees bear withered fruit, while gobbets of exploded fruit flesh drape the limbs of others. One wheat stalk might be strong and firm, but its neighbor disintegrates to dust at a touch. Harvesting crops takes more work, but yields less food. People try not to starve, using a variety of tactics.

  The Loyale traveling circus survives the aether storm mostly unscathed. When the circus comes to Seppanen Town, all seems well until a ragged fugitive plunges into their camp and begs for sanctuary.

  A Stranger Comes to Town

  ~* * *~

  A Circus of Brass and Bone Adventure

  Abra SW

  Bimulous Books | Minneapolis

  Prologue

  ~* * *~

  It began with an imperfection in a handblown glass tube. The imperfection hardly mattered, but it had gone unnoticed for a month, allowing the slow leak of fire aether to form an invisible bubble that floated and danced in the lab assistant’s wake.

  The assistant knew he wasn’t allowed inside the aether enrichment chamber, but he could not resist the urge to peek. Even that would not have caused serious harm, except to any potential progeny of the assistant, if he had not decided he needed a better look and struck a match to light his lamp.

  From a distance, the resulting event looked like the birth of a new sun. Most of those who saw it did not survive to tell the story. The aetheric chain-reaction sent a wave of death rolling around the world. Many died. All aether-powered technology was severely affected and in some cases destroyed, causing more deaths. In the middle of this, the Loyale traveling circus docked in Boston. Because they were at sea when the disaster struck, they are mostly undamaged, and they decide to continue on their tour.

  The aether storm ruptured all the locomotives’ steam engines. In one afternoon, trains went from being the power that pushed civilization out to the frontier, to being very expensive sheds of scrap metal, filled with rotting produce and starving cattle.

  The farmers were hardly in better shape than their former customers in the city. The railroads had allowed farmers to specialize—they could reach enough customers to justify growing only high-profit crops like strawberries, or grapes, or asparagus. Before the storm, it was an excellent way to prosper.

  In their frenzy to butcher and preserve the meat of the animals the aether storm killed, it took the countryfolk a while to notice that the storm had killed more than animals. Some trees bore withered fruit, while gobbets of exploded fruit flesh draped the limbs of others. One wheat stalk might be strong and firm, and its neighbor disintegrate to dust at a touch. Root vegetables fared better than aboveground plants, but without digging up the crop, it was hard to tell what amount would be edible. In farms across the (Rapidly-Less-)United States of America, the same amount of work gave a smaller yield.

  Ravenous insects attacked the harvest. Every bird in the air when the storm struck had died instantly. The insects survived in greater numbers, and they bred faster. Without enough birds to keep them in check, the insects ate and ate and ate.

  The humans tried not to starve.

  A Stranger Comes to Town

  ~* * *~

  Christopher Knall

  “Welcome to Seppanen Town,” the wooden sign read.

  Customers! Christopher Knall thought. He stopped to beat the travel dust out of his clothes and straighten his hat before he walked on. As he approached a farm on the outskirts, the little boy sitting on the farmhouse steps sprang to his feet and ran ahead. Christopher smiled. He wished he could make a more stylish entry into town, but his horse had died in the giant freak storm that struck the area a week ago. He’d been traveling by foot ever since. The one-horse towns he’d passed through recently were reluctant to lose a valuable animal, and he couldn’t sell enough merchandise to afford their price. This town looked big enough that he might have better luck.

  As Christopher entered Main Street, the little boy trotted back out of the general goods store with a peppermint stick in his hand and a burly, balding man in a shopkeeper’s apron following him.

  “Welcome to Seppanen Town, stranger!” the shopkeeper greeted Christopher. “I run the general goods store. Just passing through, are you?”

  “After a fashion,” Christopher said. “I’m a traveling purveyor of fine ladies’ hair combs and men’s shaving sets. Just the thing your customers would appreciate. I can arrange a discounted rate.” He winked. “But I won’t tell anyone you paid less.”

  The storekeeper wrinkled his forehead. After a moment, he said awkwardly, “Come with me to lunch at Margaret Della Rocca’s and we can discuss it. Mrs. Della Rocca runs our boarding house. Her buttermilk biscuits are famous around these parts.”

  It was a bit of an odd invitation, but Christopher wouldn’t miss the first real opportunity he’d gotten since that hell-storm.

  When they knocked, Mrs. Della Rocca opened her door wearing an apron lightly dusted with flour. The aroma of biscuits drifted out to greet them.

  “Welcome!” she said. “You must be new to town!” She tossed a questioning glance in the storekeeper’s direction.

  “This is Mr. Knall,” the storekeeper told her. “He’s a traveling salesman, selling ladies combs. I told him how good your biscuits were.”

  “Marvelous. Come on in! Lunch is still cooking, but I’ll get you some biscuits and tea.”

  As soon as they sat at the table, Christopher opened his salesman’s suitcase. “Let me show you—”

  “Wait.” The storekeeper put up his hand. “First, let’s enjoy the biscuits.”

  Mrs. Della Rocca came out of the kitchen with a plate in each hand, and a biscuit on each plate. She set the biscuits in front of the men and beamed. “Go on then!”

  Obediently, Christopher picked up his biscuit and bit in. The biscuit was hot and fluffy on the inside, but he noticed a slight bitter aftertaste he didn’t like. Too much baking soda in the recipe, perhaps.

  Not wanting to alienate his host, however, he finished the biscuit, smiled, took a sip of tea—and slid sideways as the world tilted and darkened around him. He barely felt the impact when he hit the floor.

  ~ * ~

  One week later.

  Dr. Christopher Janzen, the Great Doctor Panjandrum!

  Dr. Christopher Janzen sat on his bunk, which rocked back and forth with the movement of the wagon. Sleep helped pass the tedious travel time, but since performing the ringmaster’s autopsy, dark thoughts circled around him whenever he lay down. He tilted a small glass bottle carefully as he measured out a few drops of laudanum to help him sleep.

  “Bandits!” a woman screamed.

  The scream startled him, and his hand shook, spilling the laudanum on the floor. He looked at the wet drops seeping into the planks of the wagon. “Damnation,” he said mildly. His wagon lurched as the caravan halted.

  But—bandits? It was as well he hadn’t taken his sleeping medicine yet. He reached into his steamer trunk and brought out the black leather doctor’s bag he kept there. It would have been a useful prop for his Doctor Panjandrum act, but he never used it for that. He couldn’t bring himself to disrespect the memory of young Dr. Christopher Janzen, just out of medical school, filled with fresh-scrubbed pride and as shiny as his new patent-leather doctor’s bag.

  The bag Dr. Janzen took out of the bottom of his trunk now might be
worn down, but it still held all the tools a proper doctor would need in a hurry. He might no longer be licensed to practice, but if he stayed out of the big cities, his patients didn’t care. As long as he had his tools, he was still a doctor.

  He stuck his head out the door of his wagon and into chaos. The caravan boiled with activity. The equestrienne slid a derringer into her pocket and mounted her white mare. The fat lady loaded a shotgun. The skeleton man jumped down from his wagon and ran off into the underbrush, a burlap sack in hand. A trapeze artist furiously unharnessed the horse from his wagon. The hostlers tried to lead balking horses around to circle the wagons—a move they hadn’t practiced recently, not expecting to need it this far East. A dozen men (mostly roustabouts) set off. They rode whatever nag hadn’t been harnessed or ran afoot. They carried mallets and crowbars or other weapons. The knife thrower wore a full bandolier of shining blades.

  Dr. Janzen scowled. Whatever lay around the curve of the hill, he would definitely be needed.

  In the distance, the Indian mahout sprinted along the road on his elephant. For something so large and gangly, it moved with frightening speed. That the mahout stayed on its back said something for his tenacity, his skill, and his disregard for his own mortality.

  Dr. Janzen picked up his sturdy walking stick and his black bag, and he set off after the rest. He was nearly to the curve in the road when he heard the sharp bark of a gun. He broke into a run.

  When he rounded the hill, breathing hard, the first thing he saw was the equestrienne struggling to control her rearing mare. She leaned forward against its neck, both her hands wrapped in its mane. A strange man lay dead in front of her, a rifle in his hand. Her derringer lay between the mare’s dancing hooves.

  Dr. Janzen needed only to glance at the dead man to see the cause of death: a red-black tunnel into his skull where his eye should be.

  “I didn’t know you were a sharpshooter, Miss,” he said, looking up at the equestrienne.

  She laughed shakily as she succeeded in getting the mare to settle with all four feet on the ground. “Not I. When I wouldn’t dismount at riflepoint, he grabbed my stirrup and tried to pull me down. My derringer nearly touched him when I pulled the trigger.”

  Many of the boys who’d fought in the War would have hesitated to shoot a man so close, Dr. Janzen thought. Shock must be insulating her from her natural feminine reaction.

  “How many were there?”

  “Three others. They fled into the woods when I fired. The men went after them, except for him.” She nodded at the Indian mahout.

  The mahout rested on top of his elephant, his face inscrutable but his eyes flickering back and forth along the road and the woods. With him standing lookout, Dr. Janzen went to the supply wagon.

  The wagon master was just coming to. He grumbled as he tried to push himself up from the wagon bed. “Young ne’er-do-wells. They weren’t even good at being ne’er-do-wells! They hit me on the head, but not near as hard as I’ve been hit before!”

  “Maybe they weren’t trying to kill you,” Dr. Janzen said, helping the older man to sit up. “Whoa!” he added, as the supply master tried to stand. “Let me take a look at you.”

  “I need to see what the bastards got,” the supply master protested.

  “In a minute.” Dr. Janzen took a candle out of his bag, lit it, and held it close to one of the supply master’s eyes, and then the other. “Your pupils aren’t reacting equally. Don’t drink hard liquor or lift anything heavy until after breakfast tomorrow.”

  “I don’t drink hard liquor until at least noon, anyway.” The supply master tried to stand again. “Can you tell me what the bastards got?”

  “I can tell you that you’ll probably live,” Dr. Janzen said acerbically, “since you’re so concerned. Come find me if you feel yourself falling asleep in the middle of the day. That could mean you’ve got bleeding on your brain. And avoid any further trauma.”

  “What’s that?” The supply master stared at him suspiciously.

  “Try not to get hit on the head again!”

  With a grunt of acknowledgment, the supply master pushed himself up and began taking inventory. He tended to repeat himself and to wobble slightly, but at least he wasn’t trying to lift anything heavy. Yet. With a sigh, Dr. Janzen climbed back out of the wagon.

  The roustabouts returned empty-handed from their pursuit, though they bore the bruises and cuts of combat. “Come along to my wagon,” Dr. Janzen told them sternly. “You need to clean those with boiling water and lye soap.”

  The tallest one scoffed. “It’s just a couple of scrapes. We’re big strong men; we’ll be fine without a nurse.

  We got the strangers, too. One has a broken arm, and another has a knife stuck in his shoulder.” He nodded respectfully to the knife-thrower.

  The attackers weren’t alone in their injuries. The tally on the circus’ side stood at one sprained wrist, two head injuries, three broken toes (one of the roustabouts had dropped his mallet on his own foot in the heat of the moment), and a plethora of scrapes and bruises.

  The less-damaged men helped the injured back to the caravan, and at Dr. Janzen’s request, the mahout slung the stranger’s corpse across the back of the elephant and took it with them.

  The caravan’s defenders lowered their rifles and leaned them against the wagons as soon as they saw that the return was a victorious one. Dr. Janzen observed hands that shook and eyes that showed a little too much white around the edges. The midget and his wife began to quarrel over who bore the responsibility for cleaning their child-sized .22 rifle. The two female aerialists yawned in unison. The skeleton man sat in the grass beside his wagon, eating a chunk of bread that he held with both hands as if he were afraid it would be snatched away from him. All signs of stress that might lead to nervous disorders if not ameliorated.

  Usually, the ringmaster enforced a rest day—or two, if needed—every five days or so, as soon as they found a good place to camp. They were past due. Dr. Janzen edged closer to the equestrienne. “Do the horses need a break?”

  She frowned as she studied the horses hitched up to the wagons. “Yes, if we want to keep them healthy. And given how expensive these were to get, we want to keep them healthy. I’ll speak to the head hostler, though he’s probably already keeping an eye out for good places to camp.” She looked around. “This isn’t a bad spot. There’s space enough between the trees over there, and I think I see a creek—.”

  “The horses might not care, but the people would probably prefer if we camped a bit further away from where we were attacked.”

  “Ah, yes.” She nodded. “I daresay you’re right.”

  Dr. Janzen studied her and wondered. Shock, or nerves of steel?

  “Thank you, Doctor,” she said, before striding off in search of the head hostler.

  The midget fight had grown to include the maintenance of their wagon, how she didn’t mend his costumes fast enough, and how he had been ogling female townies of the tall persuasion. The rifle waved in the air. Dr. Janzen sighed.

  Unearthing the root of their stress can only help.

  “The attackers have been driven off,” he said. “We are safe now.”

  Or not.

  They both glared at him.

  “Sure we are!” the midget scoffed. “It’s not like there’s a murderer among us, oh no!”

  “Yes,” his wife added, with a glower that was small, but fierce. “Don’t you have something to add to that, Doctor?”

  Those nearby left off their other activities to watch with interest. Their expressions gave Dr. Janzen little hope of escape, despite his attacker’s small stature.

  “You took the ringmaster’s body,” she accused him. “You kept the lamp in your wagon burning the night long, and we all heard sawing and squishing noises coming from under your door.”

  He winced. I must try blocking the door with a feed sack to mute the sound.

  “So who killed him?” the midget asked, in as close to a non-combati
ve tone as Dr. Janzen had ever heard him use.

  The only sound was the rustling of leaves and the shush of the horses shifting their hooves.

  “I—think that would be best told to someone in authority,” Dr. Janzen tried.

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, the ‘authority’ is dead!”

  “Of course I noticed!” Dr. Janzen said. “I meant—.” He gave up. “Very well. I’ll tell you what I found once everyone’s gathered. Everybody should hear this at once.”

  They gathered with remarkable speed, faster even than when Cook made his famous Dutch oven apple pie.

  He did it quick, like an amputation. “You all saw he’d been stabbed. What you didn’t see was that he’d been poisoned.”

  Gasps. A rising murmur that he raised his voice to speak above.

  “More than once, if—as I suspect—his seasickness was no such thing. The sweats, vomit—I wager if I’d looked in his chamber pot, I’d have found bloody feces.”

  He pointed to the candy seller. “You were playing cards and saw him right before he died. He looked tired. You thought he winked at you to wish you luck. He wasn’t tired, and that was no wink. Those were poisoning symptoms. His eyelids drooped, his skin had a pallor, and his lymph nodes were swollen when he died.”

  “He was poisoned?” the equestrienne asked, her eyes wide and astonished.

  “Yes. The murderer probably stabbed him to death because the first two attempts failed.”

  “What kind of a knife did he use?” the knife-thrower asked, his tone uneasy as he fingered the blade on his belt. The crowd drew back from him.

  “A thin knife with an unusual curve at the end,” Dr. Janzen said.

  The knife-thrower relaxed. “None of mine are curved,” he explained to his neighbors. “Makes the balance more difficult.”

  “There!” Dr. Janzen told the midget. “Now you know. Do you feel better?”