The Clockwork Steed (Part Two)

© 2013 David Jasmin-Green

“What's that..... that thing?” the old woman said as she beheld Coolibar riding Bucephalus home after a two hundred mile plus gallop across empty plains and a struggle up and down a number of sheer slopes under the light of a pale half moon. The woman was walking a small, scruffy mongrel on the wasteland a couple of miles from the settlement in the middle of the damned night when decent people were supposedly tucked up in bed. He didn't see her until he was almost upon her, otherwise he would have waited in the shadows until she buggered off. The rider recognised the woman and she recognised him, and that was bad news. “I remember you when you were a little lad,” she said. “Your name is Prince Coolibar, I'll never forget it. Your ma and pa used to use our shop, remember? That was a long time ago. But that's beside the point – what's that infernal thing you're riding?” Coolibar wanted to pull his rifle from his shoulder and put a bullet between the old woman's eyes, but he managed to control himself.

“'Tis a winged steel hoss, harridan,” he replied, “a beautiful Clockwork Steed, your eyes should tell you that. But why do you want to know, you nosey old coot? It's not really any of your business. Anyway, what are you doing away from the settlement at this hour? This is a dangerous place for an unaccompanied woman.....”

I remember the general store that your family ran, by the way, it was guarded at all times by armed men. Your name is Mrs. Samson, am I correct? Shit, you're talking about forty years ago. Your store was a filthy place, it was infested with rats and cockroaches. Nearly everything we bought from you was rotten or crawling with bugs, in fact my baby sister died from ingesting food unfit for human consumption. It was cripplingly expensive crap that you sold, but we didn't have any choice because food was very scarce for several years until the government set up the new farming projects. Many were less fortunate than us, the wilderness is full of their bleached bones.”

“A clockwork horse?” the old woman grunted as if she hadn't heard the rest of the conversation. “I've never heard anything so ridiculous in my life. And there's no way it uses petrol or diesel, it would be far too expensive to run, especially for a poor man like you – I assume you still live in that big, tumbledown house on the edge of the old scrapyard. Even the electric vehicles that seemed to hold such promise at the beginning of the century all died a death because electricity became so costly to produce, so I don't understand how you can afford to power such a machine. There are rumours that you're in league with the devil, young man. Is there any truth in them – is that some sort of mechanical demon you're sitting on?”

“It's no demon,” Coolibah chuckled.

“Until the traders started bringing goods in and out of town with horses and carts we had a period of many years when you never saw a horse. Most of them were butchered and eaten after the war when the coal and oil supplies started to dry up, when there was mass unemployment that the benefit system had no hope of coping with. At one time there were only a handful of horses in the possession of the very wealthy, the government had to import animals from the continent to maintain a healthy bloodline. It's getting more and more commonplace for traders to use them nowadays, though, and they're used on an even bigger scale in the countryside north of here to work the land now that there's no fuel for tractors and other machinery. As you know, the soil in these parts is considered too contaminated to grow food or raise livestock commercially, though plenty of folk do so for their own consumption. Little by little the economy is improving, but I guess it'll never be as strong as it was before.....

“Bucephalus isn't really clockwork, she's largely solar powered,” Coolibah explained, growing tired of the old woman's chatter, “but she's pretty versatile and she also munches on coarse vegetation and animal droppings, in fact anything biological is capable of feeding her system. The series of vessels within her upper legs and spacious abdomen ferment biological material to produce hydrogen and methane, which the engines at various locations under her flexible shell use remarkably efficiently, but I would have thought that the clockwork explanation would be enough to satisfy a simple mind like yours.

My prototype, crone, is the answer to the world fuel crisis, she's the future, and don't you forget it. I'm not ready to sell my secrets just yet because my masterpiece still needs a fair bit of tweaking, and until then I can't afford to let the tongue of anyone unfortunate enough to have witnessed my invention wag. I'm afraid you're going to have to taste the wrath of my hoss's mighty hooves - I'm sorry, Mrs. Samson, but I have to kill you. No, I take it back, I'm not sorry at all. Ha!” The old woman looked puzzled rather than frightened.

“No! No more killing, Prince Coolibah,” Bucephalus whispered, gnashing her enormous steel teeth.

“You have to do as I say, Bucephalus, that's the way it is, I'm afraid: I call all the shots, I am the teacher and you are the pupil, I am the master and you are the slave.

Soon there'll be no evidence of your existence apart from a little blood, old woman, because Bucephalus will consume your scrawny carcass and use it for fuel. The people from the settlement will think that one of the monstrosities from the badlands to the south strayed this way and devoured you; as I'm sure you appreciate that's happened often enough before, only a fortnight ago I saw a massive, hairy something that lumbered around on two legs less than a mile from here, but it was too slow to catch us.

Look, there's no point in pleading for your life, you know where I live and you know my name - I can't afford to have busybodies spreading rumours before my invention is perfected or the government will catch wind of it and their troops will swarm into the area and steal Bucephalus away. I shan't lose any sleep about killing you, Mrs. Samson, because as well as being a genius I'm a completely merciless psychopath, so prepare to meet thy maker, if you have one. Mwu-ha-ha-haaar!”

Bucephalus took a couple of steps backwards, reared up and threw her rider to the ground. The old woman screamed as Coolibah bounced off a boulder and landed on his back, and her dog barked loud enough to raise the dead.

Coolibah was seriously winded, and it took him a couple of minutes to get his breath back. He had lost his rifle, it had bounced into the stream when he fell. When he sat up, breathing in deep, ragged gasps and silently cursing his Clockwork Steed he felt a sharp pain in his lower legs, but it was only when he tried to stand that the severity of his injuries hit him. When he rolled up his trouser legs he realised that his left shin bone was shattered and his right ankle was injured, it was probably just a sprain, but there was no way he could put any weight on it. “Damn you, Beucephalus!” he roared as his mechanical horse reared and whinnied, stomped the ground with her hooves and performed all the horsey actions that it had pleased him to include in her programming.

“No, damn you, Prince Coolibah,” the steel horse replied. “Come, old woman, take me back to the settlement and sell my secrets, I'm your horse now.”

“No!” Coollibah yelled. “You can't leave me here, I forbid it!”

“But I can,” Bucephalus said. “Look over there, Prince Coolibah, you naughty, naughty boy. Keep an eye on that hazel thicket on the other side of the stream. Can you see anything unusual?” He could see movement in the undergrowth in several places, and whatever was coming their way wasn't alone.

“No,” Coolibah repeated, this time more pleadingly.

“What foul post nuclear mutations do you think are creeping your way?” Bucephalus said. “Corn dogs, Bundi bears, Death lizards, Tiger worms? Or maybe something more terrible, something that ought to remain nameless? I reckon you have ten minutes to say your prayers, repent your wickedness and beg forgiveness, Coolibah, before whatever is concealed by the undergrowth starts to eat you alive.”

“No, please!” Prince Coolibah yelled as the old woman and her dog followed the Clockwork Steed through the low undergrowth towards the settlement.