With every glance back at Number Four grinding up the slope, Brewman was more convinced that her water was foul. He chewed at his lip furiously. Blast Grint for not paying closer attention to the filling! Blast the Guild for leaving the tank at the North Cut three-quarters empty. Blast this shoddy coal - all he'd been able to secure at the last yard - which was boiling so slow. He looked out at the rising country around him and fixed each rowan and pine with an angry glare. Blast them!
But it was his own fault, and that was where the fury was sourced. He had known that Grint needed closer supervision. The man was fair enough for local runs, but on a trip like this he didn't have the sense to think further than the next milestone ahead. Steerbridge was laid up and Macklemore was taking the Beast down to Manchester with a four-car train. That job needed two good men, so young Horrocks had gone with him, leaving old Horrocks to handle the local work in Number Five for the time being. They were both well past their prime - old Horrocks could only really stand when clutching onto the regulator wheel and Five, well, she spat cinders whenever she was driven further than four mile.
And that had left only Grint and the boy to accompany him on this trip. He'd known he would need another hand for the stretch past Yarthwaite, and thank God, the man he'd taken on at the Crown didn't seem to be an idiot, but it was Grint, his own employee tasked with the responsibility of driving the second engine, that frustrated him. A steamsman needed more caution. The big engines were temperamental - Brewman wasn't ashamed of admitting that. They needed coaxing up the long slopes, warming gently in the morning, talking to, reading. Every gauge and valve told you their needs. Number Four had always been thirsty. It couldn't be called a fault, no. That would be a deeply ungrateful, even unfaithful thing to say about a steam-powered road locomotive. It was simply part of who she was. And a good driver took account.
It was a dirty tank, though. He hadn't filled at North Cut for years, but he should have known the water was going to be muddy. It was his own fault more
than Grint's.
"Mester Brewman," said the lad. "They's two engines a-coming up from the Cut."
Brewman turned about on the footplate and wiped the sweat out of his eyes. He could see the two dirty plumes of engines burning coal and accelerating up the road, clearly meaning to climb Hammer Hill the same evening as himself. He unclipped the monoscope from its mount above him and handed it to the boy.
"Take a good hard spy on 'em," he said. "Who is it?"
The boy peered away while Brewman concentrated on steering his own engine over the uneven road. The mighty Carocall locomotive didn't mind where she rolled, but the two wagons behind were piled right high, lashed tight over with canvas and cord, but still at risk. He let a little more steam in and immediately felt the pistons surge and the wheels pick up pace.
If it were a local firm, they'd have climbed the hill in the morning. So they were making the same run he was: up Hammer Hill by twilight, a rest at the filling station just over the crest and a run down into Finchwick in the morning. And probably on into the city after that...
"I think they's Guild engines, Mester," said the boy at last. "Red with gold bands."
"Hop back onto Number Four and look from there," growled Brewman. "Then light on up here as fast as you may. Go on - get!"
He'd stoke and drive for the next stretch. The hill didn't really steepen for another mile and Spadille, his own Number One engine, was singing and steaming as sweet as she ever did. It was Number Four that worried him, and he longed to coax her up the slope himself, but that would mean changing places with his man and he'd rather go blind than trust Grint to drive Spadille.
Brewman settled into his rhythm. Scoop and toss, scoop and toss, toe the door, look about, choose a line, check the pressure, feel the wheel. Scoop and toss, scoop and toss. Spadille was older than all of 'em, except Number Five, but she was tough. She was tough and she rode smooth and she never complained. She liked a hot fire and a long run and she lit quick again in the morning. A real steamsman's engine. His kind of engine. He allowed himself a grim smile and began to build the pressure a little more in anticipation of the climb.
The boy scrambled up again beside him. "Red and gold bands, Mester Brewman." He didn't have to say anymore. Brewman handed him the shovel and it was the boy's turn. Scoop and toss, scoop and toss, wiry muscles standing out through his thin cotton undershirt. Scoop and toss.
The boy knew not to ask questions, but Brewman liked him. Another three-four year and he could be of real use to Brewman and Son, Haulier. And if he were to drive, he needed to know the lay of the land.
"It's like this, son. We need water after the climb. Hammer Hill station has enough for both our engines, but maybe not for four. And the Guild fill first, see. Because it's their tank."
It hadn't always been their tank. Old Master Brewman had been one of the seven or eight hauliers who had seen it built, replacing the very unreliable roadside pool, but the Guild had bought it out more than ten year back. That rankled too. Because it was really Brewman's own water - at least in part.
"But we're going to be there first, Mester, ain't we? And they can't fill if we's already taken what we need."
"You think we'll be long ahead of 'em, Shawn boy?" The lad looked up into his master's face. He wasn't often called by his given name. He had hoped that the master liked him - he tried to be good - the tough, reliable roadsman he wanted to be. "You think we'll be filled at the rate Number Four is goin'?"
They looked back. The gap between their own rear wagon and the following locomotive had lengthened even since the boy had scurried between them. Brewman shook his head. He could see it all ahead of him. Half-filled, the Guild drivers would arrive upon him and claim their privilege. Four really needed a full flushing. He'd be stuck, waiting for the tank to refill at its trickle, until at least midday, or have to split his train of four wagons and take two on and deliver half the consignment. But he'd contracted to bring it in by the night of the eighteenth and the bounty wasn't a prize: it was his firm's lifeblood. They couldn't compete with the Guild's margins, so he had to get every delivery in on time. No penalties, no mishaps, no smirches on the Brewman name. That was the only way he had managed to keep the firm alive.A Vital Resource
Something completely different – a sci-fi short story (fragment?) from a couple of months ago.
A Vital Resource
Evo felt the shutter lock behind him, sealing him, alone out of the thirty-three thousand on the Lunar surface, into Ancillary Chamber Complex 28.4 (Provisional).
That last part – ‘provisional’ – was his responsibility. Regulations required the final inspection for any new lunar structure, inhabited or not, to be carried out by a suitably qualified human. And it was a good regulation. The human ability to spot unforeseen problems – things that an automated inspection wouldn’t register – or to extrapolate risks based on human behaviour, was exactly what was needed. Inspection had prevented injury and waste when Evo’s colleague Johnson Mugembe had insisted the Assembly delay the incorporation of Complex 19.9a, only a month or so ago. The robot excavators had done their job exactly as programmed, resulting in a barrier of concreted regolith less than 1200mm wide between 19.9a and the adjacent 18.3 Complex, which was already inhabited.
1200mm was structurally stable and fine for the robots. But it had taken Johnson’s intuition, actually observing the interior of the excavated sphere, to realise that the narrowest point would coincide with the planned fish farm, which the robots hadn’t been told about. The chance of a breach between the spheres was still unlikely, but the severity of the damage to the colony, if it did happen, was unjustifiable. So a redesign was ordered.
This Complex, 28.4, was privately funded. It was also an Ancillary excavation, at the end of a long service tunnel on the northern side of the colony, without any close neighbours and a small chance of breach. The eight spherical chambers fitted closely into the depth of the regolith, beneath the covering layer of compacted spoil and above a spine of bedrock running diagonally through the site. The spheres would eventually have a flat, circular surface of aerated regocrete laid into their bases, creating flat, insulated floors, but for now Evo had to inspect the true floor – the internal surface of the chambers, excavated and chemically bonded into a hard regocrete by the bots. He took a deep breath and walked to the lip of the first chamber.
“I wish you didn’t have to go in there alone,” Angeline had said to him that morning, as she tightened the armpit seals of his lo-pressure suit. “Two heads are better than one.”
He had nodded. “They do send us in a pair after the initial inspection. It’s only the first time I have to go in by myself.”
They both knew why. In the case of catastrophic collapse, or a blow-out, the colony couldn’t afford to lose two workers. They couldn’t afford to lose a single able body, really, but this was the compromise that had been made. Nor was their atmosphere easily replaceable – hence the lo-pressure for the initial inspection.
At least it was light inside. Evo’s accompanying crabbot was fitted with several powerful LED lamps. A single lamp easily lit the interior of the first sphere, which was marked on the plans as an entry and administration space. Twin passages led out. Evo took the one on the left, through the series of smaller chambers, before looping round into the big chamber.
It was a beautifully simple design. They were true Bonin Balls, built with nothing more than the native regolith bonded together, self-supporting, airtight and adaptable. The spoil was mounded on top to add a dense, protective mound as insurance against meteor strike and solar radiation. Anthills, the colonists called them. And they were the ants.
The big chamber was big. A diameter of forty-five metres meant a displaced volume of almost fifty thousand cubic metres of spoil. He dialled up the crabbot’s lamps and flooded the space with bright, bright light.
One of the differences between the privately-funded complexes was the finish of the interior. In this case, the robots had polished the regocrete to a marble-like, glossy smoothness. Embedded flecks of mica sparkled in irregular constellations. Evo activated the laser-scanner and stepped back into the mouth of the access tunnel to give the space a critical eye.
It looked good.
“How’s it look, Evo?” called Lesti, almost as if she could read his mind.
“Looks good. No leaks or faults I can see. Roboys have done a good job again.”
“Alright,” she replied. “Take as long as you like. The owner’s on the line, when you’re ready.”
“Tell him five.”
“Roger, Evo. You know you don’t need to speak to him if you don’t want to.”
“Come on,” he replied. “Man paid for this lovely burrow. I can answer his questions. I won’t be long.”
He walked carefully down the steps cut into the wall of the sphere, out into the bowl, feeling like a true moon man. For, despite his wife’s reasonable worry and the real risk, he loved being the first one into these holes. For time immemorial, moon dust, rock and rough, broken meteorite debris had lain in a deep, deep blanket of silence over the surface of the moon. And then, spurred on by the distant program of an engineer, a robot had cut out this Platonic wonder, right into the regolith itself, and created a bubble, a void, an inverse planet within the body of the satellite itself. And in journeying to the moon, mankind had returned to its first homes – caves in the ground.
One patch of the lower surface caught his attention. He walked over and brought the crabbot with him. Inside the polished surface were pale crystals – much larger than the mica flecks – crystals with soft, ethereal hue of purple and faint green.
Evo sat down and reached out to touch them. The ground was cold, of course, even through the insulation of his thigh pads and his gloves. But there was something warm about the translucent clarity of green and lilac that almost contradicted his sense of touch. To see colour out of the rock itself, within all this grey, silver, slate… He had never seen anything on the moon like it.
Something worried him. He ran a quick sonar scan and found, to his surprise, that the sphere had reached hard bedrock. Beneath him would be the hard bone of the moon itself. No more regolith. But previous scans had given bedrock depth of a full fifty-five metres across the site. Someone had almost made a bad mistake. It looked like the robots had got away with it, though.
“Evo? Can you hear me? This is David Gregory.”
“Hello Mr Gregory. I’m receiving you.”
“How do my Bonins look, Evo? Will you be able to give them the go-ahead?”
“Well, you know that I’m only able to give them a first-stage approval. Following the second inspection, you’ll get a definitive answer.”
“You know as well as I do that no-one’s ever contradicted your first-stage inspection, Evo. That’s why I asked for you. I want this one to be right. If anything needs doing, you’ll be the one to tell me. I’ve got big plans. So tell me. Is it structurally sound?”
“It looks good so far. But I think I’m going to run a few lithographic diagnoses before I finish up in here.”
“You take your time, Evo. I’ll be listening in.”
Evo had been looking at the crystals, hard, throughout his brief conversation. A bell was ringing somewhere in the back of his head. Spodumene? He called up a reference chart. Prismatic, striated, pale purple or lilac. Green. Spodumene. Lithium aluminium silicate.
Lithium aluminium silicate.
He was about to get the crabbot to shave into the polished surface and confirm what he saw. Then he looked up at the sphere above him. Its simplicity. Its beauty.
“Mr Gregory, I want to ask you about your intention for the Complex.”
“A studio, Inspector.”
“What kind of studio?”
“A recording studio and concert space.”
Evo found he was grinning a wide grin. “On the moon?”
Gregory laughed. “You don’t believe it, do you? I had to pull every string I could, and then some more. They didn’t want to give me the excavators, of course. I’ve had to wait. And wait. And put up the money myself. Paying over the odds. Significantly over the odds.”
Evo knew a few people who played instruments – largely electronic instruments, considering the restriction on organic material and the near-impossibility of wooden resonators on the moon. But were there enough to justify the creation of an entire Ancillary Chamber Complex, just for the recording and performance of music?
Gregory continued. “Do you know there are fifteen violins on the moon? One of them is a Stradivarius. Three violas. Four cellos. Eighteen flutes. Do you know what that is? That’s the First Lunar Orchestra. We’re going to make it happen. Not just a little piped music into earbuds. Not just washboard and basfibre guitar. I mean music. The sort that makes your hair stand up on the back of your neck. I mean Brahms. And it’s closer than you think. Now that the Bonins are finished, we can move in and start to rehearse. This is the first chance at a dedicated space we’ve had since the beginning of the colony.”
“Mr Gregory, I’m going to get back to you. Some more analyses to do here.”
“Well, now you can look at it all in a new light. In a month or two, we’ll be fitted out and rehearsing. Just imagine it!”
Music. Evo shook his head. Maybe Gregory was right – that was what they needed on the moon. But they also needed lithium.
Yes, spodumene crystals contained lithium, along with the ubiquitious aluminium. But a few crystals themselves meant nothing by themselves.
No, the pale purple moments of glamour, beautiful as they were, meant that the bedrock beneath might be the lithium-bearing pegmatite granite that the colony had been looking for. Their earlier-worked deposits were exhausted. The demand for lithium amongst the electronic engineers was almost insatiable, and its value to the colony was hard to overestimate. Lithium meant batteries. Batteries meant power. There was no wind to turn turbines, no water running to create hydroelectricity. There was only the shining sun and the long lunar day. Followed by the long lunar night.
They had mechanical batteries – the massive, constantly-spinning flywheels buried beneath the deepest spheres. But for the everyday necessities of electric life, these ants depended on lithium.
And here he was. Evo was sat on the inner surface of a sphere dug right down to the bedrock, for some reason, on what might be the colony’s most important natural resource.
Or David Gregory’s recording studio.
It wasn’t even a decision for Evo. It shouldn’t have been. His duty was as clear as the lunar sky.
He got up, switched off his laser scanner and trotted back up to the access tunnel, his crabbot clicking after him.
“Lesti? All clear in here. Book Johnson to join me tomorrow. And you can tell Mr Gregory to prepare to take occupancy of Ancillary Chamber Complex 28.4.”
Evo returned through the airlock, through a magnetic shower intended to remove the sharp-edged lunar dust from the living quarters, out into the adjoining corridor. Once the Complex had been flooded with nitrogen wind and all the particulates shuffled into a less dangerously abrasive powder, they would do without the magnetic shower. Another of his privileges and dangers. Silicosis was a considerable risk for him, Johnson and the rest of the team.
He took off his breathing mask and skullcap, shaking out his hair. There was a public blister just down the corridor, at 27.62(b). He’d sit for a while on the bamboo-fibre bench and complete his report through the direct access. Maybe get some water. Plan the rest of his day.
Time. He had too much of it, really. With that job done, there was nothing scheduled until Johnson came onto shift tomorrow and they could re-enter. He could have rushed forward, found another qualified inspector available. But he knew Johnson. He knew how he worked. And they were friends.
It had not been like this to begin with. For the first decade, man-hours were the limiting factor in every equation. Operating remote excavators, writing software, repairing broken equipment, fabricating specific tools, making observations that robots could not be trusted with… Everything required attention and time.
Now it was the other way round. For the past five or six years, the Colony had been sliding further and further into a serious resource shortage. There was a seemingly unlimited supply of moonrock and sunlight and human time, but tools were wearing out. Aluminium could be had for the price of moment’s sunshine, but reagents, iron, complex carbohydrates, starches, water – these were another story. The greenhouses were thirsty and several thousand of the Colonists were devoted to running them at increasingly near-perfect rates of efficiency.
And yet no-one would dream of putting bamboo aside for something as frivolous as seating in current circumstances. Basfibre weave, perhaps.
Even his hair was a luxury. Just about everyone was cutting theirs short, now.
Evo wondered whether war had felt like this. Not for the fighters. But for those left behind, scrimping and saving and sharpening and re-using, to eke out what they could for the sake of some great victory. Not because they were forced, by law or authority, but out of a public and shared compulsion to succeed in one thing needful.
But if this were a war, what were they fighting for? That was becoming the question in everybody’s mind, if not on their lips. And who really was the enemy? The idea of a sustainable, independent lunar colony was no longer one that depended on stability. In fact, stasis would kill them. They simply had to keep on falling forward. But towards what?
Evo wondered whether David Gregory had found an answer.
When the report was completed, Evo looked him up. Billetted in 3.45, right on the other side of the massive network of tunnels and burrows. Currently there. About a two-hour walk. Not that anybody walked on the moon.
Chamber Complex 3.45 was an old one, split into around a hundred and twenty ‘tins’ – the first private quarters that had been built. Expanded aluminium sheeting and crumbling regofoam. Not really the place Evo had expected to find the patron of the First Lunar Orchestra.
Gregory’s quarters didn’t even have a door. Hanging up was a sheet of coarse material that Evo didn’t immediately recognise. The weave was wide and the fibres had to be at least 40 microns. It was fairly ragged, somewhat stretched, and had a discernable shadow of human grease where it was lifted aside.
“Hello?”
Evo recognised David Gregory’s voice immediately. Slightly rasping. How old was he?
“Mr Gregory? Can I come in?”
An aluminium bedframe creaked and a creased hand swept the woollen blanket aside from the doorway. David Gregory stood there, waiting for Evo to speak.
“I’m Evo de Andrada. I inspected your chamber complex this morning.”
“Ah! Evo, very nice to meet you.” Gregory seized his hand and shook it. “Is this about the inspection?”
“No,” Evo replied. “I… just wanted to meet you.”
The older man smiled. He was clearly older. His hair had greyed unevenly and his skin had a slightly desiccated look.
“I want to thank you for going in,” said Gregory. “And giving it as much attention as you did. That’s what everyone says about you, you know? In the construction division. Why, as I think I said, I wanted you to be the one to go in.”
Evo cleared his throat. “We’ll be making the second inspection first thing tomorrow. I have to warn you, we might still find something. That’s the point. Two heads are a lot better than one.”
“I appreciate that,” said Gregory. “After all this time and sacrifice, the last thing I want to happen is a collapse, or some accident. We’d lose the dome, of course, but we’d also miss this chance. This chance to make something greater out of what we’re doing here.”
Evo looked into Gregory’s little cubicle. An alumium bunk hanging against one wall. Several dusty storage boxes. A repeatedly-repaired surface suit. Not much else.
“There’s nowhere to sit other than the bunk,” said David Gregory. “Come round the corner. A neighbour of mine does noodles.”
They sat at bench and table in the passageway outside the eatery. A bowl of rice noodles in a thick, glossy broth. Evo supped at it in wonder. “Is there meat in this?”
“Apparently not. Tastes good, doesn’t it?”
He had to agree. “Delicious, Mr Gregory. I’m sorry I’ve still not really worked out what I wanted to say to you – or ask, I suppose.”
“That’s quite alright. You said you wanted to meet me. That doesn’t need to involve explicit information exchange.”
“But you made me think. When we spoke earlier.”
“About the orchestra?”
“Yes. Exactly. What do you mean?”
Gregory concentrated on his noodles. He didn’t speak for a while. Then he looked into Evo’s eyes with a new, hard gaze. A challenge.
“People are becoming hopeless, Evo. Have you noticed it? We’ve grown to thirty-three thousand inhabitant, can you believe, and for all the security and carefulness, we’re missing something. It’s not Earth we’re missing. Earth is gone to these people around us. Humankind is adaptable – almost infinitely adaptable – and we’ve adapted to this life, underground, lit artificially, living to an abstract cycle, based, yes, on the Earth day. But utterly out of touch with the surface life up there.”
“But you know why we can’t live on the surface,” began Evo.
“I do. Radiation. The temperature range. Fourteen days of darkness. The meteor barrage. Of course. But it’s not the surface itself that we’re missing. It’s risk. It’s purpose. We’re safe, here, for the first time since the colony was established. Hungry and thirsty, yes, but safe. The systems we’ve designed around us are resilient and we’ve got backup plans all the way up to our shoulderblades.”
Evo narrowed his eyes. “Why would we want a more dangerous place to live?”
“I don’t. That’s not my point. There’s enough danger here. I still surface walk. Do you know what I do? I’m in the panel maintenance team, day shift. Have been for eight years. How else do you think I’ve managed to earn enough to pay for that beautiful bubble of air? Danger money. You can’t even call it blood money. Do you know what happens when your suit tears up there? Massive depressurisation? Blood doesn’t flow. It evaporates into a red mist. There’s still danger. You know that – you take your life into your hands with every inspection, don’t you? Sidula died only a week ago, didn’t he?”
Sidula had been on another inspection team. Evo knew his face, said hello, but couldn’t claim to have known him. He’d make it back to the airlock, but a combination of lo-pressure sickness, trauma and blood loss meant that he’d lasted about six weeks before giving up the ghost on his sickbay bed.
“What I don’t see is innovation,” continued Gregory. “People are just content to do as they’re told and to eke out their lives.”
“What about this lady?” asked Evo, motioning to the woman industriously manning her wok behind them. “This looks like free enterprise and innovation to me.”
“This is survival,” said Gregory. “And it’s delicious. But what about things that haven’t been done before? Entirely new ideas? Not noodles or better ways to get power out of the sun or a replacement for lithium batteries. Paradigm shifts. I’ll tell you, ideas come into people’s heads all the time. But what makes it possible for those people to carry out those ideas? To fulfil their dreams? Where do they get that hope?”
“Brahms?”
“Brahms.”
“You don’t think that this is something for the Assembly to decide?”
Gregory laughed. “Politics is a mug’s game, Evo. I spent my first ten years trying to run this place. Rules can only change people’s behaviour, not their motivations.”
Evo had to smile at that. “You sound like Saint Paul.”
“Glad to hear it,” replied Gregory, returning to his noodles. “That man changed sides too.”
“Alright, one more question. Is there really a Stradivarius on the moon?”
Gregory’s eyes glinted. “Why do you think I wouldn’t let you sit on that storage box in my quarters?”
“You brought it here?”
“No. A Chinese woman named Xuan Xuilan brought it here at considerable personal expense, in L3. I heard of it five years ago, but I couldn’t be sure if it was anything more than a rumour. It took me three years to track it down.”
“It must be worth more than the price of the Complex.”
“I paid eighty ludo for it. And the holder, at that time, was glad to get it. Xuan died on the surface, maybe twelve years ago, as far as I can tell. Her possessions were put in storage, then auctioned off, sorted, so on. It passed through several hands without anyone really knowing its value.”
“Have you played it?”
“Once or twice. Needs some repairs. The moon isn’t kind on wood. Our dry air down here. And we’re famously short on gut for new strings.”
Evo pushed his empty coconut bowl aside. “Thanks for the soup. You’ll have a final report by midday tomorrow. And thanks for the conversation.”
“Are you a musician, Inspector de Andrada?”
Evo paused. “I don’t know, Mr Gregory. I might be. I’ve never had the chance to find out.”
Steam Highwayman II Playthrough 1-1
On a dark night, I set out to ambush travellers and seek my fortune as a highwayman in the wooded hills of the Chilterns. My past as the scion of a noble family was forgot: only my high GALLANTRY score (6) and my inherited rapier (PAR 4) reminded me of my origin.
Yikes – what a playthrough! As part of my editing, I’ve been playing Steam Highwayman II as a new reader. Complementing the link-checking, this allows me to discover what balances are needed and tweak them before the final version is published. But I’ve also been massively enjoying re-discovering the world I wrote earlier this year, trying to overcome the forces of the law and of poverty and sickness. Nobody said that this life would be easy!
So I started by keeping my blade clean and talking my first victim into handing over cash. I headed for the Crown at Pishill but was unable to take a room since the landlady lacked trust. Listening to her sob story, I set out to try and right a wrong and made my way to Wallingford, where I was unable to convince a menial paper-pusher in the barracks, despite using charm and gold. I’d be back with a bigger bribe, I decided.
So I set off to try and get a pot of guineas to throw at the problem. My first attempts at ambushes were only mildly successful and I was wounded twice with little to show for it. Now a new problem arose: finding medical treatment. It was risky to continue to ambush carriages but with only a few shillings, I was unable to buy what I needed to set up a camp in the woods or to take a room at an inn. One more robbery was needed…
I stopped a carriage and lucked out – a priest! He showed fight and wounded me again, but I subdued him and stole his precious golden pectoral cross. Earlier I’d found a goldsmith who had offered me a good price for these things, so I shot off in his direction, mercifully still unknown to the Constables as a result of maintaining my disguise. The gold was sold and I had money in my pocket at last! I returned to Wallingford, bribed the official, headed for the Crown and gave the good news to the landlady, who let me take a room. Once inside I could attempt to tend my wounds – but required bandaging. This was the first point at which I thought my gameplay was being frustrating and I decided to edit more bandages into some of these locations.
Things looked up! I left the and decided to head out to find an adventure. Not far away I came across a grand house, bluffed my way inside with my good breeding and a double six and burgled the place. The lady’s jewels were in my grasp… but, folly of follies, I could not resist striking out for more and I came a cropper, trying to sneak around the house.
Beaten and subdued, I was handed to the Constables, who scorned me as an unimportant burglar (and to tell the truth, I had indeed achieved little of note) and threw me into prison – but not before confiscating my weapons, remaining cash and those lovely jewels!
Released, I completed a little honest work delivering parcels, but soon grew tired of this slow employment. I desperately stopped the first two carriages I came across and scraped together enough coin to buy a sabre (PAR 3) at a market – oh for my lost rapier! Doing so, however, I earned the wrath of the Haulage Guild and the Constables. Eager to gain more gold and bootstrap myself up into some higher skills (I had also grabbed some goggles (MOT+1)), I returned to the scene of my earlier crimes and prepared another ambush. This time, as a result of my growing notoriety, the Haulage Guild were ready for me and the vehicle I met was guarded. A MOTORING test allowed me to dodge damage to my precious velosteam, but in the process I was wounded once more, and still without a firearm, I was unable to press home my attack.
I’m somewhat amazed at the story that has just appeared from an hour and half’s gameplay. To me it feels realistic, challenging, gritty and hooky. Is this just the start of a great tale or is it doomed to failure and replay? If you’ve read this, you may end up recognising some of these events during your playthrough, but I’m also amazed that another reader or another reading of Steam Highwayman II: Highways and Holloways could proceed for just as long without a single common event with the story I’ve just described. From your choice of backstory and the manner in which you approach your first robbery to your decision of where to base yourself, how to treat wounds, which sort of travellers to target and the manner in which you pursue profit, your choices could be entirely different and your experience in the book much more – or less – successful.
That’s really the biggest difference between the two volumes of Steam Highwayman.  Smog and Ambuscade was open-world in many ways, but I created ‘choke-points’ to make the mechanics manageable and in the end didn’t feel that there were enough opportunities to behave as a highwayman should – essentially robbing travellers. Now in Highways and Holloways, I’ve been able to develop my structures and instead of ‘choke-points’ I have what I think of a ‘dispersal passages’ that gather events from different locations, shuffle your options and send you back out to your region. It’s a powerful mechanic that keeps the story moving and helps you zip across the map when you need to.
I’ll continue with this playthrough (I was sorely tempted to stop once I missed that NIMBLENESS roll in the night burglary!) and probably post some more, but I’ll try to avoid hard spoilers as I do. Anyway, by the time you read the book, the world will be responding to your choices, not mine.
If you haven’t yet pledged on Kickstarter, why not head over and fund your copy of Steam Highwayman II: Highways and Holloways now? The project is 87% funded and with unique custom art spots still available, this is your opportunity to appear as the Steam Highwayman in print!
Writing to Music
I’ve been writing for hours at a time again and it can be difficult, some days, to turn my mind and focus on an imaginary world when there are so many things to keep me in the everyday world. Having a piece of music playing can help. By filling up my ears, it over-rides part of my consciousness – the ‘internal editor’ that is constantly correcting and improving before I’ve even drafted. But getting the right album or long track is tricky.
Good writing music is melodic. Some classical music does this, but film or game soundtrack is more reliable – the themes that repeat and develop are much easier to grasp. Soundtracks are also explicitly written to create atmosphere, which is the other big reason for writing to music alongside focus.
When I’m writing cyberpunk – or gastropunk – I rely on Vangelis – either the extended Blade Runner soundtrack or his album The City. Melody a-plenty, but I don’t get too distracted from what I’m writing because I know the pieces so well.
I’ve been focusing on Steam Highwayman II for the last week and so Blade Runner doesn’t match at all. Following a few comments by Jonathan Green, who also writes to music, I discovered the soundtrack to Skyrim. I only know the game through watching a few playthrough videos and (mercifully for my schedule) have never had a computer that could run a large CRPG, but I was really impressed both with the composition by Jeremy Soule and the simple arrangement into a long track by TheSagaris2. This is perfect writing music – no jarring transitions, plenty of atmosphere, loads of melody, easy to get to know.
The sound might feel pretty open and natural, so it doesn’t fit the world of Steam Highwayman too well, but it certainly suits the writing of it. I mean to post soon about my search for a ‘Steam Highwayman sound’ and what sort of music sounds steampunk to me. Let me know if you’d be interested in reading that – or listening to a curated list.
Monks in Space
I wrote this piece in 2013, but I’ve had the concept since around 2004/5. Â Monks in Space. Â A space monastery in the Kuiper Belt. Â Excellent.
The First Chapter
It was Brother Isador, returning from a baptism on a nearby asteroid, who found the drifting escape pod.  The spherical capsule had long since burnt out its distress beacon, but the polished reflective surface made a spark in the darkness that caught Isador’s attention.  As he neared it he scanned for transmissions – none.  He would certainly find nothing more than the remains of a lost soul forgotten in space.
But he didn’t.  Matching trajectory and velocity at about thirty metres he saw a movement through a tiny, trapezoid window.  Then a face.  A haggard and desperate face.  Isador offered a brief prayer of thanksgiving for the preserved life within the pod – and a prayer that he might serve his maker in preserving that life further.
He approached, programmed a tiny rocket drone to thread a cable through a projecting rung, fired it, and powered up all his boosters to begin to slow the pod’s flight. Once in the hangar beneath the refectory and with the gentleness of the abbey’s air on his cheeks, Isador and the other monks wrestled with jammed catches and an electronic lock coded in an unfamiliar script.  They opened the hatch and found a man inside, unconscious and breathing shallowly in the remnants of his thin air. He had a wasted and enervated body, lank and dirty hair.  He wore an old-fashioned suit that seemed to have been fitted to a larger, form.  How long had he been drifting in space?  Neither the pod nor he could tell the monks, who carefully carried him up to a cell and laid him on clean sheets. Continue reading “Monks in Space”
Josh Davidson 4.2
Part II
They were building a new shopping centre in Chesterfield and one morning Josh came past the site. He paused for a while, watching. He was watching two contractors – brothers – on the scaffolding. They were brickies, men his age, paid well for working fast and straight. He knew them from work they’d done previously, but this morning he wasn’t interested in what they were building.”Simon!” he shouted. “Andy!”
The two men looked up – gave him a bit of a wave – and paused.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Cladding this wall,” shouted Simon back. “What’s it look like?”
Josh Davidson 4
Part I
Now, Joshua didn’t stay there long. He followed the voice that told him to go out into the hills and woods of the country, and underwent a test of his own self. A time of self-seeking, some might call it, although this Joshua already knew who he was and what he was called to do. But every accusation that could come at him, as he walked and thought and prayed, attacked him with the voice of the devil. Because he wasn’t eating or drinking, the whole time, longer than a month, and if you’ve never been without food that long then you can’t say you know what hunger was. But he knew what hunger was – past the pangs of longing, into the feeling of bodily need, when your own body feels light because you have metabolised every scrap of fat between your sinews and under your skin. When the cushions of cartilage and fluid are empty and your nerves run directly over your bones.
“Hungry?” asked the Devil scornfully. “But you don’t even need to be hungry! You’re just indulging your need for drama – and needlessly. You’re going to survive – so why invite all this pain and starvation? Only a sadist does that. And are you a sadist?
“And anyway, didn’t we all hear it? If you are God’s son, you can turn any of these stones from the path into something good to eat – you can call a tree to fruit right in front of you. And I thought you liked that whole blossoming, fruiting, growing thing anyway? There’s no need for this stupid fast.”
But he knew why he was there. The hunger was the unavoidable companion of the degree of discipline and sacrifice he had chosen. The Devil was just trying to distract him from the real reason for his fast. “I know what it says,” replied Joshua to that needling voice. “Food doesn’t keep you going and breath doesn’t keep you breathing – it’s God’s promises that keep us alive.” He remembered the way his dad Joseph had said that – sometimes when he had been hungry and sometimes right before a feast. His dad had stuck to what he knew to be true.
But then it was as though Josh’s wanderings had brought him, suddenly, around a dry-stone wall and beneath overhanging trees to the pinnacle of the tallest tower in London, the city spread our below him, the trains rushing into and out of London Bridge station, vans delivering, riverboats accelerating away, and no-one looking up. And the Devil challenged him again.
“I don’t even know why you’re being careful with yourself. If you fall, you’re not going to die! If you were God’s son he’d send an angel to catch you, wouldn’t he? Like it says in that book you love – ‘His angels have orders to protect you, so they’ll carry you and you won’t even stub your toe.’ It’s a written promise, isn’t it? So just jump and leave all this stubborn walking.”
Joshua shook his head. “And it says ‘Don’t joke about with God’s promise.”
But then it was like Joshua had climbed even higher, so that in one view he could see all the countries of the worlds, their rulers and parliaments, all the wonderful diverse and developed kingdoms of men. And he heard the Devil say. “And where is God, anyway? Have you heard him, after all this time not eating or drinking? But you can hear me. Do what I say and you’ll have this – you know you will. You’re powerful enough to take it, if you let me direct you. If you choose me instead…”
“Don’t you dare,” said Joshua. “Don’t you dare even suggest it, you liar! I know what it says: ‘You belong to God – so don’t let anyone else take charge.’ I know what will happen if I choose you, you liar! Go away.”
And that was the last he heard of that needling voice. But I tell you what, he didn’t stub his toe on any stone as he came off the hills and back towards home. And whichever way he looked he saw figures guarding and guiding. And they even fed him with a food that he couldn’t quite recognise. And by the time he was back from his walk, he looked better and fitter than ever.
On the journey back he heard that John Waters had been arrested and was being held pending charges. He returned to his mum’s place and picked up a few things. And then he went down to Chesterfield, because it had always been said that when God would choose to change things, he’d start there. Perhaps because if God could change Chesterfield, he could change anywhere. So that was when Joshua Davidson started to tell people. “Change your life,” he’d say. Whether it was someone on the bus next to him or when he got on local radio or a visit to a school. “Change your life, because God’s reign is coming.”
Who is Josh Davidson? 3
Twenty years passed. And then, to follow our story, the BBC news ran a special report on a mystic who’d been living off handouts and and out of bins in Yorkshire. A beggar with a strange mysticism and an undeniable charisma who was starting to be followed.
Why anyone would want to follow this man was a mystery to the presenters. He seemed to have a completely negative message of a very old-fashioned, fire-and-brimstone type, but the makers of the programme noticed that such a message had been a cyclical part of British culture for hundreds of years, and this newer manifestation was simply a repeat of what had happened in the nineteenth, seventeenth and fifteenth centuries.
But it wasn’t simply a repeat. The man’s name was John Waters and he wasn’t so much a beggar or a tramp as a man who’d committed himself to a message. He’d been privately educated, raised in a wealthy home and in fact – not that anyone noticed – he was related, through his mother, to Moira Davidson. But this John Waters had dropped out and lived in the counter-culture, a hippy who still thought it was 1969 and that world harmony was around the corner.
He dressed from leftover and patched his own clothes, looking like a fool in motley from another age. His long beard was typically in a ponytail and his dreadlocks rivalled a senior rastafarian’s. Nobody could take such man seriously. He didn’t even wear shoes.
Yet when the Prime Minister came to Yorkshire, John Waters was somehow there, seen on camera, challenging him. When the new Archbishop was out surveying the church estates, John Waters managed to get through security and video of him lambasting the man went viral. “You’re a snake,” he’d said, toothily. “Looking for somewhere to hide? A nice flat stone to shelter under? You won’t escape. If you want to survive what’s coming, you need to change – you and all the church! You can’t simply say you believe in God! You’re a whole dead orchard without more than a few dried-up apples on branches that haven’t been pruned for years.”
The Archbishop’s reply was just as violent, but John Waters was suddenly headline news and people wanted to know more. He explained it all on video. “The washing ceremony is just to show that people want to change. That’s why they come to me and that’s why we do it. But that’s not the end of the story – because I’ve been told that we’re going to see someone with a real authority – someone who can wash with fire and God’s power and presence. And when he comes you won’t think I’m extreme.”
The Church of God had on official response. “God chose our people and this country thousands of years ago and it is the responsibility of our establishment and the government to maintain observance of God’s holy law. John Waters’ cries for change, although popular, in no way reflect the unchanging message of God for his people to obey the commandments and the traditions of our nation.” They believed he would disappear in time.
But John was right. He was carrying out his washing ceremony, as he called it, near Oxford on the banks of the Thames. Tens of thousands of people were there, being washed by John and his helpers – for he had quite a following by now, including a wealthy few who bankrolled him. And among the crowd, on a miserable Saturday in February, came a carpenter from Sheffield called Josh Davidson.
The whole thing was on film. People filming themselves, their friends going under, making promises to a new life. And you can find the clips were Josh Davidson’s turn comes in the queue. He’s been standing there in his work clothes, taken off his boots, clambers down the muddy broken-down slope of the cow-pasture and steps into the freezing water.
“What are you doing here?” asks John. “What have you got to change?”
Joshua said something, but no-one heard it.
“No,” said John. “You should wash me.”
“This is the right way,” said Joshua. And he turns and one of the videos shows the big smile on his face. He’s a typical looking guy with a bit of an accent – not strong, South Yorkshire, a beard, plaster-stained work overalls and up to his shins in muddy Thames water. “Look John, this is what was meant to happen.”
John relucantly agrees, shrugs and calls out to the crowd in harsh voice, tired by hours of calling in the drizzly late winter morning. “This man wants to change the way he lives! He will be made new, God promises!” And then he pushes him into the water and pulls him back out.
If you watch any of the videos, that’s the moment the conspiracy people go mad over. That moment when he came out. No-one can deny that Josh Davidson came out of the freezing February Thames near Oxford wet and smiling – a beautiful smile. But there’s plenty of people who will stand by all those who say they heard the voice of God shake the clouds and say something that really, if it’s true, everyone needs to know.
“This is my Son, and I love him, and I’m very happy with what he’s doing.”
Who is Josh Davidson? 2
It wasn’t a good time to have a baby. The whole UK had been in an increasingly tight grip of a government pretty much recognised to be heading to autocracy. But it was a short while after he was born that they’d had visitors. Joe hadn’t want to tell people about this – it was so wild and dangerous. These strangers had turned up, one evening, a group of about ten, Chinese and Tibetan and an Arab man, a woman from Russia, at the flat, on the doorstep, in a minibus. Seekers after truth, he’d been terrified at first. But they brought with them an air of peace and he’d let them in to the front room where they’d squeezed together and had a cup of tea in all the mugs and cups in the house while Moira brought the baby down. And as she’d come down the stairs, they’d fallen to the floor, all at once.
And there’d been the pop star, the American singer, who’d turned up right then. Joe had opened the door to his knocking and he’d walked right in, kissed the baby on the head and placed a big envelope on the mantlepiece above the gas fire. “You’re going to need this,” he’d said.
It was like another dream.
The strangers had given them strange, oriental lotions for the child, to help him grow, for cleaning, and weirdly, an ointment that was labelled for corpses at the undertakers. He’d shivered reading it, thanked them, and eventually they left, leaving Moira and Joe and the baby sitting on the sofa by the gas fire breathing in the smell of all the strangers and the baby crying too.
And then someone had said that the Seekers were a cult – they were wanted. Joe had known it was a set-up – there’d been nothing wrong with them. They hadn’t been criminals, he thought, but he didn’t want to be mixed up in it, but the next night he’d woken up in a cold sweat with a ringing voice in his ears, “Get out, get out…”
He’d shaken Moira awake, wrapped up the baby, taken the baby bag and the pram and a few clothes, the big envelope, and they’d left the flat without telling anyone where they were going. Joe had learned to trust those dreams.
Something compelled him to get to the Netherlands on the ferry, and there, on the early morning news, he watched the footage of a anti-terrorist squad searching for the Seekers as they rammed down the door of a very familiar Long Eaton flat and felt sick.
It was all to do with their son. He didn’t know why, but Joe knew that the government weren’t after the Seekers at all. They were after his boy, the little red, bawling fist of life wrapped in a crocheted blanket and held tight against his chest.
Leaving was the right thing to do. There were arrests and people detained – including some of Moira’s family – some without charge. But Joe and Moira found a place to work and live near Gronigen, somewhere entirely overlooked, while they began to build their family and raise their boy.
After three or four years the party tumbled and the minister who’d been scaring the country into self-destruction with his xenophobia and hatred, well, he’d died nastily. And the next people in had published a general amnesty, and they’d come home. The Davidson family had come home, but settled nearer Sheffield, put a bit of distance between themselves and some very scary memories.
From one perspective, it all made sense to Joseph Davidson. It felt as though protecting his family was his life’s work, providing for them and for Moira the highest calling. But from another, it looked like a badly-plotted drama on tv, something unbelievable, something that should only have happened in a far less civilised country. But it hadn’t. It had been their story and it had been his life and it was real. That was undeniable. The boy was there, Moira was there, they were living in a too-small house and although the old van had gone for scrap long ago and the cash in that envelope had gone too, there was still that bottle of ointment on the mantlepiece, so long a part of the family that its quiet threat had become an inaudible harmony to their ongoing life. Every now and then Joe would pick it up, hold it to the light, tip the yellowish liquid and watch it move sluggishly against the faceted glass.
And then most days he’d head out to work.
Who is Josh Davidson? 1
“Oh yes,” Joe would say, “There’s royal blood in us. Way back, but royal blood.” And he’d sit his son on his lap, even when he was nine or ten and tell him about where he came from. “My dada, your grandad, Matthew Davidson, he was in the trades too. He died when you were very small. But he loved you, didn’t he, mum?”
And Moira would turn around, drying up the dishes or folding the clothes and say, “Oh yes. Your dada, he loved you, little Josh. When we got back he was always poking his finger into your face, laughing with you. You used to cling onto his big finger like that,” and she’d show the boy. The others would sit there around, little Jude tugging at something, James in his cot, the girls, a bit older, helping their mum or playing at house.
“And his dad, dad?” Josh would ask, and Joe would huff and puff and pretend to struggle to remember – but he loved this bit. He knew them all the way back.
“His dad was Elbert Davidson, he was a milkman. And his dad, who was born back in Queen Victoria’s time, he was George Davidson, and he was a blacksmith who moved here from Yorkshire. But he was descended, eventually, from a royal line, you see. Kings of the hill country, back, back in the distant past. And so are you. This is your country, lad. And all of yours,” for Joe tried his best not to let his firstborn son seem over-special in the family, although the truth was that he loved him like he loved nothing else in the world.
For it hadn’t been an easy birth and Joe Davidson, who didn’t talk about it that often and, when he did think about it, was amazed by what they’d been through and amazed by his power to begin to forget it, he was inclined to think of it as a miracle.
They’d been in love. Joe was starting out working for himself, subcontracting and labouring when couldn’t get the skilled work, driving around the Notts-Derby border in a beat up Vauxhall van. And Moira had just finished college, got herself a qualification in hospitality, although she spent most of her time looking after her aunt, who lived in the house. And they were going to get married, God knew how, with no savings and precious little to live on, when Moira, one tear-stained evening by the Trent, told him that she was going to have a baby.
It wasn’t his. Because although they’d been sweethearts through school and their teenage years, nothing had ever passed between them.
Joe had been heartbroken. He’d put Moira back in the van, driven her to her parents’ without talking and gone home to his own mum, cried and cried with frustration and disappointment. Life had only been just beginning.
His mum had said they were young, he still had plenty of chances, but he hadn’t wanted to fall at the first hurdle. He’d always wanted a wife and a family and boys crawling on the kitchen lino and girls to walk to school in their cotton dresses, one on either hand. And Moira… She was such a sweet thing. Overlooked. His. He had thought.
A bad week had followed. A bad week of work, he’d cut his hand and thrown the chisel away in self-disgust and anger. He’d taken long walks and not wanted to tell anyone anything.
And then the dream, which he barely remembered now, but he remembered it by its shadow. It had been so powerful, so important, that it had shaped his life, and though he couldn’t remember what the man had looked like or even what he had said anymore, his whole life since then had been changed.
He’d been sitting on a concrete wall, his legs dangling, looking down at the water and at the gravel embedded in the roughcast beside him. He could still feel the cracks in the concrete where he sat. And he’d looked up and there’d been someone walking along the very edge of the parapet, arms out, balanced, enjoying the edge, but not at risk, and as he’d come closer, he’d spoken to Joe in the dream and said, “Don’t be frightened.” Yes, Joe remembered that. And then the man had comforted him, somehow, with words or an arm around the shoulder and he had the feeling that Moira’s baby wasn’t a mistake or a broken promise at all, but like the sun that was sinking into the sea in front of him, was something that defined everything it touched. And he’d known, absolutely known, that it was going to be a boy, and a boy he could love, his son even if it wasn’t quite his son. For all children are gifts from God and belong to him, whoever conceives them or raises them.
And when he’d woken up, he’d even known what he would call him. Joshua. And he got out of bed and went to find Moira and instead of leaving her on her own to cry and weep and feel abandoned, he had chosen to be the man she needed as a husband and the man she deserved. They went through with the wedding, but brought it on. Civil ceremony, no big party, and they moved into a flat near her mum’s place, and he watched the child grow inside her and worked and worked to be the man he had dreamed he might be. And when the baby was born, Joe had told her all about the dream and she’d cried.