Everfair, p.1
Everfair, page 1
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About the Author
Copyright Page
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For Octavia, who knew this day would come
Historical Note
This novel derives from one of history’s most notorious atrocities: King Leopold II’s reign over the Congo Free State. The exact number of casualties is unknown, but conservative estimates admit that at least half of the populace disappeared in the period from 1895 to 1908. The area thus devastated was about a quarter of the size of the current continental United States. Millions of people died.
The steampunk genre often works as a form of alternate history, showing us how small changes to what actually happened might have resulted in momentous differences: clockwork Victorian-era computers, commercial transcontinental dirigible lines, and a host of other wonders. This is that kind of book.
I like to think that with a nudge or two events might have played out much more happily for the inhabitants of Equatorial Africa. They might have enjoyed a prosperous future filled with all the technology that delights current steampunk fans in stories of western Europe and North America. And more. In Everfair they do.
Of course steampunk is a form of fiction, a fantasy, and the events within these pages never happened. But they could have.
Some Notable Characters
European:
Lisette Toutournier, 1/28/1873–8/3/1954, author, nurse, and intelligence agent
Adelaide/Daisy Albin, 8/15/1858–5/4/1924, “The Poet,” a founder of the Fabian Society, married to Laurence/Laurie Albin, mother of George and Lily Albin, foster mother of Rosalie Albin and Laurence/Laurie Albin, Jr.
Matthew/Matty Jamison, 5/19/1860–6/19/1937, playwright, knighted in 1912
John/Jackie Herbert Owen, 7/26/1856–8/13/1913, a founder of the Fabian Society
Laurence/Laurie Albin, a founder of the Fabian Society, married to Daisy Albin, father of George, Lily, Rosalie, and Laurence/Laurie Albin, Jr.
George Albin, son of Daisy and Laurie Albin, married to Martha Livia Hunter Albin in November 1897
Lily Albin, daughter of Daisy and Laurie Albin
Rosalie Albin, daughter of Laurie Albin and Ellen Main Albin
Laurence/Laurie Albin, Jr., son of Laurie Albin and Ellen Main Albin
Ellen Main Albin, a Fabian Society member, married to Laurie Albin in April 1897
Albert Dowson, an engineer and Fabian Society supporter
Christopher J. Thornhill, a British intelligence agent
USian:
Serenissima/Rima Bailey, 11/2/1894–3/7/1967, actress
Martha Livia Hunter Albin, 8/10/1858–2/27/1964, married to George Albin in November 1897
Thomas Jefferson Wilson, 10/16/1849–8/2/1923, missionary and military officer
Chester Hunter, engineer and inventor, Martha Livia Hunter Albin’s godson, brother of Winthrop Hunter
Winthrop Hunter, engineer and inventor, Martha Livia Hunter Albin’s godson, brother of Chester Hunter
The Lincolns, a Baltimore-based family of entrepreneurs
African:
Mwenda, 1875–6/22/1954, king of the territory sold to the Fabian Society by Leopold II
Josina, 1865–12/2/1928, priest of Oxun, intelligence agent, Mwenda’s favorite wife and queen
Fwendi, 1888–9/16/1970, intelligence agent
Captain Renji, one of Mwenda’s military leaders
Captain Tombo, one of Mwenda’s military leaders, trained to fly aircanoes in 1912 and 1913
Old Kanna, King Mwenda’s chief counselor
Nenzima, a fighter, elder, and representative for the Grand Mote
Mwadi, princess and intelligence agent, daughter of Josina and Mwenda
Lembe, one of Josina’s favorite attendants
Sifa, one of Josina’s favorite attendants
Alonzo, an intelligence agent for Josina and Mwenda and representative for the Grand Mote, cousin to Josina
Yoka, refugee, fighter, devotee and apprentice priest of Loango
Loyiki, refugee, courier, representative for the Grand Mote
Great-Uncle Mkoi, the only other survivor of Fwendi’s village, brother of her grandmother
East Asian:
Ho Lin-Huang/Tink, 1/18/1881–7/18/1978, engineer and inventor, representative for the Grand Mote, brother to Bee-Lung
Ho Bee-Lung, pharmacist, sister to Tink
Look for a long time at that which pleases you, and a longer time at that which gives you pain.
—COLETTE
Part One
Burgundy, France, July 1889
Lisette Toutournier sighed. She breathed in again, out, in, the marvelous air smelling of crushed stems, green blood bruised and roused by her progress along this narrow forest path. Her progress, and that of her new mechanical friend. Commencing to walk again, she pushed it along through underbrush and creepers, woodbine and fern giving way before its wheels. Oh, how the insects buzzed about her exposed skin, her face and hands and wrists and ankles, waiting to bite. And the vexing heat bid fair to stifle her as she climbed the hillside slowly—but the scent—intoxicating! And soon, so soon, all this effort would be repaid.
There! The crest came in sight, the washed-out summer sky showing itself through the beech trees’ old silver trunks. Now her path connected with the road, stony, rutted, but still better suited for riding. She stood a moment admiring the view: the valley, the blurred rows of cultivation curving away smaller and smaller in the bluing distance, the sky pale overhead, the perfect foil for the dark-leaved woods behind her and by her sides. Not far off a redwing sang, cold water trickling uphill.
She had the way of it now: gripping the rubber molded around the machine’s metal handlebars, she leaned it toward her and swung one skirted leg over the drop frame. Upright again, she walked it a few more steps forward, aiming straight along the lane, the yellow-brown dust bright in the sun. The machine’s glossy paint shone. Within the wheel’s front rim its spokes were a revolving web of intricacy, shadows and light chasing one another. Tiny puffs of dust spurted from beneath the black rubber tires.
She raised her eyes. The vista opened wider, wider. The road laid itself down before her.
Up on the creaking leather seat. Legs drawn high, boots searching, scraping, finding their places … and pedal! Push! Feet turning circles like her machine’s wheels, with those wheels. It was, at first, work. She pedaled and steered, wobbling just once and catching herself. Then going faster, faster! Flying! Freedom!
Saplings, walls, and vines whipped by, flashes of greenbrowngreengrey as Lisette on her machine sped down the road, down the hill. Wind rushed into her face, whistled in her ears, filled her nose, her lungs, tore her hair loose of its pins to stream behind her. She was a wild thing, laughing, jouncing over dry watercourses, hanging on for dear, dear life. Lower, now, and some few trees arched above, alternately blocking the hot glare and exposing her to it coolwarmcoolwarm, currents of sun and shade splashing over her as she careened by. Coasting, at last, spilling all velocity till she and the machine came to rest beside the river.
The river. The comforting smell and sound of it rushing away. Out on the Yonne’s broad darkness a barge sailed, bound perhaps for Paris, the Seine, the sea beyond, carrying casks of wine and other valuables. Flushed from her ride, Lisette blushed yet more deeply, suddenly conscious of the curious stares of those around her: Mademoiselle Carduner, the schoolmistress; and Monsieur Lutterayne, the chemist, out for a promenade during his dinner hour or on some errand, seizing a chance to vacate his stuffy shop. Flustered, she attempted to restrain her hair into a proper chignon, but at only sixteen and with many pins missing, this was beyond her skill. She began furiously to plait her thick blond curls, and the others moved away.
At last she was alone on the riverbank with her mechanical friend. She tied her plaits together, though she knew that momentarily they would slither apart. She stroked the machine’s still-gleaming handlebars, then leaned to fit her forehead at their center, so. “Dear one,” whispered Lisette. “How can you ever know how much you mean to me? Who would not give all they could, everything they had, in exchange for such happiness as I have found with you?”
Sans words, the front tire’s black arc responded to her whispers with visions. It preached to her of motion, of travel, of the mysteries dwelling beyond this sleepy, provincial village.
“Ah, yes, and one day, my dear, one day…” She raised her head and gazed out again at the river, at the barge now nearly gone from view. “One day we shall venture out and see for ourselves what it is the world holds for us.”
Boma, Congo, December 1889
Horror.
The Reverend Lieutenant Thomas Jefferson Wilson could think of no other word to sum up what he had experienced on this trip. Even now, alone in the quiet, white-walled room provided him by his host, he heard their cries, he saw their wasted bodies, their eyes bulging large in their thin faces, pulsing with defeat, hopeless as marine creatures stranded on a desolate beach. He smelled them, their sores running with blood and infected matter where chafed by their chains at neck and wrist and waist and ankle. Smelled the sweat of their fear, the fear that made them lift up and carry burdens half their malnourished weight till released by death. Smelled their abundant corpses rotting by the trail in the tropic heat.
This land was to have been Heaven.
Restless as ever, he abandoned his seat on the narrow cot to unshutter the room’s one window. A breeze brought some relief from the day’s fierce temperatures. Even up here, on the capital’s plateau, a Pennsylvanian such as himself found the Congo “Free” State’s equatorial climate hard to withstand. But he should not complain.
Or not on his own behalf.
A tapping at the door. He opened it on a child of eleven, the household’s primary servant—a boy named Mola, he recalled. “’Soir,” the boy slurred in French. He entered, bearing with him a tray, the meal his master offered in lieu of the repast shared by Boma’s white residents at the hotel near the river below.
The Reverend Lieutenant Thomas Jefferson Wilson would not be welcome at that hotel, for he was not white.
The dishes on the tray held vegetables, the ever-present manioc, and stewed meat of some sort—probably from a fowl or goat. No doubt this was what Mola himself would sup upon, and Thomas made sure to tender the boy his thanks as effusively as his limited French allowed. When he was alone again he placed the tray beneath his cot, the food untouched. His journey upriver to Stanley Falls and then back here to the port of Boma had entirely wrecked his appetite.
The wine he also set aside, to aid him later in seeking sleep. He drank instead a gobletful of water from a crystal decanter, then set that on the sill to cool and turned again to his work.
To the horror.
At forty a veteran of three wars, Thomas had seen and survived much. Though no more than a child at the American Civil War’s onset, as soon as blacks were allowed to fight he had enlisted and seen action. That must be why his sojourn here in the Congo was affecting him so adversely, he told himself sternly. His reaction was not illness, not pain and anguish, but anger: righteous indignation that the evils of slavery, which he had staked his life to eradicate from the face of the Earth, had sprung up once again. Unprotested and, what was worse, unremarked, they had met him everywhere he journeyed in this supposed Utopia.
A pair of thin pillows lay over his traveling desk, incompletely concealing it. He retrieved it and drew forth the manuscript of his open letter to King Leopold, monarch of this realm and soi-disant benefactor of its benighted native population.
“Good and great friend,” the salutation read. “I have the honor to submit for your Majesty’s consideration some reflections respecting the Independent State of Congo, based upon a careful study and inspection of the country.…” So far, he had written five pages and not yet named a third of the atrocities he had been forced to witness. The whippings, the murders committed so casually as if a form of sport, innocents dismembered—Thomas’s gorge rose, but he settled nonetheless to his self-appointed task.
Keeping his intended audience in mind, he aimed for a tone of forthrightness that yet maintained discreet silence on the more repulsive details of what he had discovered. The open letter would be published in his paper, The Commoner, and also as a stand-alone pamphlet; perhaps in boards as a small book, on the Continent. There he would find support for such an enterprise, translators …
The light dimmed rapidly, but not till he heard the clattering ratchet of the steam-driven trolley climbing Boma’s cliffs did Thomas cease his efforts. That noise, he knew, presaged the arrival of his host, the Anglo-Flemish trader Roger Morel. Thomas didn’t trust him, didn’t trust anyone who profited from Leopold’s reign. He packed away his open letter and went to meet the trolley at the platform mere yards from Morel’s villa.
Four cars comprised the steam train’s entire length. Their iron fuselages had been painted a brilliant yellow with gaudy red, blue, and green trim. This jaunty coloring and the fortuitous semblance of a face in the alignment of their doors and windows lent the cars a charming air much like the illustration in a children’s book. Thomas at first had succumbed to this charm and to the undeniable romance of such a small machine so beautifully built—until his peregrinations brought home to him the human cost involved.
Beneath the leafy serrations of a grove of palms the cars disgorged themselves of their riders, black-clad white men replacing their hats and stepping carefully down the platform’s wooden stairway. Morel bared his head again in salute to his visitor. Exchanging meaningless pleasantries, the two returned to Morel’s home.
Mola took his master’s hat and gloves at the door, handing him a glass half-filled with a greenish liquid. Thomas made as if to return to his room, considering his social obligations for the evening met, but Morel would have none of it. “No, no, my friend, I insist,” he said, indicating with his drink the sitting room’s best chair.
Ensconced perforce on its cushioned mahogany, Thomas accepted from Mola a second glass. He sipped the unknown beverage with his customary suspicion as the boy slipped from the room. It was faintly bitter and contained no alcohol he could detect.
“So.” His host had assumed a seat on the divan, crossing his legs and clasping his hands over one knee. “You leave the day after the morrow?”
“Yes.” There were other colonies to explore, perhaps more truly paradisiacal, more suited to providing his colored brethren a new home. The ship would stop for Accra and Dakar, and he intended to travel from there to Tunis, Cairo—“That is my plan.”
“I advise you to change it.”
Thomas looked at Morel inquiringly. His eyes held a warning gleam that overrode Thomas’s mistrust of him. Thomas set the harmless glass down on the side table with a steady enough hand and spoke: “I fail to take your meaning, sir.”
“Ah. You have no confidence in me. That is well.” Morel nodded as if confirming a pet theory to himself, his chin doubling. “You are being watched. You must leave tonight and go—elsewhere. A different route, more direct.”
A different route? “To where?” No use attempting any further to dissemble.
“To England.”
Not home. “Not to America?”
“In England you will be safe—enough. But this continent—there are large stakes, and the holders of those stakes are at every hand. During supper this evening I overheard enough, my English being supposed more imperfect than it is, to warrant giving you this warning.”
Morel stood. “As well, I have a—a commission of sorts— If you will allow me to retrieve certain papers I wish you to convey—” He left and returned with a sheaf of documents—bills of lading, figures in long columns, maps. Thomas read them in growing dismay. Here was proof, if such would be needed, of what he had witnessed. Proof and beyond proof … The scope of the problem far exceeded what he had seen with his own eyes. Not thousands but tens of thousands were doomed unless the abominations practiced so freely in the Congo Free State were to cease, and cease now.
Liverpool, England, October 1890
Grim brick walls, dark with dead smoke, crowded Jackie Owen’s path. They huddled over him, blocking the grey clouds but not the icy rain. A drop ran beneath his collar. Another followed it. He shrugged irritably in his mackintosh but hurried on, pressing through a small group of workmen just freed from some nearby dock or warehouse.
It wasn’t the buildings’ fault. The narrowness of the ways between them, mere corridors, was what annoyed. So obviously outmoded. No room for machinery of any sort. Here was Victoria Street, a modern thoroughfare at last. Four lanes for carriages, business facades well set back but of more or less uniform height, meaning electric tramlines could easily be strung overhead between them. Striding rapidly along, an unconscious smile of contentment lurking behind his beard, Jackie saw only enough of his surroundings to avoid crashing into obstacles. He was lost, though continuing automatically on his course to St. George’s Hall. Lost in time, rapt in visions of things to come.
