Metropolis Read Free Page B

better view of the excitement was riding on the shoulders of her friend Fiona, her feet tucked into her partner’s armpits, her skirts bunched unladylike around her thighs, letting the cold air in. Beatrice was describing the scene to Fiona, who could see only snatches here and there through gaps in the milling crowd. Being pickpockets, they were always on the job, of course, but among many other things they were also girls, curious of a spectacle, and they’d long since ceased trying to work the crowd.
    Beatrice thought she saw a man emerge from the doorway and struggle briefly to stand, then ball up against the rushing water and disappear from view. Everyone else was watching the horses with their tails aflame, the windows shattering, the orange roil, but she stretched herself higher to confirm her sighting. Yes, there was a man in there, and she gesticulated to no one in particular. “Stop,” she shouted, “Stop!” But nobody heard. She was trying to flag down a fireman when she swayed too far sideways, and Fiona staggered and dropped her. She was too large a girl to be carried like that in the first place, even without all that flapping. She didn’t hit her head or break her arm, nothing grave, just landed on her back and lay gasping for breath, her arm still jabbing the air, pointing toward the stable door. She had become a small spectacle unto herself, and finally, when she got her breath back, her cries—“There’s someone alive in there, I saw someone trying to get out the door!”—at long last drew people’s attention to the man whom no one else had seen.
    If he’d heard her voice, he wouldn’t have recognized it, regardless of how he’d dreamed of her, or how many times she’d sung her wares in his neighborhood before. A song is not a shout. Even if he’d seen her, he might not have recognized her—she didn’t look exactly like the woman of his dream. The bridge of her nose had a larger bump, her eyes were deeper set, her chin was sharper. But no matter—he’d meet her again soon enough, and not find himself all that happy about it, if you must know. She couldn’t see his face—it was night, there was smoke, he was black with soot—and no, she wouldn’t have known him, but she’d find out who he was before long. But all that was later; this was now.
    Quite a crowd had gathered, and the collective eye of all those people followed the girl’s finger to the muddy figure writhing in limbo between fire and ice. Her announcement was repeated, mouth to ear, mouth to ear, until someone finally told a fireman, who told another, who briefly diverted the stream to a window above. Most in the crowd were silent with horror when they saw him; some cheered the survivor; others were more cynical, doubting aloud that he would live. Fires were common in New York—death, too.
    One of the onlookers was a dirty-blond man in the front row. He knew the stableman from Barnum’s, where he held some nebulous job that brought him through the stables now and then. He was talking to the boy at his side, loudly, so that anyone nearby could hear him—one of those people who seem to think everyone cares to know their opinions.
    “Look at that, Jimster—isn’t that the new stableboy, the German one? Jesus Christus—you think maybe he’s the firebug?” He scratched his neck as they watched a fireman run up and drag the stableman to the sidelines.
    “Come on, Mister U.,” said the boy. “Him?” But he wasn’t really paying attention; he was marveling at the water that came through the hydrant under fabulous pressure but started to freeze almost before it met the flames. It seemed the hoses were shooting snow.
    “Well, somebody did it, didn't they, Jimmy? Fire doesn’t light itself. Just look at it: Barnum’s burning down
again.
Just look at that blaze.”
    “Yeah,” said the boy, breathing out white puffs. “But you know what gets me? Where the Hell all that water comes from.” He was thinking of the