by Mark Cain
I’m allergic to coconut. Just a little bit of it on my skin will give me hives. That’s why I always get smacked with a coconut cream pie as opposed to, say, Boston Cream or lemon or even butterscotch. On the other hand, Orson’s pie of punishment was lemon cream. He hated lemon, because the juice made his eyes sting.
I wiped the pie from my face, using a bit of the cream to extinguish an errant lock of hair that was still burning. The pie and bolt of Hellfire at least proved my sincerity, but I still felt like a creep. I looked up mournfully at my friend.
Orson panted for a second, trying to warm his tongue. Finally he spoke. “Just stop with the puppy dog eyes. Fine. I forgive you.”
“You sure we’re okay?”
The big man helped me to my feet. “Yeah. So what was the purpose of this little stunt with the pipe, aside from providing you with some amusement?”
“It shows us that the cooling level is staying constant, at least between here and Nine. We’ll check farther up, but I bet we’ll get the same result.”
“What would have happened if the coolant was out of whack?”
“If it weren’t cold enough, you wouldn’t have stuck. If it were too cold, your tongue would have ripped out of your mouth.” Hurriedly I added, “Don’t worry. It would have grown back.”
“Swell.”
“Really, Orson, I was almost positive that wouldn’t happen. I’m virtually certain the entire problem stems from the burners failing in the boiler room down on Nine. We have to check out the rest of the system to be thorough, but I’m pretty sure as we move up Hell’s Circles, towards Gates Level, we’ll find the blue pipe stays a constant temperature and the red one keeps getting cooler.”
“Maybe, but next time, you can use your own tongue.”
“Fair enough.” I determined I’d only do that one more time, though, and that would be on Level Two, where Erebus was. Any more checking was probably a wasted effort, since Nine's pipe was the right temperature, but Beezy liked us to be meticulous. Still, if Two, Five and Nine all passed the tongue test, our boss would probably be satisfied.
It took several hours – even with BOOH’s help – to zigzag our way across the Netherworld, checking pipes, ducts, repeaters and so forth. We didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, convincing us that the problem was in the boiler room. It simply wasn’t producing enough heat to keep the system in balance.
Bik watched our day of diagnostics from his place in my pocket protector. He’d hardly said a thing since we’d left our office.
BOOH whisked us back to the trailer. Orson seemed to have gotten more or less used to flying BOOH Air, but he had some work to do on his landings. Once again, he tripped and sprawled on his face. He was cursing a blue streak as I helped him up.
As soon as I opened the office door, Bik launched from my pocket protector and started a frenzied buzzing around the office.
“Hey, Bik. You doing okay?” I asked
“Yeah,” he said, not bothering to stop his aerial calisthenics. “I’m just bored. I don’t know why Grandpa was so keen on me going with you. I don’t see that there’s much for me to do.”
“Well, you never know. I’m sure you’ll be of some help to us.” Though for the life of me, I couldn’t figure how. At least he was small and stayed out of the way.
Orson and I spent the next hour drinking coffee and staring at the HVAC schematic. I didn’t see any new information to be gleaned from it. “Say, Bik?”
The fire giant was sitting on the edge of my desk, swinging his legs back and forth idly. “Yes?”
“Could you pull your grandfather up on the flameophone again? I want to ask him a question.”
“Sure.” The little guy stood up on the desktop and swirled his hand before him. A disc of flame formed, and it got bigger and bigger until I could plainly see the boiler room and the giant Surtr sitting in his chair. He was back in his Thinker pose.
The fire giant looked up. “Bik, what is it?”
“It’s Mr. Minion, Grandpa. He wants to talk to you.”
“Well, put him on.”
I leaned down and was face to face with a bespectacled Surtr. “I’m still checking on the status of the system. Everything from Level Nine on up is working perfectly, including the cooling system running from Erebus. But the main heating pipe coming from the boiler room gets progressively colder the farther up you get.”
“No shit,” Surtr grumbled. “What else would you expect, with the burners shutting off down here?”
“Have you had a chance to inspect them … oh, and what about the fuel lines?”
“Yes, of course. I checked all of that. What do you think I’ve been doing since this started, sitting on my ass?”
Well, that’s kind of what it had looked like just a second ago. “Is there anything broken down there?”
“No, not a single thing. I’ve checked every burner. Even the ones that have shut off are in perfect working condition.”
“And the lines?”
“All clear.” Surtr’s face was a mask of irritation. “Listen, sonny, you don’t need to tell me how to do my job. I’ve been taking care of the boiler room since your great great etc. grandfather humped up an ancestor for you in some hay loft back in the old country.”
“Hey! No need to get offensive.”
“Then quit questioning my competence. Everything is working perfectly down here.”
“Except for all those burners that continue to fail, you mean.”
Surtr frowned at me. I swear if he could have reached through the flameophone and popped me one, he would have. “I don’t care what it looks like. The problem isn’t down here. Look elsewhere. Surtr out!” The giant waved his hand, and the fiery disc disappeared.
“Is he always so rude?” I asked Bik.
“Yes, usually,” he confessed. “Even with me, he’s not very nice. I don’t think Grandpa’s ever been known for his charm.”
Orson walked to the coffeepot, to discover it empty. “Considering he was supposed to engulf the world in flames at Ragnarok, I’d say that’s putting it mildly.”
“So, the system is working perfectly, and yet it’s not. Great. Just great.” I folded up the drawing and stuffed it in the inside breast pocket of my coveralls.
“We need a fresh perspective,” I said, standing up. “I’m going down to Seven to consult with Pinkerton.”
Orson dumped the grounds of the Mr. Coffee into the trash, refilling the paper filter with some more from the can of Yuban. It wasn’t always Yuban. Sometimes it was Maxwell House or Folgers or even Chock full o’ Nuts, but they all tasted the same: like hell. “So you’re back to thinking something more than a system failure is involved?”
“Yeah. Beezy implied it was possible when he and Satan first briefed me on this job. Our boss never believed his system was capable of failing on its own.”
“Splat! Splat! Splat! Splat!” An all too familiar sound was coming from the pipe above my inbox.
Orson looked with worry at the rapidly growing pile of work orders. “Well, we better get this figured out quickly. As Hell gets colder, even more things seem to be breaking than usual. Our workload’s bad enough already, and it’s not like we get paid time and a half.”
I nodded. “While I’m gone, why don’t you and Bik triage the work orders?”
“Right.” Orson was used to this kind of work, but Bik looked at the work orders with distaste. “Can I go with you instead? Grandpa said to help you with the HVAC system. He didn’t say anything about an unpaid internship in Plant Maintenance.”
“Well,” I said with surprise. “That was a pretty snarky retort. And here I thought you were such a polite, accommodating young feller.”
The fire giant stood on the desk, his fists on his hips. The envelope of flame that usually surrounded him flared. “I’m at least a hundred years older than you, so watch who you’re calling ‘young feller.’”
I looked at him mildly. “I guess bad tempers run in your family.”
<
br /> Bik flushed crimson, which was a pretty neat trick for someone already encased in fire. “Yeah, they do. Sorry.”
“No problem,” I said, holding open my pocket protector. “If you want to go with me, that’s fine.”
“Thanks,” Bik said, flaming off just before dropping into my pocket.
Chapter 8
A great storm raged above the ocean on Level Seven. We arrived just in time to see a monstrous tsunami slam into the pier of the port city where Allan Pinkerton, one of history’s great detectives and a close friend of mine, was enduring his eternal punishment. The giant wave shattered the wooden planks of the docks and swamped all the vessels that were moored there. A few terrified sailors and dockworkers managed to get to higher ground, but behind the wave, the enormous tentacles of the Kraken erupted from the water’s surface. They snagged the poor damned souls and dragged them down to Davy Jones’ Locker.
After the tsunami hit, the rain ceased, and the ocean turned from a roiling chaos back to its normal state, which was still pretty stormy. A fog immediately descended on the city, a blanket of moist air so dense that it hid the buildings.
“Say, BOOH, do you think you can find Pinkerton’s shop in this mess?”
BOOH snorted in a way that to me implied, “Of course I can, you dummy.” Then he cleared his throat and let out a “Skree!” The pitch of his scream quickly rose, octave by octave, until I could no longer hear it.
“Ouch!” Bik exclaimed from my pocket.
“You can still hear his screech?”
“Yeah. We fire giants have really good ears.”
“I’d say.”
BOOH panned the city before him, connected with something, and flew toward it. In a second we were hovering before the plastic skyscraper that was next to Pinkerton’s small wooden workshop.
Well, that was clever. Sound must bounce back differently from plastic than from other substances, and the skyscraper was the only plastic building I’d ever seen in Hell, or on Earth for that matter. I always knew BOOH was smart, but I sometimes forgot just how smart. Satan had told me once he thought BOOH was more intelligent than I was. Maybe Big Red was right.
BOOH deposited me on the pavement before the workshop and prepared to shoot to the rooftop, where he waited for me the last time I had a tête-à-tête with Pinkerton down on Seven. “Hey, why don’t you come inside? I’m sure Allan would be glad to see you.” BOOH shrugged and dropped to the concrete beside me. We walked in together, though BOOH had to scrunch down pretty far to get inside the door.
“Bloody Hell!” Pinkerton grumbled. “Ah cannae see a damn theeng!” He was working on a barrel in the dim light of his workshop, a small oil lamp providing him his only illumination. Allan’s damnation was to make wooden barrels throughout eternity. He was bad at the work, and he could use all the help he could get.
“Hey, Bik. You said you wanted to be of some use. Do you think you could make like a lightbulb?”
“No problem. It’s hard to keep my flame out for too long anyway.” Bik flew up into the rafters and made like a small sun.
“Och, mon!” Pinkerton exclaimed, as he shielded his eyes from the glare. “What kinna creetur be tha’ totie?”
“Allan, it’s me, Steve. Can you drop the blarney?”
“Blarney’s Irish, not Scottish,” Pinkerton said in perfect King’s English. Or Queen’s. I really had no idea the gender of the person currently sitting on the British throne. Allan often affected a Scottish accent, since he was a Scot by birth. Yet he had lived in the States for a good portion of his life and been down in Hell even longer, where most of his friends were Yanks. He’d long ago lost his accent, but he used it frequently, thought it was colorful. I thought it was irritating, and he knew it.
“Meet Bik,” I said, pointing up at the bright light. “He’s a fire giant.”
Allan frowned. “Looks a wee small for … ”
“He’ll grow.”
“Ah. The light’s good, though. Give me a minute to finish up.” Pinkerton tucked his head back in the barrel, cursed a few more times then stood up. “There. Done,” he said, taking off his leather apron and hanging it on a nearby nail.
“Better?” I asked.
“No. I was trying to make it better, but I only made it worse, which is what usually happens. At least I’m done making it worse, though. A craftsman I’m not.” Pinkerton looked at the shoddy barrel and sighed then stepped forward to shake my hand. “How are you, Steve? I haven’t seen you since that day at Gates Level, when we stopped the Free Hellions from using the Stairway to Paradise to escape Hell.”
“I’m doing okay, I guess,” I said, plopping into a rickety chair at the back of his shop. Allan sat in its twin. Between the two was a small round table.
Allan squinted at the doorway. “BOOH? Is that you? Great to see you! Come over and have a drink with us.” BOOH dragged his giant carcass across the shop’s floor. Fortunately, the room was large and the ceiling high; BOOH had no problem navigating from the entrance to our table in the back.
“What about you, Bik?” Allan yelled into the rafters. “Care for a draught?”
“No thanks!” came the reply “I don’t drink. Can’t really.”
“Sorry to hear that. Drinking problem?”
“Nothing like that,” said our light bulb. “Alcohol vaporizes on contact with me. Sometimes I can get down a little of my grandpa’s kerosene, but that’s about it.”
“Makes sense,” Pinkerton said, as he took out a bottle of Scotch and a couple of glasses.
“Uh, none for me, either, thanks. I’m working.” Since coming to Hell, I'd never had qualms about drinking on the job, but it was a good excuse. I’d sampled Allan’s Scotch before. It was more like motor oil than liquor.
Allan shrugged. “Suit yourself, Steve. But I promised BOOH a drink, and a drink he shall have.” Pinkerton got out of his chair and grabbed a bucket and a gasoline can from the corner of his workshop. He poured about a gallon of dark liquid from the can into the bucket then set it before the giant bat.
“So, a fine, fifty-year-old Scotch?”
“Hah. Funny, Steve. It’s the best I can do, and you know it. Besides … ”
“Yeah, I know. It’s the thocht that counts, aye laddie?”
Allan chuckled as he filled his own glass. “Not bad, Steve. To your health, BOOH.”
The bat deftly picked up the bucket in the, relatively speaking, small hands attached to his wings. He took a big swig and burped mightily. Then he slammed back another swallow.
Allan laughed. “Looks like BOOH likes my brew!”
“Nice rhyme, Allan.”
“It’s good to see you, Steve, but I’m guessing this isn’t a social call.”
“No. I need your help. Oh, and I changed my mind. I’ll have what BOOH’s drinking.” I thought it might be better than the stuff in the bottle. Allan shrugged and used the gasoline can to pour some whisky in my glass.
“To good friends,” I said, indicating both Allan and BOOH. Normally, a toast like that would have gotten me in trouble with Hell’s Management, but I figured BOOH’s special status might provide some cover. Apparently it did: no pies, no Hellfire.
“Here, here!” Allan said.
“Skree!” said BOOH, and we all drank.
I only coughed for about five seconds.
“Are you okay, Steve?”
“Yeah,” I sputtered. The liquid wasn’t any better than the stuff in the bottle. Still. “Pour me another round.” I must have had a death wish. Well, perhaps not. That would have been redundant.
“BURPPP!”
The workshop filled with a noxious odor. BOOH held out his empty bucket.
“Whew! That was one major belch! Still, I’m glad you like the brew.” Pinkerton poured out another gallon for our batty friend.
“Skree!”
“You’re welcome.” Allan turned to me. “So, aside from sopping up all of my Scotch, to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”
&nbs
p; I looked down at my fresh pour of motor oil, debating about whether or not to take another slug. “What the hell,” I murmured, and slammed it back in a single gulp.
When the coughing ended, I squeezed out a few words. “I need your advice.”
Allan had dark, piercing eyes, the kind that seemed able to penetrate a dense fog or see the most nuanced expression even in the dark. As he turned those sharp eyes on me, I knew they mirrored the keen mind that lay behind them. I was glad to have Pinkerton as a friend and advisor. “What is the problem?” he asked.
I explained things to him, pulling out the HVAC schematic for illustration. “Allan,” I said, as we both stared down at the complex pattern of lines and circles on the sheet, “I just don’t know how it can fail. I now know where the failure point is, which is down in the boiler room, but Surtr, the old geezer running the place, assures me that nothing is broken down there.”
“And yet the system has failed anyway. So, why come to me?”
I got out of my chair and walked over to Allan’s wall of tools. I picked up one of the adzes.
“Careful with that,” Pinkerton warned. “You’ll cut … ”
“Ow!”
“ … yourself.”
I put the blade back in its place and turned to Allan. “I think,” I said, sucking the blood from my finger, “that someone has caused the failure deliberately.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s really no way I can see for it to fail.”
“Now why do you think that? Why would someone want it to fail?”
I shrugged. “Dunno. It’s just a gut feeling.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Allan said from his chair. “I mean, what would be the motive for someone wanting the system to fail?”
Pinkerton got up and walked over to a small portable blackboard that was against one of the workshop walls. It was the kind that could be spun around, so someone could write on both sides of it. Allan, during a moment of boredom, had drawn a “Kilroy was here” illustration on the front. For some reason, he wished to preserve it, so he pivoted the board to the other side, which was blank. He drew three vertical lines, spaced evenly apart, creating four columns. At the top of the first column he wrote the word, “Suspects.” Above the others, he wrote “Motive,” “Means,” “Opportunity.” Each time he made a stroke on the board, the infamous chalk Screech resonated, putting my teeth on edge. This was, after all, a blackboard in Hell, so it stood to reason that it could do nothing but make that obnoxious grating sound. I tried to tune it out.