by Phil Foglio
It was Zeetha, while studying them closely, who realized: “Hey. These all feature the same woman.”
Theo examined them and nodded. “That is the Lady Lucrezia,” he confirmed. “I saw portraits of her in the family gallery back home.” He shook his head. “My mother said she always loved looking at herself.”
Everyone examined the pictures with a renewed interest. Lucrezia had been a curvaceous blonde, with large, heavy-lidded eyes, a small nose, and sensuous lips. In every picture, the artists had managed to convey a sense of mischief and the underlying cruelty that one found in the most pernicious of practical jokers.
“So that’s Agatha’s mom?” Moloch asked. “She doesn’t look that dangerous.”
“Nevertheless, that’s the woman who became the Other, destroyed a whole bunch of the Great Houses, and rules the Geisterdamen,” Krosp reminded him.
While everyone else examined the paintings, Higgs was slowly walking the perimeter of the room, tapping lightly on the walls. Finally, he stopped, reached out, and gave a nondescript section of paneling a firm shove. With a faint groan, a narrow door fell inward, raising a cloud of dust. He nodded in satisfaction. The head of a darkened stairway could be seen.
“I’ll bet that goes straight down to her hidden lab.”
Theo nodded. “A nice little chain of logic there, Mister Higgs. Well done.”
As they filed through the door, Zeetha laid a hand on Higg’s sleeve. “Wait a minute—how did you know where the master bedroom was?” she asked quietly.
Higgs looked at her with raised eyebrows. “It was on the map.”
The passage wound down and down and down. They descended in single file, with Higgs leading the way. Krosp was fascinated. “This thing must connect to secret doors throughout half the Castle.”
Moloch hunched his shoulders. “I’m just amazed there wasn’t a trap every two meters.”
Snaug considered this. “This is a place the Castle intelligence didn’t go. Maybe there weren’t any.”
Moloch snorted. “If I was one of the wackjobs who built this place, it’s where I’d make sure there were traps.”
Higgs listened as he stealthily disarmed yet another trap. He nodded. Young von Zinzer would fit in just fine.
Eventually they came to a door that, when opened, revealed the ruins of Lucrezia’s secret lab. They all exclaimed at the sight of the collapsed ceiling and immediately spread out to look for Agatha and the others.
Krosp and Moloch gazed back at the stairway, which continued on deeper into the earth.
Moloch scratched his beard. “So—there are secret rooms under the secret room?”
Krosp grinned. “Exploring this place is going to be very interesting.” He clapped Moloch on the back. “You’ll have to tell me all about it.”
Zeetha was searching near the pile of debris when she stumbled against an unstable rock—striking it with her shoulder. A small cascade of rubble began and Higgs yanked her out of the way just as a large stone block dislodged and fell. She looked at the cracked floor beneath it and turned to Higgs. “Thanks. I was careless.”
This was clearly not the response Higgs had been expecting. To cover, he gestured at the pile with the stem of his pipe. “We have to risk it to find the others, but this whole thing is unstable. Could come down at any time. You keep searching. I’ll keep my eye on you.”
Zeetha nodded, but at that moment there was a shout from Theo. “It’s okay! They all survived!” He was holding a wad of notes that had been placed on the same bench as the comatose Von Pinn.
“Then where are they?” Krosp asked.
“They’ve gone to fix the Castle.” He read further and frowned. “Ah. They say that the fake Heterodyne girl is still loose. Huh. Gil says she’s someone he met in Paris—and she’s a lot more dangerous than she looks,” He looked up. “They want us to take care of Madame Von Pinn.” He shook his head. “I can’t say they left us with the easier job.”
Moloch leaned into Fräulein Snaug. “Oh, I dunno. You mean I get to stay in a fortified secret room while a bunch of sparks race around trying to fix this death machine of a castle? Twist my arm.”
Snaug looked at his defenseless little arm and shivered. Soon enough, she promised herself. Aloud she said, “But first we’d better shore up this ceiling.”
By Von Pinn’s bedside, Theo was finishing up a quick examination and frequently referencing the sheaf of notes he’d found.
Sleipnir stood by passing instruments as requested. She bit her lip. “Poor Von Pinn. She looks so . . . vulnerable.”
Theo nodded. “At least she’s stable.” He laid down his stethoscope and shook his head in admiration. “This setup they put together is amazing. I think she could lie here for the next few months if she had to.”
“So what should we do?”
Theo again shuffled through the notes. “They didn’t leave me any specific instructions, which is flattering, but not particularly useful.” He flipped a page and then frowned for a second. “Ah. Look here,” he said, not showing Sleipnir anything. “Gil, Agatha, and Prince Sturmvoraus all worked on this. They’ve annotated each other back and forth.” A light seemed to go on inside his head. “Oh! Yes! I see! Amazing! And I think I can even improve this.” He looked up and his voice began to drop into the registers associated with the activation of the spark. “Yes! I’ve got everything I need already here! By the time you—” he pointed at Mister Higgs “—get that watchdog clank down here, I can have all of the preliminary work done and then some!” He wheeled about and gave Sleipnir a crazed grin. “I can do this!”
Sleipnir gave a tiny growl and slipped her arms around Theo’s neck. “Now that’s the brilliantly sparky beast I ran off with!”
Theo swept her up in his arms and cackled softly, “Care to assist me?”
Sleipnir gazed up at him through half lidded eyes. “Oooh. Yes, master.”
Moloch’s overly loud throat-clearing barely registered. “We’re just gonna leave. And . . . and go tell the others how to get down here.” He began backing away. “And we’re gonna do it really slowly.”
Zeetha nodded. “Yeah, and, um, we’re going to go with them.”
Higgs glanced down and noted the heat coming off the couple before him had spontaneously ignited his pipe. “And then we’d better go look for the Lady Heterodyne.”
Krosp waved a paw. “Eh. Too much running around. I’ll just wait here.” Two seconds later, he had been forcibly hauled out of the room by the collar of his coat. “What is your problem,” he groused as the party trudged back up the stairs. “Haven’t you ever watched that sort of thing? It’s hilarious!”
Privately, Zeetha had to agree with him. “Everybody deserves a bit of privacy.”
Krosp shrugged. “Whatever.”
Moloch stomped upwards, shaking his head. “Sparks,” he muttered. “They’re crazy, the lot of them.”
Beside him, Fräulein Snaug glanced at him coyly. “I think it’s romantic.”
He glanced at her with a touch of concern. “You’ve been hanging around sparks too much.”
“Oh, come now, Herr von Zinzer. Have you no romance in your soul?”
A look of mild regret passed briefly through the man’s eyes, then he shrugged. “Dunno. Never had a chance to find out.”
Hexalina looked skeptical. “No! A dashing fellow like yourself?”
Moloch snorted. “The word you want isn’t ‘dashing,’ it’s ‘fleeing.’”
“Oh, but surely there’s some girl somewhere who’s caught your eye?”
“Well . . . ”
Hexalina was astonished at the feelings that swept over her at this. “Yes?” she prodded.
Moloch concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, but his face slowly went red. “Well, I do kinda like Sanaa.”
Snaug stopped dead. “Sanaa? Sanaa Wilhelm?”
Moloch nodded. “I knew you’d know her, she’s been in here longer than me.” He glanced at the look on Snaug’s face
and gave a self-deprecating shrug. “I know. Crazy ain’t it?”
“She will die,” Snaug whispered.
Moloch blinked. “What was that?”
Snaug grinned maniacally and gave him a jaunty “thumbs up.” “I said, ‘never say die!’ You know? Good luck?” Her canines glinted in the light.
Moloch smiled. “Thanks.” Some vague feeling urged him to change the subject. “So how is it—working with Mittelmind?”
Snaug blinked. “Oh, he’s very supportive of my needs.”
“Yeah? That’s good.”
Snaug glanced down at her hands. The hands that would never be truly clean . . . “I wouldn’t call it good—”
At that moment there was a scream and a brilliant actinic flare from the room directly before them—the room where they had left the three scientists.
With a blur and a gust of displaced air, Zeetha and Higgs shot ahead. They paused in the doorway just long enough to see the scientists sprawled about and Zola furiously clutching at a smoking hand. She gave an animal snarl and, without hesitation, dove into the great shaft melted into the floor.
As she dropped, she produced her grappling gun and fired it upwards, catching a protruding beam. With a jerk, she swung herself to the side, released, and gracefully rolled into a pile of crumbling old furniture on a lower floor, then sprang to her feet and headed into the shadows.
Seconds later, Zeetha followed. She had leapt from floor to floor in a tightly controlled acrobatic fall. As she stood, she heard a cracking thump and spun to see Airman Higgs straightening up from a small impact crater. She smiled. His positioning made it look as if the airshipman had simply leapt down from several stories—her smile faltered. How had he—
“Where did she go?”
Zeetha’s thoughts were derailed and she pointed to the dusty floor where footprints could be seen. “That way.” But all too quickly, the trail disappeared. The two stood back-to-back and scrutinized the shadowy room. It was large and full of nooks and crannies. At least seven empty doorways led from it. Zeetha’s shoulders slumped. “I think we lost her.”
Higgs was peering up at a crenellated ledge that encircled the room. He pulled his pipe from his pocket and stuck it, unlit, into his mouth. “Think you’re right,” he sighed. Moving silently, while still speaking conversationally, he began looking under tables and behind tapestries. “I don’t know what she was doing upstairs, but I doubt she’ll be back.”
Zeetha kicked over a suspiciously fallen chair and studied where it had lain. “Probably, but that doesn’t help. While she’s alive, Agatha’s in danger.” With a shrug, she slid her swords back into their scabbards. “I’m going after her.” She looked Higgs in the face. “I . . . can’t order you to come with, but I’d like it if you did.”
Higgs looked at her and moved his pipe from one side of his mouth to the other. He nodded. “It seems like she’s out to get young Wulfenbach, too, so I don’t think he’ll mind.” He gave her arm a brief pat. “Let’s ship out.”
Back upstairs, the two minions and Krosp were cautiously peering around the doorway. The room was in shambles, although, Moloch had to admit, with three sparks working this was a perfectly normal state of affairs. Even so, there were signs that things had gotten out of hand.
Several racks of equipment had been overturned, and it appeared that most of the electronic components were smoking. A thick smell of charred insulation and ozone filled the room. Little helper clanks were lying about everywhere, inert.
“Doctor!” Fräulein Snaug called out. “Doctor?”
A groan caught Moloch’s attention and he dashed over to a heap of parts and rags that stirred, revealing itself to be Professor Mezzasalma. Moloch knelt beside him and fished a small flask of moonshine out of his apron. A sip and the professor coughed and opened his eyes. “Ah, von Zinzer.” He shuddered and his metal legs flexed. “Help me up, my boy.” Again his legs spasmed. Mezzasalma swore. “That electromagnetic pulse has shorted out my legs.” He waved towards a bench, but Moloch had already fetched a toolbox. The professor grunted in thanks and used a screwdriver to pry open an access panel in the control module.
“What happened?”
The professor was wrenching free a row of fuses. His movements slowed as he remembered. “We . . . yes, we were working, and suddenly—” fury filled his face “—that’s right! And that blasted adventuress, the one claiming to be the Heterodyne! She popped up out of nowhere, waving a great huge marshmallow gun!11 She killed Diaz—”
“Wait . . . with a marshmallow gun?”
“She clubbed him to death with it.”
“Okay. That would work.”
“Obviously, she meant to kill us all—”
A heartfelt keening arose. Moloch saw Fräulein Snaug on her knees, cradling the still form of Doctor Mittelmind in her arms. “No,” she sobbed softly, “Noooo . . . ” Moloch noticed the machinery within the late doctor’s chest was also smoking.
“Luckily, Mittelmind has a pulse cannon built into that contraption of his.” Mezzasalma shrugged. “It killed him, of course, but her gun blew up.”
Moloch looked back at the late doctor with new eyes. “That . . . that was really brave.”
Mezzasalma rolled his eyes. “Oh, please. Don’t start. He’ll be smug enough about it as it is.”
Moloch blinked. “What?”
“Oh. You didn’t know?” Mezzasalma sighed as he slid a final fuse in and snapped the cover closed. Green running lights began to bloom along his legs. “Mittelmind is part machine.” He waved a hand to indicate the rest of the Castle. “He’s died several times in here. Claims we’re just interacting with his ghost. He’s made sure that Fräulein Snaug is very well trained in his personal repair and revivification routine.”
Moloch now saw the girl had the old scientist hooked up to a battered-looking metal box. She had slipped on a pair of thick rubber gloves. With a shout of “CLEAR!” she threw a small knife switch, sending a jolt of power through Mittelmind’s inert frame, causing it to jerk and twitch. By the time she had powered down the device and removed the cables, the old man was slowly sitting up, his inevitable grin reestablishing itself upon his lined face. With a squeal, Fräulein Snaug hugged him, relief suffusing her features.
Mittelmind reached up and gently patted her arm. “Thank you, my child. That was exhilarating, as always.”
Moloch offered him a hand up, and the old scientist gingerly climbed to his feet.
“Do you do this a lot?” Moloch asked him. “Don’t you get memory loss?”12
Mittelmind grinned and pulled a small battery out from the recesses of his chest. “As long as I maintain a small emergency power source while I’m dead, I manage to keep my original personality quite intact.”
Moloch peered at the battery. “Wait—see that corrosion at the tip? This battery’s been dead for ages.”
Mittelmind examined it and frowned. “Whoops,” he muttered.
Krosp waved them over to the last body. “What about Professor Diaz?”
Mezzasalma, who was now back on his feet, daintily stepped over to them, shaking his head. “His head is totally smashed in, I’m afraid. Dead as a doornail.”13
Mittelmind shrugged philosophically. “Sans appel.”
Krosp frowned. “But I thought sparks . . . ”
Mezzasalma shrugged. “Well, I could turn him into an undead mechanical spider.”
Mittelmind perked up. “Ooh! Now that I could work with! I could condition it to obey our every command!”
Mezzasalma’s eyes began to shine. “Ah, but if we make it a giant undead mechanical spider . . . ”
“Big enough to inspire fear in the general populace?”
“My dear sir. You think too small! Big enough that it could construct webs that would trap airships!”
“Inspired! Never again will we lack for research subjects!”
Moloch rubbed a weary hand against his temples. “I cannot wait to get out of here.”
Kro
sp snorted. “Good luck with that.” He continued. “I mean, listen to these guys. Did they do any work on that clank?”
This drew an indignant squawk from Professor Mezzasalma. “You impertinent construct! We most certainly did! In fact, I’d venture to say it is complete!”
Moloch looked at him skeptically. “Really. I know sparks work fast, but—”
Mezzasalma shrugged. “Well, we were ably assisted by the Lady’s little clanks. A pity none of them survived.”
Moloch had noticed drifts of the little mechanisms scattered about the room. Victims of Mittlemind’s pulse cannon. Good to know that there’s something that can keep them in check, he mused. He realized Mezzasalma was still talking.
“And, well, you know how it goes when one is caught up in the grip of the spark . . . ”
Moloch interrupted him. “Just for the sake of clarity, assume I’m not barking mad.”
To Snaug’s astonishment, Mezzasalma didn’t even look offended at this, but merely dipped his head in acknowledgement. “Very well, when you build on another spark’s work, you get little flashes of inspiration. You see . . . possibilities you wouldn’t have if you had tackled the problem on your own.”
Moloch remembered Theo’s reaction to the notes he’d found downstairs and nodded in understanding.
Mezzasalma continued. “Now combine that with these marvelous little clanks; they were so useful. We merely had to explain what needed to be done, and they attacked it on a dozen different fronts simultaneously. Plus they allowed us to implement any number of extemporaneous ideas . . . ”
Again Moloch held up a hand. “Yeah, yeah. So it’s done.”
A giant metal paw crashed to the ground behind him. Mezzasalma grinned. “And we made improvements!”