Despite his avowed aversion to her, the footpad feels the thrust of regret’s rapier in his wrinkled liver. Poor Clarice! Has unrequited love forced her to be dashed from this domestic height? But Darktree flatters himself; this is no plot to cancel her life. She drops directly into the gondola of a passing dirigible, to the consternation of its occupants. A struggle ensues, in which her handbag plays the leading role, and postal workers are knocked over the side. Now she is the sole passenger of the craft, pulling on the rudder and gunning the engine to steer it to the other side of the city. Redundant postmen leak in the gutter.
A cheer arises from the citizens standing near Darktree. He is less sure of Clarice’s motives; they are usually more selfish than this. Does she intend to take on the whole Post Office? But no, she is soon lost to sight, refusing to engage with other balloons. Perhaps she means to bore through the canopy to pocket the gas inside? His bewilderment is cracked by the arrival of Signor Udolpho, rolling a barrel in a foreign velocity and whipping its circumference with his moustaches. “Ho there, signor! I have the self-raising at last. It was a coquettish flour to acquire. The cellar of my pâtisserie was empty at first; I made a circuit and nothing was available. All the barrels were dry. Then I heard a deafening rumble and it flooded through the trapdoor.”
“Nay, sir!” cries Darktree. “ ’Tis a blend of gunpowder and narcotic from the Opium-Arsenal, released by a wicked lady. Do not use for cakes, lest they be more self-raising than you might expect. ’Twas my fault the trapdoor was left open; I yanked it.”
The pastry-chef is devastated. “Then muffins as big as mules are no longer feasible. Ginger biscuits must suffice. What thinks your innards, signor? Will they accept such a pathetic substitute or will they declare vendettas against your lips?” His tears are like tributaries of custard, encouraging Darktree’s kindness to again dominate his barbarism. Licking the cheeks of the virtuoso with a rag tongue, he sits him on the barrel, while parcels burst in the vicinity.
“Ginger biscuits are the fuel of my forays.”
“I am pleased to hear that. But the self-raising has still deceived me. I rolled him all this way like a brother.” Signor Udolpho is a stoic at heart; he has been betrayed by too many ingredients to expect them to be faithful. As long as they mix in hotel kitchens, away from his mouth, he is willing to turn a blind taste bud. “Was my journey wasted, signor? Does there remain no crumb of hope?”
More clock towers topple and the roof sniggers. Darktree is blessed with an idea: “I’ll compensate you.”
“The very suggestion! How dare you? Signor Self-Raising would never be bailed by a scoundrel. And what shall you use for money? You look the sort who cannot afford clean socks.”
“Here is my payment!” The footpad lifts his sandbag and attacks the virtuoso. There is no need to aim at his body; knocking off his tall hat is enough to cause serious injury. Clarice’s earlier wound explodes from its confinement, like music from a purged bagpipe. Signor Udolpho faints and his barrel, kicked by the footpad toward the Warrior-Chefs, strikes Herr I. M. Wright and turns him over. The ballistics expert gropes weakly for his detached spectacles, which are like theodolites. Conrad has sunk into a depression and Darktree has problems communicating his notion. He dances on the holed pots: “Mortars!”
“What do you mean, sir? Are you suggesting I demand a refund? But I purchased them in Naples last year.”
The footpad has always been able to see objects hiding inside other items. “Nay! They were grand cauldrons once. But now, empty and drilled, they are mortars. Here is the propellant; for shells we have harpy eggs. By destroying the balloons we’ll save our lives. The ceiling is close to collapse. I’m too senescent to die!”
Simultaneously, the Warrior-Chefs perceive his stratagem. From this moment events proceed at an accelerated pace. While they select and peel degrees for spicy cauldron angles, Darktree invades the barrel, scooping measures of powder with his tricorne. One brimful is enough for unwashed mortars. The mixture of explosive and drug smells like mascarpone sauce. The footpad packs every charge into the pots with his undamaged boot and Conrad carefully lowers the eggs, which fit perfectly, on top. They work to the tinkle of crumbling clock towers, like spiders netting a celesta. Finally the dozen cauldrons are ordered in a line, each leaning as close to the vertical as a boxer’s sneeze.
“The artillery is ready. But we lack fuses!”
The footpad rummages in his pocket and extracts the muffin he stole from Signor Udolpho. “My coat was suffused with opium-gunpowder and this cake’s beard is highly combustible. Shave with cleaver, chop thinly into twelve strings and insert in holes.”
“Splendiferous! But how will we light them?”
Darktree holds up the microscope lens awarded him by Xelucha Dowson Laocoön. “Fetch Herr I. M. Wright over here! I’ll focus the heat from his glower onto the fluff. That should do the trick.” When the Warrior-Chefs drag the ballistics expert to the side of a cauldron, Darktree positions the concave disc midway between frown and fuse, screeching as the goatee ignites. “ ’Tis a success! Let’s try another: there is scant time left to post them. Cover your eyes and ego.”
With a sulphurous but dreamy roar, the first harpy egg hurtles into the sky, leaving behind a smoking and wrecked pot. Spinning close to one of the highest balloons, it hatches and releases a yolky abomination: an awkward hybrid of falcon, demon and housewife. With an inaugural cackle, the monster opens its eyes, spreads its undeveloped wings and flaps with unlikely grace in an ascending spiral. Obviously too immature for such a manoeuvre, it collides with the ceiling, scrabbling at the underside but failing to find purchase. Then it drops with exhausted wings toward the closest perch: the canopy of the balloon. The postmen in the gondola can only scream as the harpy’s talons rip asunder the feeble sphere, sending the deflated contraption down to entangle itself in another craft, which is floating beneath. Both plummet in a colourful delivery which hits the city’s doormat with a satisfying thud.
The second egg is even more fatal. Pointed directly at a dirigible, it passes clean through the canopy, strikes a balloon behind it, bounces upwards, hatches under a basket and instantly clings to the wicker base. The occupants attempt to drive it off with sacks of postcards, but these beings are far too tenacious. Its claws tear the basket’s bottom and the rebels are also dropped to their doom. Oblivious, dangling by one talon, the harpy remains with the craft as it drifts into the path of a comrade and is shredded by the propellers. All four vehicles are erased from the revolution’s final draft. Citizens yowl with savage glee and the footpad realises he is on the brink of becoming a local hero. Nor does the third egg disappoint, sweeping another couple of balloons from the air. Fourth and fifth battle with each other for one title: duchess of carnage. Both harpies compete for the same dirigibles and—not possessing teeth—gum the indentured crews to alkaline mush.
With the sixth, seventh and eighth eggs, the insurgency undergoes a peculiar alchemy and transmutes into a lost cause. Darktree brushes soot and shards of iron from his shoulders as he detonates the cauldrons. The Warrior-Chefs torment Herr I. M. Wright from one mortar to another; he is delirious with the strain placed upon his glower. Balloons fall to earth in a myriad of ways, like acrobats trained in rival schools. With desperate courage, the postmen hover over Hauser Park, attempting to kill Darktree and Conrad with the excess-charge parcels, which are almost as dangerous to users as the enemy. Most land harmlessly on the roofs of tents, force broken by the soft cloth. One splashes in a bucket of soup and is boiled safe with potatoes and onions. The ninth, tenth and eleventh eggs merely tidy up the massacre, leaving only two balloons still aloft: the distant one crewed by Clarice, which has taken no part in the revolution, and an immense zeppelin with cumulus manners.
Dropping slowly, this gassy contraption threatens to squash them in a final act of revenge. Darktree labours to turn the twelfth mortar, but
the range is too close. The egg will ricochet and hit them instead. What are they to do? The footpad remembers the primed catapult and orders the Warrior-Chefs to load the final cauldron onto the spoon. By lighting its fuse and shooting it to the other side of Chaud-Mellé, they will be able to attack the zeppelin from afar, giving the harpy time to hatch when it flies back over. Once the mortar is resting on the onager, Darktree aims the contraption at the furthest ice wall, angles the microscope lens and waits for the fuse to ignite, but Herr I. M. Wright’s glower has all been used up. Thrashing the ballistics expert with his sandbag to restore it, the footpad only manages to beat him unconscious. Aghast, he cries: “But we need just one more spark! ’Sblood!”
In the growing shadow, Conrad prepares to meet his baker: the deity who cooks souls beyond the swing doors of the horizon. “No point arguing with fate’s waiters, sir. We’ve eaten the final course of our existence. Time to pay bills and depart quietly.”
“I’ve not consulted the wine list yet!”
At that very moment, a resounding clang echoes across the city. The bells of the chronometers are striking four o’clock. One at a time, they crack, dissolving back into Chaud-Mellé like snakes who shed their skins only to realise they are really worms. This is the camel which broke the sand dune’s back; the process accelerates until no pillars remain. Hours and minutes settle on the cobbles, as if they care to sleep on stones. A pendulum the size of an archangel’s limb whirls down the Rue Discord and assaults the stave of that street. Quavers quiver in attics. And highest of all, above the truncated cathedral, a chord so cold that its separate notes are packed together, rather than connected to stalks like tropical arpeggios, heralds a cryolite opera…
“So the Post Office has won after all!”
Unsupported, the ice ceiling begins to drop, compressing the air as it does so. Darktree feels a pressure in his ears. The Warrior-Chefs are writhing on the ground, together with most citizens. The footpad marvels at the smooth way it falls, inexorable and spiked with icicles. Yes, the whole city will be impaled; all the rickety houses and personalities. If only he had Hannah to hide under! Conrad bends to his knees, grabbing at Darktree’s belt to steady himself. Normally a compacted atmosphere would be able to drain through Chaud-Mellé’s single gate, the hole in the ice, but it has been plugged with refugees. The weight of air increases until even the footpad, who has submarine ethics, starts buckling. Pressure is soon high enough to knead dough, caress gargoyles or lock broken chests. Darktree marks its guiltless progress.
“ ’Tis high enough to crack barometers!”
A mile or two distant, in response to his prediction, a roof bursts open and a gigantic figure takes flight. Leaking mercury, rotors humming like choirboys who have forgotten the words to a hymn, laughing insanely as it rises, the VTOL Hermes booms: “Free at last!” Despite the force on his tongue, Conrad clicks it savagely.
“In the name of ravioli, what is that?”
“A heathen deity, sir. ’Twas converted into a scientific instrument but now has lapsed. Poor Madame Ligeia! She won’t realise it has escaped until next month—it was her patron.”
The collision between descending ceiling and ascending avatar burns itself into Darktree’s consciousness like the chance encounter between a paddle steamer and a brothel for comets. Rotors and ice grind their hips, snapping the heels of velocity. This tango is a stalemate: the weight of the roof and the strength of the god balance each other out. The ceiling is held steady at half its original height. Citizens and visitors regain their feet, shielding eyes as the VTOL Hermes overheats. Cracks run over the ice like lecturers who are late for work; as the deity glows hotter, the roof begins to melt. The footpad’s appreciation of this spectacle is marred by a dour fellow who charges into the knot of Warrior-Chefs, coat stinking with mythic dung and giblets.
“You cheated me! These aren’t amethysts at all!” He casts a handful of sultanas into Conrad’s face. “You’d better pay properly, dolt!” Among the adjacent stalls is one stacked with dried fruits. “I’ll take some of these rubies instead.” He overturns a barrel of figs while the leader of the Warrior-Chefs tugs at his sleeves.
“Come now, Joachim Slurp, those are emeralds.”
Rodin Guignol, the artist on the stalactite, has come to a pause at the summit of the central marquee. Letting go, he slides down the fabric and soars over the rim of the temporary roof, landing on the zookeeper. Slurp is knocked into a puddle of his own saliva; Guignol sits like coal among the shards of his carved waistcoat. Weeping flinty tears, he tries to reconstruct its strata and fossils.
Darktree leans over to assist him, but a deluge of water sweeps the slivers away. The VTOL Hermes has blown itself apart, vaporising the ice and forming the largest raincloud since Noah visited Liverpool. Droplets of liquid are sewn into streamers by their ferocity. A flash flood picks up the zookeeper and sculptor and carries them off, to suburbs unknown. The zeppelin is battered to a forced mooring on the central marquee. The footpad struggles into the storm, tricorne absorbing the fluid. What can happen next? Conrad shouts and points beyond the park. From the mouth of Cortázar’s Squeeze, numerous objects are spewed: geometric solids, weird shapes. The drops of rain hammer punctuation all over the Warrior-Chef’s amazement, like a staccato grammatist.
“The water. It’s filling the underground caverns. Ancient artefacts are floating to the surface in pairs.”
A green pyramid drifts past like ossified nougat. Was Madame Ligeia right about the High Sessatrams of Sitnalta? If so, this might be a kind of time machine. Emptying the sand from his sack, Darktree scoops it up, justifying the snatch with a pout: “I’ve been a failure as a footpad and have naught to show for the energy I’ve expended. So I’ll take this as a souvenir of my Chaud-Mellé residency.”
Something hairy and flatulent drops through the cloud, landing near him. “Hurrah! ’Tis Hannah! She was on the roof all along, looking for an alternative entrance!” With a roar of delight, he mounts her to keep his knees dry. Conrad flounders in the current, but the pair ignore him. Now two more characters enter to terminate the melodrama. Trampling citizens who stand in her way, Hannah suddenly rears in horror. The footpad finds himself peering down on his exact double, stiff and malevolent under the downpour. Puppet and human click dark teeth, then the doppelgänger wades to the central marquee, climbs the guy ropes and enters the zeppelin. It is a classic skyjacking—the puppet demands to be taken to Cork in Ireland. With a scowl, the pilot obeys and casts away.
Coppelia de Retz comes swimming up behind the real Darktree, biting a gold key between brass teeth. Together they watch the craft accelerate towards the west, following Clarice, who has crossed the Swiss border. A gallon of fermented joy surges through the footpad as he comprehends the scenario. Clarice has mistaken the doppelgänger for the genuine article! Because she always chases from the front, she was compelled to steal the balloon before the puppet skyjacked the zeppelin. They are both floating away from his life; specks on the horizon of his responsibility. Now his female counterpart will probably end up marrying an automaton! After she prickpockets its virginity, will it suffer from metal fatigue? But irony is too dry to suit this sodden climax.
“He fled the shop before I informed him he was a machine,” Coppelia sighs. “I planned to build a partner for you, but he’s more like a rival now. He’s convinced you are the fake.”
“ ’Tis a useful outcome in some ways. I want to try every fashion of outlawry and have become a skyjacker at no moral cost to myself. Perhaps I ought to try some other delinquency at the same time? Laundering funds sounds appealing: I’ll buy a washing machine. Or forgery. For that, I’ll need anvil, tongs and hammer: pretend to make horseshoes, forgers do. On the other deceit, wrecking is an art.”
“Chaud-Mellé has no use for any of those crimes.”
Darktree watches as the water level continues to rise. If this city
spurns his offers, he shall take himself away. Besides, it occurs to him he is not entirely safe from Clarice. She is ahead not only of the false Darktree but also of himself. Possibly she is following both. Somehow he must get in front of her so the puppet becomes her only target. Where is Conrad and the other Warrior-Chefs? They are not here to see him off. As he steers Hannah, who is treading water, a pallid Signor Udolpho bobs up to them with a bag of ginger biscuits.
“You don’t deserve these, but I’m a tender soul. They’ve been baked to a special recipe: at night they breed. Leave two at the bottom of the bag and you’ll have an eternal store.”
Pocketing the biscuits, Darktree encourages Hannah to jump onto the unsprung onager. She balances on the loaded cauldron on the spoon, while he glances around, debating whether to make a speech. Successful oratory is difficult in a pink coat. He wants to thank the populace for his stay in this nightmare; he is eager to exchange addresses with Conrad. Nobody is looking at him—they are too busy drowning. It is nice to journey and sin, he contemplates saying, but it is nicer to break the law at home. A respectable opening floods his palate.
“Friends, I am leaving Chaud-Mellé because…”
He frowns. Why is he leaving? He struggles to articulate an answer. While he designs a polite one in his head, a region of stagnant water to his left starts to bubble and foam. A building rises from the depths: it is the Café Worm, segmented and soil-encrusted. A hatch at the top opens and a semi-familiar figure emerges. “Ho there! I am Franklin Junior, son of an inventor. You are English?” Before he can continue, Darktree snaps the microscope lens between his thumbs. This is reason enough: grandiose absurdity. He throws a jagged half of glass and it severs the catapult’s rope, launching the pot and Hannah. He clings to her mane as they ascend over the city, gazing down at the intertwined streets, cresting what are surely 666th and Main—sails, not springs. Then they are over the walls of ice, heading toward the true Alps.
The Big Book of Modern Fantasy Page 123