The Smell of Telescopes
Page 37
Morgan, Billy and the ghoul turned to stare at the speaker. It was the pirate queen, Charlotte Gallon, her hair tied in bunches, dark eyes glowing, more lovely than all the moonlight in a sea of wine, and not a drop or shimmer less intoxicating.
“That is a lie! You are just an actor!”
“No, I am also real. In fact, every rogue here is the genuine one. It certainly is the best way of avoiding the authorities. And all of us are immortal, albeit temporarily.”
“How many people did you kiss, sir?”
Morgan blushed. “The Welsh get lonely, not from being on their own but without constant reassurance.”
Charlotte added: “No man will beat a flying machine in a race, but the roads will fall in love with me, like all other things, and help me along. And I can imitate ’Phagia.”
“Yes, it is odd how you resemble the navigator even though you are a ravishing female and he is not.”
“I may not start without the right cup of tea.”
Billy pointed at a tent closer to the hub of the town. “That stall specialises in perfect beverages.”
Morgan lifted Laocoön onto his shoulder and grunted. “I shall take this ghoul and the grimoire to Austria, hack him open at the designated place and recite the incantation.”
“Wait! I am not a sacrifice. I am a sage!”
But the buccaneer laughed as he strolled with his prize toward the horizon, and his captive was forced to chuckle also, for Morgan stuffed the magic book into his trousers and tickled him with his free hand. As they moved away, Laocoön’s giggles became sobs, increasingly weaker and desperate, until they merged with the general hum of the planet, itself tickled by the solar wind. And now Charlotte had purchased her tea, had sipped it, and was hurrying off in a different direction, leaving Billy and the navigator joyously stupefied and eager for tranquillity. But it was not to be, for as they continued to pass through the assembled evil person- alities, she stopped short at a couple who were gnawing chocolate and cheese, the man garbed in a waistcoat of pale sequins, the woman in skirts only recently straightened.
“Father! Mother! How can you be here?”
They blinked twice at her, shook their heads and returned to their snack. She was no longer familiar.
Billy explained: “These two come from a part of the exhibition you did not enter. They are Federico and Marina Zanahoria, a trespasser and an adulteress. Rather insignificant criminals really, but they caused a fair quota of pain to each other.”
“No, they are my family! Watch close!”
She pulled off her hat and her hair tumbled out, having taken over three centuries to grow back to its childhood length. Then Federico and Marina clapped their hands and embraced her. “Yes, it is us. The horrid Ugolino remade us in a green jar.”
“I have many doubts. I am too happy! You might be actors! Prove to me you are real! What is my name?”
“It is Juanita, of course. Our daughter.”
“Ah, relearning that fact has made me forget the mantra again! And Morgan has taken the book! It must be time for me to die. My destiny is here. But how will I expire? How?”
Suddenly there was a sound of stamping feet from within the wagon. Then the steam bull, now nameless, issued a terrible roar and pawed the dust into a cloud. The whole contraption shuddered. Billy was aghast as it rolled forward, drawn by the automaton. It accelerated and turned to bear down on them, dozens of faces peeping from tiny windows. They were all familiar and mutated. From a hatch at the rear, a stream of pistols and blunderbusses tumbled out, the triggers stiff and bored, as if each weapon had been married for years.
“The reserves have broken from storage! Damn those Cadizites! Weak performers every one. They always seemed disinterested when miming acts of torture, so I never used them.”
Juanita was fixed to the spot, unable to move as the bull ploughed into her, knocking her down. The wagon rumbled on and the sweet but icy voice of Ugolino floated back to her. He was trying to blow kisses from the open doorway, but with the jolting motion his aim was inaccurate. A window at the top of the wagon sprang open and the head of Humberto von Gibbon emerged, his jowls crimson.
“Help! I am being abducted yet again!”
The last thing the navigator understood was that the iron entrails of the bull were missing and that the ground was hot and damp. Then she died. But the world did not fold into blackness. Her ghost slipped from her skeleton, rejoicing to be free, the marks of the restraining sinews still visible on her arms, but fading as she blew toward a meeting with Morgan, a reunion of her comrades on a barren mountain, over the corpse of a ghoul, and then away, trailing in their captain’s wake, to collect the parts for a new ship, including her octant, and off to Wales to dig for gold, but not before a brief diversion to a restaurant in Sardinia, to a celebration where healths do not need to be drunk, but where a cat speaks and a cook grumbles in a kitchen of charcoal ovens at rogues who are bright blue with lewd tattoos.
Contents
THE SMELL OF TELESCOPES
Copyright Information
Dedication
Contents
The Banker Of Ingolstadt
Ten Grim Bottles
Spermaceti Whiskers
The Blue Dwarf
The Purloined Liver
The Squonk Laughed
Telegram Ma’am
Depressurised Ghost Story
Thanatology Spleen
The Tell-Tale Nose
A Girl Like A Doric Column
The Orange Goat
Nothing More Common
Muscovado Lashes
A Person Not In the Story
Bridge Over Troubled Blood
Burke And Rabbit
The Yellow Imp
Lanolin Brows
The Haunted Womb
Mister Humphrey’s Clock’s Inheritance
There Was A Ghoul Dwelt By A Mosque
The Purple Pastor
The Hush of Falling Houses
The Sickness of Satan
Omophagia Ankles