Gears of a Mad God Omnibus

by Brent Nichols

  The gear left her hands, the pistol went off, she saw sparks fly as the bullet hit the spinning disk, and she saw that the gear was going to miss him. But his eyes went wide with panic and he tried to dodge back down the stairs. With only a split second to react he made the wrong choice and dove into the path of the gear. It slammed into his chest, knocking him backward, and he hit the railing behind him. The railing broke with a screech and he tumbled into space, the pistol spinning away as he fell.

  "You couldn't have dropped the pistol up here," Colleen grumbled, dropping to a sitting position on her platform. The strength seemed to leave her limbs, and a sudden wave of agony from her toe filled her eyes with tears. She drew her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around her legs, and let the tears flow.

  Footsteps scuffed the concrete floor far below, and she lifted her head. A cowboy, his hand still clapped over his bleeding mouth, glared up at her, his face filled with hate. He lifted his pistol, taking careful aim, and she heard the thunder of a shot. The cowboy twitched, and two more shots rang out, somewhere behind him. He dropped his pistol, started to turn, and collapsed to the floor.

  Colleen closed her eyes and murmured, "Thank God." Someone else was still alive. It hadn't all been for nothing.

  A voice spoke directly below her, a clipped British accent in a voice dark with malice. "You win this round, little girl. But it doesn't matter. We'll find Tanathos first. We'll be waiting when you get there. We'll kill you all. And then He will come."

  Footsteps rustled across the floor. Then the squeak of hinges, and silence. He was gone.

  # # #

  She stayed on the platform until Carter came looking for her. She climbed down to join him, and the two of them made a circuit of the warehouse, checking that all the cultists were gone. They tied up the unconscious man and went back into the main workshop area.

  There were two dead cowboys on the floor, and Colleen grimaced as she stepped over a man's outflung legs. Maggie and Rick sat with their backs against the wall, pistols in their hands. Smith was still tied to the machinery, and Colleen stared at him, confused. She took a cautious step toward him, and Carter murmured, "Don't get too close."

  Smith stared at her for a long moment without speaking. Then he said, "Cut me loose." When she hesitated, the veneer of sanity abruptly dropped away. His eyes opened wide until she could see the whites all the way around, his lips peeled back to expose his gums, he strained against his ropes until tendons stood out in his neck, and he screamed, "CUT ME LOOSE! Cut me! Cut me! He's coming! He'll take us all! It's too late, it's been too late for a hundred years, cut me, cut me now, cut me."

  His voice subsided to a low mutter and he sagged in his bonds. Colleen drew away, aghast. Behind her, Carter said, "Maybe something can be done for him. We're certainly going to try. The Dirk I know is in there somewhere. I think. We'll help him if we can."

  Rick left to summon police and an ambulance. Carter and Colleen joined Maggie against the wall. Maggie squinted through the bruising around her eyes and said, "Thanks for coming for us, Colleen."

  Carter rubbed his bristling mustache. His bowler hat was missing, and Colleen could see sweat glisten on a balding spot on the top of his head. He said, "I guess you'll be going back to Toronto now?"

  "No."

  "No?" His eyebrows rose.

  She shook her head. "The Englishman's still out there, and I got his attention, not in a good way. I don't think I'll be safe back home. Not for a long time."

  "What will you do, then? We could send you into hiding, like we did with Jane."

  "Actually, I think I'd rather help you find Tanathos." She glanced at Smith. "These scum are more dangerous even than I realized. I don't think I can just walk away. Not when I can help."

  Carter nodded. "Well, I appreciate the sentiment, but we still have no idea who Tanathos is, much less where to find him."

  "It's a place," Colleen told him. "Not a person. The Englishman told me that on his way out. And I think I figured out what that picture was, the one my uncle burned. I think it's a map."

  Carter frowned, staring into space. "A map. You could be right. That could have been a coastline, maybe with a river down the middle. If we go through enough charts and atlases, I bet we could figure out where it is." His gaze switched to her face. "Maybe you can be helpful, at that."

  Maggie snorted. "Look around you, Phil. Did you really need more convincing?"

  He grinned, then turned serious. "Well, we do have an opening for a Canadian liaison to the team. I suppose you could be a candidate. You've seen what can happen, though. Are you sure you want the job?"

  Colleen closed her eyes briefly, thinking of the life she could still have back in Toronto. But she thought of a little house in Calgary as well, and the life that Smith could have had, and she nodded. "I'm sure."

  Carter's eyes searched her face. At last he nodded. "Welcome to the team. Next stop, Tanathos."

  Dark Island

  Chapter 1 - Java Station

  The journey toward darkness took Colleen Garman into a world of blazing sunlight.

  She stepped onto the deck of the Britannia and tilted her parasol to block the worst of the tropical sunlight. She didn't like the parasol any better than the blue gingham dress she wore. She had packed some sensible trousers and coveralls, and intended to change into them as soon as the team was ashore.

  "It's beastly hot," said the woman beside her. Maggie Nelson wore her graying hair pulled back in a severe bun. Her face was generally set in stern, unforgiving lines, but Colleen had discovered a relaxed, friendly, thoroughly likeable woman just under the surface.

  "And only getting hotter, I'm afraid," said Phillip Carter, the third and final member of their party. He angled his bowler hat to block as much sun as possible. His brown mustache protected his mouth from sunburn, but the tip of his nose was red and beginning to peel. "After all, we're moving closer to the equator."

  They had travelled from Vancouver to Sydney, Australia, on a grand ocean liner. Now they were on a much smaller ship. The Britannia, despite its grandiose name, was half the tonnage of the Union Steamship Company's Marama. The Britannia had brought them to Batavia on the Java Sea. The next ship would undoubtedly be even smaller.

  Stevedores shouted as the Britannia glided up to a wharf. The din was incredible, with the steam engine rumbling, the screw churning the water in reverse at the ship's stern, and a thousand voices crying out in half a dozen languages. A steam whistle shrilled, making Colleen's ears ring, and she leaned on the railing and drank in the sight of the port of Batavia.

  The waterfront was a chaotic bustle of humanity. She could see Europeans wearing far too much clothing for the heat, Arabs and Chinese, and the short, wiry, brown-skinned indigenous population. Smells washed over her, spices and diesel, coal smoke and sweat, coffee and rubber, salt water and oil.

  "Oh, it will be so nice to be back on terra firma," Maggie said.

  Carter nodded his agreement, but added, "Just keep your eyes open. It's a dangerous game we're playing."

  There were a dozen passengers on the Britannia, mostly Dutch with a smattering of Australians. Maggie and Carter, Americans, and Colleen, Canadian, were the only North Americans on board. The crew seemed to have been cobbled together from every port in the South Pacific. The passengers clustered together along the railing and waited while sailors with every skin color known to humanity brought their luggage up from below.

  Colleen travelled with a single suitcase, to the astonishment of Carter, who used a steamer trunk, and Maggie, who got by with a trunk, a hat box, and a portmanteau. When all of their luggage reached the deck they appropriated a handcart and headed for the gangplank.

  Carter was an experienced traveller who'd gone around the world investigating the nameless cult the three of them were dedicated to fighting. Colleen was happy to follow his lead, turning her attention to the bustling crowd instead. She was struck by the prosperity of the Europeans she saw, and the near-poverty of
almost everyone else.

  On the other hand, rope sandals and ragged shorts had to be a good deal more comfortable in this heat than a three-piece suit. Perhaps it wasn't poverty she was seeing, but common sense.

  The crowd thinned a bit and she saw a white man sitting on a barrel, gazing at the passing crowd. He was an exception to the general rule, being visibly down-at-heel. His trousers might once have been part of a suit, but they were patched at the knees now, and a dingy white shirt, canvas shoes, and a cloth cap completed his ensemble.

  A pair of swarthy men in long robes walked past, gesticulating as they spoke in a strange language. Colleen stared, fascinated by their turbans and pointed beards, until they vanished in the crowd. Then she glanced back at the tattered white man.

  He was staring at her.

  Not at her exactly. He was staring at all three of them, but when he saw that she saw him he quickly looked away. He seemed to be staring now at the passing crowd, but there was a new stiffness in his posture. She had the distinct impression that he was watching her from the corner of his eye.

  Troubled, she glanced at her companions. Carter, a map in one hand and a notebook in the other, was thoroughly preoccupied, but Maggie caught her glance and said, "Is something wrong?"

  "There's a man off to my left," Colleen said. "He was staring."

  Maggie swivelled her eyes without turning her head. "That enormous African fellow?"

  "No, a white man on a barrel. Fair hair, dressed like a tramp, could be any age from thirty to fifty."

  "Ah, I see him." Maggie nodded. "Well, he's not paying attention to you now. You're a pretty girl, Colleen. Men are going to look at you, you know."

  Colleen smiled at the compliment, but she wasn't convinced. The look on his face had been... intense. Alarmed, even. Closer to horrorstruck than lovestruck. Well, I'm not going to spend the rest of the trip wondering and worrying. She started walking toward him.

  He stiffened, not quite looking at her, but tilting his head to keep her in the corner of his eye. When she was a dozen feet away, he hopped off of the barrel and walked briskly away. In an instant he'd vanished into the crowd.

  Colleen returned to the others. Carter fixed her with a peevish stare. "You musn't go off on your own, Colleen. It isn't safe."

  "All right," she said, and peered over her shoulder. The man was still gone from sight.

  "He's right, you know," said Maggie. "It's not just our adversaries. This isn't the most civilized place in the world. There is all sorts of trouble you could get into." She smiled. "It's not that you can't take care of yourself. You've proved that well enough. I just hate to borrow trouble."

  "Lord knows we've got trouble enough already," Carter muttered. "Come on, let's see if we can find a taxi." He grabbed the handle of the luggage cart and trudged inland.

  The two women followed. Colleen glanced back occasionally, and sometimes caught a glimpse of a pale face or a dingy shirt appearing and disappearing in the crowd. She shrugged. If they were being followed, there was little they could do about it. Perhaps the taxi would be enough to shake their tail, if she wasn't imagining it.

  They cleared the wharf, reached a major street, and stood for a time watching traffic flow past. There were horses, ox-drawn carts, cars, and countless pedestrians. A chugging sound and rising puffs of dark smoke heralded the arrival of a coal-powered tram.

  "Some parts of the city have an electric tram now," said Maggie. "Soon the age of steam will be over."

  Colleen nodded sadly. Diesel engines were showing up on locomotives and ships with increasing frequency. The internal-combustion engine was undeniably a modern marvel, but she was going to miss the elegant simplicity of coal and steam.

  Eventually Carter flagged a rattletrap yellow taxi. He and the driver loaded up the luggage, a process which ended up taking more time than the actual journey. The taxi dropped them off a scant two blocks later in front of the King Gustav Hotel, a once-fine colonial building now rapidly going to seed.

  Their shadow caught up with them as the luggage was being unloaded. Colleen watched his reflection in a hotel window, perplexed. He had no hope of going unnoticed. His white face made him stand out from the crowd around him, and his shabby clothes and lack of purpose set him apart from the few other Europeans.

  Yet he was clearly nervous. He stood in plain sight of Colleen and her companions, looking around in every direction, as anxious as a shoplifter in a police station. There was no doubt that he was following them. Every time his eyes strayed toward Colleen he looked away with almost comical haste.

  She turned to Maggie. "I'll be along in a moment. There's something I have to do."

  "No, wait, you-"

  Colleen walked away before Maggie could finish her protest. She felt a prickle of anxiety at this separation from her friends. The exotic, bustling strangeness of Batavia put her on edge. The cult had shown itself quite capable of murder, and someone could plant a knife in her back and vanish into the crowd in a heartbeat.

  She marched toward the white man, determined to wring some answers from him, and saw him fade back as she approached. He retreated between parked cars, pretending to lean on a fender, and some instinct made her march past him, not turning her head. She continued down the street, walking with purpose, as if she had a destination.

  She sensed him falling in behind her. She continued down the block, reached the end of the hotel, and took her life into her hands crossing the street. If there were traffic rules in Batavia they were beyond her comprehension. She finally stepped up close to a round, brown-skinned woman with two small children, paused when they paused, and plunged blindly into traffic when they did.

  A pair of wooden statues stood framing a shop doorway. They were magnificent carvings, fierce men eight feet tall, with plumed swords, made from some blond wood she couldn't identify. She peered into the shop. It was a gloomy, cluttered space filled with carvings of every description. Best of all, there were no windows. She ducked inside.

  A bored shopkeeper nodded to her from behind a counter as she pretended to examine some wooden masks and kept an eye on the door. Several minutes passed. Had she guessed wrong? Was her tail waiting outside, or had he given up?

  Then a rustling sound caught her attention. A line of light appeared in a dark corner of the shop, and a door she hadn't noticed swung open. For a moment a lanky figure was outlined in the light from the street. Then the door swung shut and he hurried toward her.

  He smelled of gin and sweat and tobacco smoke. She opened her mouth to demand an explanation, but he spoke first, his voice high and urgent with a distinct cockney accent. "You're in danger, Miss! I'm right sorry, but I got to tell 'em. I got no choice. They got other people looking, and if they know I saw you, and they don't 'ear it from me, I'm done for."

  He stared at her, turning his cloth cap over and over in his hands. It was hard to make out his face in the gloom of the shop, but he looked wretched and frightened.

  "Who do you have to tell?" she demanded. "Who are you so afraid of?"

  "Well, I don't ask them their names, do I?" His voice was plaintive, defensive. "Only they pay me sometimes, to keep me eyes open, so I does. Only it was different this time. More serious, like. They had sketches of you. All three of you, and some other blokes, too. They really want you bad."

  "Who does? Who are you talking about?" She was growing alarmed, and annoyed.

  His voice dropped. "The skelington man. I don't know 'im by any other name. 'E's an odd one, 'e is. Mad eyes on him. Mad. But 'is money's good. Does a bit of smuggling, he does, and I tell him sometimes about the police boats and such like. But this was different."

  "Where can I find this skelington man?"

  He spread his hands. "I don't know, Miss." When her face clouded he tightened his grip on his hat. "God's truth! He seeks me out when 'e wants to know something. I don't never go looking for him."

  Colleen put her hands on her hips. "All right, then. Who are you? You must know that much."


  "Name's Bob Caldwell." He bobbed his head. "Seaman first class, back in the day. Been on the beach for a while now."

  "What does this skelington man want with me, Mr. Caldwell?"

  There was real fear in his face as he shrugged. "I don't rightly know, Miss, but it ain't nothing good. He's a right bad customer, 'e is. A right bad customer."

  With that he jammed the wrinkled cap back on his head and peered around the shop. "I can't be seen talking to you, Miss. You take care." He started edging away from her. "You steer clear of the skelington man. Great big tall fellow he is, at least this big." He held a hand above his head, indicating someone close to seven feet tall. "Skinny, though, like he's all bones. Black as a bag of coal. Face like an open grave."

  He spun around, returned to the corner of the shop, then turned to face her again. "I got to tell 'im, Miss. He'll know your hotel. You block your door shut, you hear? I'm sorry, but I got to tell 'im." Then he swung the door open and slipped outside.

  She found Maggie and Carter standing on the sidewalk in front of the hotel. Maggie smiled in relief when she saw Colleen. Carter just frowned and tapped his foot, then said, "I've found an agency that can help us find a ship." He looked pointedly at Colleen as he said, "I think it's best if we stay together. It's in walking distance. Shall we go?"

  The agency was a tiny, dusty office a block from the waterfront. A fat Dutchman with a cigar between his teeth pawed through piles of paper and finally gave them the name of a ship and its captain. A short walk brought them to the appropriate wharf.

  The Angel's Luck was as disreputable a ship as Colleen had ever seen. She mentally apologized to the Britannia, which she now realized had actually been quite grand. Rust-streaked, filthy, and listing slightly to port, the Angel's Luck was scarcely a hundred feet long, and every foot of her stank of oil and fish and rot.