The Ulysses Quicksilver Short Story Collection (Pax Britannia)

by Jonathan Green

  "Yes, but you've never been out in the open, practically the highest thing in the vicinity of a thunderstorm with a trunk of copper wire in your hands before, as far as I am aware, sir," Nimrod replied, pointedly.

  With a last, half-slipping lunge, Ulysses grabbed hold of the chimney stack and gave an audible sigh of relief.

  "There. Made it," he called back over the drumming of the rain. "Should have this fixed up in a jiffy."

  Wiping the rain from his eyes with the back of a hand, Ulysses set about the task of securing the cable to Hardewick Hall's lightning conductor. Three floors below in the cellar, Smythe and Wentworth were busily attaching their ghost detecting gizmo to Oddfellow's teleportation sphere, by candlelight. After the generator had failed, Smythe informed Ulysses that they had discovered that the machine's own reserve battery had retained enough energy to keep the sphere running on standby, as it had done for the last three months, and so still retained the teleport-trapped scientist's scrambled signal, but would only be able to do so for an hour at most. Time was once again of the essence.

  "There, I'm done!" Ulysses called back to Nimrod as the downpour strengthened.

  "Pardon, sir?" his manservant called back, his master's words subsumed by a booming thunderclap.

  "Never mind. I'm coming do- "

  The flash of prescience struck a split second before the storm did. Sizzling white light exploded around the rooftop and Ulysses felt its heat as he went skidding down the rain-slicked tiles. The garret window shot past and he flung out his right hand, hoping to catch hold of the guttering. His fingertips brushed the mossy lip of a drainpipe and then he was over. His fall was sharply arrested by Nimrod's grasping hand.

  Ulysses winced in pain as his shoulder jarred, antagonising the old injury, but despite the white-hot lances of lightning that felt like they were flaring along his arm, Ulysses still managed a knotted smile as he looked up into the aquiline features of his loyal manservant, now leaning bodily out of the attic room window above him. He hung there for a moment, the rain steaming from his clothes in the aftermath of the searing lightning strike. Above him the conductor crackled with the last vestiges of storm-born electricity.

  "Told you there was nothing to worry about, Nimrod," he grinned and then gasped as his shoulder pulled again.

  "Quite, sir."

  "I know they say lightning never strikes twice," Ulysses managed through gritted teeth, "but under the circumstances I wouldn't like to tempt fate, so, when you're ready, if you wouldn't mind reeling me back in, as it were?"

  A matter of minutes later, back in the basement laboratory, the sphere was running up to speed again. The vibrating hum of the whirling rings filled the space with its organ-resonating force, the feeble light cast by candles stuck into the necks of empty wine bottles suffused by the lurid glowing shell of light at the centre of the gyroscopic machine. Everyone's hair stood on end like weird halos around their heads.

  "Is it working?" Ulysses asked, sprinting over to join the boffins at the control panel. Wentworth was monitoring the sphere while Smythe was concentrating on the dials and switches adorning the front of his own device, now resting on the logic engine console in front of him.

  "Let's see, shall we?"

  Ulysses watched with baited breath, the ion charged hairs on his head streaming out around his scalp. As before, the image of the struggling Oddfellow appeared within the coruscating ball of light. It began to gain in opacity and colour, as if the old man were solidifying out of the ether in front of them, the incorporeal becoming corporeal again.

  Whatever was happening to the aged inventor, it seemed to be hurting him.

  "Father!" Emilia cried out as Oddfellow's features knotted in agony, strangely out-of-sync moans of pain wafting to them through the distorting containment field conjured by the machine.

  And then, there he was, solid flesh and blood once more - although he looked pale and drawn - wearing the same clothes he had the day he disappeared, shirt sleeves rolled up, an untied bow tie loose about his neck.

  "We've got him!" Smythe exulted.

  "Got 'im!" Wentworth echoed.

  "By Jove, they've done it," Daniel Dashwood gasped.

  Tears running in tiny rivulets down her face, Emilia ran to her father as the circling concentric rings ground to a halt and the cellar was left lit only by the wax-dripping tapers. There was a distinct smell of burnt ozone and singed eyebrows.

  "Emilia," the shaking scientist said weakly, his clothes and skin wet with perspiration, and took a faltering step out of the bounds of the matter transmitter. And then he collapsed, unconscious, into his daughters outstretched arms.

  "How's he doing?" Ulysses asked, observing the wan figure lying swamped beneath the sheets and blankets of his own bed.

  "All right, I suppose, all things considered," said Emilia as she gently mopped the old man's brow with a flannel. "Anything's an improvement on being dead."

  "You've got a point there. And how are you doing?"

  Emilia took a moment to answer. "Better," she said simply.

  In the soft candlelight of the bedchamber she looked more tired, more overwrought, more resolved, more noble and more beautiful than he had ever seen her.

  "I'll leave you two alone," Ulysses said, suddenly feeling like he was intruding.

  "No," Emilia said sharply, her voice loud in the pervading stillness of the room. "Stay. Please?"

  The old man suddenly stirred under the covers and murmured something.

  "What's that, father?" Emilia asked, putting her ear close to his mouth.

  "Is he here?" the old man asked again.

  "Who?"

  "Quicksilver," Oddfellow managed before his efforts to speak gave way to a phlegm-ridden bout of coughing.

  "Yes, Ulysses is here."

  Half opening rheum-encrusted eyes, Oddfellow turned his head on his pillow to look at Ulysses. A hand appeared from beneath the covers and the old man beckoned him over.

  "Hello, old chap," Ulysses said as he approached the bed. "How are you feeling?"

  "Never mind that." Oddfellow sounded irritated. "I must speak with you alone."

  "Father?" Emilia asked, surprised.

  "Please leave us, my dear."

  Emilia looked like she was about to protest, tears glistening at the corners of her eyes again. Then she thought better of it. "Very well." She sounded hurt. "I'll be out in the corridor if you need me."

  "Understood," Ulysses said, feeling her pain but also keen to hear whatever it was that Oddfellow wanted to share with him.

  "What is it, old chap?" Ulysses asked, as soon as he heard the door close softly behind Emilia.

  "You know me of old, Quicksilver." Ulysses nodded. "And I know you. I know for example that you're not entirely the dandy playboy you make yourself out to be," he went on. "I know of your government connections, whereas, I believe, Emilia does not know how involved you are with the defence of the realm of Magna Britannia."

  "I think you're right," Ulysses confessed. "It was that secrecy that drove a wedge between us in the past."

  "But now is not the time to tell her either," Oddfellow warned. "There is still action that must be taken to bring this matter to an end," he wheezed and then coughing consumed him again.

  "But it's over, isn't it?" Ulysses pressed.

  "Would that it were," the old man managed. "Would that it were. You now know what that thing in the basement is," he growled bitterly.

  "Yes, it's incredible - an experimental teleportation device. It's an incredible feat of scientific invention, Oddfellow." Ulysses gushed.

  "It was slow progress at first, but then I got myself a sponsor and, with the necessary financial backing, I was really starting to get somewhere. But then certain things came to my attention - nothing major, just niggling doubts - and I began to suspect that, how shall I put this?" He broke off to cough again.

  "Go on," Ulysses urged impatiently.

  "Well, that certain malign agencies had taken an inter
est in what I was doing and were funding the project, intent on getting their hands on the fruits of my labours. You know the accident that trapped me inside the transmat's containment field?"

  "Of course."

  "Well, it wasn't entirely an accident."

  "You were set-up? A booby-trap?"

  "Something like that. I believe it was the work of..." Oddfellow paused, lowering his voice to a whisper, even though there was no one else present to hear. "An agent of the Nazis."

  "Really?" Ulysses was incredulous. He knew that the Nazis were still an underground power in Europe, with their hooks in other parts of the world too, but he hadn't had anything to do with them himself within the British Isles.

  "You must believe me!" Oddfellow pressed, his plea loud again. "Because if I'm right, now that I am free of the sphere, it won't be long before they make their move."

  "Who is this agent?"

  "I don't know - that's the trouble. They could be here, right now, in this house!" He sounded desperate now, close to panicking. "But they cannot be allowed to get their hands on my machine. I got as far as destroying all of my notes associated with the project and was preparing to destroy the machine itself when that so-called 'accident' occurred."

  Ulysses fixed Oddfellow with a penetrating stare, the pieces of the puzzle finally beginning to make sense. "What do you want me to do?" he asked, with cold purpose.

  "You must destroy the sphere, so that no-one can ever use it as a weapon or to further any evil plan for dominion."

  Ulysses didn't need to be told twice. He trusted the old man, and if he had decided that the machine was a danger to the safety of the realm, and needed to be destroyed, that was the course of action that had to be taken.

  Outside the room he met Emilia pacing the corridor. "Stay with him, he told her, "and keep the door locked."

  Ignoring her protestations and questions, Ulysses raced downstairs to find everyone else gathered in the library.

  Something close to precognition sent an icy chill down his spine and turned his skin to gooseflesh even before he saw Sigmund Faustus, sitting in the same leather-upholstered armchair from earlier that evening. Fingers steepled in front of his face, he announced solemnly, "Mr Quicksilver, it would appear that you have walked into - how do you say? - something of a situation."

  "Oddfellow truly made a deal with the Devil when he fell in with you, didn't he Faustus?" Ulysses riled, his body tensing, ready to deal with whatever the alleged German philanthropist might have in store for him.

  "Oh, but you are mistaken," the bloated Faustus railed in response, his double chins wobbling in indignation.

  A bark of cruel laughter from the corner of the library caused Ulysses to snap his head round in surprise.

  "Not as quick as you thought, are you, Quicksilver?" Dashwood sneered as he emerged from the shadows, the gun in his hand trained on Ulysses.

  Ulysses considered his own pistol, feeling the weight of it in the holster under his arm, but he kept his hands down by his sides. Now was not the time to go for his own weapon; Dashwood would shoot first and ask questions later, he was sure of it.

  He hurriedly scanned the room. From left to right around the library, either seated or standing in anxious anticipation were the parapsychologist Wentworth, Sigmund Faustus, his aide, Ulysses' own manservant Nimrod, the quaking, all-but-forgotten Renfield, Smythe, Caruthers and then the pistol-wielding Daniel Dashwood.

  "But Herr Faustus really hit the nail on the head there. This is what you might call something of a situation."

  With a barely perceptible nod to Ulysses Nimrod suddenly leapt at Dashwood, more agilely than his slicked back grey hair and apparent age might suggest. But before he could reach the traitorous gentleman, and before Ulysses could make the most of Nimrod's diversion, Smythe, standing between Nimrod and Dashwood, sprung into life himself and floored the manservant with a vicious punch to the face.

  In his shadowy life before finding a position as Ulysses' father's butler and manservant, Nimrod had, for a time, held something of a reputation as a bare-knuckle prize-fighter, but Smythe's attack had been entirely unexpected.

  Dashwood's aim didn't waiver for a second. His eyes still fixed upon Ulysses, he gave another bark of harsh laughter and tensed his finger on the trigger.

  "I believe you've met my colleagues - partners-in-crime, as it were - Mr Smythe and Mr Wentworth."

  Ulysses said nothing but merely continued to watch Dashwood, hardly daring to blink in case he missed the one moment of opportunity he needed.

  "Very useful they are too," the gloating Dashwood went on. "Particularly when it comes to cobbling together a containment field focusing device from what little I was able to salvage from my rather ingenious uncle's notes. They're also dab hands at setting up little 'accidents', shall we say.

  "Although, of course, they might not have been so hasty to arrange one in particular if they had realised that uncle had already made moves to stop anyone following in his footsteps. But now we have both the inventor and his invention intact, thanks in part to you, Quicksilver, so what need have we now of cremated blueprints?"

  Obviously already considering himself victorious, the arrogantly boastful Dashwood saw no reason to keep any element of his schemes secret any longer. He had revealed to Ulysses the how and the why, certain that there was nothing that the dandy could do to stop him. And, unfortunately with Nimrod out of action, he appeared to be right.

  "All that remains is for me to tie up a few loose ends."

  Dashwood's finger tightened still further on the trigger, easing the mechanism back, the barrel of the gun aimed directly at Ulysses' chest.

  With a wailing cry, the flabby Faustus launched himself out of his chair with surprising speed. Startled, Dashwood turned, amazement writ large across his face, as the fat German barrelled into him.

  The discharge of the gun was loud in the close confines of the library. Faustus gave a grunt, as if winded, and tumbled forwards onto Dashwood. It was the opportunity Ulysses had been hoping for. He went for Wentworth and sent him smashing to the floor with a well-aimed blow to the stomach, which he followed up with a double-handed blow to the back of the neck.

  There was an audible crunch and Ulysses look round as Smythe cried out. Nimrod had had his revenge. Smythe lay howling, curled in a ball on the floor as blood poured from his broken nose.

  Dashwood lay motionless, beneath the bulk of Oddfellow's sponsor.

  "Nimrod, with me!" Ulysses shouted. "We haven't a moment to lose!"

  Ulysses leading the way, the two of them raced back down the cellar steps and into the abandoned laboratory once more.

  The sphere squatted there on its claw-footed stand, the machinery glowing faintly with what little power remained in its storm-charged reserve batteries, a malevolent presence in the candle-pierced gloom of the cellar.

  The last time it had been activated, to effect the release of the imprisoned Oddfellow from its containment field, had drained the potential energy released by the lightning strike but no-one had thought to actually turn it off afterwards.

  "We have to destroy this thing," Ulysses said, finding himself suddenly in awe of the machine.

  "I do not mean to sound impertinent, sir," Nimrod said, "but how do you suggest we do that?"

  Ulysses scanned the control panels of the device and the stilled rings. "There must be a way to overload it. Sabotage its controls or something."

  "But overload it with what?"

  "Ahh..." Ulysses was suddenly caught out. The generator was still down. "Don't worry, I'll think of something."

  Ulysses hastened over to the control panel, frantic eyes searching for a solution. Then preternatural awareness flared inside his skull and he flung himself down behind the logic engine.

  The retort of the pistol was dulled by the damp stone acoustics of the cellar. There was a second crack as the bullet spanged off the control console, shattering a glass dial. A second shot rang out and Ulysses heard it smack int
o the gyroscope itself.

  He dared a glance around the edge of his sturdy shelter. The three scoundrels stood at the bottom of the steps. Smythe had a bloody handkerchief clamped to his nose while both Wentworth and Dashwood were gasping for breath, having been badly winded. But Ulysses couldn't see Nimrod. He had doubtless taken cover when he heard the felons dashing down the steps into the cellar.

  However, Ulysses couldn't let their presence halt his mission. It was all the more important now that he destroyed the sphere and stopped the traitorous Dashwood and his lackeys getting their hands on it.

  Grasping the thick trunking that connected the control panel to the machine he gave a sharp tug. He heard a tearing metal sound and felt something give at the other end of the cable. Teeth gritted he heaved again and was rewarded by a spray of sparks as a bundle of wires came away from the back of the gyroscopic frame. But other cables still connected the sphere to the logic engine, in some unnatural imitation of the umbilical cord connecting an unborn infant to its mother's womb.

  As Ulysses reached for another bundle of wires, another flash of prescience sent him scrabbling away, shuffling backwards on his backside, heels kicking against the floor of the cellar.

  Dashwood saw Ulysses as he emerged from behind the sheltering cover of the control console and drew his aim on the dandy once more. Distant thunder rumbled over Hardewick Hall.

  "Now I've got you," Dashwood snarled.

  Scintillating electric blue light exploded throughout the laboratory as the broken rings of the sphere began to spin again. Dashwood threw a hand up over his eyes against the retina-searing glare.

  "Lightning never strikes twice, my arse!" Ulysses exclaimed delightedly to himself as he ran for cover.

  Eyes narrowed to slits against the brilliant light pouring from the spinning sphere, Dashwood dropped his shielding hand and searched for his target beyond the edges of the coruscating glare, where the shadows appeared even darker now in contrast to the blinding whiteness. But there was no sign of Ulysses.