Tales of the Shadowmen 3: Danse Macabre

by Jean-Marc Lofficier

  Two hours went by. On the Moon, Buzz Aldrin and Armstrong were drilling core samples, photographing what they saw and collecting rocks. But finally, the moment they had been waiting for came: the planting of the American flag.

  “Here it comes,” said Zemba III.

  Madame Atomos leaned forward to not miss a second of this historical event.

  The House and Senate of the United States had stated, “This act was intended as a symbolic gesture of national pride in achievement and was not to be construed as a declaration of national appropriation by claim of sovereignty.”

  Armstrong grabbed the flag that had been mounted on the left-hand side of the LEM’s ladder to make it more easily accessible. To protect it from the temperatures of up to 2,000 F during the 13 seconds of the touchdown, it had been wrapped in an insulating shroud consisting of three layers of stainless steel, Thermoflex and aluminum.

  Armstrong began to unfurl the flag by extending the telescoping crossbar and raising it to a position just above 90 degrees. He then lowered it to a position perpendicular to the pole, where a catch prevented the hinge from moving. The upper portion then slipped into the base portion of the flagpole, which had been driven into the ground using a geological hammer.

  It was an ordinary 3 x 5 foot nylon flag, which weighed only 9 pounds and 7 ounces.

  “It’s strange, it looks like it’s flying in the breeze,” said Zemba III, watching Armstrong salute the Stars and Stripes. “You don’t think this is all a hoax staged somewhere in Nevada?”

  “No,” replied Madame Atomos. “They sew a hem along the top of the flag. A horizontal crossbar gives the illusion that it’s flying.”

  A NASA secretary who had gone to the local Sears department store during her lunch hour purchased the flag for $5.50. Ironically, its insulating shroud cost several thousands of dollars.

  “How did you ever manage to steal their flag and replace it with the one I provided?” asked Madame Atomos.

  “Like you, I have my secrets,” smiled Zemba III. “But if you must know, dear Madame, demonstration tests were performed to make sure that the flag would operate properly. Suffice it to say that the Jack Kinzler, the Chief of Technical Services Division who flew to Kennedy Space Center on June 25 to participate in a mock review of the lunar flag assembly may not have been who everyone else thought he was.”

  “I see. Very clever indeed.”

  “Thank you.”

  The bottle of champagne was now empty, as Zemba III found when he tried to refill his glass one last time.

  “I drink to your victory, Madame Atomos. When will the flag now turn into your flag? The Stars & Stripes replaced by ‘Hiroshima. Nagasaki. With the compliments of Madame Atomos.’ I can’t wait to see their faces!”

  “It’s not going to. Why would I want to do such a silly thing? I am above such petty vanities.”

  “But when you hired me, you said...”

  “I lied. I told you what I thought a Frenchman like yourself would most likely believe.”

  “But then, why...?”

  Zemba III never uttered another word. He collapsed on the table, dead.

  “Make sure you remove the bottle and the glasses,” instructed Madame Atomos. “The poison I use leaves no trace, but there is no reason to give the FBI any more clues than we have to.”

  The Frenchman had been right, thought Madame Atomos. It had been a most successful enterprise. She wasn’t fooled by Congress’ proclamation. Someday, America would colonize the Moon; the Imperialists wouldn’t be able to help it. They would go there, build a domed city, a shrine for the site of their first landing, a memorial around their flag so conveniently abandoned on the surface.

  And then that flag, in reality her flag, would spawn its deadly children and the first colonists would die in excruciating agony,

  She had sown the first seeds of her hatred in the cosmos and an ill wind was now waiting amongst the stars.

  If Tales of the Shadowmen did not exist, it should have been invented just to make room for stories like Brian Stableford’s unfolding Févalesque feuilleton and Paul DiFilippo’s amazing contribution to this volume. Of all the French science fiction authors who followed in the footsteps of Jules Verne, perhaps the most important was Albert Robida, a writer-artist who also deserves a place in genre history as the founding father of science fiction illustration. Robida not only illustrated genre stories by Rabelais, Cyrano de Bergerac and Camille Flammarion, but he also wrote and illustrated his own scientific anticipation feuilletons, starting in 1879 with a deliberate homage to Verne entitled Voyages Très Extraordinaires de Saturnin Farandoul, in which the Tarzan-like Farandoul meets Captain Nemo. (This encounter will be included in the forthcoming Black Coat Press release of French proto-SF News from the Moon). However, Robida’s masterpiece remains Le Vingtième Siècle (1882), devoted to the visual description of the mid-1950s. In addition to imagining futuristic devices, such as videophones, flying taxis, etc., Robida added the idea of the Moon being drawn closer to the Earth by a battery of giant magnets. So popular was Le Vingtième Siècle that he continued in this vein with La Guerre au Vingtième Siècle (War in the 20th Century) (1883), set in 1975, and La Vie Electrique (The Electric Life) (1890), set in 1955, which offered more of his satirical, pessimistic view of the future, and often contained frighteningly accurate predictions, such as the possibility of germ warfare. It is that fantastic, alternate universe, truly a future that never was, which is revisited by Paul DiFilippo in a brilliant “electricpunk” satire which unites Robida’s amazing vision with another, entirely unexpected, fragment of popular fiction.

  Paul DiFilippo: Return to the 20th Century

  The 20th Century

  January 1, 1960, and the whole globe was atremble with anticipation. For today marked the start of ceremonies surrounding the official inauguration of the new man-made continent dubbed Helenia.

  A truly unique milestone in human progress had been reached. The cunning assembly of millions of hectares of artificial land from great carved sheets of the Himalayas and Rocky Mountains, covered with rich topsoil dredged from the many productive ports and harbors of the whole world, and utilizing the scattered Polynesian isles as seeds around which to accrete, represented the supreme accomplishment of human craft and ingenuity to date. Although the startling and productive 20th century still had four decades to run, it certainly seemed to most of the citizenry that an apex of engineering, ingenuity and social coordination had been reached, one that would not soon be surpassed, if ever.

  But little did anyone suspect that a looming crisis would soon spur mankind on to an even greater feat of construction and ambition, all in the name of sheer self-preservation of their remarkable civilization in the face of a malign and unknown rival!

  The capital city of Helenia, Pontoville, was abuzz this temperate day with the arrival of assorted dignitaries from across the harmonious globe. These eminences from all the spheres of culture, politics, industry and religion arrived by several means. By swift undersea rail tube, one such contrivance emanated from San Francisco (otherwise known as New Nanking), one from Lima, and one from Manila. By streamlined submersible and surface-plying oceanic vessels. And, of course, by innumerable aircraft, both immense ships of state, featuring lifting balloons large as castle and multifarious as a sculpture garden, and individual pinnaces and veloces from nearby territories such as the Sandwich Islands.

  So heavily did the distinguished visitors plunge upon Pontoville, thronging the skies over the city of parks and towers and also its broad avenues and long piers, that they could not all be greeted individually by President Philippe Ponto and his first lady Hélène (nee Colobry). Later, of course, the President and his amiable consort would spend at least a brief interval of conversation with every superior guest, as they circulated at numerous state functions in celebration of the sixth continent’s official birthday. But, for the moment, on this first day of the festivities, President Ponto had reserved his time for welcoming only
the highest among the high. Su Chu Peng, leader of the Oriental Republic; Bismarck III, chancellor of Germany and its North American satellite, New Germania; Kulashekhara II, Emperor of India; and so forth down the list of exclusively great names–with two humble exceptions, the first being the President’s immediate family.

  Philippe and Hélène Ponto turned out in person at midday to greet Philippe’s father (and Hélène’s former guardian), Mr. Raphaël Ponto, the supreme industrialist, banker, speculator and visionary, whose titanic career had been an inspiration both to his son and the world at large. Accompanying the elder Ponto was his wife Josephine, herself well-noted for her role as an officeholder representing the Radical Feminist Party. And rounding out the party were Philippe’s sisters, Barbe and Barnabette, along with their spouses and offsprings.

  Philippe, a handsome mustachioed man barely past his first bloom of youth, clasped his stout father to his bosom, heedless of rumpling his official sash of office or of the impress of his many medals into his own and his father’s chest. They stood upon the high, broad and busy aerial platform where the express from Paris had just docked.

  “Father, I cannot believe you have finally made it to this new land whose creation owes everything to your own guidance and exemplary career.”

  Mr. Ponto, a stout and convivial iteration of his child, responded with bluff, hearty warmth and self-abnegation.

  “Well, you know that a few small matters have kept me busy till now, during the year or two of Helenia’s creation. The takeover of Portugal as a second pleasure park along the lines of Italy, for instance. But there was simply no way I would miss the official inauguration of such a monumental achievement. You have much to be proud of this day, my son!”

  Philippe made some humble rejoinders of his own, before moving to greet his mother and siblings in similar open-hearted fashion. Meanwhile, Mr. Ponto’s eye falling on Hélène, the elder man turned to his daughter-in-law, who so far had held back from the familial mingling.

  “Why, Hélène, you look so distracted! Daydreaming perhaps? A privilege of youth. Still, it is most undiplomatic behavior on this splendid state occasion. I thought my days of lecturing you were over. But perhaps I shall have to take you once more in hand!”

  Hélène, a slim, attractive, blonde woman of average build, did not respond immediately to her father-in-law’s mix of chafing and jollying. Instead, she continued to stand at the ornate cast-iron railing of the platform, gazing up into the sky.

  There, above the city of Pontoville, hung the daytime Moon.

  The perpetual orb filled nearly the entire sky.

  Some short time ago, Earth scientists had drawn the satellite much closer to its primary, by means of electrical attraction. Precisely speaking, the distance from one globe to another was now 675 kilometers, or roughly the gap between Paris and Lyon. Moreover, the rotation and gravitic interactions of the two planets had been locked and stabilized, so that the Moon neither rose nor set any longer, but remained perpetually in the sky over Pontoville, as a tribute to the importance of this new nation.

  It was this very orb that seemed now to transfix Hélène. She murmured mysterious words at the blank visage of Selene, words which Mr. Ponto could interpret as he approached his daughter-in-law.

  “Alpha, we await your coming. Alpha, we are ready.”

  Mr. Ponto laid a hand on Hélène’s shoulder, and the woman started, as if an electrical current had passed through her. She turned her face away from the lunar surface, its most minute details plain as the creases in one’s palm, even by day, and addressed her father-in-law.

  “Oh, sir, it is so good to see you! I am glad you have arrived!”

  “Now, that is more like the reception I expected, dearest.”

  The reunited family consorted pleasantly for a few more minutes, amidst the hurly-burly of additional arrivals, with Hélène and her sisters-in-law exchanging news about the latest fashions of each continent. But their chatter was cut short by Philippe’s exclamation.

  “I see it! Jungle Alli’s ship! The famed Smoke Ghost!”

  All eyes turned to follow Philippe’s pointing finger. The President of a continent was as excited as a schoolboy. Here came the second party for whom he had deigned a personal reception.

  Moving swiftly through the sky like some celestial pirate ship, the Smoke Ghost radiated a louche élan not exhibited by any other craft. Suspended beneath a balloon shaped like a recumbent odalisque of Junoesque proportions, its baroque gondola was scarred by hard travel and not a few bullet impacts. As the craft approached the docking platform, the dashing figure behind the wheel inside the pilothouse could be more and more clearly discerned.

  Jungle Alli, christened Alice Bradley at birth.

  Alice Bradley had been born to Mary Hastings Bradley and Herbert Bradley in Chicago, the “second city” of the Mormon interior of North America. Directly from her first juvenile stirrings of reason and independence, she had resisted the conventional life outlined in advance for her, utterly rejecting a future that included the infamous Mormon polygamous marriage. Partly to tame her rebellious spirit, her parents had sent her to a private girls’ school, Les Fougères, in Lausanne, Switzerland. But this rigid institution suited young Alice no better than her native patriarchy, and at age 16, in 1931, she had run away.

  The next news of the renegade Alice Bradley came most unexpectedly from the heart of darkest Africa. At this time, the continent was not totally pacified and integrated into the 20th century as it is today, with its productive citizens indistinguishable–save for the hue of their skin–from their Paris or Berlin cousins. Pockets of sub-Saharan barbarism still existed, and one of the most brutish tribes were the Niam-Niams of Central Africa. Cannibals one and all, they derived their name from their blood-curdling war-cry of “Nyama! Nyama!” Otherwise, “Flesh! Flesh!” Feared by natives and Europeans alike, the Niam-Niams maintained an inviolate sphere of privacy and secrecy.

  But even this hostile bubble had eventually to be pierced by the superior forces of technology, culture and capitalism, and in 1940, a trading expedition from Marseille entered the main Niam-Niam village under a flag of truce.

  Imagine the consternation and discomfiture of the Europeans to discover, ruling over the cannibals, a young white woman!

  Not precisely white any longer, after nearly a decade under the tropical sun. Nut-brown and nearly naked, save for a lion-skin skirt, with whip-cord muscles and long blonde tresses matted into elflocks hanging down to her shapely rump, Alice Bradley exhibited teeth stained brown and filed to points. She sat on a crude throne, clutching a feather-adorned spear. And she hailed the newcomers in the Niam-Niam tongue.

  After overcoming their initial shock, the traders awoke Alice’s long-disused French and were able to converse. She detailed a long history of conquest, first over the Niam-Niams themselves by one lone 16-year-old girl equipped with no more than a Krupp repeating rifle, 60 pounds of backpacked cartridges and an infinite supply of bravado and courage, and then, at the head of her adopted clan, of all the neighboring tribes.

  When asked tentatively what her ultimate aims and goals were, Alice Bradley grinned in her ghastly fashion and replied simply, “Freedom.” When asked if that goal were incompatible with her return to civilization, Alice said, “Not at all-so long as it’s on my terms.”

  Thus began the public career of the astonishing woman soon dubbed by journalists everywhere “Jungle Alli.”

  For the next two decades, employing her obediently savage (and presumably dietarily reformed) cannibals as shock troops, Jungle Alli participated in the taming of the Dark Continent. Up and down the broad expanse of Africa, a mercenary in service of whichever government could afford her, Jungle Alli contributed to the establishment of law and order in pursuit of profit and fame. Her exploits became world-famous, from the overthrow of the dictator of Senegambia to the suppression of the Tuaregs of Biskra. Hundreds of pulpy novels, hardly exaggerated, had been written with her as the star.
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  However, of late, Jungle Alli had begun to seem like a bit of an anachronism. Now that her work was finally done amidst these former backwaters, Jungle Alli found herself on the verge of being outmoded. The modern pacified world seemed to have few assignments for a rogue of her nature, and she had spent the last few years in frivolous deeds of personal derring-do: mountain-climbing, big-game hunting, motorcar-racing and so forth.

  Nonetheless, to those of young President Philippe Ponto’s generation, she remained an alluring figure of romance and adventure. Even in this era of complete female suffrage and equality-female dominance, some would maintain-when many of the fairer sex had built exemplary careers, the ex-Chicago girl boasted a worldwide celebrity. Having grown up on tales of Jungle Alli’s exploits, President Ponto had determined that she must grace the seminal celebrations of Helenia, conferring her iconic mana upon the new nation.

  Thus her arrival today.

  With Jungle Alli at the controls, the Smoke Ghost maneuvered delicately until achieving a mooring. Over the decks of the gondola swarmed dozens of Niam-Niams of both sexes, bare-chested and grass-skirted, fur cuffs at ankles and wrists. They dropped a plank to the platform, and carpeted it with zebra hides. Only then did Jungle Alli condescend to disembark.

  Now 45 years of age, Jungle Alli remained an extremely attractive woman. Her lithe physique was modestly displayed by khaki pantaloons and blouse, complemented by high black boots. Twin pistols were slung at her hips, while bandoliers of cartridges crossed her chest. An unholstered machete slapped her thigh as she walked.

  Jungle Alli’s golden hair, admixed with threads of grey, had long ago been bobbed neat and short. Fighting aerial freebooters off the coast of Zanzibar ten years ago, she had lost an eye, and that sinister empty socket had henceforth been concealed by a patch. When she smiled, as she did now, the work of the best Parisian dentists was revealed, synthetic caps covering her cannibal heritage.