“Just stay back,” Doctor D said, keeping us behind the crowd. “Best not to be seen.”
Right. If the Doll wasn't recognized by those people, Kitt and I would undoubtedly be if we started making noise. I nodded to Doctor D and kept my distance from the group.
But then a thought formed.
“You know who we are, right?” I mumbled to him.
He nodded. “You got the balloons.”
“Right, but—“
“I noticed she no longer has the balloons.”
“Oh, I guess not. Must have let them go somewhere.”
“Shame.”
“Right, big shame, but you know who we are now, right?”
“Yes. Former balloonists.”
“No, I mean...you know, the posters...around the city.”
He nodded. “I know. It's my fault.”
“What?”
“That's why we're helping.”
“Your fault? What are you talking about?”
He took from his coat a folded illustration and handed it to me. It was an elegantly-detailed charcoal sketch of the Doll, Kitt, and myself sitting stoically under a crescent moon. It was, I admit, quite beautiful.
“You drew this?” I whispered.
He bit his lip, half-frowned, and nodded.
“What's the problem?” I asked.
He put his finger to the illustration and circled my and Kitt's faces. Then I saw it. These were the faces that were pasted onto the posters around the city. My eyes widened and I stared at the salesman. He shrugged at me.
“They came around asking questions, wanted a description.”
“And you identified us,” Kitt said.
“Yes.”
“And you thought,” Kitt irritably continued, “that a detailed list of features wasn't enough? That you'd better draw us for them?”
Doctor D furrowed.
“The so-called artist in their employ was a disgrace. All slaggy lines and dippy shadow. The faces he drew greater resembled clothed chimps than the human form. I felt I had to put him in his place.”
“And make sure we could be easily identified,” Kitt said.
“A mistake!” Doctor D hissed under breath. “Mistake! That's why we'll help you now. You can keep the picture.”
I sighed and peered down into the paper Dolly's charcoal eyes. At least she was spared from public display, the face of the victim scrapped in favor of a focus on the villainous kidnappers.
I sighed again and tucked the drawing away.
“If you're trying to help us,” Gren said, “why are you parading her around up there?”
Doctor D grinned and giggled. “She's blending in.”
Unable to intervene without raising attention, we had no choice but to hang back and watch the spectacle unfold.
Up on the stage, Dolly began tapping her shoes together as Doctor P made another pass around the stage.
Blending in...
“Now friends, now neighbors, now colleagues,” he shouted. “Now acquaintances, companions, onlookers, spectators, conscientious viewers, welcome faces, trained ears, discerning minds, now!”
“Now what?” said a man in the front.
“Now, my people, my friends, my neighbors—“
“Aren't you going to show us something?” said another.
“Some...thing?!? Good people, welcome faces, discerning minds, I have shown you items, valuables, wonders, devices, but would you think me so base as to show you a simple thing? What I have now is nothing less than a mechanized wonder!”
He took two dramatic steps to the edge of the stage.
“Tell me now!” he bellowed, commanding the crowd into a hush. His next words were quiet and poised. “Who among you enjoys pastry?”
There seemed to be a moment of confusion. Hands were cautiously raised throughout the audience.
“And so do I, friends,” said Doctor P. “So do I.”
The Doll had her hand up as well. Doctor P gestured to her and she put it down.
Doctor P proceeded to bring out a little clam-shaped hunk of metal and wire, which he claimed was a portable, electric, pie maker, guaranteed to produce sweet dishes faster than the speed of sound.
“Just throw some flour inside,” he instructed. “Maybe a fruit here and there.”
He started applauding himself in attempt to get the audience involved. When they just stood there slackjawed, he put the device down and put his hands on the Doll's shoulder. “My sister, Bea, ladies and gentlemen.”
She waved to the crowd.
“My dear sister, would you be so kind as to inform these good people, these clever, dashing onlookers, as to the nature of your culinary deficiency.”
Culinary deficiency?
The Doll took her cue, nodded, stood, and clasped her hands.
“I have been medically diagnosed by my brothers, the very good doctors Marin, with the disease of pierosis.”
“And please,” Doctor P said, choking back what he wanted to look like tears, “my poor, tragic sister, tell them the symptoms of your disease, which we of a medical background call pierosis.”
She placed an open palm to her head, as if she might swoon.
“I am unable to handle pie!”
The crowd gasped. I shook my head and snickered.
“They have got to be kidding,” Gren whispered to me.
“Pie!” Dolly announced. “My most favorite treat.”
“Her most favorite treat!” Doctor P shouted, mashing a fist into a palm. “Yes, it is horrible! Fortune mocks her! And yet...and yet, Sister, I have brought you here with a question. Is there any pie, any at all in existence, that your most-delicate constitution could possibly handle?”
The Doll shook her head with exaggeration. “It would have to be a pie of great making,” she said, “else I fear that I would die.”
“Death by pie?” Kitt whispered to me. “Isn't that a bit much?”
Doctor P shut his eyes and clasped his hands. He wore the deep, sober face of a parishioner in prayer. He carefully retrieved the metal device and opened its hinges. From inside he pulled out a messy piece of pie that more appeared to have been crammed into the device than to have been baked inside.
“My only sister,” he said, the blue pie innards dripping through this fingers, “sample this dessert.”
Carefully, the Doll took the sloppy dish and chewed a bit. Her face lit up.
“It is perfection!” she announced. A wave of cheers, laughter, and applause broke out from the crowd. Dolly licked her fingers and started bowing like an actress, her grand performance a success.
“And now!” Doctor P said, holding the portable, electric pie maker above his head. “Who will be the first to own this piece of tomorrow, this machine of—“
A round of gunshots fired off in the distance, followed by gruff hooting and jeering. Doctor P stopped his speech and set down the device.
It was silent for only a moment. Another round of firing and shouting commenced.
“Ladies and gentleman, please excuse me,” Doctor P quickly said. He darted off of the stage and into the caravan, leaving the Doll alone onstage.
The gunshots got louder, or rather, closer. Doctor D grabbed us and pulled us into the middle of the crowd.
“Get down!” he whispered, pushing us to our knees between clusters of the audience.
“What is it?” Kitt asked, crawling around.
“A very serious problem.”
“So what's new?” I hissed.
The shouting got louder.
“Oh, no. No, no, wait,” Gren said, recognizing the rough male voices that accompanied the shots. “Marin, tell me that isn't who I think that is.”
“Keep down!” Doctor D said.
Despite the warning, I peeked to check on the Doll. Her expression had changed to worry and she tapped her feet in place, unsure of what to do. Suddenly Doctor P reappeared, pushing a very large steamer trunk.
“The floor, Sister!” he commanded, ne
rvous.
“Eh?” the Doll said, dropping to her knees.
“Sorry about this.” He gave the opened trunk a swift kick and it fell, hole down on top of the Doll, covering her. She squeaked.
Doctor D's hand found my shoulder and yanked me back to the dirt. “I told you to stay down!”
“What's happening?”
A rather nasty set of voices called out from the back of the crowd. Huddled between the masses, we couldn't make out faces.
“Oi, Marin!” a phlegm-throated voice shouted. “Whatcha got in the magic box?”
“My laundry!” Doctor P shouted back.
Half of the crowd quietly laughed, the others tugged at their spouses and whispered.
“Mary, is this part of the show?” the man above me quietly asked.
Some began to cling to each other's arms.
“Laundry, eh?” the rough voice from the back mocked. “Not very magical. That all you've got in there?”
“Why?” Doctor P shouted. “You boys have an interest in my socks?”
“Couldn't say. How 'bouts we take a look around at 'em?”
Doctor D started crawling through the crowd toward the caravan. “Now!” he said. “Follow! Hurry!”
We moved as fast we could manage through the crowd. When we got near the stage stairs, our guide slid down and started crawling underneath the wagon. It was a tight squeeze, but we all got under, moving to the other side.
With a grunt, I popped my head out the other side. Doctor D had already gotten loose and was standing behind the back of the caravan. He offered his hand and helped drag me out. Once free, I took off my hat and dusted off my pants as he helped pull Gren out.
“Damn it!” Gren said, once free.
“Who are those idiots?” I asked, flicking some grime off of my bottle.
“Motorists.”
“Motorists?”
Doctor D opened a back door into the caravan and whistled. “Inside!” he said.
“Don't have to tell us twice,” Gren said. We hurried inside. It was a rather cozy cabin filled with mismatched pillows.
“Stay put here,” Doctor D said.
He left us and started scurrying outside. We heard him move around the side and hop onstage. The Marin brothers spoke loud enough for us to hear.
“Ah!” Doctor P said. “Brother, what timing! These men are interested in our launderings!”
I exhaled and put a pillow over my face.
“I am too sober for this,” I muttered.
“Me too,” Gren said.
“I'm going to hate myself for asking, but what did you mean by 'motorists?'”
“You really don't know? I was sure that...” He stopped. I waited for him to continue. When he didn't, I tossed the pillow aside.
“Why'd you stop?”
“Pocket...”
“What?”
“Where's the fox boy?”
A squeaky hinge turned somewhere outside of the cabin, followed by shrieks from the crowd.
“Look!” a gruff voice from the back said, firing into the sky. “It's one of them!”
“Uh...hello,” came a voice that was unmistakably Kitt's.
“Shoot the bastard!”
Without thinking, I jumped outside and looked around the corner. Kitt was sticking up out of a trap door that led under the caravan. Seems he got lost in the crawl. The crowd shouted and took off in every direction. A group of unwashed men started running up from the back. Many swung chains, thick bars, even wrenches, while others hurried to load their rifles.
“Hurry!” one yelled. “Shoot him!”
The Marins quickly grabbed the trunk and spun it over, keeping the Doll inside. The lid slapped shut as they got a tight handle on each side.
“Heavy...” Doctor P said.
“Hurry!” Doctor D said.
Kitt disappeared back down his foxhole as the Marins got the steamer inside the wagon. Gren ran up behind me and dragged me back towards the cabin.
“Come on!” he said. “You want to get shot?”
We tumbled back into the wagon. Gren leaned over, slammed the door, and then locked it.
An inner door on the opposite side of the cabin swung open and Doctor P came barreling in. “Gentlemen!” he said. “Excellent to see you again!”
“You've never met me before,” Gren pointed out. The point was ignored.
“I take it you're comfortable?” Doctor P said. “There’s peppermint tea in the next chamber.”
“No, thanks,” I said. “Look, we’re—“
“You’re right. Too bumpy for tea.”
“Bumpy?”
“Right!” Doctor P sat down next to Gren and braced his arms against the walls for support. “Oh, and I’d steady yourselves.”
A burst of power I have never felt exploded from the back of the caravan and we launched like a shot violently forward. My head whipped back against the wall and rammed into a few scattered pillows.
“Ah!” Doctor P said as we throttled forward at unimaginable speeds. “I knew the pillows were a wise choice! My brother was worried they’d come off rather gaudy.”
“What the hell is going on?!?” Gren shouted.
“Gas!” Doctor P shouted. “Wonderful, fantastic gas! A fuel of tomorrow propelling us on our marvelous way!”
“Garbage!” Gren yelled. “I’ve seen gas engines before! They don’t act like this!”
“Well, they don’t have my brother to command them!”
“What do you mean, command?!?”
“He’s a grand engineer! I have never seen a man stimulate or ignite the gas the way he does!”
“Ignite?!?” Gren shouted. “You lunatics are igniting gas?!?”
Another explosive burst shot out from the back of the wagon, gluing me to my seat. The outside world blurred into smeary colors outside my window. Faerie juice danced and jumped about in my seemingly indestructible bottle.
“Family secret!” Doctor P said. “Sure, we get by with the typical hug-and-chug of conventional gas-propulsion, gets us through the day. But where’s the zip? I say, gents, that you are lucky travelers! It's a fine art to properly ignite gas without losing a face or the back half of your vessel! I cannot remember the last time we had both opportunity and excuse to use such technique!”
“You’re going to kill us all, you maniac!” Gren shouted.
“What was your name, sir?”
“Gren Spader! And I want…no, demand, to live!”
“He’s an excitable one, isn’t he?”
“Appears so,” I uttered, clutching…well…I don’t even remember what I was clutching. The ride was that frantic. “Doctor,” I then said, “is the girl all right?”
“Should be fine. Plenty of air holes in the trunk. And we didn’t lock the latch.”
“What about Kitt?” Gren asked.
“I believe he’s topside, helping my brother pilot this wagon.”
“Oh, good!” Gren snarled. “And I was worried!”
We took a hard turn and my body was tossed against the outside door. The ankles of my companions were thrust skyward. Gren offered some muffled profanities to his seat. The doctor adjusted himself and saw me leaning on the door.
“Better watch out. That latch gets rather loose.”
To prove he wasn’t lying, the door flung upon and I went hurtling backward out of the cabin. At the last possible moment I caught the door with one hand and wedged my feet to keep myself from smashing against the ground. Cold air whipped over me as I hung outside, bent backward, speeding down the way. I tried to raise my head and open my eyes. Smears of reflective blue-grey-brown. We were riding alongside a riverbank.
“What are you waiting for?!?” I shouted. I felt Gren and Doctor P grab my ankles.
“Give me your hand!” Gren shouted back.
“I can’t! Not bent out like this!”
“Pocket?” I heard Kitt say. I bent my head up. He was sitting on top of the roof, peering down at me.
“H
i Kitt.”
“Are you all right?”
“No. I’m about to die.”
“Oh. Hold on then.”
“To what?”
It was hard to see, but I half-watched as Kitt took his wrench and popped out the knife blade. He began sawing through the ropes of something large and pink that was tied to the top of the wagon.
“Here!” Kitt said, cutting the final rope. “Try and catch this!”
“Kitt, wait!”
But he didn’t. Instead, he toppled the giant thing over the side and right on top of me. It was soft, like…ah!
“Hey, that’s one of my collector’s mattresses!” Doctor P said.
Twisting my side, I flipped it underneath me and kicked off from the door frame. My ankles slid through their fingers and I fell from the caravan onto the ground, the soft cushioning of the mattress keeping me from mashing my bones into paste upon impact. I hit the riverbank fast and began to slide on the mattress down the slope. Just before falling into the water, I came to a slow halt. I lay there, clutching the mattress, watching the caravan disappear on its maddening drive. The stage, I noticed, had not been detached before we had made our escape and pieces of it, broken and splintered, were still sticking to the vehicle. A snaking line of smoke, I also noticed, was coming from the back of the speeding wagon. This was, as the Marins would tell you, a by-product of their experimentation with propulsion. Or, as I will simply put it, the back of their wagon had caught fire, most likely because Doctor D was taking volatile gas and putting a match to it. Still, you have to admire how one such as a Marin manages to continuously not die despite their gloriously self-destructive tendencies. The smoke snaked up and dissipated into the smoggy sky. Kitt stood upright on the wagon as it faded into the distance, shouting something to me that I could not hear. It was soon gone.
And I was alone on a mattress.
I reached to my side and felt for my bottle. Not a scratch on it.
Just then, a sour array of noises sparked up in the direction from which we had fled. I squeezed my eyes and saw a veritable fleet of steam-powered motorbikes come into view. They were being driven by a collection of nasty-faced thugs waving chains and pipes, the very same unwashed group that had interrupted the miracle pie maker presentation. I spit a blade of grass I had obtained in my fall and watched them speed off after the caravan, hooting primitive battle cries. I kept my head down and was lucky not to be spotted.
Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) Page 19