A good half-minute later, you finally wrap your sleepless brain around your surroundings: you stand in a room the size of a small café with a ceiling no more than a hand’s breadth higher than your head. A great many machines are clattering and clanging and a great many people are attending to them. A dozen gnomes pack envelopes into pneumatic canisters that are whisked away by two score pneumatic tubes. Half a dozen goblins ride miniature, stationary penny-farthings, powering a great leather-and-copper bellows. A human woman turns knobs and pulls levers on a mysterious and massively complex machine. Four creatures that you don’t recognize—of stature similar to the gnome’s, pasty-pale with gigantic unseeing eyes—are calculating with over-sized brass abaci and yelling numbers in Spanish to the human.
Above the din of work rises the din of laughter and play, for it is clear that everyone is enjoying her or himself. Blazing gas lamps light the place, leaving no trace of deep shadow.
For your part, you have just been standing there, mouth slightly agape, stomach churning in the aftermath of adrenaline and exertion.
After a moment, one of the letter-writing gnomes takes notice of your presence and walks over to converse with Eleven Stroke B. in Gnomish. The gnome is wearing the near-ubiquitous coveralls—with various glass vials of ink held by loops across her breast—and has feathery pen quills protruding from her hat at jaunty and ill-considered angles.
After hearing from Eleven, she turns to you and speaks in accented but fluent English: “Welcome, Comrade Gregory. You have come to put yourself in the service of the Above-ground, to seek liberty and freedom?”
You nod.
“Your face, it’s bloody. Please, let me lead you to the washroom. After that, you may sleep. In the morning, I or someone else will answer all of your questions.” Your new guide takes you behind the gigantic bellows, into a hallway—need it even be said that this hallway is lined with pipe and apparatus?—, and into a small shower room.
There are faucets set into the wall, showerheads in the ceiling, and drains in the floor. Mirrors line the room at knee and waist level—for goblins, gnomes, and those other creatures, you assume—and a single small mirror is placed at approximately your own eye level.
You are, in case you were curious, a complete mess. Your bowler is dented, your jacket covered with dust, and your face quite bloodied. You need a shave and a shower. But more than that, you need sleep. You wash the blood off your face with soap and water.
“What’s your name,” you ask your guide.
“You may call me Comrade Pneumatic H. Fourteen.”
“Are all of you gnomes named with numbers?” you ask.
“No, no. When we join the Aboveground, it’s customary to take on a new name. Usually, after a machine dear to our hearts. A Pneumatic H. Fourteen is a type of air-compressor used in the message delivery system. It’s a bit outdated, but it’s what I learned on.”
“And Eleven Stroke B.?”
“It’s a type of light-cannon. It was developed to penetrate faceshields and permanently blind.”
“Interesting,” you say, as Pneumatic H. Fourteen leads you into a tiny room with a bunk bed. Neither of the bunks is occupied.
To take the top bunk, go to One Hundred and Two.
To take the bottom bunk, go to Ninety-Eight.
Eighty-Three
You leap into the air, and the purple beam of light catches you in the leg. A pain worse than fire—well, you’ve never really been burned, but you can suppose—shoots up into your chest, and you collapse to the ground, bashing your head on the stone. Your mind goes a bit fuzzy, you long for a sip of absinthe, and you die.
The End
Eighty-Four
You raise your weapon to fire, and both of you shoot simultaneously. Fortunately, the leaden bullet has immediate effect upon the chest of the gnome, while the purple ray has only enough time to hurt you immensely. Your foe drops the raygun and collapses into the street while you limp away unsteadily, having lost your cane.
Although a few more beams scatter about you, you make good your slow escape and stumble until the sounds of battle are far behind you.
Once you’re back into a familiar neighborhood of vice and low culture, you sell your revolvers and stumble into an opium den. Opium, you think. That’s good for what ails you. Soon enough, it will all be forgotten. Perhaps you’ll even write a book about your adventures. A fantasy, of course you’ll have to call it. And perhaps that’s what it all was.
The sweet, floral taste of opium smoke goes through your mouth and into your lungs, and soon you recline on the couch to sleep.
The End
Eighty-Five
The city is the most beautiful and alien thing you’ve ever seen. Every surface but the floor glistens, every wall is clearly hand-shaped with love and care. It looks a bit like pictures of the Casbah, in that the buildings seems stacked atop one another and are formed by an organic logic that isn’t immediately visible. Just as it occurs to you that the walls themselves are built so as to reflect sound in useful—or perhaps just aesthetically pleasing—ways, you see two kabouters come running from an alley across the way, brandishing knives and looking like quite unpleasant people all around.
You turn when you hear Sergei shout “Success!” as he runs out of the building, chased by two additional guards. A’gog has taken one of them by the leg with his teeth while Sergei holds a second at bay with his fists. No more seem to be coming from within the building, so you turn to face the two newcomers.
You remind yourself that they’re half your height, and strike one down with a lucky blow from your cane as soon as he or she or it or whatever is within range.
The other darts past your reach and stabs you in the thigh. You drop your cane in shock, pick up the miserable little creature, and throw it with your enraged might into the side of the building.
You pant, exhausted, and examine the scene once more. All four guards lie facedown, dead. So does A’gog.
“We’ve got to go,” Sergei says.
You grab A’gog’s body, the torch flickers out against the cold stone floor, Sergei grabs your arm, and you run for it.
Go to One Hundred and One.
Eighty-Six
The world seems to go silent as you cock the hammer and pull the trigger. You don’t hear the report of the powder igniting, nor the crack of the glass of the gnome’s helmet. Nor do you hear a scream. But who could die without a scream?
Several blood-drenched minutes later, you learn the answer. You could die without a scream. In fact, you do. You die in the arms of your goblin comrades, having given yourself fully to the cause of their freedom. But regardless, you still die.
The End
Eighty-Seven
“I saw a spider,” you say to the guard, “up there, on the wall.” You point to a spot behind the guard.
“Where?” the guard asks, turning her back to you. You snatch the lightrifle away and attempt to knock her unconscious with the butt of it. This, however, perhaps owing to her helmet—or perhaps owing to your general inexperience in the art of violent conflict—proves unsuccessful.
“Give me back my lightrifle,” the gnome insists, jumping up towards the gun, which you hold above your head and well out of her reach.
You give your captor a good, solid kick—well executed, it must be said!—, grab your hat, coat, and cane, and dive out the window headfirst. However, unlike the acrobatic young gnome who did likewise before you, you are unable to perform the requisite roll, and thusly your nose is bloodied. Your cane skitters away from you.
You stand up and see the representative from the gnomish Aboveground fleeing down an unlit street, and run, exhausted, to catch up. You leave your cane behind.
“Why did you say for the guards?” your rescuer asks when you finally close the gap between the two of you.
“I uh,” you begin, “I thought it would be a good opportunity to commandeer a weapon.” You hand the lightrifle to the gnome.
“Good tho
ught!” the gnome says. “Call me Comrade Eleven Stroke B.”
“Gregory,” you introduce yourself.
Comrade Eleven Stroke B. leaves the boulevard and leads you through a maze of alleys. The ceiling gets steadily lower, and you realize you must be near the city’s edge. Finally, when the cavern roof becomes so low that you stoop, the gnome reaches up and pulls down a staircase from a trapdoor in the ceiling, as though it were a stairway into an attic. He leads you up.
Go to Eighty-Two.
Eighty-Eight
“I think I can handle this without any bloodshed,” you say to your companion, “but you’ll need to stay back here in the shadows.”
“I suppose. But we don’t have much time. And besides,” she says, “he’s only an old hu–”
You look at her in horror and she realizes what she almost said. “My apologies,” she says. “The gnomes talk about humans like you’re simply livestock. I forget sometimes to ignore what they’ve raised me to believe.” With that, she puts away her sword. You hand her the rifle, which she holds like a pike since it is three times her height.
“Good morning!” you announce to the caretaker as you walk up, concealing your limp as best as you can.
The man looks surprised to see you.
“Have a drink with me, boss?” You ask, offering a flask of brandy from under your vest.
“I’m… I’m sorry?” The gentleman asks, clearly far from fluent in English. You mentally curse yourself for forgetting the language barrier.
Your plan was to convince him that you were a new hire, quite familiar with a balloons, then abscond with the lighter-than-air craft once he passed out drunk. But you had forgotten that you don’t speak enough French to do more than order drinks and flirt.
“Gu’dal,” you say, “I believe your plan will have its purpose after all.”
The man looks even more confused, as you addressed this last bit as though you were still talking to him.
You take a sip of your brandy, and try to look relaxed.
Suddenly, a swift goblin comes sprinting down the path, sword in one hand and cane in the other, top hat somehow staying put upon her head.
The caretaker turns his back to you and you take the opportunity to strike him on the back of the head with your cane, hoping to knock him out.
“Jésus-Christ! Tu m’as frappé à l’arrière de la tête avec une canne, vous trou du cul!” he says, turning back to you.
Gu’dal drops her sword, takes a running jump, and lands on his back. She pulls her cane up along one side of his throat and compresses. Four short seconds later, he collapses unconscious on the ground.
“Get the balloon in the air. We have only seconds. And give me your brandy,” Gu’dal commands.
You pass Gu’dal the flask and run to retrieve your rifle. Then you climb aboard the wicker gondola, piling more wet straw and oiled fabric onto the brazier. Soon, the balloon begins to rise. Gu’dal splashes brandy on the caretaker’s collar, drops the flask by his hand, retrieves her sword, and hops aboard.
As you lift into the air, she tells you, “You know you can’t actually just hit someone on the back of the head to knock them out, right? I mean, you’re as likely to kill them as knock them out.”
“Of course,” you bluff, “I was just trying to distract him. But, uh, what was it that you did?”
“Sleep hold. You stop blood from reaching the brain without blocking the airway. It puts them down, but not for very long.”
“Ah,” you say.
“Now, you know how to control this thing?”
“Control?”
Go to Ninety-Six.
Eighty-Nine
You duck, but while crouching you are an easier target still, and the purple beam of light catches you in the face. Perhaps the goggles have saved your eyes, but it is the rest of your head that burns with pain, forcing you to collapse. A lanky form shoots forward from the horde and brings down your assailant with a well-struck sword-blow, but you are wounded too seriously to continue.
A goblin horde does not bother with combat medics, it seems, because you are left where you lie, and the horde storms around you and into the city of Hak’kal. They might have won, too. But you don’t know, because you die slowly, fading in and out of painful consciousness for what might be hours or merely seconds. Eventually, you drift away forever.
The End
Ninety
You steel your nerve and lift your cane. Actually, you decide, perhaps you merely copper your nerves, because even in this moment before a fight, that lovely drug adrenaline pumping through you, you do not feel as though you have nerves of steel. Certainly more copperish. Which is prettier anyhow, you realize, and certainly strong enough for cookware.
Sergei runs out door at an incredible speed, and you stick your foot into the doorway after he’s through, tripping the guard who follows. You see A’gog with his teeth latched on to the second pursuer’s leg, and things are looking good.
Until you feel the warm, wet feeling of a blade run down your backside. You collapse, uncertain of who has laid you low, and die.
The End
Ninety-One
You dodge to the left and the purple beam passes harmlessly beside you before diffracting on the wall. Before you can blink, and certainly before you can recover your wits, Gu’dal has crossed the gulf between the horde and your assailant and has cut his chest open so that his child-sized guts pour out, hot onto the stone.
You rush after her, and the horde follows with you. You storm through the city gates and witness Hak’kal, an underground metropolis of majestic stonework and fanciful clocks.
It’s through this city that you dash, drunk on adrenaline—and booze, of course—, fighting the few guards who attempt to delay you. Most of the gnomes, non-combatants, surrender and are escorted to a building that serves as a jail. Some gnomes—and humans, and strange, giant-eared creatures you learn to call kabouters—join you in your fight and are welcomed in your ranks.
When at last you reach the halls of government, the city guard puts up a fight. At the front lines, you are standing next to Gu’dal when she falls, the butt of a lightrifle crushing her skull. The spike of your cane finds her killer’s chest, and you lift his lifeless body over your head and dash it against the council building.
The fight is soon over, and you sit down to weep. You are alive, still, and miraculously unharmed, but so many lie dead about you. So many goblins, so many gnomes.
“Thank you,” Trevor says to you, “thank you.”
You look down at him—for even when you are sitting, his head is below your own—with red eyes. His meet yours through the facemask of his helmet, and the two of you begin to sob together.
There is no cheering upon the victory, something you find odd but that Trevor explains: “the fight is when we celebrate. The victory? The victory is a beginning that is marked by loss. We mourn our dead and theirs, we mourn the long years that we lost to slavery.”
“When will you celebrate, then?” you ask.
“When we next have something to fight,” Trevor says, pulling off his helmet. A smile cracks, complete with black gums and razor teeth. “And, of course, when next we drink!”
For a moment, you manage to smile yourself. You think that you will stay here, in the undercity. Smallish they may be, you feel like you have found your people.
The End
Ninety-Two
“Envoy from Hak’kal,” you say.
“What? What is an envoy?” a voice asks in very simple and heavily accented English.
“I was sent from Hak’kal to talk to you about the goblin situation.”
“What goblin situation?”
While you’re talking, Sergei takes his hand from your elbow and disappears silently into the dark.
“The goblins are up to something,” you say.
“The goblins are always up to something,” the voice responds.
You continue in this way for the better part of ten minute
s, confusing the officers and occasionally tossing in words that you are certain they will not know.
“It’s very important that I beguile you,” you say to the officers.
“What is beguile? Why have they sent you if you do not speak Kabouter?” the officer asks.
“Because they understand how important it is to me to find a terminal solution to the continued impediment that is presented by your existence,” you say.
“I don’t understand you at all! Guards!” But those are the last words the officer ever speaks, because soon the room is filled with the sound of retching and a strange feeling of death that you’re not sure how you’ve identified.
“They’re all dead,” Sergei announces, after screeching once.
“Ah, hell, so am I,” A’gog announces.
You whirl in the darkness but see nothing. You hear a body—A’gog’s, you presume—fall to the floor, and two screeches sound from two different people. You hear a tussle, and the sound of a knife repeatedly entering a body, and nearly lose control of your bowels owing to your fright.
“Let’s get out of here,” Sergei says, and takes your arm. You run. Once you’re back outside, Sergei hands you A’gog’s body. “He died in service to his people and mine,” Sergei says, as though words could comfort you.
You realize with horror that you’re not actually saddened by A’gog’s death. You’re just, well, startled and confused. And very, very overwhelmed.
Go to One Hundred and One.
Ninety-Three
Gu’dal runs charging ahead of you, straight towards the old caretaker. She raises her blade up above her head, holding it two-handed. As she nears him, he turns to see her, a look of horror on his wrinkled face. She jumps vertically something like three times her own height, bringing her head level with his, then draws her blade across his throat swiftly, ending his life.
What Lies Beneath The Clock Tower: Being An Adventure Of Your Own Choosing Page 11