Agatha H. and the Airship City

by Phil Foglio

  Boris gave the monster soldier a look of disgust, but merely added, “Can we leave, Herr Baron? My boots are sticking to the floor.”

  None of them noticed Agatha bristling in the background until she snarled at them. “How dare you!” The three backed into each other before the furious girl. “How dare you? You murder one of the greatest scientists in Europe and you’re treating it like a kitchen accident?”

  Gil attempted to explain, “But he threw a bomb—”

  But a glare from Agatha shut him up. She went on, her voice beginning to take on the power of conviction. “The people of this city loved him! When they find out how you—”

  The headache lanced through her skull like a white-hot bar of iron, causing her to scream and drop to her knees. The listeners blinked and looked towards the Baron, who shrugged.

  Dr. Glassvitch hurried over to Agatha’s side and helped the quivering girl to her feet. “Forgive her, Herr Baron,” he pleaded. “She has these attacks when she gets upset.”

  The Baron’s lip curled. “Pathetic.”

  Gilgamesh stepped close and quietly murmured, “That doesn’t make her wrong, Father.”

  Klaus looked at him, then at Agatha, then slowly rubbed his great jaw. “Hmm…” he conceded. “The populace is sometimes a problem…”

  “Possibly not, Herr Baron.” Klaus wheeled about to face Dr. Merlot, who quickly realized that drawing attention to himself at this time was not the wisest of decisions, but having committed to it, chose to push on. “Very few people actually saw Dr. Beetle on a regular—hurk!”

  This last sound was caused by the Baron grasping the front of Merlot’s labcoat and effortlessly hauling him up before his face. “I despise traitors.” Klaus informed him. “I consider Dr. Beetle’s death to be your fault. Without your theatrics I might have salvaged him. I am very annoyed. So now, I’m going to put you in charge.”

  Merlot squirmed futilely in the Baron’s iron grasp. “I… I don’t understand, Herr Baron.”

  “You’ll oversee everything. The city, the college, the lands— everything.”

  “But…” Klaus shook him once. Merlot’s teeth shut with a snap.

  “And the first time you make a mistake, I’m shipping you to Castle Heterodyne.”

  Merlot’s face went white. “No! All I wanted—”

  Klaus released him and turned away dismissively.

  “What you wanted is irrelevant. I want Dr. Beetle lying in state—for viewing—by midnight, with a hero’s funeral to be held the day after tomorrow.”

  Merlot stared at the charred corpse on the floor. “But… my work… I just wanted to… do something important…”

  Agatha muttered an aside to the Jägermonster. “He was trying to turn chalk into cheese.” The soldier guffawed.

  Merlot’s head whipped around and found a focus for his displeasure. “Right! At least I shall get to do one useful thing today. Miss Clay—get out! Henceforth you are banned from this university. Forever!”

  Agatha looked stunned. “You… you can’t do that! I’m a student and—”

  Merlot drew himself up. “Of course I can do it! Haven’t you heard? I’m in charge now!”

  Agatha felt her world collapsing around her. She barely registered Dr. Glassvitch’s hand on her shoulder. “It may be for the best, Agatha,” he murmured. “Without Dr. Beetle’s protection, I doubt you would like it here.”

  “No!” Agatha shook her head. “How will I…?”

  Glassvitch cut her off gently, and began to escort her to the door. “I’ll come and see you, I promise. But now, I think, you had better leave.”

  Klaus watched the two leave. His mouth twitched. “Petty,” he muttered.

  Glassvitch returned and approached him with a worried look on his face. “Herr Baron, the girl is quite distraught… Are the streets safe?”

  Klaus sighed. He turned toward the Jägermonster. “Unit Commander! See the girl home.”

  The soldier grinned. “Hokay!”

  Klaus plowed on, “Then come right back!”

  The soldier shrugged. “Oh. Hokay.”

  Once out on the campus, Agatha could see that things were in disarray. There were few students in evidence, though she could see that almost every window was crowded with anxious observers. Several airships had landed in the quad, and Jägermonsters and the Baron’s clanks were everywhere. As Agatha watched, one of the late Tyrant’s own clanks rounded the corner and advanced. Agatha had time to directly compare its jerky motion to the deadly fluid movements of the Wulfenbach clanks who spun and mowed it down. Other smoking piles of parts revealed the fate of the “Unstoppable Army.” The Baron had been right. Beetle’s clanks had become quite obsolete. As Agatha turned the corner, she stopped dead in her tracks. There, looming before her was the burning hulk that had been Mr. Tock. A crew of the Baron’s mechanics was already swarming over it, and as Agatha watched, a group of hovering airships began to lower cables to their waiting hands. Agatha suspected that the giant clank would be quickly rebuilt. But it wouldn’t be the same. Nothing would.

  Agatha skirted the vast remains and felt tears well up as she passed between the vast gateway for the last time. “Goodbye, Mr. Tock,” she whispered.

  Her mood was shattered by the business end of a machine cannon dropping towards her face, and the amplified voice of the clank behind it roaring, “HALT. ALL CITIZENS ARE TO STAY OFF THE STREETS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.”

  Agatha stepped backwards and bumped into someone. Turning around, she found herself face to face with the grinning Jägersoldier she’d last seen in Dr. Beetle’s lab. “Hoy,” he called out to the clank, “she’s vit me!”

  The clank paused. “YES SIR,” and with a hiss it resumed its watch position.

  The soldier then looked back at Agatha and was nonplussed to see her crying. “Vot’s de matta, gurl?”

  Agatha stared at him through her tears. “They sent you out to eat me!”

  The monster soldier actually looked embarrassed. You could also tell that this was an unfamiliar emotion. “Hy em not gun eatchu.” This did nothing to stop the flow of tears, and after several minutes, the exasperated soldier roared, “Onless dats de only vay to shot hyu op!” Agatha’s sobbing stopped instantly , and she stared at him with wide eyes. The Jägersoldier nodded. “Now. Vere hyu liff? Let’s get hyu home,” and when Agatha continued to stare at him blankly: “MOOF!”

  The walk back through the town was markedly different from the one she’d taken this morning. The number of citizens on the street was greatly reduced, and the few left were obviously determined to get home as quickly as possible. Shopkeepers were closing up, frantically pulling stock in off the sidewalks or, when they saw Agatha and her escort, abandoning it altogether and slamming shut doors and window shutters.

  The only sign of fighting that Agatha saw was a shattered member of the Watch, which still twitched and feebly ticked against a wall as they passed by. More and more of the giant Wulfenbach clanks and soldiers wearing the Wulfenbach crest were to be seen assuming positions on various street corners, and with chilling silence, a small troop of Jägermonsters swarmed across the rooftops of the buildings across the street and disappeared. Shadows from the overhead fleet glided across the streets, causing the townspeople to involuntarily duck their heads and move even more quickly.

  Soon enough they turned on to Forge Street, and the large former stables that housed Clay Mechanical came into sight.

  Agatha turned to her companion. For the last several blocks, the Jäger had abandoned its attempts at conversation, and had been sniffing repeatedly, while a look of distracted concentration flowed across its face. “That’s it. That’s my house. Um… thanks.” With that she bolted for the main door. The Jägermonster lazily leaned against the nearest wall and watched her scurry inside. With a sigh, he shook his head and muttered, “Tch. Poor little ting.” Again he sniffed deeply, then shrugged irritably and loped off.

  Inside the shop, machinist and master blacksmith Ada
m Clay grasped a thick chain in his massive fists and pulled. The ceiling beam that held the combined pulley system groaned, and the front of the steam tractor the chain was attached to began to slowly rise upwards.

  Herr Ketter’s tractor had some leaks. Adam was pretty sure he knew where. A small collection of probable replacement parts were neatly laid out on a small bench by his side.

  Adam liked this sort of job, as it didn’t involve dealing with madboy technology. Whereas Sparks were able to design and construct bizarre, physics-skirting machinery, their devices were never really able to be mass produced or even reliably duplicated by regular people. Even trained machinists eventually suffered nervous breakdowns if they were forced to try.

  One of the Wulfenbach Empire’s groundbreaking ideas had been that instead of exterminating rival Sparks after defeating them, Klaus hired them. He kept them happy by keeping them supplied with materials, tools, and food, and a dedicated staff that made sure they ate it. They found themselves free of the petty concerns that had plagued their lives, such as what to actually do with that small country once they had proved that they could conquer it with nothing more than a navy composed of intelligent lobsters. He also gave them challenges, adoring minions, and on a regular basis, a large dinner celebrating their accomplishments along with a beautiful calligraphed award expressing the sincere thanks of the Empire in general and Klaus in particular.

  As a result, almost any one of the Sparks Klaus had defeated over the years would have disintegrated you if you had seriously attempted to offer them their freedom, and they gleefully built and repaired the airships and the armies of clanks as well as the other terrifying monstrosities that supported the Pax Transylvania. This easily made up for the tightly guarded warehouses full of devices that made ants run backwards or could remove the rings from Saturn that they occasionally delivered in their free time.

  And of course, regular science marched on, if only in self-defense.

  The pulley caught. Adam grimaced and gave the chain a sharp tug, and links snapped with a sound like a gunshot, the tractor slamming back to the ground, shaking the entire building.

  Adam looked at the broken chain as if it had personally betrayed him, and then he dropped it to the ground. He walked over to the tractor and quickly inspected it to make sure there was no additional damage. Seeing none, he glanced around and, reassured that he was alone, grabbed the front of the tractor in one large hand, and slowly lifted it above his head. Satisfied, he hooked a foot around the bench that contained the spare parts, slid it over to his side, selected a wrench from a loop on his belt, and began working on the undercarriage.

  Adam was a construct. Whereas the term “construct” encompassed any and all biological creatures created by Sparks, Adam was an example of a “traditional old-school” construct, i.e., a patchwork collection of body parts that had been revivified by a massive dose of electricity. They were the simplest form of construct to make, and the vast majority of Sparks had started their careers by assembling one. Unfortunately, while reviving the corpus was simple enough, the brain remained a tricky thing, and most Patchworks, as they were called, were either dull-witted or homicidally deranged, which meant that a significant number of Sparks had their careers ended surprisingly soon after they started.

  As a result, there was a well-established tradition of such constructs being viewed with suspicion at best, discriminated against with impunity, and made the butt of jokes in sensationalist novels, such as those chronicling the adventures of the Heterodyne Boys. Their loyal construct companions, Punch and Judy, were portrayed as oafish clowns. Music halls and traveling shows across Europa also embraced this interpretation, and the two were solidly established as the personification of low humor. Constructs tended to avoid popular entertainments.

  Refreshingly, the Baron had long let it be known that blatant discrimination against constructs was officially frowned upon within the Empire, and he backed this policy up with force.

  But this was a rule that was often ignored in the small towns and rural villages that rarely saw the Baron’s forces or polysyllabic words. As a result, constructs moved into the larger, more cosmopolitan towns and cities. There they were reluctantly embraced. Those like Adam and his wife, who, with a bit of effort, could pass as human, tried to do so.

  And thus Adam and Lilith lived happily amongst the general populace of Beetleburg, and were respected members of the community. Adam impressed many with his ability to repair the simpler Spark creations, and did regular piece-work for the Tyrant. Lilith played the piano, giving lessons in music and dance, and provided entertainment at various functions. There were those in town who knew what they were, but usually they were constructs themselves.

  Suddenly the door slammed open behind Adam, and before he could react, he found a sobbing Agatha clutching at his chest. “Oh, Adam,” she cried, “I’ve had the most awful day in existence! Dr. Beetle is dead! And I was robbed! And I’m not allowed back in the University! Ever!”

  Adam strained to keep his balance, and the arm holding up the tractor began to shake. Agatha continued, “I can’t think of anything that could make it worse!” Sweat began to form on Adam’s brow as he tried to gently disengage Agatha from his shirt with one hand.

  The door to the inner house opened, and Agatha’s mother appeared. “What is all the noise out here?” She blinked at the scene before her. “Agatha? You’re back? What’s wrong child? Come here.”

  To Adam’s great relief, Agatha turned to his wife. “Oh, Lilith, Dr. Beetle is dead!”

  Shock crossed Lilith’s face. “What? How?”

  “He was killed in his lab by Baron Wulfenbach!”

  At the sound of Wulfenbach’s name, Adam gave a start, dropping the tractor, again shaking the building.

  Lilith’s eyes widened. “Baron Wulfenbach! Here?”

  Agatha looked at her in surprise. “Yes. He’s taken the town. You didn’t notice?”

  Lilith looked embarrassed. “I’ve been canning all morning—” she looked at Agatha again, “Klaus Wulfenbach. Are you sure?”

  “Lilith, I work in the main lab. I was right there. I saw the whole thing!”

  Lilith only looked more worried. “Did he see you?”

  “Dr. Beetle introduced all of us.”

  “Yes, of course he did. Why shouldn’t he? How did—?” Suddenly a look of horror crossed Lilith’s face and she grabbed Agatha and lifted her up before her eyes. “Your locket!” she exclaimed. “Where’s your locket?”

  Agatha looked surprised at the turn of the conversation. “I was robbed. By two soldiers.”

  “Wulfenbach soldiers?”

  “I… I don’t think so. They looked too shabby.”

  Lilith set Agatha back down and turned to Adam. “We’ve got to find it!” Adam nodded.

  Agatha interrupted. “With everything else that’s happened— that’s what you think is important?” Adam and Lilith looked at each other, unspoken communication passed between them.

  Lilith’s face took on an expression that Agatha knew as “I’ll explain this when you’re older,” a look that at eighteen, she no longer had any patience for. “Your uncle was very clear. You must

  always wear—”

  “Dr. Beetle is dead! Don’t you understand?”

  “Agatha, when your uncle left you with us, he told us things we’d need to know if—”

  “If he didn’t come back! Things I needed to know! Well what are you waiting for? It’s been eleven years! Maybe… maybe he never meant to come back at all and—”

  Adam’s vast hand dropped gently onto her shoulder, cutting her off in mid-word. The look in his eyes as he slowly and deliberately shook his head conveyed the message that whatever else, her uncle had never intended to leave for good.

  Lilith nodded in agreement. “Agatha, your uncle loves you very much. Almost as much as we do.” With a sigh, Agatha allowed herself to be enfolded by the arms of the two constructs. The quiet minute that followed would be o
ne of Agatha’s most poignant memories.

  It was ended by Lilith straightening up and assuming her no-nonsense voice. “Now. Agatha, Adam and I are going out. There are a few things you must do. We’re leaving Beetleburg. Pack everything of importance to you, but it must fit into your green rucksack. No more than two sets of clothes, but take two extra sets of stockings, the thick wool ones, and linens.”

  Agatha blinked in surprise. “Leaving town? But the shop! Our house! Your canning!”

  Lilith nodded. “It can’t be helped. If Baron Wulfenbach has taken the town then we have got to leave.” Agatha opened her mouth, but Lilith cut her off. “Once we are on the road, I’ll answer everything, but now there is no time. Prepare similar packs for Adam and myself, as well as the blue shouldersack that is already packed in our closet and—” she paused, and seemed embarrassed, “Our generator.”

  Agatha looked somber. “We really are leaving.”

  Lilith nodded and looked around the cozy room. “Yes. I’m afraid so.” While they were talking, Adam strode over to the fireplace. Lifting aside the rag rug, he exposed a stone tile over a meter square set into the floor. In the center was an indentation that was revealed to be a handle, as Adam grasped it and effortlessly lifted. The tile was revealed to be a cube that easily slid from the hole with the sound of stone on stone. Depositing it to the side, he leaned in and lifted out a thick money belt, as well as several small canvas bundles, before smoothly sliding the block back into place.

  Lilith continued. “Then you must clean the house.” Agatha opened her mouth, but Lilith raised her hand. “Start a fire in the fireplace. Burn everything in the red cabinet. This is very important, Agatha. When you’re done with that, I want you to disassemble our two spare generators and scatter the parts around the shop. Then go through the house and if you find anything that you think would tell someone that the people living here were constructs, get rid of it.”

  “You’re terrified of Baron Wulfenbach finding you.”

  “Yes. And you should be too.” She forestalled Agatha’s next outburst. “Tomorrow. Now Adam and I will go and check the pawnshops and jewelers for your locket. If it’s not there, we’ll talk to Master Vulpen and see if it has made its way onto the Thieves’ Market. In any case, if we’re not back, make sure all the doors are locked, be in bed by eight o’clock and ready to leave by dawn.”