The Sorceress and her Lovers

by Wesley Allison

  “Well, thank you for telling me about it all… about him, I guess,” said Iolana.

  Egeria nodded, and turned back around to continue playing.

  Iolana joined the other children and their grandfather for several games of croquet, all of which Augie won. Though Mr. Korlann might have lost on purpose, Iolana certainly didn’t. After a delicious tea in the garden, Mr. Korlann took the three children home on the trolley. Unlike his wife, he was not keen to learn steam carriage driving.

  Back home, Iolana went directly to the library. She had neglected her reading that morning. Scanning the shelves, she spotted a book. It was a paperback, something she usually avoided, but for some reason it called to her. It was The Wild Woman by Rikkard Banks Tatum. She knew of the author, of course—a writer of pulp adventures, but she had read none of his work before. By the dinnertime announcement, she had finished the book and had scoured the library for other Tatum novels, none of which could be found. Looking at the inside cover, she found the name of Saba Colbshallow written in pencil and vowed to ask the chief inspector about it when next she saw him.

  As it turned out, Saba Colbshallow, his wife, his mother, and his daughter were guests that evening and were already seated when she entered the dining room. The entire family was present and so the Colbshallow family was seated in the center of the table, two on each side. Little DeeDee was next to Iolana. She was perched atop a large stack of books just as Augie, Terra, and Iolana herself had been before the arrival of the child booster seat that Terra still used.

  “How lovely to see you joining us today,” said the elder Mrs. Colbshallow over DeeDee’s head.

  “Yes, my parole came through this morning.”

  A line of lizzies filed into the room and around the table, setting salads of apple, nuts, and wine vinegar before each diner.

  “Are you a tutor?” DeeDee suddenly asked Iolana, looking up at her with two-toned eyes.

  “What?”

  “DeeDee, we were going to discuss that with Iolana’s parents later,” said Mr. Colbshallow from across the table.

  “I want to go to school!”

  “Is it that time already?” asked Mr. Staff. “It seems like just yesterday she was a baby.”

  “Well, she’s still only three,” said Mr. Colbshallow. “But we’ve had some discussions.”

  “It’s that she’s so precocious,” said Loana Colbshallow. “We think it’s time to give her some direction.”

  “I still don’t see why we can’t wait a while,” said the elder Mrs. Colbshallow.

  “She wants to have school,” said Mr. Colbshallow. “We’ve talked about a tutor, but honestly, I see how Iolana is tutoring her cousins and they seem to be getting on better than any other children in the colony.”

  “Oh, Iolana is a wonderful teacher,” said Mrs. Staff, glancing at her daughter. “That is if you don’t mind your child being subjected to socialism.”

  “Mother, you think anyone who votes Labor is a socialist,” said Iolana.

  “As indeed they are.”

  “Well, we can discuss it later,” said Mr. Staff.

  “Iolana is a fine teacher,” said Augie suddenly, from the far end of the table. He looked just as suddenly uncomfortable when everyone turned toward him. “Well she is.”

  “Speaking of education, Inspector,” said Iolana. “I believe I found a book that belongs to you in the library—The Wild Woman?”

  “I remember that one. I liked it,” he said excitedly, oblivious to his wife’s elbow in his ribs. “How did you find it?”

  “I quite liked it. Do you have any more Tatum books?”

  “Only everything he ever published. I have to keep them in a trunk in the motor shed, because Loana thinks they’re too scandalous to be kept in the house.”

  “Really?” Iolana turned to the police inspector’s beautiful wife. “I found it quite mild.”

  “The wild woman in that book runs around the forest completely naked,” she replied with a shiver.

  “I suppose that once you’ve read Sable Agria, everything else seems mild,” opined Iolana.

  Mr. Staff cleared his throat. When Iolana looked at him, he nodded toward the far end of the table, where Auntie Yuah’s face had turned bright pink.

  “Of course I wouldn’t let children read her novels,” said Iolana, as if she were three score ten, rather than eleven years of age.

  “I must have eighty Rikkard Banks Tatum books,” continued Saba. “I’ll have Risty bring the whole lot over for you, if you’d like. That will be plenty of reading material.”

  “You don’t mind parting with them for a few months?”

  “A few months? How many do you plan to read a week?”

  “I read two books a day,” replied Iolana solemnly. “I’ll read these books in the morning. That will give me time to read the Gazette afterwards. I try to save my evenings for non-fiction or serious literature.”

  Mrs. Staff leaned toward Mrs. Colbshallow. “You say your child is precocious, do you?”

  The next morning, Iolana finished her second Rikkard Banks Tatum book and her daily copy of the Birmisia Gazette before breakfast. The previous evening, the Colbshallow lizzie had delivered the trunk full of books just as had been promised, and she chose The Cannibal Women. She found it less engaging than The Wild Woman, though it followed a similar formula.

  After breakfast she grabbed her hat and found Walworth Partridge, sitting on his usual stool in the kitchen, watching the lizzies clean up while he ate black sausages.

  “Fancy driving me to a friends house, Wally?”

  “That’s what they pay me for,” he said, shoving the last sausage into his mouth and hopping to his feet. “Willa Tice?”

  “No, I have a new friend named Dovie Likliter. She lives on Marigold Avenue near Pine.”

  “Whole family of redheads?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sure, I know them. Let’s go.”

  The entire distance was less than ten miles, but it took more than forty-five minutes to reach Marigold. It would have taken longer had not Walworth made a sizable detour through Lizzietown and away from the area of the train station. While Lizzietown was full of slow-movie reptilian pedestrians lining the narrow, winding streets, the area five blocks in any direction of the station was filled with steam carriages and lizzie-pulled rickshaws, vending carts manned by both humans and lizzies, and long stretches of road construction. Once Wally had dropped her off at the edge of the gravel road in front of the brownstone, she dismissed him. Striding up the cobblestone walk, Iolana entered the front door and examined the directory for the correct apartment. It was only one flight up, in the back. When she knocked on the door, it opened to reveal two red-haired boys about Augie’s age.

  “What do you want then?” said one of them.

  “I was led to believe Dovie Likliter lived here. Would you be her pet monkeys?”

  The door slammed shut. This was followed by several loud shouts. Then the door opened again, this time revealing Dovie in a simple but pretty outfit.

  “Iolana!” she beamed. “What a lovely pin-striped dress.”

  “It’s a bit much for daywear, isn’t it?” said Iolana, looking down at herself.

  “Nonsense. Won’t you come in?”

  “Just for a moment. I’m off on an adventure and I wondered if you wanted to come with me.”

  “Do I? Do I?”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes, of course I do. I just have to get my hat and pop next door to ask Mrs. Typaldos to look in on the boys now and then.” She raised her voice and called toward the back room. “And they’d better behave themselves if they know what!”

  Ten minutes later the two girls were climbing aboard the trolley. The trolley car, in good repair despite its well-worn condition, was pulled by an enormous triceratops. While the passengers took their seats, the driver fed it large pieces of shrubbery from a bin beside the tracks. Iolana put two pfennigs in the glass box behind the driver’s seat
and they sat down in the front. By the time the driver took his station and rang the bell, the carriage was standing room only.

  It was a long ride northward through town, with many stops along the way. Dovie asked a thousand questions about the sites they saw from the Church of the Apostles to the 203 foot tall Victory Obelisk. Iolana answered each question easily, her already prodigious knowledge of Port Dechantagne recently augmented as it was by her studies of the early days of Birmisia Colony. As they passed the Gurrman Building, several passengers shouted and pointed at what turned out to be Iolana’s mother getting into a steam carriage. Iolana made no effort to get herself seen.

  They traveled all the way out onto the peninsula before stepping off the dinosaur-powered vehicle at Seventh and One Half Avenue. Walking up the gently sloping street, they came to a massive two-story structure, with a half-raised roof and large, dirty windows all along the upper level. The only interruption of the brick wall on the ground level was a single door. Though sounds carried from the nearby dockyard and the even nearer dinosaur pens, there seemed to be no one in the immediate area.

  “What is this place?” asked Dovie.

  “This is our destination,” said Iolana, pulling out a large brass key.

  Quickly looking around, she unlocked the door, stepping inside and pulling Dovie along with her. It was surprisingly bright inside. Dust covered everything from the tools and workbenches along the walls to the massive piece of machinery in the center of the huge room. The size of a railroad car and looking something like a cross between a steam engine and the inside of a clock, the device stood mutely. The side was covered with pipes and pressure tanks, gauges and valves, but there were also thousands of gears and levers, pulleys and pendulums. On the right side was a bank of controls, including a series of large buttons and a pair of levers.

  “What is that?” wondered Dovie.

  “It’s the great machine,” replied Iolana, straining to make her voice deep for the last two words. “Come on. There should be a furnace on the other side.”

  They found a firebox, not all that different, except in size, from one found on a steam carriage. A bin stood against the wall here. It still had a few inches of coal in it, and a shovel. Opening the firebox, Iolana shoveled what coal remained into it. Looking around, she found several old pieces of paper and stuffed them into the coal, lighting them with a match she had stuck in the brim of her boater.

  “Do we need water?” asked Dovie.

  “Here,” replied Iolana, spying a pipe coming from the floor and connecting to the machine. She found a round flow control and turned it, hearing the sound of water suddenly rush through the pipes. Then they went back around to the front.

  They waited several minutes, but there was no whistle of steam.

  “This might take forever.”

  “You might not have enough coal,” said the redhead.

  Not wanting to wait any longer, Iolana pressed the sixteen large buttons across the control panel and then pulled the first of two levers. The depressed buttons popped back out. Then she pressed every other button—the even ones, and pulled the lever. She then pressed the buttons she hadn’t pressed the last time—the odd ones, and pulled the lever. Once again she pressed all of the buttons and pulled the lever, but this time she then pulled the second lever. Gears ever so slowly turned. Pulleys moved slowly up and down. Then everything stopped.

  “It’s not going to work,” said Iolana, rubbing her chin and unknowingly leaving a large coal-black smear.

  Suddenly they heard what sounded like a typewriter on the other side of the room. Stepping round to the far side of the machine again, they saw a sheet of paper emerging from a slot in the side. Iolana grabbed it before it was completely ejected. She carefully read the paper.

  Result Mechanism.

  Serial Number: 000001

  Data Format: HXD

  Location:

  Environment: EWL 1.0

  Version: 1.001f

  If you can read this, help me.

  Chapter Nine: The Champion

  “Why must you embarrass me in front of the governor?”

  “What are you on about now, Loana?” asked Saba Colbshallow.

  “You, discussing those horrible books.”

  “Well at least I didn’t bring up Sable Agria. Why don’t you go on up to your room before you get yourself any more worked up than you are already?”

  Saba’s mother had turned in an hour earlier, and the remainder of the family had sat quietly listening to the mechanical music box as DeeDee’s eyes slowly glazed over. Now she was asleep in her father’s arms.

  “Aren’t you coming up?”

  “Yes, I’ll be along shortly. I just want to listen to this song one more time.”

  Loana gave a curt nod before turning and starting up the stairs. Saba watched her enormous bustle, sway from left to right as she negotiated the steps. As soon as she was out of eyesight, he raised his hand and snapped his fingers. Risty, their lizzie butler, quickly slipped a cold bottle of Billingbow’s into his hand, the cork already removed. Then he rewound the music box and placed the needle back at the start of the cylinder. Saba finished his soda water just as the music finished, and Risty was there to take the bottle away. Rising to his feet, only difficult because of the added weight of his daughter, Saba headed for the stairs. DeeDee had her arms around his neck and her legs wrapped around his waist. Placing a hand under her bottom, he stepped slowly upward.

  Sandy, the nurse lizzie, was there to change DeeDee into her night clothes when Saba set her on her bed. He kissed her on the forehead and rounded the corner to his own room. Slipping into his nightshirt, he slid beneath the cool sheets, not even glancing at the door to his wife’s adjoining room.

  Saba left early the next morning, before anyone in his family was stirring, including his mother. Even the five-story police station was quiet. The night shift was still on duty, and it would be another hour before the morning shift arrived. The desk sergeant, Corman, leaned against the counter, half asleep. A PC, Loewy, was taking notes from two women, apparently working girls, seated on the bench in the lobby. He gave a sloppy salute as Saba passed him on the way to the elevator. Throwing the lever, Saba sent the elevator car upwards to the second floor.

  The chief inspector’s office was a large, beautifully paneled room with several huge windows along the outside wall. Another wall, this one behind the desk, was covered with photographs of Saba with various city officials at groundbreaking ceremonies and the like. Walking around the large desk, he sat down on the plush leather chair. Sitting on the right corner of the otherwise mostly clear wooden surface was a stack of folders. Each held the case files for an unfinished investigation. He pulled the top one from the stack and opened it, skimming the summary.

  Nothing new had been discovered about the bomb that had been set off at the shipyard. Constables had found and questioned the lizzie that had placed it. He couldn’t identify the human that had hired him. To most of the lizzies, the humans were just as hard to tell apart as the lizzies were to most humans. Pieces of the bomb had been recovered, but they had led to nothing. All they had to go on was Wizard Bell’s description of a man about forty, with dark hair, whose name began with an “s” sound.

  A knock at the door was quickly followed by it opening and Wizard Bell sticking his head inside.

  “Are you busy, Chief Inspector?”

  “Come in,” said Saba. “Now I know you’re a wizard, Bell. I was just thinking about you and here you are.”

  “Fortunate happenstance,” replied the wizard, closing the door and starting across the room.

  Bell wasn’t wearing his helmet and his uniform seemed, if anything, even looser than the last time that Saba had seen him. He sat down in one of the two chairs in front of the desk.

  “I was just going over the case file for the bombing,” said Saba.

  “Nothing new on that front.”

  “Do you think our Mr. S managed to get out of the col
ony? Maybe he was on his way before the blast.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Have you learned anything else with your magic?”

  “I have scried several times but haven’t been able to find out anything more,” said the wizard. “It’s more of a feeling that I have. I think he’s still here in Port Dechantagne.”

  “I just hope we can find him before anyone else gets killed.”

  Bell nodded his agreement.

  “Have you eaten?”

  “This morning?”

  “This year. You look thin.”

  “I’ve lost a bit of weight. It’s the magic. It puts me off my meals.”

  “What would you say to a bit of breakfast now.”

  “I suppose that would be all right.”

  Stepping around the desk and walking to the door, Saba grabbed his coat and hat from the rack where they had been hanging for several days. He usually wanted them on the way to work this time of year, but didn’t need them in the afternoon when he went home, and so often forgot to take them. Bell followed as they travelled the length of the hallway and stepped into the elevator. At the bottom of the stairs they ran into Eamon Shrubb.

  “We’re going to breakfast,” said Saba. “Interested?”

  “I’m just coming on. I’ve got to take the desk.”

  “Get Wilkes to take it,” said Saba.

  “Well, if it’s an order.”

  A few minutes later, Shrubb met the other two men outside the front door of the station. They walked down the cement sidewalk to the beanery at the end of the block. There were four eating establishments in Port Dechantagne called beaneries. This one was the original. A single square building served as kitchen, diners eating out front on long wooden tables beneath a large colorful awning. As they took their seats, Bell next to him, and Eamon across, Saba held up three fingers to the lizzie who approached and set down three cups of steaming tea. With a quick nod, the reptilian headed back toward the rear of the restaurant.

  “Don’t you usually have breakfast at home?” Eamon asked Saba.