The Forever Engine - eARC

by Frank Chadwick

  Mirjana Radojica shooed us all out into the front room and drew heavy drapes across the door to the kitchen. Jovo sat in the only padded armchair in the room and gestured to other chairs around the fireplace for us. He began packing a long white pipe with tobacco, and Melzer pulled his own pipe out as well.

  “So,” Jovo began once his pipe was going, lit from coals in the fireplace, “you have come for the Scottish scientist Thomson. The Old Man of the Mountain wants him as well. Why should I risk that one’s wrath by giving the Scotsman to you?”

  “I don’t think you’re afraid of the Old Man. If you were, what was that fight with his zeppelin all about this morning?”

  “You heard about that? It was nothing. Rumors! These stories grow in the retelling.” He puffed on his pipe and frowned into the fireplace. The flames painted his face orange and yellow.

  “I did not hear about it: I watched it from a ledge less than a mile from here.”

  His eyes moved to me and then crinkled in a smile. He shrugged.

  “Very well. I get along with some of my neighbors better than others. That is always the way, is it not? I have the crew of his airship, those who survived the crash, twelve men in all. Also his strange gun, although the barrel is bent and will require a master gunsmith to set it right. I thought to ransom the crew, but the Old Man sent word he might spare my life if I turned over them and Professor Thomson unharmed, and paid to repair the ship. Can you imagine the arrogance? Then he sent his other ship here to intimidate me. Well . . . things got a little out of hand yesterday. So now I suppose I will have to send his crew back just to settle things down.

  “I would dislike giving Professor Thomson to the Old Man, even though it would help make peace. I have grown fond of the Scotsman. He is the only one I can talk to of the wider world. I went to school in Vienna, you know, two years at Die Akademie der Bildenden Künste. I wished to paint. Now, mostly I sketch—gun positions, poorly guarded gates, that sort of thing.”

  “Life’s funny that way,” I said, and he nodded in agreement.

  He turned to face me directly.

  “So,” he said.

  I pulled the five gold sovereigns from my pocket and handed them to him. They seemed to glow in the firelight.

  “We will pay more,” I said. “This is just to demonstrate we can.”

  “An impressive demonstration,” he said. “Now we haggle back and forth to reach a price. The people in these hills love it, because there is so little else to do. It is a form of entertainment, you see? But I have no love for it, and not enough patience.

  “So this is what I do instead. You tell me your price, and I will tell you yes or no. No bargaining. If the answer is no, you leave and the Scotsman stays with me.”

  “No second chances, huh?”

  “No.”

  He put his pipe in his mouth and turned back to the fire, I guess to let me think it over. I didn’t need to.

  “One hundred gold sovereigns. The five you have here and ninety-five more.”

  He continued to study the fire, chewing on his pipe, as if thinking over the offer, but I knew from the way his eyebrows went up at the figure the answer was yes. Maybe he was thinking about whether there was a way to ask for more, but that would have broken the rules of his own game. Finally he turned to me and smiled.

  “I will send for the Scotsman.”

  I sent Melzer with the news for Gordon, but also to tell him we wouldn’t be leaving until morning. Thomson had banged his leg up and would need a litter, and Gabrielle would as well, just to be on the safe side. Rigging litters and trying to carry two people down the mountainside in the darkness was just asking for trouble. Besides, Jovo Radojica, voivoda of Brezna, was feeling hospitable.

  His hospitality did not extend to a dozen or so heavily armed men, however, so the team would have to camp in the woods. It was just as well—I didn’t want Radojica giving our Bosnians, or Sergeant Durson, too close an inspection.

  I rose when Thomson came to the door, and for a moment neither one of us spoke. His brief time in captivity seemed to have aged him. He walked with a wooden staff and favored one leg, and his face bore several abrasions and bruises, probably from the crash. He’d still been in his nightshirt when Tesla’s men grabbed him back in Munich. Now he wore homespun peasant clothing, and if his hair had been longer he could have passed for a gray-bearded village elder. He put his hand on my shoulder, and his face crinkled in relief and grief.

  “Ach, look at yah!” he said, his voice thick with emotion, “your eyes black and nose crooked, and I’m that glad to see you. I saw them beating you, Jack, once you went down. I though’ you were dead. I did, it’s God’s truth.”

  “I’m hard to kill.”

  We shook hands.

  “Come on and sit down, you old fart.”

  I helped him to a chair by the fireplace, and from the other room I heard Gabrielle.

  “Is that Professor Thomson’s voice?”

  Within moments she joined us, supported under one arm by the formidable Mirjana Radojica, who frowned in clear disapproval of her patient being up and about. It was starting to look like a convention for the walking wounded.

  “My word, is that Mademoiselle Courbiere?” Thomson asked. “I hardly recognized you.”

  Gabrielle ran fingers through her straggling hair and smiled weakly.

  “I recognized you at once, Professor. But we are so different from when we met at the house in Munich. Was that really only one week ago?”

  I took her arm and helped her to a chair as Mirjana dragged a wicker hamper over from beside the wall and then gently raised Gabrielle’s injured leg and rested it on the hamper. Through the slit side of her riding habit’s skirt I saw a fresh bandage on her thigh.

  I pulled a chair next to Gabrielle’s and sat, and for the next twenty minutes we caught up. I told the bare bones outline of our adventures, leaving out the rendezvous with Durson’s Turks and Cevik Bey’s promised intervention once we gave the signal. No matter how Jovo Radojica felt about Tesla, he probably wouldn’t be crazy about a Turkish-led battalion of Bosnian riflemen marching through his neighborhood. Thomson told of the flight through the mountains and the crash at night, and Jovo freely admitted to setting the lure for the airship, although he was surprised it had actually worked.

  Marjana brought steaming cups of sweet coffee just when a villager knocked on the door. It opened to reveal the returning Sergeant Melzer with Gordon in tow. More introductions followed, along with another reunion between Thomson and Gordon, more reserved than ours had been.

  “We need to talk,” I said once everyone settled in. I glanced at Jovo, hoping he would give us some privacy. He shrugged.

  “What is it you want?” he asked us, looking around the circle of faces. “What is it you expect to accomplish here? I think more than simply rescue my new good friend Professor Thomson.

  “I have a problem of my own. He is called the Old Man of the Mountain. He loves Serbia, he says, but he does not love me, and he does not love our king, this I know. He will bring ruin on our nation if he continues with his madness—this I believe.

  “I think you intend to do something about him. Tell me if I am wrong.”

  He looked around at each of us. No one said anything.

  “I thought as much. I will not help you in this. Too many of my countrymen are likely to die. Even though my country may need this thing done, I will not bloody my hands with it. But this much I will do: my wife and I will go to bed.”

  He rose, shook Thomson’s hand, bowed to the rest of us, and then he and Mirjana went back through the kitchen and up the creaking wooden steps to the second floor.

  Thomson looked at each of us.

  “Well, then,” he said, “I suppose the first order of business is command. Nominally I am supposed to be in charge, but I have some misgivings on that score. Captain Gordon, you have crafted a new plan and brought the expedition here, surmounting what sound like extraordinary obstacles. It woul
d be foolish and irresponsible of me to supersede you at this point, particularly as I am physically unfit to actually accompany our move on Kokin Brod. I know that officially the responsibility is mine, but I surrender command to you on the grounds of medical infirmity. Do you accept?”

  Surprise and embarrassment flickered across Gordon’s face.

  “I do, Dr. Thomson. And I—I very much appreciate your confidence.”

  “Not at all. Now, tell me what we know about Tesla’s plans.”

  “Well—”

  I heard shouts from outside, the sound of running feet. The door burst open and Sergeant Melzer came in, face red with excitement and alarm. Through the open door the sound of angry voices was louder, but I also heard the crackle of distant rifle fire.

  “Herr Hauptmann, the natives say we have betrayed the truce! There is firing from the direction of our camp!”

  THIRTY-THREE

  October 11, 1888, Brezna, Serbia

  Gordon and I sprang to our feet. I heard two people pounding down the back stairs. Jovo and Mirjana appeared at the doorway in nightclothes, Jovo’s face dark with anger.

  “By God, if you have betrayed us . . .”

  “Do you see a gun anywhere pointed at you?” I demanded. “You have all our leaders under one roof, deep in the heart of your town, with one gun between us, and it’s not drawn and pointing at the voivoda. If this is a betrayal, it must be the most stupid one in history.”

  He glanced at each of our faces and saw nothing but surprise and alarm. His frown remained in place, but he nodded. He spoke a word to Mirjana, who turned and hurried back upstairs, and then, still in his nightshirt, he stalked between us and out the door.

  “Come along,” he said curtly.

  I turned to Thomson and Gabrielle.

  “You two stay here. I’ll be back. I won’t leave you.”

  “Yes, go,” Thomson said. Gabrielle simply nodded.

  Jovo, Gordon, Melzer, and I ran to the edge of town through a growing crowd of angry and frightened villagers. The sound of firing grew louder and more distinct as we got to the small gate.

  The wild-eyed sentry babbled out a sentence in Serbian, and Jovo put his hand on his shoulder to calm him. The voivoda replied, the sentry looked around in confusion, then relaxed and nodded. Jovo patted him on the back and turned to us.

  “He says the English are attacking us,” he explained in German. “I tell him I don’t think so, but if they are, the English must be terrible shots since none of the bullets come this way. Tell your captain someone is attacking his camp.”

  I started to translate, but Gordon nodded impatiently and cut me off.

  “Right. The camp is under attack. We have to get back there and sort it out.”

  “You go. I won’t leave Thomson and Gabrielle.”

  “Don’t be a bloody fool! They’re safe here, and I need you to translate,” he said.

  “You’ll do okay without me. I’m staying.”

  He hesitated for a moment, torn between duty and the desire to throttle me. Then he unbuckled his pistol belt and handed it to me.

  “You may need this.”

  “What will you fight with?” I asked, but I took it gratefully.

  “A mixed platoon of Royal Marines and Bavarian rifles, I should imagine. I shall be back shortly.”

  Gordon and Melzer ran off into the darkness toward the distant flashes of small arms fire twinkling through the branches of the woods to the southeast. I wondered what General Buller would think if he could see Gordon now, running into the pitch-black night, toward a fight with unknown enemies, unarmed.

  “Is he brave or foolish?” Jovo asked, as if he had read my thoughts.

  “He’s English,” I answered, and Jovo nodded.

  The breeze, blowing softly from the northwest, picked up for a moment and carried a soft, faint droning sound which momentarily was louder than the distant crackle of rifles. Jovo heard it as well, and we looked at each other. Bees?

  “A zeppelin’s engine,” Jovo said.

  “Get your men armed. The land attack is a diversion!”

  I ran toward his house, to Thomson and Gabrielle. Jovo shouted a warning in Serbian behind me. Somewhere a bell rang the alarm. I rounded the street corner before Jovo’s house and saw broad black shapes glide over the rooftops ahead of me, making soft whispering sounds. A batlike creature, its wings fully a dozen feet across, settled into the shadows of the courtyard ahead. Its wings drooped to the ground and fluttered awkwardly, and without thinking I had Gordon’s revolver out.

  Crack, crack, crack.

  Three shots and the thing staggered back and then collapsed. I waited a moment for more movement and then trotted toward it.

  The thing rested on the ground, an indistinct lump outlined faintly in the pale starlight and the yellow glow of the voivoda’s nearby open front door. I prodded the thing with my foot. It groaned. It was not a creature at all, simply a black-clad man in a sort of silk-winged paraglider harness.

  He started to move again. I shot him once in the head and ran toward Thomson, Gabrielle, and Mirjana, all crowding in the open door.

  “Back inside!” I barked.

  They hurried back in, and I followed them and closed the door to a slit.

  “Douse that light. Tesla must be either very anxious to have you, Professor, or very angry at Jovo, or both.”

  I buckled on Gordon’s pistol belt, dug four cartridges out of the leather ammo pouch, and replaced the spent rounds. As I clicked the revolver closed, Jovo ran up the street. I held the door open for him.

  There was fear in his face. He and Mirjana exchanged hurried words in Serbian, and she disappeared into the kitchen.

  “You have seen them?” Jovo asked. “They come like shadows, mostly in the north side of town, I think, while we were south.”

  The distinctive, metallic rattle of a Gatling gun reached us from outside.

  “Ah! Now the damned airship joins the attack,” he added.

  “It will pin your men down in the south half of the village, suppress their fire, while the air assault consolidates in the north,” I said. “Once they are organized, they will push south and clear the village house by house. They’ll get here fairly soon.”

  Jovo looked around the room, fighting against the rising tide of panic. Everything was happening too fast for him. I turned to Thomson.

  “I hate to say this, since we just found you, but we’ve got to leave you behind. Your leg . . .”

  “Yes,” he answered, and put his hand on my arm as if to hurry me toward the door. “I’d never keep up, and I doubt he means me any harm. You have to go now.”

  “My leg is injured as well,” Gabrielle said. “Perhaps I—”

  “You I can carry. We’re going down the ridge into the valley. Jovo, we need a back way out, a window—”

  Jovo’s face cleared, and he nodded decisively.

  “Yes, follow me.”

  He led us into the kitchen, where Mirjana finished tying together the two ends of a rolled wool blanket. She thrust it at me.

  “Take,” she ordered in German.

  “Danke.” I slipped it over my head and left arm. “What about you?” I asked Jovo.

  “All we can do is give up or die, and dying is stupid, so we’ll give up. The Old Man does not butcher Serbs, although he may take his anger out on me. We will see. When the soldiers come, I will say the Scotsman is Mirjana’s crazy uncle Sasha from Zagreb, who only speaks German. Perhaps we will have some luck there if the released airship crewmen do not see him.”

  “And when they ask where Thomson is?”

  “The five gold coins will explain his absence, unless Captain Gordon’s party is taken as well. Now go!”

  Mirjana opened shutters on a window on the back wall.

  “It is about three meters down, then twenty meters to the edge of the slope.”

  I lowered myself out feet first but stopped to shake Jovo’s hand.

  “Thank you. I don’t thi
nk I’ll be able to repay you.”

  “Singe the Old Man’s whiskers and that’s payment enough.”

  I lowered myself until I hung from my hands and then dropped the two feet to the ground. Out here the rattling chatter of the zeppelin’s Gatling gun was louder, along with shouts and screams and the sound of scattered small arms fire in the town. Above me Jovo and Mirjana helped Gabrielle out and lowered her by her hands. I reached up and held her by her waist.

  “Got her. Take the weight on your good leg, Gabi.”

  I eased her to the ground.

  “This is foolish. I cannot keep up. You must leave me.”

  “No chance.”

  Above me the bright square of the window darkened, filled with Thomson’s head and upper body. From behind him I heard loud rapid knocking on the house’s front door.

  “Laddie, you’ve got to stop Tesla. He has enough liftwood to have built an engine of enormous power. If the earth’s orbital velocity slows even slightly, we move closer to the sun. Temperatures will rise, and it will take very little to produce disastrous results. It—”

  “Yeah, melting icecaps, rising oceans, killer storms, mass extinctions—got it. Now close the window, Uncle Sasha. I’ll take it from here. And watch out for yourself.”

  “God be with you.”

  The shutters closed, and the world turned black.

  Stop Tesla. Did I even want to do that? I supposed I did, but I also needed Tesla for . . . everything else. Putting those two things together was going to be a really good trick, and I could hardly wait to find out how I was going to pull it all off.

  For that matter, Tesla was a smart guy and so far as I knew not suicidal. Wouldn’t he have figured out all this end-of-the-world stuff? That was something to ask him, when the time came, but first we just needed to get away. When I faced Tesla, it wouldn’t be as a prisoner. Not if I could help it.

  We had to get to the edge of the slope, then start down, but my night vision was shot. I put my arm under Gabrielle’s shoulders to support her, and we started slowly toward the valley.

  “Leave me,” Gabrielle said, her voice almost pleading. “I will be all right. You have a better chance by yourself. I do not believe Tesla will harm me.”