by Mark Jeffrey
“What, you ask?” Veerspike imitated. “How dare you inquire as to what?” Veerspike pointed out the window to where the pin lay broken and burning. “That is what! I know you are the villain behind it. I’ve known since you arrived that you were an infernal menace!”
Bantam blinked in surprise. “You think I did that? But I’ve been here the entire time under house arrest! General, you know that!”
“I’ll tell you what you I know. I know that you appeared out of nowhere a few weeks ago. You broke through our security once, you can do it again. Then you tell this cock-and-bull story about time traveling. You may have fooled Hardin and Cleveland but you haven’t fooled me.”
Wiping the blood from his mouth, Bantam said, “I seem to have fooled Dr. Archenstone as well.”
Veerspike’s eyes became dark pools of unconsciousness, flooded with deep hatred. He shook, raising his hand to strike again.
“Hold!” It was Dr. Hardin with Rachelle next to him. “General Veerspike. I thought I was clear.”
“Not anymore!” Veerspike raged. “Not any goddamn more! Have you peeked outside the window, Dr. Hardin?” Hardin opened his mouth but before he could say anything, Veerspike continued: “No! Stop it. Just stop it. Not this time!”
Hardin seemed to lose all power and shrink.
“General!” one of the men searching the room called out. “General. Look at this.”
Veerspike hurried over to where the man had pulled an armoire away from the wall. A small hole had been dug into the plaster behind it. The man brought forth a paper bag. Veerspike peeked inside it. His eyes widened. “You wanted proof, Dr. Hardin? Here it is!”
Veerspike pulled out a strange device. It had four chambers, each a different color. All four chambers were depleted.
“Proton fire!” Veerspike sneered. “That explains the green flame.”
A look of horror came over Rachelle’s face. Her hand flew up to her mouth and she ran from the room. Veerspike watched smugly.
“What’s a proton fire?” Bantam asked.
“He pretends he doesn’t know! Oh, that’s rich!” Veerspike said.
“It’s a plasma fire,” Hardin said quietly. “An exotic chemical reaction of four compounds. The only thing capable of burning through the black diamond superstructure of the Pin.”
“General Veerspike. Please listen to me. It was the Nazis! It wasn’t me! Hitler blew up the Pin. I swear I’m telling the truth! You’ve got to believe me!”
“Get him up!” Veerspike said. “Now we’re going to do things my way. Down to the holding cell with him!”
“General, I—” Hardin began.
“This happened because of your carelessness,” Veerspike said. “Yours and Cleveland’s. And mine for indulging it. The prisoner had access to the entire base! He was walking around free! I am hereby activating Article 4, the Emergency Powers Clause. That puts me in charge. I’d say we have an emergency, wouldn’t you? Am I being in any way unfair?”
Hardin shook his head.
“Good,” Veerspike said. “Now. Mr. Bantam and I are going to get acquainted. Much better acquainted.”
THE TORTURE was exquisite.
It employed a device known as a pinion, which worked by setting the blood on fire, or so it seemed to Bantam.
Through the haze of pain, Bantam heard Veerspike explain something about water in the body and sympathetic vibrations amplifying the pain.
Veerspike hardly asked him any questions: he seemed to enjoy tormenting him.
How this went on, Bantam couldn’t say. The pinion scalded his psyche in places he did not know existed.
He prayed for death.
And it was death that came for him.
Journey by AetherLev
“IT SEEMS I am forever destined to administer your delirium, Mr. Bantam.”
Bantam’s eyes adjusted to the lovely Rachelle Archenstone, bent over him and checking his pulse. A hint of a smile played across her face
“Where?”
“We are on board a Mary Blaine,” she explained, eyes twinkling. “An AetherLev, anyway. I am forced to confess that we smuggled you out of the base. Mr. Cleveland, Dr. Hardin and I.”
With a start, Bantam noticed they were moving. He and Rachelle were in an ornate wooden compartment, a train compartment, it seemed. The lace-curtained window was curved like the inside of a cylinder. Whatever he was inside of was itself inside of a transparent tube. Their conveyance sped along at blinding speeds as the countryside whizzed.
“How?”
“Simple. I administered a tincture that simulated death when I was asked to examine you,” Rachelle explained.
Bantam gaped at her quizzically.
She continued, “Have you not read Romeo and Juliet? I had thought you an aficionado of literature. Anyway, the tincture stopped your breathing and all but stopped your heart. General Veerspike believed he had tortured you to death, and I daresay he would have had we not intervened.”
“But then . . . ?”
“Your corpse was removed. Once it was brought to the morgue, Dr. Hardin shipped you, whereupon Mr. Cleveland and I extricated you from your coffin.”
Bantam thought about this for a moment. “Sooner or later, Veerspike will figure out what Hardin did.”
“He already has,” Rachelle said, eyes averted. “Hardin had spirited several keys away from General Veerspike, concealing them within his false arm to affect your transit from the morgue. But the ruse was doomed to discovery from the start.”
Bantam tried to sit up. “Why did he do that? I never asked him to.”
“Rest,” Rachelle insisted, and injected him.
BANTAM WOKE WITH a jolt. The AetherLev turned a sharp corner, rattling everything in the compartment.
By degrees, it came back to him.
Smuggled you out of the base
Oh, no. Hardin.
The door burst open and a man with a black beard entered, quickly closing the door behind him.
Bantam surged to his feet, adrenaline slamming through his belly. But the sheets were still wound tightly around him and he fell. The man pounced.
“Bantam! It’s me!” he said. The man pulled his beard down. Cliff Cleveland was in disguise. “I’m famous, remember? I have to wear this when I go out!”
“Frack,” Bantam panted. He jumped to his feet once again. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“You appear quite satisfactory for one who has accumulated several days in a morgue. It seems death becomes you.”
“Is that how long it’s been? Days? What’s going on?”
“Ever since the explosion, the papers are blaring headlines about how the American Space Program is kaput. President Cobb is despondent. Germany is a shoo-in to win the Great Race. Chancellor Hitler is ecstatic.”
“Now do you believe me?”
“Of course I believe you,” Cleveland replied. “Why do you think I risked my neck to help Dr. Archenstone transport you off the base? Besides. I am currently a man of leisure. I am an astronaut and somebody blew up my starcraft.”
“Okay,” Bantam said, sitting down. “Where are we going?”
“New York. You and Rachelle are meeting up with some friends of Hardin’s. A hacker society called Cape and Cane. I, however, am due back at MacLaren.”
“You can’t go back there!” Bantam almost shouted. “They’ll—”
“No they won’t. General Veerspike simply thinks I have been on family leave. The shock of the explosion and all. I’ll be fine.”
Bantam shook his head. “Yeah, about that. I thought Dr. Archenstone was engaged to Veerspike. Why is she helping us?”
The door opened again. This time it was Rachelle. She’d clearly overheard, judging from the glare she gave Cleveland. “I’ll leave you two alone. I’ve got to get going anyhow.”
When he’d left, Rachelle whispered, “I suspect General Veerspike of being the true saboteur.”
“You think he’s a Nazi?” Bantam ventured after a
long moment. Rachelle only nodded in reply.
WHEN THEY ARRIVED in New York City, Bantam noticed it was much larger than his New York City. The buildings were wider, taking up many city blocks at the base, and they stretched for many more stories into the sky.
Clearly the structural advances embodied by the Volzstrang pin were employed here as well. Bantam estimated some of the buildings to be ten times the height of the Empire State Building.
They’d stepped from the train directly into an air taxi, an ornate, open-air car-like compartment hanging from a smallish balloon. Rachelle explained that this balloon was filled with an ultra-light gas called helux. This gas was one of the key advances of the age: it gave thirty times more lift per square inch than hydrogen or helium, and it wasn’t flammable. Thus, small balloons could be used. The craft itself was called a growler. It was steered by using propellers at the back and front, all of which were powered by steam.
As they ascended, Bantam saw that the buildings were tiered: their upper floors curved inward every ten stories or so, and the structures came to a point near the top. It was a city filled with steel-and-glass pyramids with soft edges like the Chrysler building. This, in turn, opened vast canyons of air at the upper altitudes, which were subsequently filled with wafting fog banks as well as criss-crossing pneumatic tubes, Manhattan Air Way cars zipping along on cables, and myriad personal flying machines. Small dirigibles with naphtha gaslights drifted along in a clog of traffic and honking at multiple altitudes.
This was a more elegant city with softer sounds, not the shrill insistence of Bantam’s own New York City. The persistent whir of propellers created an omni-present low-level buzz, like a beehive. A gentle ping alerted the growlers to each in the fog, thus preventing collisions.
The police—blue bottles, as Rachelle called them—wore a batwing contraption combined with a back-mounted bubble that enabled them to zip around more quickly and nimbly than any other vehicle. They used a higher concentration of the precious gas helux in their bubbles for extra lift and speed.
People in parasols and top hats thronged the airway platforms that seemed to hang off every floor of every building. New York was alive and pulsing.
Several large billboards passed by as they flew:
Dr. Wolcott’s cherry morphine drops
Cures toothaches, asthmatics, and all diseases of the throat and lungs
The ad show two toddlers, glassy-eyed, with spoons near a bottle of red liquid.
What Kind of Man Owns His Own Hydrologics? A Man of Progress!
A Man who owns a genuine Neptune!
Beneath this, a proud man sat in front of a device much like Volzstrang’s but smaller. A pretty woman gazed adoringly behind him.
Galvin’s Tapeworms
Fleshy Women! Eat! Eat! Eat!
But never gain weight!
SANITIZED AND JAR PACKED
Helux Lifting Gas
It’ll lift you to the Moon!
Above this last advertisement stood a picture of Cliff Cleveland, thumbs up and grinning in a full-color artist’s rendition.
After a time, the air taxi began to descend through the billowing shoulders of cloud. By degrees, a rickety wooden house appeared through the mist. Bantam’s eyes popped open in surprise. “You sure this is the right address?” he yelled through the wind to the growler pilot.
“Yes, sir!” he replied.
The house was raised on scaffolding that extended out of a building directly below it. Another building had been carefully erected around the house so as not to encroach on its property, and after a respectful seven stories, jutted out again and resumed its upward climb. The house was perpetually blocked from the sun and existed in a shade of infinite gloom and fog.
They landed on the platform and Rachelle paid the growler pilot. When he’d gone, the duo walked up the creaking porch stairs and knocked on the door.
“It’s open!” came a voice inside.
So this is Cape and Cane, Bantam thought.
The dark place seemed a horrible mess. On the far wall, a large moving image of a naughty dancing girl flickered. The projection was thrown there by a gas lamp-powered kinematoscope embedded in the far wall. The girl’s ethereal form moved to the tinkling of an elaborate gold-leafed music box. She was like a ghost pixie doomed to dance for eternity. The only other sound in the house was the gears of the music box: a steady oil-on-metal whirring purr.
“Need a coggler,” muttered the voice of a man who stepped into the stray light. “A good coggler could get rid of that noise.” The thin man looked like he hadn’t eaten in days. His forehead was bandaged, and he wore a tattered trench coat over dirty long johns. He gripped a bottle of bright green absinthe. “Then I could hear my music right and think!”
“You’re with Cape and Cane?” Rachelle asked.
The man cackled. “Ha! I am Cape and Cane! What’s left of her, anyway.” He looked around drearily, lifting a pinky ring to his nose and snapping it open. “Hold a minute. Just up from the weeping willow, have a mercy. Need to pack the snozzler.” He snorted.
“Are you snorting cocaine?” Bantam asked.
“Why, yes. Yes I am,” the man replied, yawning. “Why do you inquire?”
Bantam fumed, not knowing where to begin. Rachelle took over: “You’re a friend of Dr. Hardin.”
“More like an online friend,” the man mused. “He knows me as DionySYS. We had lengthy confabulations on ferroequinology and the aetheric sciences. Debates about logiducts and aquagates, mostly. And throng plates. One must always have a discussion about throng plates. He found my delineation in an online salon and we went from there. Why?”
Bantam surged forward and grabbed the absinthe from his hand with one swift movement and smashed the bottle into the far wall. A splash of green and glass soiled the phantasm of the dancing girl.
“Because the Volzstrang Pin has been destroyed,” Bantam yelled. “Because you have a lead on who did it. We need you to sober up and give us your help right now. For the sake of your country! You have no idea what’s at stake!” Bantam pushed the thought of swastikas emblazoned on growlers from his mind.
The man blinked. “Sober up? But I am far more useful polluted. My intellect expands. Vistas unavailable to it in temperance are laid bare, nude and raw. Oh, I like saying that: nude. It’s like naked, but nuder. You could call me a useful kanurd. No, really. Hold your applause and astonishment. What is it you wish to know?”
“Hardin said you hacked a communication to the saboteur of the Pin,” Rachelle said.
“My, aren’t you tasty?” DionySYS’s gaze became watery and dull with lust. “Are you a ladybird? Hardin never mentioned you. Hardin. Hard-on.” He burst into laughter at the pun.
Bantam slammed him into a wall. “Talk. Now.”
“Okay, okay! Jesus. Glocky, isn’t he? Yes, I do have something. Some cracksmen and I vented a tube weeks back. The air clankers were down for the night, and the Blue Bottles couldn’t see us in the soup. So we culled us some polly. One was a cylinder addressed to a ‘Ton. I know what you’re thinking. Since when did ‘Ton’s get p-mail, right? Well, this one did.”
“Which automaton?” Rachelle asked.
“A performing unit. A slang cove magician. A hypnotist. An illusionist. Works a club nearby called Magfly. It calls itself Gaspar the Great. You know, after the—”
“—most famous magician of all time. Of course I know that,” Rachelle said irritably.
“Leave me alone!” DionySYS shrieked, collapsing against the wall and protecting his head with his hands. “Please! You have to go!”
“There’s no reason to go all Hunter S. Thompson on us,” Bantam said. “Settle down. We’re leaving.”
As they sailed across the sky Bantam smiled when he saw a sign that read:
A Poor Boy’s Hat
The Novel of the Age!
Thrill to the story that enchants young and old alike
Gaspar the Great
AT THE NIGHTCLUB Ma
gfly, Bantam and Rachelle watched the automaton Gaspar the Great run through his act. Humans no longer performed, Hardin had said. It was beneath them. It was predicted that in the century to come, automation would quickly replace every human endeavor, Rachelle explained. This was a worry: Mankind would always be at leisure. The plague of convenience would lead to boredom, and suicide in mass numbers. Rachelle could not fathom why Bantam found this hilarious.
Gaspar’s magic act involved sawing a woman in two, which was much more horrifying when performed by cold hands of steel than by human hands. There were levitations and vanishings, and re-appearances and reconstitutions of destroyed items. Every act chilled Bantam further. In each, the robot lorded over his human audience: pathetic, foolable, fallible bags of blood and water. The message was clear: the automaton, a being of perfect clockwork and precision, was the clever one with the secrets who would triumph in the end.
Gaspar was the creature God should have made. Had He done so, there would have been no Fall, and a clockwork Eden would still hold dominion over the earth.
When the show was done, Bantam led Rachelle to the dressing room backstage.
Bantam did not knock, and he entered unannounced. The ‘Ton spun from the mirror. “Ho, there! No one is allowed in here after the performance! But I can be seen in rare public appearances on Thursdays.”
“No, Gaspar,” Bantam interjected. “We’re not here for autographs.”
Bantam was astonished to see a small herd of miniature horses prancing over to him tentatively, curious. They seemed to be Gaspar’s pets.
“Oh? But whatever for why not? I see you met the prads. Don’t you nobble them!”
“We have something far more important to discuss with you,” Bantam continued.
Suddenly, without transition, Bantam and Rachelle were standing on a building ledge, thousands of feet above the street below. The wind was ferocious.