by Mark Jeffrey
“You don’t understand,” Veerspike said, shaking his head. “A new empire is arising, one that will last for a thousand years! A brilliant man leads it . . . if you could only hear him speak, you would feel his majesty for yourself!
“This man is the new messiah. He will lead humanity into a brighter future than you can possibly imagine. Not everyone is invited, of course. The way must be cleared first. Too many people in the world are unfit, unclean! Vermin must be exterminated! But you can still be a part of it, Rachelle. Come back to me. Be by my side in the new world order.”
“Oh, my formerly betrothed. How can you know me so poorly? If this empire is to be led by the man Benjamin described, it is an empire of hoaxes, darkness and sand. I would rather die.”
“So be it,” Veerspike growled, and he launched himself at her.
She screamed and dodged, scampering across the roof of the car. But her close-cropped dress and corset did not permit agility. Veerspike quickly pinned her, and held a dagger at her throat.
“Goodbye, Rachelle. The blood of my beloved on my blade in the name of the Reich? My führer will weep tears of joy when he learns of it.”
As he sank the blade into her neck, Bantam’s boot cracked him across the temple, sending him skidding across the metal-slick roof. He grabbed the open hatch at the last second. Bantam bounded after him. Veerspike rose and the two began exchanging blows.
Bantam knew Tae Kwon Do, but Veerspike was nearly double his weight in both muscle and fat. When Veerspikes’s blows connected, they were like a meteor crashing through a forest. Bantam’s blows were precise and aimed at soft spots: the windpipe, the temple, the ribcage.
“Not bad for a jelly-belly,” Bantam taunted.
“Only women kick. Men fight with their fists,” Veerspike said, not knowing how to defend himself from such blows and clearly irritated by that. “I’m going to nobble you good, pigeon.”
“I have to—”
Bantam was cut off as the airway car bounced. They’d hit a switch cable and sped off in a new direction through the iron canyons of New York City.
The sudden jolt caused Veerspike and Bantam to stumble, but they both regained their footing. Rachelle was thrown from the roof and plummeted.
“Rachelle!” Bantam yelled. But Veerspike offered him no respite; fists thundered in his face.
For several more minutes, the two of them were in a deadlock of skill versus size, evenly matched.
Then Veerspike made a mistake: he left his side unprotected. Bantam spun with all his might and gambled on a flying roundhouse kick to the ribs. The gamble paid off.
The sound of ribs cracking, bending inward, puncturing the lung. Veerspike coughed immediately; blood was already pouring into his lung. Soon, he would drown in it.
The force of the kick had sent Veerspike careening off the roof.
When Bantam peered over the edge, he saw both Rachelle and Veerspike hanging from the foot rail.
Rachelle had managed to climb onto it and she was steady, whereas Veerspike was holding on by a single hand.
“Here!” Rachelle said, offering her hand. But Veerspike didn’t want that. Savagely, he tore at her dress, trying to pull her down with him. Blood poured from the corner of his mouth. “No!” Rachelle cried, backing away. “Let go!”
His grip slipped. He latched onto Rachelle’s dress. For a moment, they hung there together. Rachelle hung onto the footrail for dear life with all of Veerspike’s weight pulling on her.
But then Bantam was at her side. He turned his gaze to Veerspike.
“You want to reduce the world population? Fine. Let’s start with you.”
Bantam kicked Veerspike in the face. The portion of dress he was holding onto ripped.
Victor Veerspike went howling down into the abyss of cloud below.
The Phlogistonian
THE PHLOGISTONIAN Aerotel was permanently lodged in the clouds above New York City. Under construction for the past fifteen years and newly opened, it was the latest marvel and newest gilded playground of society.
As they approached in a growler taxi, Bantam saw that the aerotel was essentially a large building kept permanently aloft by a great number of helux-filled shafts and columns built directly into the superstructure. A complex system of hydrologic circuitry, gyroscopes, and propellers worked in concert to continuously nudge the building into the same location, accounting for the shifting winds and weather.
It was a golden palace floating in the sky.
Rachelle figured it was the perfect place for them to hole up for a bit and figure out what to do next.
The lobby was a cacophony of top hats and ladies in mink, several of whom carried fashionable and elegant miniature horses. Bantam had thought these pets to be a peculiarity of the automaton Gasper, but it was evidently a widespread fad.
“How are we going to get in?” Bantam asked. “This is the twirled moustache version of an Ian Schrager hotel, and we have no reservation.”
“I’m an Archenstone, remember? This hotel was built with my family’s money.” She strutted to the front desk. Within seconds a bellhop scurried, leading them to an elevator made of crystal. It is like being inside a chandelier, Bantam thought as they ascended.
Their room was appointed so lavishly it bordered on hallucination. Marble, gold, and sapphires adorned the walls and columns. An open-air balcony featured a rich fire pit crackling in the sunset. They were fairly high up in the air, but by some trick of architecture, it was only mildly windy and not cold at all.
Rachelle dismissed the bellhop with a generous tip and closed the door. “Thank you for trusting me,” she said to Bantam. “We need the rest. And we need a place to hide out while I think. If we go back to MacLaren, we will be arrested. I’m certain Victor left standing orders for my incarceration, and if they saw you alive, you’d be in clappers even more quickly than I.”
Bantam allowed himself to collapse on the bed. “I’m sorry,” he said to Rachelle. “I just got hit with a wave of tired that you wouldn’t believe.”
“You haven’t properly recovered from the pinion,” Rachelle said. “Not to mention the tincture I gave you. It is harmless, but not altogether without a toll. All you’ve done recently is run for your life. I’m surprised you’re even on your feet.”
She circled the bed, and took his pulse and felt his forehead. “You are on the mend, though. That is the good news. But now, we must warn the army base of the message we intercepted. We must tell them to have the men standing at the ready, not drunk in the kife.”
Bantam started to get up. “No. If they know where we are, they’ll arrest us.”
Rachelle pushed him back down. “I am not daft! Yes, we would be nibbed and quick. That’s why we’ll need a nose instead.”
“A what?”
“An intermediary.”
“Who?”
“I was thinking that Mr. Hardin’s friend from Cape and Cane would be suitable. That dodgy DionySYS fellow. I can send him a p-mail from here.”
“ There can’t be pneumatic tubes that reach up here! They’d snap in the wind!”
Rachelle laughed. “Have you forgotten the Volzstrang Pin so easily?”
“Right,” Bantam said tapping his forehead. “That’s me, still not thinking with my top hat.”
“In any event, I will ask him to kindly relay the message to Mr. Volzstrang, who can attend to it on that end. I will send the message in a species of mathematics that Mr. Volzstrang will know at once it is not a forgery, and that I must be its author.”
“Volzstrang will raise the alarm. Keep everyone on their toes.”
“Yes,” Rachelle said, pushing him down. “Now. You must rest.”
It was accidental, of course, but she was tantalizingly close. In the act of pushing him back down, she’d overextended just a bit more than she had anticipated, and her weight was on his chest.
Their eyes met. She didn’t pull away.
The curve of her waist and the line of her neck we
re immediate and palpable in new ways he had not considered.
Normally, this would be the moment Ben Bantam would certainly not miss. But Rachelle was different from any girl he’d known. Something held him back.
She seemed to sense this and pushed herself back up. “Sleep, Mr. Bantam. Rest. And when you awake, the message will have been accomplished.”
Bantam watched her as she moved away. Gracefully, she sat at the ornate desk across the room. She pulled stationery from the drawer and began to compose her message.
WHEN BANTAM AWOKE again it was midday.
Rachelle lay next to him, on top of the covers and fully dressed except for her hat. She was curled up, breathing softly.
He resisted the urge to sweep her hair away from her eyes.
Gently, he rose. He pulled his suspenders on, and adjusted the various buttons and snaps. Damn weird clothes, he thought.
He sauntered to the open air balcony. A sea of cloud stretched in every direction. A wide staircase of marble stood before him, descending into mist as though one could simply walk across the sky.
It should have been ferociously windy and cold but it wasn’t. It was strangely peaceful.
Above him, three massive propellers were continuously making small adjustments, rotating ever so slightly, in an effort to keep the Phlogistonian in a perfectly stable hover above New York City.
The propellers possibly worked against the wind as well, balancing it breath for breath. Bantam wasn’t sure how the sky had been tamed, but it had been.
Rachelle was suddenly beside him. “How did you sleep?”
“Like a dead man thanks to that pinion.” He shook his head.
She said quietly, “The message has been sent, as I promised. Nothing more we can do now. You must eat. Here. Let me order room service. The firepit on the balcony is quite marvelous. We can have a salon of our own, just the two of us.”
A TRAY OF meats, cheeses, and wine was set up for them on the balcony. Bantam could hardly stop himself from consuming it in a rude and ravenous fashion, looking up at Rachelle with apologetic eyes. She seemed not notice. Instead, she ate with the dainty grace of a woman of this age.
As the day wore on into evening, she asked him many questions about his world. Bantam spent most of the time telling her about the Beatles, Facebook, iPhones, television, airplanes, and even the moon landing in his own 1969. She could not get enough of these details, and he barely had time to ask questions about her world.
Conversation drifted to their beliefs in supernatural phenomenon, and she offered a tale of a medium that caused him to sit up and listen.
“It’s quite strange, really. A number of years ago, I went to see a spiritualist. It was kind of on a lark, a dare, you know, with a friend. I didn’t take it seriously. I thought it all flimflam: you know, tricks done with ropes and confederates in the dark, designed to elicit wonder with the sudden ringing of bells and shaking of tambourines.
“But this was nothing like that. Instead, it took place fully in the light of day. The woman—a didikko, a gypsy, darkly beautiful—was confident and strong. Nothing about her bespoke a charlatan. As you know, I am a scientist, and I am no flat. I am confident in my knowledge. She displayed the same confidence, the same fire in her eye about her occult art.
“She bade me to sit down, and she studied my palm for a long time. She seemed to descry puzzlement, a conundrum she could not solve. Finally she said, ‘You were meant to have one true love, but fate has given you two. Yet your fate is double: you have two lives, and they intertwine over one another. I have never seen anything like this. I do not know what it means. But it is clear that in both lives, you are quite important. You alleviate the suffering of billions. That is your fate, your truest purpose. Astonishingly, you manage it not once but twice, though in wholly different ways both times.’”
“This woman,” Bantam said, his throat tight. “What was her name?”
“I will never forget it. Madame Europa Romani.”
Bantam felt like he’d been socked in the gut.
“What is it?” asked Rachelle.
“I met her granddaughter,” Bantam said. “Before I came back. She read my fortune and told me something odd as well.” The encounter had been disturbing to Bantam; she had thrown him out, horrified. But for Rachelle’s sake, he kept that to himself. “She told me I would meet my soulmate.”
Rachelle smiled broadly. “That is most peculiar. You see, Madame Romani told me something similar. She said that a man would come from far away, further than I could imagine. This man would be my true love. I would know him by this sign: upon our first meeting, he would notice a fascinator in my hair. He would take it from me and perform an illusion with it.”
His heart jack-hammered in his chest. Rachelle’s eyes burned into his soul. They moved closer.
“Do you believe her?”
“I never used to believe in such things,” Rachelle said. “I was a scientist. But now, I must confess I do. How else can one explain what you did with the fascinator?
“No one else has ever thought to do something like that?”
“No. You must understand that here, such a thing is not done. Men are not so forward. I know you didn’t understand that, being from your world, where I suspect such acts are much more . . . liberated.” She smiled and pulled the fascinator from her hair, causing a waterfall of auburn locks down her shoulders. “Being from a liberated world, you are educated in the arts of love, are you not Mr. Bantam?”
Unable to take his eyes off her and coming fully awake now, he said, “Uh huh. And you? I mean like Hendrix said: are you experienced?”
She didn’t answer directly. “Whoever this Hendrix is, I suspect he would instruct you to follow me inside this instant.”
Bantam did so.
Once inside, she leaped forward into his arms and they collapsed onto the bed, mouths clamped on one another. Bantam tried to figure out how, exactly, a woman’s clothes were removed in this world.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“THAT WAS wonderful and delicious,” Rachelle said, rolling over after hours of lovemaking.
Bantam was still catching his breath. He couldn’t believe how long they had been going. “You’re amazing,” he finally managed to say. “I thought Victorian women were prim and proper. Where did you come from?”
She smiled. “Why, I came from you, silly.”
Bantam raised a brow.
“If it wasn’t for you coming back in time, the Day of the Red Sun would have never happened. My parents would have never met.”
“That is a weird thought,” Bantam said, truly digesting it for the first time.
“Strange, indeed. Here I am with a man who accidentally caused my existence!”
“Yes. You were my accident,” Bantam kidded, rewarded with a flurry of tickling.
“You are unlike any man I’ve ever met,” Rachelle said with a new sparkle of wonder in her eyes.
“How so?”
“You’re . . . free. You’re not caught up in embarrassment when you are with a woman. You’re a wild thing. You must understand how incredibly rare that is in this world. The men here are not as open as you.”
Bantam smiled. “That’s easy. They simply haven’t invented rock ‘n’ roll here yet.”
“Rock ‘n’ roll?”
“Never mind.”
They spent a few more hours together until they were exhausted, and they slipped into a deep sleep.
WHEN BANTAM awoke, he saw to his surprised that Rachelle had a surprise for him: a tuxedo, complete with cane, top hat and cape.
Bantam laughed aloud. “Where did you find that?”
“This is the most stylish hotel in the world, Mr. Bantam. Just about anything can be had by simply asking the concierge.”
Bantam eyed it. “Will it fit?”
Rachelle giggle and snuggled up to him. “I measured you as you slept.”
“Hopefully I can figure out how to put it on. The odd clothes in this
world are completely confusing.”
“But you do think us odd, don’t you?”
“Yes. All these twirled moustaches make me dizzy.”
“What was it you called it in the hydrologics room? A crazy top hat world? Yes, that was it. What exactly is so crazy about it?”
“Everybody talks on eggshells. You all fly around in balloons.”
“But you like it,” she grinned.
“I’m beginning to really like it.”
She grabbed his arm and grinned wide. “You will be amazed by what you will see at dinner tonight! Hurry and put on your tux!”
THE GRAND ballroom was a vision unto itself. It was a massive wide-open space, shaped like an egg, and topped with an iron spider web of glass and jewels that let the moonlight and starlight bathe gloriously down in shafts of silver and ivory.
But the most amazing element was the people, who danced on the air to the live orchestral music, aided by helux pouches strapped to their gowns and tuxedos. They twirled and spun, laughing, some high in the air, others barely two meters from the ground. Some floated to open landings above and stood watching, situated everywhere around the ballroom. Others performed choreographed tumbles and rolls, showing off their prowess in three-dimensional dancing.
As Bantam peered more closely, he saw that the helux harnesses were controlled by small propellers attached to the boots and back of the dancers. Only the men wore these, and thus led the dance.
Waiters floated to and fro the domed ceiling, wearing the batwing contraptions that Bantam had seen policemen wear in New York below. They carried silver trays of food to the diners, who were all seated on the ground in alcoves near the dance area. Several couches were arranged in concentric circles beneath the dancers, where men smoked cigars while their ladies fashionably sniffed cocaine from their rings.
The whole scene had a marvelousness to it that Bantam could barely pull his eyes away from. Rachelle, noticing this, smiled. “Crazy top hat world, hmm?”