by Sean Heslin
“Ver' muffled if it is,” said Terand.
As they passed through, they realised that the main room was merely a tinkering and storage place. This room is where the miracles happened.
Tool racks covered the grey stone walls, featuring all types of spanners from hydro to trans-dimensional to sonic. Brass chisels sat side by side with monofilament cutters. Monkey wrenches share their shelves with devices mostly made of light. Bins and boxes contain an array of materials to rival the unbridled productions within a star, and the spice rack includes tunga root. Two different forges are available depending on the process needed, as well as a lump hammer.
The main workbench is a mess.
Everyone walked stealthily as they entered, ears straining for the source of the sound. Yrinmet and Goe stayed deep in discussion in the other room, which was a distraction. Milspeth frowned, wandered back through, and shortly there was a dual yelp.
The remaining four stalked about the machine shop. The faint cries seem to be coming from underneath a metal bowl attached to some truly bizarre machinery with nary a pipe out of place.
Perci approached, sword drawn, ready to flee at the first sign of danger. He used the tip of it to lift the bowl. The others hold their breaths…
A sausage looked at them accusingly. “Well, what did you expect to find?” it said.
“Not a sausage,” replied a stricken Perci
“If I didn’t know any better I’d suspect you were being tiresome,” said Rancha glancing in his direction. “Are you the purveyor of this establishment?” he inquired of the sausage, which smelled faintly of basil.
“I don’t think that means what you think it does, but yes I am. I’d very much appreciate it someone would pull the lid back down and pull that lever there. The lever: Do you see it, the one with the blue…”
Terand obliged and there was a short whirr, followed by the sound of thirty-six giraffes having all their bones broken while drowning in custard. They all suddenly felt the urge to puke.
A metal tube adjacent hissed open and a naked white-haired guy fell out.
“Ow,” he commented. “Remin’ me to pud a cush’n dwn here.” He stood up and looked around, up. Then down. “And some clothes. ‘Scuse me a moment.”
He sidled through another door, and they heard clumping from upstairs.
“Well,” Terand said.
“Indeed,” said Rancha.
“Gosh! That was a big sausage,” said Pib grinning widely, but she then got shushed for bad taste.
“What did we miss?” asked Milspeth, entering holding an ear in each hand.
“An advanced cookery lesson,” sniggered Perci.
“That was nearly funny,” Rancha told him.
Yrinmet squirmed free of the lady's grasp and prodded at the machine. “Not seen one of these before, what’s it supposed to be, do you reckon?”
“Cross-genetic re-iterator with post-polynucleic capabilities,” said Goe, glumly resigned to being gently restrained by his lobe.
“Oh.”
The man eventually emerged from whatever was upstairs wearing sensible brownish work clothes.
“Hello, gentlemen. Oh, and ladies. How can I help you? Ah, ta for changing me back by the way.”
Rancha took the lead “You’re welcome. We are here on business I’m afraid.”
“Naturally,” the man said, gently shooing Pib off a bench and fiddling with a multi-head screwdriver. “I’m Jones, genius extraordinaire. Welcome to my workshop. If you are in the wrong place, you are very determined wrongdoer to go past the camouflage. If you are here mistakenly, I again thank you and ask politely for you to leave. Actually, as it is, can some of you wait outside - it’s a little crowded in here.”
“Fair enough,” Rancha nodded. “Perci, Yrinmet you stay. You lot, go and find something interesting to do for ten minutes.”
When Rancha would think about this later, he would be stunned into realising that they had all complied without question and he would bump into a wall at the moment that it occurred to him.
Jones flicked a switch and a comparatively primitive air conditioning system hummed on. “So, gents, what can I do you for?”
Rancha nudged Yrinmet whose eyes were gleaming with the dual goals of hero-worship and avarice. “Oh, me,” said Yrinmet. “Are you a supplier of anti-culmoful interquoiters?”
Jones paused with his tinkering in the bowels of the machine. “With polyfranoplic hungpaications?”
“Certainly.”
“Then yes I am. I invented the damn things, more fool me.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” rumbled Perci. “What does one of those do anyway?”
Jones paused again, staring into the middle distance and thinking how to frame the complexity of his invention in the arcane language of 'layperson'.
“In simplest terms, it knocks a hole in reality through particularly weird dimensions, which can then be used in much the same way as a crucible in certain arcane applications.”
“Come again?”
“A mixing bowl in space,” clarified Yrinmet.
“Ah, a connoisseur. Do you have one then?” said Jones, his pride rising.
“Yeah, I ordered one a few years back because I kept running out of chalk to do the incantations for the hard way.”
“Hmm.” Jones meandered over to a large book, mounted in an alcove. “And your name is…?”
“Yrinzametaphicalogispolymoboincat The All-Powerful,” he of said name pronounced easily. Jones ran a finger down some listings and flicked a couple of pages. “Hmm,” he uttered. “Right.”
“Yes?” said a bemused Yrinmet.
“Get out of my workshop right now before you get eviscerated,” Jones said with perfect calm. “And never order anything from me ever again.”
“That’s fair,” said Yrinmet, and left without another word.
Rancha and Perci goggled as he left, then shook themselves from this performance.
“That book tell you who has ordered what from you?” said Rancha politely, attempting to regain the flow of conversation.
“Absolutely,” said Jones, moving back to the re-iterator and popping a panel. “Accounting round here is the only thing that keeps my sanity on a dangerous edge. I get so sick of it sometimes that I do masterpieces out of spite. Works quite well.”
“Anyone ordered one of those…interquoiters recently?”
“Sure. Well, the order was sent about five years ago, but I finished one about last fortnight or so. One of my better ones, actually.”
“Tell us who wanted it, now,” ordered Perci.
Jones turned and grinned. “No.”
“No?” said Perci with menace.
His gaze was easily matched with a disturbingly quiet intensity.
There was a pause filled with tension.
Rancha broke the knife-edge silence. “Can you tell us why not?”
“Sure!” said Jones cheerfully “Because I don’t know. I only got an address to deliver to and most of the money in advance.” He returned to his mending. “I suspect I’ll get the rest when it eventually gets delivered.”
“How’d you figure that one?”
“Whoever it is, they are a regular customer. They seem to always pay up.”
“Regular?”
“Sure, do you want to see what else they wanted? Some pretty weird stuff, even for me, but it was quite a good intellectual exercise.”
“Go on then,” Rancha said.
The two got led back into the main room where some impressive equipment and designs were shown to them. It all gleamed, as such things should.
“What does that lot do?” asked Perci.
“They are the mechanical counterparts to some heavy-duty incantations used in dimensional wizardry.”
“Cool.”
“It is rather,” said Jones, sounding happy, “I use them myself now, it really was a nuisance hunting for new supplies of gargoyle blood every other week.”
“Fresh?” Ra
ncha asked feeling sick.
“Heavens no! The gargoyle nation gets paid by the pint by their Blood Service. Very much in demand and they got fed up of squishing people trying to hunt them, so they cashed in. I invented an armour-piercing extraction needle, but they haven’t got back to me yet. Pity.” He flapped at them and he returned to the back room to find the order form they sought.
Perci was meanwhile investigating a framed design amongst the artwork.
“This looks familiar,” he said, pointing redundantly.
Rancha wandered over, as he was duty-bound to do such. “Hmm, I get what you mean. Seen something like that recently. Can’t think what though.”
The design that had so captivated their interest involved several engineering cutaways, lots of technical calculations and in the centre of the paper, a charcoal representation of an intricate set of tubes interwoven into a box shape. Subtle shading indicated that there was more than one base material used for the tubes, which also had no obvious gaps in their construction.
They stood deep in thought for a few moments, and Jones wandered back in holding the accounts book open at a certain page.
“Here we go, address changes every few years, but the current one is a fortress near the Chasm Of the Damned. Around the Lingrit area, I think this scrawl says. Interested?” Jones looked up from the book and took note of their engrossment. “Hello?”
Perci turned his head slightly and pointed again. “What’s this?”
Jones squinted, then sighed. “Oh, that is a testimony to a lost dream I’m afraid. Was destined to be the greatest invention ever. Literally. Shame really.”
“What went wrong?” said Rancha still staring at the diagram, trying to fix where in his memory the image had been.
“Silly really. It came in two parts, which work independently but doesn’t…function properly unless you have both. When one disappeared, I was fairly upset, but at least I still had one half to work from. Then that went as well. I was so angry that I made a bomb that…well, I was fairly angry. But, alas I doubt it’ll come back here in my lifetime. Out of interest, why the interest?”
Rancha scratched his chin. “We just get the feeling that we’ve seen it, or something like it before. But, if as you say it disappeared a long time ago…”
“Well, separately the pieces look like wooden and metal lattices, there’s a knack to putting them together, so I don’t think you would have ever seen the whole article.”
Perci snapped his fingers, making the other two jump. “Rancha where’s that bag, the one with those cigars in it?”
Rancha gazed absently at Perci, and then he also brightened. “Ah! Yes, that’s where they are! I remember now!”
“What? What?” Jones started hopping from foot to foot in unconscious excitement.
Rancha went over to where they had left the sacks, by the front door and fished out the fake velvet bag. The tension in the atmosphere was palpable. He undid the drawstring and removed the two crackling woven blocks.
Jones fought hard to keep his composure. He placed the book between his knees and held out his hands imploringly. “May I…may I see them?”
“Sure,” shrugged Perci and passed them over.
Increasingly gleeful, the master craftsman ran his hands over the twisted forms. Then, with several movements that made his arms appear to pass through each other, Jones joined the pieces together.
He held up a lumpy rectangle made up of wood and metal, bound in an exact and impossible embrace. No gaps in the remarkable weave could be seen and the pieces now seemed permanently inseparable.
Jones gazed at his work lovingly for a moment. Then, he looked up at the two patiently watching. He proffered the bedialled object. “This now belongs to you. I have seen it once more, and you have brought it to me. Therefore by right of quest, it is now yours. Look after it and be very, very bloody careful, for it can do practically anything, including destroying everything, ever.”
“Yes, but what is it and why is it even slightly relevant to what we are doing?” said Perci.
Jones opened his mouth to explain, when there was a whine and a blinding flash. The block quavered, twisted in on itself and vanished.
“Bugger!” exclaimed Jones loudly and with feeling. “I forgot to reset the fnuging settings! Bugger, bugger and great hairy donkey boll…” he paused. Then seemed to deflate. “But at least I saw it again. If it had gone anywhere unfortunate we would already know about it. May it bring joy, or we are all in the smelly stuff. Now, you wanted the address of whoever ordered the anti-culmoful interquoiter, yes?”
An utterly mystified Perci nodded. “But what was...”
“Never mind that, gone now. One moment.” He opened the book again and ran a finger down the page. “Ah, here we are. ‘Dread Fortress, border of Lingrit, southern end of The Chasm Of The Damned. Packages should be labelled with enclosed stickers.’ Stickers? Oh these stickers,” he said holding up a small sheet of labels tucked into the next page of the book. “Got an insignia on them and say ‘S/T C/O Famp @ Armour co.’ Is that any help at all?”
“Loads, thank you very much,” enthused Rancha.
“I’m glad,” said Jones, and indeed seemed so. “If I can just ask, who is it I am supplying do you know?”
“Ernie The Murderous,” said Perci offhandedly.
Both Jones and Rancha were horrified.
“Dear gods, I hope not!” gasped a heavily shocked Jones.
“So do I!” said Rancha. “Perci remind me to have a little talk to you. Ernie is not a man you should ever even think about, let alone mention.” The urglon shuddered.
The formerly placid Jones looked to be having a heart attack. Rancha assured him it was Eric The Merciful and not the other dire villain they were after. Jones calmed a little, but not much.
“Eric? Ugh, I wish I’d known that earlier. He is a, ha, scary man. After this delivery, I don’t intend on giving him any more items, no matter if he is my best customer at the moment. He’s almost as bad as your friend out there.”
“Yrinmet? What did he do anyway?”
“Let me put this in simple terms. He is evil. Really. Take my word on this.”
“Okay.”
“Now, if you have everything you require gentlemen, the door is over there. They say nasty things come in threes and I don’t intend to let you make a third. Good day.”
Rancha spoke quickly. “Oh, before we go can I just ask do you know a way we can transport six people to the Fortress before tomorrow? We have to save the world and Lingrit is pretty far away. On the other side of the planet in fact.”
Jones paused and pondered. Then he motioned for them to wait, went into the back room and returned promptly with some photocopied sheets. He handed these to Rancha.
“Now, gentlemen if that is that all…”
Perci and Rancha shrugged, grabbed their bags and left.
---
Jones watched them go, sighed, and leaned against a display of water clocks. He lit a smokeless cigarette, and tried to relax a little.
He looked at Eric’s latest order and thought deeply about anti-culmoful interquoiters. He then gazed vaguely at the basic Eventuality Drive that was spinning on the ceiling for a few moments.
He grinned widely.
Wandering over to a pile he pulled out a remote control for the Drive. He made an adjustment, then set the timer for six years back.
Then, laughing loudly he packed up Eric’s order ready to leave.
“Ooo, this is going to interesting!”
Chapter 40
“Old is always better than new. That's why it's been around longer”
- Ebi Ebison, antiquity dealer, negotiating the sale of the Plado Crown Jewels shortly after the declaration of Republic, 4103 C.M.
Outside, Perci and Rancha bought kebabs while they waited for the others to return. The sinister street people had mysteriously disappeared, for which they were glad.
In a rare show of conscientiousness, Perci made
note of the new location they had been given on the back of his (used) napkin. A blenching Rancha let him keep hold of it.
First to arrive back was Terand, sporting a new scabbard containing a multi-function sword that at the clunk of a switch converted into a battle-axe. He was noticeably happier with the additional armament.
Next came Pib and Milspeth, giggling, with matching dual makeovers and a new pink, flowery combat dress for Milspeth. Goe trailed behind them, looking haggard – the epitome of a man who had been through shopping hell. In his hand he clutched a bat with a ball attached by a piece of elastic, showing that the good boy had been allowed one new toy.
Yrinmet, despite the distance limit that his demon's curse imposed, took a further few minutes to turn up. His inner pockets bulged and smelled of fresh arcane supplies like crows feet, demon flesh and tarragon.
“What’s the tarragon for?” asked Goe, sniffing in appreciation.
“Casseroles,” was the reply.
Then as they watched, the building known as Jones’s workshop blew up and rained masonry.
---
The group were in shock and somewhat out of breath. Just after the workshop had blown up, they searched the rubble in vain for Jones. Then the Poitian police arrived on the scene and tried to arrest the whole lot of them for being looters.
Naturally, they had fled.
It was now half an hour later. They were in a different set of outskirts of Central Poitia, leading to the marginally more residential Southern Poitia. They were collapsed in an alleyway down the side of a potter's shop. The elderly Milspeth and Goe looked quite ill, and Terand silently bemoaned a sprained ankle.
Pib sat unnoticed on Perci’s helmet, while Rancha held an emergency council with Yrinmet.
“Did you do this?” Rancha's voice was full of barely restrained fury.
“No! Why would I want to?”
“Because Jones had a grudge against you. What did you do to him anyway?”
“Nothing!”
“The truth!” shouted Rancha, and by accident or design partially reverted his head to the vicious lizard he was. Too many sharp teeth glinted.