Ministry Protocol: Thrilling Tales of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences

by Tee Morris

  The Trouble with Phoenixes

  By Jared Axelrod

  Ministry Headquarters

  London, England

  Spring, 1895

  Within Research & Design, deep in the bowels of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences, The Future was already taking place. Science was being done there, Science with a capital “S,” which meant that Director Sound had often referred to R&D as a phoenix egg, from which The Future—you could hear the capital letters in his voice when he said this, there was no mistaking it—would arise, bright and brilliant, a beacon of the shining world to come.

  “The trouble with phoenixes,” Wellington Books muttered out loud as he trudged down into the R&D Department, “is that they often burn the house down when they hatch.”

  Wellington kept his interaction with R&D to minimum. He preferred to use gadgets of his own design whenever possible, and when a visit to “the catacombs of horror and depravity” as he liked to call it was required, he tried to time it so that Agent Axelrod was not there when he arrived. He would knock on the door during lunch breaks, tea times, football matches, or deep in the dead of night. This normally worked well, with Wellington having to interact only with a young trainee or be temporarily befuddled by Agent Blackwell’s particular blend of sarcasm, innuendo and nonsense. But he found that Axelrod was keeping more and more peculiar hours, and that the usual tactics were no longer working.

  This was the very position he found himself. He had thought, with the Sand’s American Circus opening its tent that afternoon, Axelrod would have taken the day off. Axelrod was a fanatic about Sand’s “ceiling walker” routine, and never missed a chance to see it. But instead of a bustling laboratory sans Axelrod, Wellington found a laboratory empty of everyone but Axelrod. Professor Hephaestus Axelrod was sitting in the centre of the lab, heavy goggles over his eyes, his coat off, his shirtsleeves, trousers and waistcoat all but covered with a mélange of motor oil, sweat and some sort of...green stain Wellington was uncomfortable identifying. Axelrod was perched upon a massive device, an enormous æther tank festooned with Telsa Coils like a peacock’s tail, his hands trying to make sense of the tangle of wires that spilled out of an open panel.

  “Ah, um, Axelrod,” Wellington said. “I’m surprised to see you here.”

  “I work here, Books,” Axelrod said. He did not look up.

  Wellington tugged at his shirtcuffs. “The circus is in town.”

  “I know. That’s where everyone else is.”

  “Yes, well, what I mean is, I thought you would be at the circus. It is Sand’s, after all, and I thought you’d be, well, you’d be first in line.”

  “You thought wrong.”

  “Yes. Of course. Well. I see.” This was extremely odd behaviour from Axelrod, as verbosity was akin to breathing. Such terseness seemed completely out of character.

  “Do you need anything, Books?” Axelrod’s eyes were still intent on the wires in his hands.

  “Ah, yes, an electrorifle, please. The current specifications on record are woefully out of date.”

  “They aren’t. I updated the files myself.” Axelrod’s head finally turned, the swirling green glow of his goggles made Wellington feel queasy. It was making it difficult for Wellington to keep looking at him. “Pests in the Archives, perhaps?”

  Bugger. Wellington was hoping to avoid questions in order to get a closer look at an electrorifle. Regardless of its reputation in the field, the electrorifle’s mini-generator was quite the design.

  “Qualifications are coming up, and while I am not in the field, I still need to keep up on the bas—”

  “Swift or Cover model?”

  Wellington arched an eyebrow. “Cover, if you don’t mind. The swifts are so...noisy.”

  “You know where they are.” He motioned absent-mindedly to the cupboard where the rifles were kept. “Sign the docket before you go.”

  “You sure you don’t want to...” Wellington didn’t know what to make of this. Resignedly following procedure was not Axelrod at all. “I mean, you’ve usually watched me like a hawk in here, and wouldn’t let me touch any—”

  “If you want the rifle, get the sodding rifle!” Axelrod cut him off with a shout, as sparks crackled about his goggles. Wellington was aghast. Axelrod collected himself and removed the goggles from his eyes. Once he had completed rubbing his grubby hands over his filthy face, Wellington could see that the poor chap had not slept in some time. “Please excuse me for raising my voice, Wellington. I’ve got a great deal on my mind right now.”

  “Yes, of course,” Wellington said, taken aback by Axelrod addressing him by his first name, as if he were an equal or chum. He selected a Cover, checked its stock and barrel, adjusted the sight, and signed the docket with his usually florid script. That odd shout aside, this was how he always wished his visits to R&D would be. Breeze in, select the device that he wanted, waltz out. And Wellington was about to waltz out, too, when he stopped.

  That shout. Try as he might, he could not overlook that shout.

  There is a devil on Wellington’s shoulder. It is a devil that whispers things into his ear that he’d rather not hear. Things that he knows will cause him to make irrational, emotional decisions. Just leave, the devil whispered. You’ve got what you want, now leave. You’re going to regret whatever concern you are about to—

  “I say,” Wellington said. The devil was now quite loud, rumbling with the low gravity of his father’s commands. Leave! Don’t take one step further, you soft-hearted git. Nevertheless, he wandered closer to the monstrosity Axelrod was working on. “This configuration, this isn’t a Stratus Manipulator? I remember reading a case concerning a smaller one to control the fog in Whitechapel.”

  “That’s the basic configuration, yes.”

  “But one of this size,” Wellington mused, his finger on his chin. “Why, I imagine you could control entire weather patterns with this.”

  “That is the idea.”

  “Yes, yes, well, I was just thinking, since I’m familiar with this design…”

  “Since you’ve read about this design, you mean.”

  “Yes. I’m just—” Wellington took a breath and swallowed back the lump of pride that was lodged in his throat. “I’m just saying, well, I could help you.”

  “No.”

  “Now, Axelrod, I am perfectly capable— ”

  “I know you are,” Axelrod said, cutting him off again.

  Now that was a surprise. Axelrod had treated him like bumbling idiot so often, he could not believe what he was hearing. “You know...?”

  “I am entirely aware of your capabilities. You’ve got quite a mind on those shoulders.”

  “So you admit I could be of some help?”

  “No, Books, nothing of the sort. It is fundamentally impossible for you to be any less help to me.”

  Told you, the devil whispered.

  “Well. I never!” Wellington huffed, and turned on his heel. This—this—is why I try to avoid coming down to R&D.

  “Wait,” Axelrod said. Wellington turned around to see the engineer had fixed him with a gaze that was almost pleading. “There is a way you can help. You...you spent a lot of time with Eliza, don’t you?”

  “Agent Braun, you mean?”

  His new charge. He was on his fifth day with the Ministry’s new Junior Archivist in his Archives.

  144 hours.

  8640 minutes.

  518,400 seconds.

  Five of the longest days of his life.

  “Well, the assignment is still new to us both. But yes, we are adjusting quite well if that is what you mean.”

  “Yes, well, Eliza and I have another outing coming up....”

  “What did she take?” Wellington asked, his arms folded.

  “An experimental jet belt. Don’t worry, I’m sure she’ll bring it back before anyone notices it is gone. It’s just, well, our last evening together went abysmally, and I didn’t want the same thing to happen this time, so since yo
u know her probably better than anyone else—no, scratch that, without a doubt better than anyone else, you’re almost like brother and sister you two—since you know so much about her, well, you would know exactly what kind of evening she would enjoy the most.”

  At that very moment the devil on Wellington’s shoulder was whispering, filling his ears with gravel. “Brother and sister, brother and sister. He thinks you two are like brother and sister. How’d you like that, Wellington? How’d you like to be Eliza Braun’s brother, nothing more, nothing less. Might as well be, might ya’? That’s what they all think.”

  Wellington Books was not a man to be ruled by his emotions. But sometimes, sometimes the devil’s hot tongue is very convincing.

  “You know what Eliza likes? She would never admit this to anyone, but what she loves most of all is music halls. Quiet, soothing, music halls.” Axelrod cocked an eyebrow in disbelief, but Wellington continued, a devilish grin forming over his normally collected features. “She sees so much excitement in her job, you see, that all she wants to do is sit down, and relax to an old ballad.”

  Axelrod sat back. “I would not have expected that.”

  “She’s a woman of contradictions. Take her to Weston’s on High Holbron in Camden. She’ll love it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to take this rifle apart...” Axelrod gave Wellington a quizzical look. “Errr...on the firing range! Take apart...with my...skill? At shooting! Yes. I’m going to go fire now. Well, cheers.”

  Wellington waltzed out of R&D as he had intended, confident in the forthcoming disaster. It was a dirty trick, perhaps, but when dealing with phoenixes, sometimes you had to fight fire with fire.