The Incorruptibles (Book One, Frankenstein Vigilante): Frankenstein Vigilante: The Steampunk Series (Frankenstein Vigilante. The Steampunk Series.)

by Peter Lawrence

  “Perhaps we should change the subject,” Cerval interrupted. “This isn’t the place. We’ve got to get Thor home.” He was turned around again, and strangely commanding. There was a reason he was the Incorruptibles’ leader and it wasn’t simply his wealth.

  Shelley Mary couldn’t hold his stare. And what did he mean by ‘home’? Whose home, out here in the impenetrable wilderness? She turned and gazed out and down. Three or four thousand feet below The Devil – she wasn’t sure at what height they flew – there was a wisp of smoke. As The Devil moved forward, a clearing opened up in the jungle below. A long hut with a green thatched roof. If it hadn’t been for the smoke wisps, the hut might have merged into its surroundings. Tiny figures appeared. Were they looking up at The Devil?

  “Mancits?” asked Shelley Mary. “Manus?”

  “We’ll know in a minute,” Cerval replied.

  “Can we go lower,” Shelley Mary said. “Take a closer look?”

  “Stupid girl!” said Evangeline, almost under her breath. If Shelley Mary weren’t so securely strapped in, she might have taken a swing at Evangeline, but a part of her said be happy you’re strapped in; this isn’t someone to mess with.

  Finally Evangeline answered Shelly Mary’s question. “We need every ricro of altitude, because once the RTP bands wind down we have to glide the rest of the way. Nearly 200 yoettes.”

  “Two hundred fucking yoettes? With no power! You’re kidding, right?”

  “Not known for my sense of humour,” said Evangeline.

  “At last,” said Shelley Mary. “Something we can agree on.”

  Long after they had overflown the settlement – Cerval had said they were Mancits; he recognized their colours, whatever that meant – The Devil approached a critical moment. Cerval was watching the RTP band rev counters as if their lives depended on them.

  They did.

  The counters gave him two readings. The first was the revolution speed of the air paddles and the second the total torque time left in the RTP system. The former was an accurate figure, the latter not so reliable – and the potential problem, disaster, would be caused if one paddle ran out of power before the other. The Devil would then slew sideways and no amount of rudder would completely correct it. If the slew continued for any length of time, The Devil would be so far off course that it wouldn’t be able to glide to its destination. It would crash into the jungle and the best its passengers could hope for would be to die in the wreckage.

  The paddle rev counters showed that the right side was losing power before the left and Cerval began subtly to compensate. As it happened, the left hand propeller died instants after the right and The Devil was dead on course for its final glide. Shelley Mary didn’t realize how nervous she’d been until her jaw muscles relaxed, her molars aching from the pressure. She glanced at Evangeline, hoping the warrior woman had not noticed her apprehension but, in this, Shelley Mary had sold herself short. She was a very different personality to Evangeline but, in her own way, just as tough. She had felt fear but not shown it.

  Just over two hours later – The Devil had been helped along its way by a favourable tail wind – Shelley Mary gaped in astonishment at the view growing in size and detail below her. An entire mountain, one of the biggest in the area, appeared to have been rescued from the all-enveloping jungle. Its lower slopes were surrounded by massive walls. Shelley Mary could not conceive how much labour that alone must have taken. Within the walls, and stretching up the mountain, were terraced agricultural plots and even from this height it was obvious that a wide variety of foodstuffs was being grown. Here and there, too, were pastures. Cattle, sheep, goats, pigs. Higher still, houses – an entire village, almost a town, ringed the mountain. But the most imposing sight of all was the colossal castle and fortification which topped the flattened summit. How in the name of the sacred or the profane could anyone have constructed this place? Where did they find the labour? How did they bring in the materials? Why?

  No time to figure it out because now The Devil swooped in towards what seemed to Shelley Mary – an involuntary gasp which caused Evangeline’s lip to curl – to be an impossibly small airfield. A large number of people were gathered there, craning upward as The Devil approached them in a steep dive, levelling out at the last moment.

  Cerval hauled back on the hi-lo and the P.A.V.’s nose lifted, the entire craft switching from dive to climb – except that all the forward momentum was dying and the wings, like those of a bird air-braking, stopped The Devil almost dead in its tracks. It hit the airfield gently, solid rubber wheels absorbing the shock, and rolled for just a short distance until it came to rest surrounded by the gathered crowd.

  The moment The Devil halted, Cerval and Evangeline freed the cryo-casket from its restraints and slid it towards the exit hatch, where dozens of hands reached up eagerly to carry it.

  Shelley Mary might have been invisible for all the notice anyone took of her and she tried to remain an unobtrusive observer, making mental notes of the experience, writing the story in her head but not sure where it was leading. She was surprised by the affection and respect with which everyone greeted Cerval, even the oldest and most dignified behaving towards him as if he were some kind of clan chieftain, a returning hero. She noticed, too, that an older man, tough-looking, not so tall but almost as wide as his height, embraced Cerval like a son, holding him tight then reluctantly releasing him o supervise the unloading of the cryo-casket. As he touched the casket, he was unable to control his tears and his efforts to do so were painful to watch.

  Only when the casket was on its way to the castle, in the centre of the crowd, with Cerval and the older, square-bodied man right beside it, did Shelley Mary climb down from the PAV. She wasn’t happy to see Evangeline break away from the crowd and walk back towards her.

  “Don’t run. Don’t hide. Every one of these people will give you up and you’d be lucky to last a day beyond the walls.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Shelley Mary replied indignantly. “I didn’t climb into that wretched contraption to become Jungle Girl.”

  “Just as long as we’re clear.” Evangeline turned her back on Shelley Mary and then thought again. Faced her. “And we’ve got a lot of questions for you.”

  “Yeah? Well I’ve got one for you.” Evangeline waited for it.

  “Where are we?” said Shelley Mary.

  “Welcome to the Frankenstein Estate.”

  oOo

  7

  WHERE IS DOCTOR EFRAIN?

  Since the recent massacre at his laboratory, nothing has been seen of the famous inventor and innovator. Was he killed and his body removed? Did he escape and go into hiding? Or is there some other solution to his mysterious disappearance?

  At the time he vanished Doctor Efrain was thought to be working on a new system for producing power from rainwater, an innovation that would revolutionize The Smoke’s energy market. But no more has been heard of him or his inventions, which is why The News Of The Smoke is asking its readers for help in tracking down Doctor Efrain. Contact us right away if you’ve sighted him, or if you know anyone who might have seen him. Any reader providing information which leads to Doctor Efrain’s whereabouts will receive a reward of 10,000 koronas.

  Rupert Gilchrist Bass put down the proof copy of The News Of The Smoke whose lead article he had been reading out loud, and shifted his arse uneasily. He farted nervously, then shifted a bit more to make it appear that the noise was the creak of leather.

  “Will that do?” he said to the two men who stood impassively on the other side of his desk. One was several inches taller than the other, but they were both squarely built, their expensive suits not disguising the fact that they were enforcers of some kind. If you saw them coming down the pavement towards you, you’d step smartly to one side.

  “Is that what Pfarrer wanted?” said the taller of the two.

  “Y-yes, definitely.”

  “Those words?” said the shorter.

  “Well, not ex
actly those words,” said Bass, bridling despite his apprehension. “We are journalists, you know. Writers. Wordsmiths, you might say.”

  “Yeah. Literary geniuses,” said Taller. “I suppose it’ll do. You get a sniff of Efrain, you talk to us. I left my bird with your assistant, OK? Or AvCom me.”

  “Yes, of course. Bird or AvCom, I swear. I won’t let you down.”

  “You’re right. You won’t.” It was more than agreement. It was a death warrant. From Bass’s desk, Shorter picked up a heavy brass frame containing a faded silvograph of the editor’s family. None was any better-looking than him.

  Almost faster than the eye could follow, Shorter slammed the frame down a hairsbreadth away from Bass’s right hand, making him jump, and fart again, unmistakably this time. Shorter wrinkled his nose in disgust and waved his hand in front of his face. Taller chose to ignore the eruption. He said: “You wouldn’t want those precious writer’s fingers messed up, would you?”

  “No,” said Bass, “no, I wouldn’t.”

  “Good,” said Taller. “We’ll see ourselves out.” The two enforcers headed towards the door, Taller turning back as they reached it, about to speak.

  “Don’t say it,” said Bass, clenching his sphincter. “You’ll be the first to know.”

  “The only ones to know,” replied Taller, and then they were gone and Bass relaxed, oblivious to the result. He pulled a silk handkerchief from a desk drawer, mopped his brow. Gathered himself. Followed the thugs out of the door into the newsroom of The News Of The Smoke. He shouted loudly at Caramba Dusseldorp, his personal assistant:

  “Get me a cup of tea... no, coffee... no, cocoa... no, tea... and make it snappy!” He scanned the newsroom. “And where’s that bloody Ventura? I didn’t tell her to go anywhere! Tell her to report to my office the minute she gets back!”

  Bass glared at Caramba, who looked back at him impassively. One of the handful among the staff of The News Of The Smoke who was unafraid of him; she knew where the bodies were buried. She’d make the tea, but in her own time. She was more concerned about the karrier left by the two men. Smaller than Cerval’s faithful Brutus, it was still the size of a small spaniel, perched on her desk and pecking at some crumbs left over from her morning biscuits.

  Bass harrumphed; he felt, after the humiliating episode with the Silencio thugs, that he’d reasserted his authority. He turned back towards his office, and at that moment the karrier cooed softly, and shat copiously over his left foot.

  “But what if it doesn’t rain?” The speaker was Doctor Pedro Robledo Efrain’s assistant, Yip Harbottle. Efrain and Yip were looking at a thirty ricro high replica of a building, modelled on one of the brownstones that made up most of The Smoke’s housing stock. The replica, however, featured some additions: a large tank-like structure that covered the entire roof, from which a series of outlets led to thick copper pipes which dropped vertically down the walls of the building, running between the windows

  “There you have it, Yip.’ Doctor Efrain walked slowly around the model, hand to his chin, considering every aspect of the concept which, if he could iron out a few practical glitches, would be another weapon in his battle to liberate The Smoke’s population from the rapacious hands of the energy suppliers.

  In principle, it was simple. Every building would support a large tank on its roof. Rainwater from this would flow into a series of turbines strategically positioned on or in the buildings, creating enough electricidad for each building to be self-powered. Or at least it would be while there was water in the tank. The shortcoming was exactly what Yip had just pointed out: no rain, no power. How big and heavy would the rooftop tanks have to be to maintain flow between rainfalls?

  “Long term power storage,” said Doctor Efrain, now pacing around the lab. “That’s the problem. Solve that – if each house had the room to store the electricidad that’s created by the force of the flowing water… ”

  “If we could only shrink our lightning capacitors to the size of an Arielectro sidecar… “

  “An Arielectro battery would power the average house for about a quarter of an hour, Yip,” said Efrain patiently.

  “No, no, I know that, sir,” Yip continued hastily. “I was just thinking out loud. That’s what we need: much smaller capacitors and batteries with much longer life. Or – as ever – some means to transmit and conduct electricidad more than a couple of blocks without electrocuting everyone in sight!”

  “That’s what I love about you, Yip – an ability to state and repeat the obvious as if it were a blinding revelation.”

  “Sorry, sir,” muttered Yip, chastened and Efrain, seeing his distress, apologized.

  “I’m sorry, too, Yip. Take no notice. I’m just frustrated. It would be easier if we didn’t have to skulk from one clandestine lab to another, hiding out like criminals. In any sane society we’d be heroes, not fugitives.”

  “An awful lot of The Smoke thinks you’re more than a hero.”

  “‘An awful lot’?” Efrain smiled. “Not a very scientific measurement, Yip.”

  “But the truth, sir.”

  “Well… thank you. Now, are you ready?”

  “Yes, sir.” Doctor Efrain looked around the makeshift lab – saw glass-fronted cupboards bulging with instruments, shelves overflowing with jars, bottles and tubes, wooden tables bending under the weight of scientific equipment. This was the place where he had come up with innumerable concepts for products; some disasters, but most potentially beneficial to the citizens of The Smoke.

  Devoting his life to developing ideas which would improve living standards, and at the same time reduce reliance on coal and gas, Doctor Efrain was a powerhouse of creativity. But good idea or bad, they remained – most of them – unproduced or, at best, prototypes. Potential manufacturers tended to receive unscheduled visits from tax officials or sometimes health and safety inspectors. At least one factory had been closed down overnight when it was about to launch an Efrain ecological product.

  Efrain sighed, shook his head, came back to the present. He stepped forward into a circle on the floor of the lab which was ringed by a raised metal ridge, as did Yip. Efrain checked that all limbs were inboard, before pressing first one raised button on the floor, then another. With a great clanking and whirring, a large cylinder dropped slowly from the ceiling, overhead chains rattling, rivets creaking. Slowing ponderously, it finally settled over the raised ridge on the floor, imprisoning Efrain and Yip inside. There was a swoosh of pressurized air as the chamber was sealed, then the overhead chains clanked again as they became taut. Wheels spun, cogs clicked and clacked and the cylinder rose, finally disappearing into a hole in the riveted ceiling of the lab.

  The River Latta was long and wide, one of two rivers flowing through The Smoke – which was one of the main reasons why the city state came into being in the first place. The other river, the Siebert, was now so filled with sewage and debris that it barely qualified as a natural phenomenon.

  The Latta’s small riverside complex of docks, warehouses and taverns burgeoned over the years to become the sprawling megalopolis it was today. The river also brought people from far and wide, many of whom stayed to form the multi-coloured, multi-lingual, multi-sexual population that it supported.

  Although the Siebert made it seem like a mountain spring, the Latta was now, for the most part, filthy, vomit-coloured and turgid. Further inland, however, where it passed through Battersby Park, it was a different proposition. In keeping with their policy of allowing the population some public space where they might promenade and relax, the Commission made sure that here the river bore some resemblance to natural, flowing water. Massive steam dredgers regularly patrolled, scooping up bodies animal and human; and vast quantities of chlorinol were pumped into it to make it look clearer. This meant that sooner or later it would become even more poisonous than it started out, but the Commission wasn’t known for taking far-sighted decisions.

  The riverside walk within the park had become one of the most pop
ular areas with young lovers, who strolled the towpath engrossed in their own little worlds, occasionally stopping to rest on graffiti-strewn benches. But because they tended to be more intent on each other than their surroundings, they wouldn’t have noticed what was happening on the overgrown islet in the middle of the river: Eel Pudding Island. They might have been alerted by a flight of water birds flapping into the air, squawking indignantly, but they wouldn’t have seen what caused the commotion: the sudden flipping open of a cast-iron cover and emergence from the ground of a riveted cylinder, into the centre of a small clearing in the undergrowth.

  Doctor Efrain and Yip emerged from the cylinder, and Efrain pressed a panel on the side. With more clanking and metallic groaning, it slid back down into the soil. Yip pulled the cover back over the resulting hole. A few moments later the two men were in a skiff, each taking an oar to row themselves back to the Battersby Park bank.

  None of the late-night strollers noticed as they stashed the boat in the overhang of a willow tree, nor did they see the two men walk quickly off in different directions, one towards the city centre, the other in the direction of the suburbs.

  Rupert Gilchrist Bass’s AvCom rang loudly, waking him from a dreamy slumber. He slid his feet off his desk and pulled the ‘speak’ lever, at the same time putting the earpiece to his ear.

  “Bass,” he said curtly. The voice of Caramba languidly drawled back at him. “It’s someone who knows where Efrain is. Or knows someone who knows someone who knows where he is.” Suddenly Bass was all attention: “Put him on.”

  A guttural male voice took the place of Caramba’s. “When do I get the ten thousand?” Bass sighed. There had already been several bounty-hunters who turned out to be mistaken, deluded or both.

  “Just tell me what you know,” he said. A few minutes later Bass put the AvCom earpiece back, and unlocked the top drawer of his desk. Inside was another AvCom, a machine which he used only for the most private of conversations. He checked that the blinds were down, and dialled a familiar number.