Gears of a Mad God Omnibus

by Brent Nichols

  Colleen stared at him, and he cleared his throat. "Never mind that," he said. "Were you close to your uncle?"

  "Not really. I hadn't seen him in a couple of years when he died."

  "I understand his house has been burglarized," Carter said. "Do you know if anything was missing?"

  "Hold on," said Colleen. "I'm not letting you pump me for information and leave me in the dark. Who are you? Who were those people chasing me?"

  For a moment the two men just looked at her. Then Carter said, "It might be best for you if you just answered our questions and returned to Toronto. Believe me, you don't want to get involved."

  Colleen's fingers went to the sleeve of her dress. Somewhere in Chinatown a knife had sliced through the fabric, missing her skin by a hair's breadth. She hadn't even known when it happened. "I'm already involved," she said. "People are trying to kill me. My uncle is dead, and I want to know why."

  Carter rubbed the bridge of his nose. "When was the last time you heard from your uncle?"

  Colleen crossed her arms and glared at him. "Forget it. You're getting nothing from me until I get some answers."

  The silence stretched out, and then Smith chuckled. "I think she's got us, Phil."

  Carter looked at him. "We can't just tell her-"

  "She already knows too much," Smith said, "and she's got the attention of the cult. I think she has a right to know the rest."

  The two men locked eyes, and finally Carter sighed, nodded, and turned back to Colleen. "The people who attacked you are part of a cult," he said. "It seems to have a worldwide membership, although we don't know how they communicate or organize themselves. Their goals- well, let's just say they have some unconventional religious beliefs."

  Colleen frowned. "But what does this have to do with me?"

  "Well, you're involved because of your uncle. He seems to have learned something. I think the cult wants whatever it is he uncovered, and they're hoping he said something to you, sent you something in the mail, perhaps left you a message."

  "But he didn't send me anything!" Coleen wailed.

  Carter nodded. "I was afraid of that."

  "What did Uncle Rod find out? What does any of this have to do with him?"

  Carter steepled his fingers. "This is a very old cult. They've been around in one form or another for centuries, perhaps longer. They believe some very curious things. They believe in ancient, malevolent gods that supposedly once ruled the Earth. According to their mythology, these gods were banished or locked away. They want to free these dark deities from their confinement, bring them back so they can rule the Earth again."

  Colleen rubbed the goosebumps that had popped up on her arms. Carter continued.

  "They are searching constantly for lost artifacts of some kind that will let them open a doorway to free their gods. Your uncle was a collector of antiquities, yes?"

  Colleen nodded.

  "We believe he found something, one of these ancient artifacts, or perhaps a document of some kind with a clue. The cult wants whatever he found."

  There was a long moment of silence while Colleen absorbed this. Then she rubbed a hand on her forehead. "It all seems so, I don't know, crazy."

  "Craziness, unfortunately, is a recurring theme with the cult," Carter said. "Every cultist we've ever captured has been at least half mad. And, whatever is at the heart of their twisted religion, it seems to be something that the human mind can barely withstand. Your uncle wasn't the first person to encounter this mythology and go mad."

  Colleen stared at him.

  "There are stories from the fourteenth century," he said, "about a book that would drive mad anyone who read it. The book was finally burned and the ashes scattered. There have been other stories. I think your uncle found something like that. Something that was more than the human psyche can bear. The cult knew he was beyond reach then. That's why they killed him."

  "Killed him?" Colleen looked at Carter sharply. "I thought he committed suicide."

  "There are many ways to kill a man, Miss Garman. In your uncle's case, smuggling a razor into his cell was enough. He did the rest."

  She stared at him, aghast. "Are you sure?"

  Carter shrugged. "No. But a madman wouldn't be issued a razor. He had to get it somehow."

  Colleen closed her eyes, willing away the images that filled her mind.

  "Can we talk about your uncle now?" Carter asked, his voice gentle.

  Colleen opened her eyes. "Not quite. You haven't told me who you are yet."

  Carter sighed. "I was hoping to avoid that. Miss Garman, I'm going to have to ask you to give your word that you'll keep the information I'm about to give you completely confidential."

  Colleen nodded.

  "I'm part of a team composed of members of the Bureau of Investigations in the United States. We report directly to President Harding. If the general public found out about this cult and their mad gods, there would either be widespread ridicule of our efforts, or widespread panic. So we operate in secrecy.

  "Last year, the president contacted your Prime Minister Meighen to discuss the creation of a Canadian force to deal with cult activities on this side of the border. Mr. Smith here is our Canadian liaison."

  Smith nodded.

  "The rest of the team is on their way from Washington," Carter continued. "We expect them on the evening ferry."

  A worldwide cult of religious fanatics? It seemed too fantastical to believe. Colleen fingered the cut in her sleeve, and thought of her gentle uncle taking an axe and attacking a school. There was no mundane explanation for what was happening. She might as well accept that it was true.

  "So tell me about your uncle," Carter said.

  Colleen shrugged. "I don't think I know anything that will help. I hadn't heard from him in years. I went to his house, but it was a shambles. I have no idea if anything was missing. It was a disaster area."

  The men went silent, and Colleen replayed her visit to the house in her mind. Nothing there had reminded her of Uncle Rod. There were none of the things she associated with him. No ancient relics, no maps, no souvenirs of his travels. No tools, either.

  "Where were his tools?" she said. The men looked at her. "For that matter, where did he work?"

  Carter's eyebrows rose. "I'm not sure your uncle was employed."

  "Uncle Rod wouldn't have a regular job. That was never his style. He might have repaired things, designed things, to make money. He was very good with his hands. A natural born engineer, my dad called him. But that house was tiny. There was no place to work."

  Carter said, "Are you sure he-"

  "The last time I saw him," Colleen interrupted, "he was drawing up plans for a flying machine with a propeller on the top, lifting it up. The time before that, he gave me a brooch he made from brass gears and silver wire. He was always tinkering. Always. He must have had a workshop. I guarantee it."

  Smith and Carter exchanged glances. "This is excellent," Carter said. "The cult may not know about the workshop. Perhaps we can get a jump on them. If we can find it."

  They spent most of the day on the telephone, and hit paydirt in mid-afternoon. After dozens of calls to every place of business they could think of that used complex machinery, they reached a John Roebuck who ran a tailor shop with half a dozen sewing machines powered by a central spindle. He'd hired Rod to repair the equipment, and he'd picked up the parts at Rod's workshop. He gave them an address.

  They caught a taxi in front of the hotel, Carter declaring that the convertible was too conspicuous. The taxi took them to the outskirts of Victoria, where they found a run-down warehouse at the end of a dirt road. Carter asked the taxi driver to wait, and they walked forward to investigate.

  The warehouse was ivy-covered brick, the windows filthy, rust streaking the brick under the window frames. There was a door for trucks, padlocked shut, and a man door, standing ajar. Smith drew his pistol as the three of them approached.

  Carter yanked the door open, Smith sprang inside, a
nd the taxi driver, clearly alarmed, drove away. Carter watched him leave with a shrug.

  "It's clear," Smith said, and they followed him inside. The interior was gloomy, poor light trickling in through the grimy windows. A large boiler filled the space before them. Ancient, rusted machinery, wreathed in cobwebs, lined the walls. They moved around the boiler and looked into the rest of the warehouse.

  Colleen immediately felt at home. Long benches lined one wall, dozens of tools racked above them. There was a treasure trove of machinery, metal lathes and drill presses and punches. She saw gears of every size, and brass and steel stock waiting to be made into parts or tools.

  Machines littered the floor, in various states of repair or disassembly. She saw automobile engines, a washing machine, and something designed for stamping metal. It was all dirtier and messier than her father's workshop had ever been, but somehow delightful. Colleen gazed around the room and felt as if she had finally found something of Uncle Rod.

  A cot in one corner showed that he sometimes slept here. That was where they began their search. There were few personal possessions, just dishes and a change of clothes. They expanded their search outward, examining every piece of equipment, every tool, every cabinet.

  It was Carter who made the discovery. "Uh oh," he said, and Colleen turned to find him kneeling in front of the wood stove by Uncle Rod's cot. He had the front door of the stove open, and he brought out a charred strip of leather. "The good news is, it looks like he found a book. The bad news is, he burned it."

  "Maybe it's for the best," Smith muttered, but he joined them at the stove. Carter lifted burned chunks of wood from the stove, setting them on the floor. Then he took a deep breath, reached in, and brought out a thick sheaf of blackened paper.

  Most of the book had been destroyed, but a little bit remained. The back cover, blackened and bubbled, was essentially intact. On top were sheets of fire-damaged paper. Carter did his best to lift the top sheets, but they crumbled to ash at his touch. Undiscouraged, he kept going, delicately lifting away layers of ash, working his way deeper.

  There were partial remains of perhaps a dozen sheets of paper. The top sheets were mostly gone, just a few words of Latin still legible on the fire-darkened paper. Smith drew a notebook from his black coat and took careful notes.

  As Carter worked his way deeper the legible parts of the pages grew larger. Finally he came to the last page.

  "This one's different," he said. I don't think it's part of the book. I think someone tucked this into the back."

  "What is it?" Colleen asked.

  "I'm not sure." The paper was badly fire-damaged. Nearly half of it was gone, and the rest was blackened, with large sections completely eradicated. The top of the page contained some sort of diagram, with curving lines in a pattern that meant nothing to any of them.

  The bottom of the page held text, most of it gone. Carter drew a pair of spectacles from his pocket and peered at the sheet. "Tana," he said. "I can't make out the next letter. But it starts with T-A-N-A." He shook his head. "I suppose it could be anything."

  It was a long walk back into the city. Eventually they reached downtown, and took a table at a small cafe. Colleen felt drained and spent. The three of them drank coffee and discussed what they'd found, making no progress.

  "You should ask Jane what she knows," Colleen said. The men looked at her blankly.

  "Jane," she repeated. "Uncle Rod's friend? You didn't know about her? That reminds me, she's coming by my hotel this evening. What time is it?"

  It was nearly seven. They paid the bill and walked to the Queen Anne. There was no sign of Jane, and no message.

  There was a knot of worry in Colleen's stomach as she asked at the front desk for directions to Mrs. Rosebottom's boarding house. The three of them walked through the darkening streets, grim and silent.

  The knot of worry bloomed into cold, sharp fear when they saw a crowd of people gathered in front of the boarding house.

  The crowd was a mixture of policemen and rubberneckers. Colleen, Smith, and Carter stayed on the fringe of the crowd, avoiding the police and picking up gossip. A woman had been attacked, less than an hour earlier, as she came up the steps of the boarding house. Several men had dragged her into a sedan and raced away.

  When they had learned what little there was to know, the three of them returned to room 304 of the Empress Hotel. There they held a grim council.

  "Well, that's too bad," Carter said. "Poor woman."

  "We lost a good source of information," said Smith. "I hope she can't tell the other side too much."

  Colleen stared from one man to the other, getting more upset with every word. "What are we going to do?"

  They looked at her blankly. "What CAN we do?" Carter asked. "We don't know where they've taken this woman. It's probably too late to save her anyway. We need to focus on figuring out our next move. What does 'Tana' mean? How can we figure out what this diagram is?"

  Colleen wanted to scream. Jane was out there, suffering God only knew what tortures, in mortal danger, and they wanted to write her off? Just give up and move on?

  "We can only do what we can do," said Carter gently. "Believe me, I would help your Jane if I could."

  Colleen glared at him, unconvinced. She stood up, unable to keep still, and paced back and forth in the small hotel room. Finally she opened the door.

  "Colleen, where are you going?" Carter sounded alarmed.

  "I don't know," she snapped, and walked out.

  She paced the corridor, then stomped down the stairs and paced back and forth in the hotel's elegant lobby. The hotel was vast, and the room she was in was huge, light, and airy, but she felt constricted, closed in by the walls around her. She gave a longing glance at the front doors. She wanted to go outside, but she was afraid. The cult was out there. So long as she stayed inside the hotel she felt reasonably safe.

  Her illusion of safety was shattered when a hard, cold hand closed on her upper arm. She turned and found herself looking into a familiar face. It was the cultist with the red coat. He stood close beside her, sneering. He was unshaven and not particularly clean. She could smell sweat and alcohol on him, and some other scent, something bitter and dark that made her skin crawl.

  "Where is it?" he said.

  She looked wildly around the lobby. No one was paying the slightest attention to them. She wanted to scream for help, but her lungs seemed paralyzed.

  "Where is Tanathos?" His voice was low, but it had a manic edge. His eyes glittered, and his fingers dug into her arm.

  She gasped, "What- what-"

  "Don't play no games!" His fingers twisted deeper into her arm. "You all left this morning in a taxi, and you came back looking like cats that got into the cream. You found something. You know where Tanathos is!"

  She stared into his face, feeling the sour taste of panic on the back of her tongue. He was mad! How could she persuade him that she didn't know anything?

  He gave her arm another twist, and it occurred to her that he thought he was hurting her. His pointless arm-twisting was supposed to keep her terrified. With that thought her panic vanished, and she grinned into his face. Men were always underestimating how strong she was. It wasn't their fault. Well-brought-up young ladies didn't spend their days in machine shops, after all. Most of the women Colleen knew would have been helpless in this man's grasp.

  Not Colleen. She closed her hand on his wrist. He tightened his fingers, twisted again at her arm, and she chuckled. "Is that the best you can do?" she asked. Then she squeezed his wrist with all of her strength and twisted.

  His hand tore away from her arm, his body rotated as she moved his wrist, and she brought up her free hand, grabbing him by the elbow.

  He lifted onto his toes, his other hand went under his coat, and Colleen marched him forward, across the lobby. People were turning, staring, gasping, and she heard a woman say, "That man has a knife!"

  Colleen chose a sturdy-looking pillar near the front door. The cultist,
dancing on his toes, could only scurry beside her as she drove him forward. She didn't give him a chance to brace himself or use his knife. She marched him toward the pillar, and as she got close she picked up the pace. She was running by the time he crashed into the pillar.

  There was a thud of impact, and she let go. He fell onto his back, the knife clattered onto the floor, and she drove her foot, hard, into his lowest rib. He grunted and curled up, his hands going up to cradle his bloody forehead.

  Colleen knelt over him. "Where's Jane?"

  He stared up at her, his face scrunched up with pain, mute.

  She caught his hand, bent his index finger back until tears filled his eyes. "Tell me where she is, you-"

  A man knelt behind her and to one side. Colleen caught a whiff of cologne and a glimpse of his knee, clad in elegant pinstripe trousers. A smooth voice with a British accent said, "All right, then, I'll take care of this ruffian." A hand rested on her shoulder. "Let him go, miss. I'll take it from here."

  "You don't understand," she said, "This man-"

  The tip of a knife pricked her back and she went silent.

  "I said let go of him." His voice was pitched low, for her ears only. "You will, one way or another."

  "You wouldn't dare. In front of all these people?"

  "Not unless you force me," he said. "I'm taking Jimbo with me. One way or another."

  The knife pressed against her a tiny bit harder and she released Jimbo's finger. In a moment the newcomer hauled Jimbo to his feet and hustled him out the door, holding his arms as if he were a prisoner. Colleen watched them go, the scruffy thug and a well-dressed man with greying hair. The Englishman kept his back to her as they hurried out of the hotel. Jimbo looked back, though. He gave her a glare full of hate and rage as his comrade dragged him out.

  A buzz of conversation sprang up, and Colleen scurried out of the lobby, moving deeper into the hotel. The last thing she needed was the attention of the hotel staff. If they kicked her out of the hotel it could prove fatal.

  She returned to room 304. Carter gave her a thin smile and touched the brim of his bowler hat. Smith ignored her. Colleen sat on an empty chair, tuned out their conversation, and let her mind wander.