A Company of Heroes Book Two: The Fabulist

by Ron Miller

  I don’t believe this! What a backhanded thing to say! “If I happen to be wrong then I might owe you on apology!” My, my . . . I’m so impressed.

  To her amazement and horror she hears herself traitorously saying, “That’s all right, Gyven, I understand.”

  “Do you have to know what you’re seeing for something to be interesting,” asks Thud, with an apparently monumental irrelevancy, “or can you just see something but not know what it is?”

  “What in the world are you talking about?” asks Bronwyn, still peevish from her internal defeat.

  “I was wondering about that little ball we saw in the sky today. Does that count as something interesting? Even if we didn’t know what it was?”

  “Tell me about this, Thud,” requests Milnikov, thankful again to Thud for changing the subject.

  “Today the princess and I saw something funny in the sky.”

  “It looked like a little black ball,” Bronwyn continues, “floating in the clouds.”

  “I think I know just what it was,” replies the baron, with a smile. “I’d rather not tell you right now. If you still want to go on an outing with me tomorrow, however, I can show you.”

  “Why can’t you tell me now?” protests the princess, who absolutely loathes mysteries of any kind. The baron, however, ignores all her entreaties and threats, forcing Bronwyn to retreat into a sullen pout at being both mystified and thwarted. The baron’s mischievousness easily outclasses the princess’s stubbornness. Even having to explain to Thud that fish are not to be eaten whole fails to change her mood.

  While the dessert is being served, the baron asks, “Tell me, would a concert improve your mood?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Toth possesses a fine symphony orchestra.”

  “Good for it. I don’t care to go to the theatre, thank you.”

  “Oh, there’s no need to go anywhere!”

  “I suppose the symphony is coming here?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “You really are going to make me angry, Milnikov!”

  Rather than answer her, the baron signals one of the servants. This man immediately begins removing several large, square panels from one wall of the room. This reveals a half-dozen round, funnel-shaped openings, each perhaps a foot wide. The servant then steps back to stand beside a large brass disc set into the wall. Bronwyn has before only been vaguely aware of this, but now she can see that it has the names of most of the theatres and auditoriums in Toth engraved around its perimeter.

  “If I’m not mistaken, and I doubt that I am,” says the baron, “a symphonic recital is about to begin at Blevitny Hall. If you please?”

  The servant rotates a pointer on the dial until it indicates the appropriate location. Almost immediately, Bronwyn hears someone cough, though the sound came from no one around her, then the tapping of a baton on the edge of a music stand. She visibly jumps at the sharp sound, coming, as it seems, from the empty air around her. The phantom sounds are uncanny in their realism. Then the first, swelling notes of a familiar piece of music fills the room, the overture to Espenhobble Glossop’s “The Flying Goatherd”, she realizes. The music comes from the horns in the wall, she knows. Although to a critic it would have sounded tinny and flat, she thinks she can almost see the musicians in the room with her. Bronwyn thinks it is the most magical thing with which Londeacan technology has yet impressed her.

  “You win!” she says to the baron, her mood broken.

  “We could be listening to what is going on in any one of the theatres on that dial,” he explains, gesturing to the servant. The man slowly turns the pointer from one name to another. As he does so, the sounds from the speakers change from music to the spoken word to silence, depending upon what is taking place at the indicated hall: a concert, a recital, a ballet, a lecture, an opera or nothing at all.

  “There is a central exchange somewhere in the city. All of the theatres that are connected to the service have wires that arrive there. Every evening girls are stationed to make the connections as required. A series of dials tells them who is ordering what and from where. Several hundred private homes are clients of the Theatrophone Company, as are almost all of the better hotels.”

  “What can I say? You’ve impressed me. It’s marvellous, like everything else!”

  “Tomorrow, if you’ll just be a little patient,” he continues optimistically, “you’ll see things that are even more wonderful.”

  * * * *

  Bronwyn is up before dawn, as anxious as a child on Saint Wladimir’s Day. She breakfasts alone, served by a surly, sleepy-eyed young man, then has almost two hours to take care of her toilet and choose her clothes, a saffron blouse, a conservative brown suit and hat, with high black boots and gloves. She is therefore already dressed and pacing anxiously when Thud and Gyven arrive for their own breakfasts

  “Good morning, Princess,” Thud greets.

  “Good morning, Thud. Good morning, Gyven.”

  “Good morning, Princess,” Gyven replies, and although Bronwyn braces herself for the suffixing of a remark either supercilious, snide, or both, he says nothing further.

  Well!

  “I’m meeting the baron. We’re going somewhere interesting today if either of you would like to come along with me?”

  “Sure,” replies Thud, always unquestionably agreeable. “Where?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. Gyven?”

  “Thank you very much, but I’d rather remain here, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all, suit yourself.” Coldly polite isn’t much better than coldly arrogant, she thinks, but feels a little disappointment nevertheless .

  “Do I have time to eat breakfast?” asks Thud.

  “Oh . . . well . . . the baron won’t have the coach here for another hour.”

  “That’s good.”

  “A little anxious, aren’t we?” remarks Gyven, but with an uncharacteristic smile that filters most but not quite all of the sarcasm from the sentence.

  “I just like to be prepared, that’s all.”

  Bronwyn and Thud meet Milnikov at the gate of the palace. The baron helps her into a waiting carriage. Thud, who can’t squeeze inside, joins the driver and they are off to the city.

  The palace lies on the edge of the city proper, separated from it by a broad expanse of parks and woods. The road has to wind through all of this, and then cross a small river, before the explorers can enter Toth proper. The morning is brilliant with that kind of light only a morning in early spring can provide. The sunlight is warm while the air still holds the chill of night.

  The road from the palace becomes a broad boulevard on the far side of the Solsonna bridge; a dozen carriages could have traveled down it abreast, and in fact are. It is lined with tall, slender trees, every one of which is speckled with green buds that back in Blavek would have been suicidally premature. Wide sidewalks separate the street from the buildings, and they are crowded with people. The buildings are as white as sugar and combined with the colorfully dressed crowds look like cakes decorated with handfuls of nonpareils, or perhaps swarming with sugar-frenzied butterflies.

  The carriage turns down a narrower side street. Bronwyn leans from the window, gazing upwards.

  “What are the decorations for?” she asks.

  “What decorations?” replies the baron.

  “Up there. Or is it some kind of construction?”

  He looks. Above them is a thick cat’s-cradle of black wires, stretching from one side of the street to the other, supported by tall poles topped with crosstrees. The ragged pennants of sky that manage to show through look like small, blue moths caught in a vast web.

  “Far from being decorative,” answers the baron, “most people would agree that they’re a blight.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “See that building up ahead?”

  “Yes. Oh yes, all the wires are coming from it.”

  “Exactly. It’s a central powerhouse. It’s s
upplying all of the electricity for this area of the city. There’s one every few square miles.”

  With enormous black cables jutting from its upper windows, that divided and subdivided until they became countless thousands of black threads, the building looks like the monstrous spider sitting in the middle of the metaphorical web Bronwyn had just created. As they passed close by, she can feel a pulse-like thumping that comes through the ground, the wheels, the axles, the floor, the seat and her buttocks, rather than a direct route via the atmosphere. There must be great engines inside the walls and she longs to see them as passionately as the vivisectionist longs to see the beating heart of his victim.

  The narrow street opens onto a wide park. A lovely expanse of trees, fountains and flower beds (or perhaps potentially lovely since the former and latter are as yet still, for the most part, sparse and brown). The winding paths are filled with people gliding as effortlessly as ice skaters on a pond. Instead of horses or carriages, everyone is using some sort of large wheeled device, all poared by hand or foot. Most of these have a pair of tandem wheels, fore and aft, with the driver sitting above and between (and Bronwyn can not imagine how they keep balanced). Some of these machines have wheels of equal size, where others possess, for all practical purposes, only a single enormous wheel, taller than a man, with a tiny rudimentary wheel following. There are tricycles with wheels of every size and configuration: three all of one size, one large front wheel and two smaller ones in the rear, a small front wheel and two large rear ones, two large front wheels and a small rear one, and so on. There are four-wheelers, too, with even more variety in their arrangements. Some of these devices carry only the operator, while others carry up to three or four passengers. Bronwyn is startled to see two or three single-wheeled vehicles, the operators suspended in the center at the axles. A large number of people flash past the carriage at great speed; both men and women with little wheels attached directly to their feet; either small, fat rollers on the soles of their boots, or large wheels fastened to their ankles.

  All of the devices are of extraordinary lightness; spidery geometries of wires and thin metal tubing, made far more of air and brightness than mechanism.

  The cumulative effect is altogether graceful and gay, like a regatta in a bright summer harbor.

  In the center of the park is a vast pile of a building, as gleamingly white as every other in the city. It had been constructed in the old, highly decorative Classic style that compared with the architecture of Blavek in much the same way a wedding cake compares with a brick. The carriage pulls up at the curb and the baron helps Bronwyn down.

  “What’s this?” she asks.

  “It’s the National Academy of Sciences,” he replies, starting up the broad steps. “It had been created by the king quite some time ago. He is so grateful for the invention of the devices that allow him to breathe that he founded this institution to encourage the further development of science and invention. But just wait a moment or two. I want you to meet someone who’ll answer all your questions.”

  They enter a cavernous hall, cool and dark, lined with glass exhibit cases displaying tantalizingly strange devices that draw Bronwyn on a tangent to the baron’s course; his strong hand on her arm brings her reluctantly back to his side. A short corridor takes them to a door that has Office of the Director lettered on its frosted glass panel. The baron knocks. “Come in!” comes a reply from within and they follow the instruction.

  An almost impossibly thin man unfolds like a carpenter’s rule from behind a cluttered desk. He seems to possess half again as many joints as a normal human being, and most of those so loose that they suggest that his bones have no physical contact with one another. He has a disconnected, wavering way of standing that makes him appear as though he is suspended by a string. Bronwyn can’t tell if his great apparent height is real or an illusion created by his skeletal silhouette. If someone had patiently spent years constructing a man entirely out of toothpicks, the result might have been something very much like this creature. The head is balanced on the neck like a golf ball on a tee. He has large, grey eyes that behind the thick lenses of his spectacles look swollen and wet, like little sponges, and an enormous wedge of a nose. He would look like a shark if he swam on his back, Bronwyn thinks unkindly.

  “Good morning, Baron” he says, in a voice surprisingly deep and reedy, like an oboe.

  “Good morning,” replies the baron. “Professor Wittenoom, this is the Princess Bronwyn of Tamlaght and her man Thud Mollockle. Princess, Thud, Professor Wittenoom, the Director-General of this institute.”

  “Very, very pleased to meet you,” the professor answers, extending a sheaf of bony fingers to the girl, who was prepared to swear that they rattled when she shook them. It is like grasping a handful of pencils, she decides. He repeats the gesture for the baron and, a little reluctantly, for Thud; then says, “I’m your servant, your Highness; how might I be of service?” The baron answers for her.

  “We hoped you might have time to give us a tour of your institution, Professor.”

  “Nothing could be easier. Where would you like to start?”

  “I think we should leave that up to you.”

  “That’s true,” adds Bronwyn. “Whatever you decide to show us I’m sure will be interesting.”

  “Even though it’s true, it’s still extremely kind of you to say so. Perhaps you’ll be good enough to follow me, then?”

  His long legs take him from the room in two or three strides, with Bronwyn, Thud and the baron, taken a little by surprise, hurrying to keep up. They follow the professor up a twisting iron staircase, while he gives them a brief history of the academy.

  “Anyone can come and work here. He or she need only convince the Committee that they’re working on a worthwhile or interesting project. It’s often not always necessary to do that; we’ll allow anyone a grace period of six months or so. If they seem to be satisfied with their projects and they seem to us to be promising, they’re welcome to stay for another period. The academy provides everything they need: equipment, supplies, room and board and so forth. There’s an excellent library here as well as dormitories on the top floor, to say nothing of some pleasant bungalows on the grounds.”

  “Surely,” says the baron, “there’re people who come here just to live off the academy?”

  “It’s just barely possible. However, you see, everyone’s work is reviewed periodically. We don’t have to fully understand what they’re doing, but they must show that they’ve been working. Otherwise they’re not only asked to leave, but are occasionally even submitted a bill for the expenses they’ve incurred. I admit there’s much research done here that may never bear fruit, but since it isn’t possible to tell in advance what will or won’t, how can we turn any serious person away?”

  The staircase ends at a door, which in turn opens onto a vast room, which Bronwyn estimates as occupying at least half the available area on that floor. It is filled with long benches covered with complex tangles of glass globes and tubing. Their sparkling translucency makes the room look to Bronwyn like an undersea garden. There are perhaps a score of men and women busily at work, like goggle-eyed fish intent upon foraging for their share of the plankton. None look up or otherwise seem to take any notice of the visitors. There is a peculiarly biting odor in the air.

  “This is our chemistry department,” explains the professor. “It’s not really my field, so I can’t readily describe what’s going on here or there. Let’s see if we can find someone.”

  “It smells bad,” says Thud, and the princess makes a sign for him to keep quiet. Bronwyn keeps her elbows pressed tightly to her sides as they thread their way through the maze of workbenches, for fear of touching anything. She knows she is not very graceful and the proximity of so much delicate-looking glass attracts her in much the same that the precipice of a cliff attracts the acrophobe. The trio stops when they discover a small man squatting atop a stool, hunched intently over a rack of vials.

  “Pa
rdon me, sir,” interrupts the professor.

  “What?” cries the small man, jerking suddenly erect, like a startled cat. “What? What what what?”

  “Pardon me,” repeats the professor. “I wondered if you might explain, to me and my guests here, exactly what it is you’re doing? This is not my field, you see.”

  “And who’re you?” growls the small man, who had a round, lumpy face studded with pimples, like a badly made fruitcake full of candied cherries, topped by a wiry black bush that made his head look like a horsehair cushion that had just burst.

  “I’m Professor Wittenoom, the Director, and this is the Princess Bronwyn and the Baron Milnikov.”

  “Oh, Musrum!” mutters the man. “So much for my grant.”

  “I’m sorry we’ve interrupted you,” says Bronwyn, “but I really would like to know what you’re working on. It looks fascinating. I imagine it must be something very important.”

  The little man stares at the girl for a long instant. It has been twenty-two years since a woman last asked about his work and she had not been half so attractive as the princess.

  “Important? Well, yes. Yes, of course.” He preens and grovels simultaneously. “Forgive my impoliteness, you took me a little by surprise . . .”

  “It’s quite all right,” says the professor and the little man sighs with relief and continued.

  “Yes, indeed, my work is of paramount importance. I doubt very much if there’s any more important work being done in this institution, or any other for that matter. See this?” he says, holding aloft a glass tube filled with an oily yellow liquid. “This is the most powerful explosive ever created! A single drop, a single drop, you understand, has the explosive power of five times an equal amount of gunpowder! The contents of this small vial alone could reduce this room to a pile of smoking, atomized rubble!”

  “Oh!” says Bronwyn.

  “Fraud!” comes a new voice. “Charlatan!”

  From around one of the workbenches appears a figure, equally as small as the first. Do they only accept dwarves here? Bronwyn wonders. This person is waving a fistful of dirty-looking cotton as he harangues the group.