Hellsgate

by Tim Wellman

  Stevenson started walking toward it and the others caught up. The city was very hot and just their normal movements had caused them all to be drenched in sweat. He looked up and pointed at one of the huge torches. "I think there's a clue," he said. "Those things remaining on. Unless they've become some sort of human that thrives in hothouse temperatures."

  Kato nodded. "Like the Mission," she said. She brushed her hair off her face and sighed. It fell back down and stuck again in the sweat. "Shit!" She brushed it back again.

  There were large double doors, like garage doors on the side of the building that were partially open and they all slipped between the gap and walked into the large, open building.

  "Holy crap," Stevenson said. It was a workshop, much like his own at the university, but bigger, and it was filled with weapons. There were guns of all sorts, large cannons, and various vehicles with guns and weapon mounts. It was apparently the city armory. He pointed to a large engine attached to a central shaft that ran along the center of the entire factory, with belts coming off it to work the machinery... metal lathes and milling machines, power brakes and bending rolls. The engine itself was an odd contraption, though, with a series of spinning wheels centrifugally mounted, but how it worked wasn't obvious. It was apparently an unknown, or lost, technology.

  "They were expecting a fight," Kato said. "If even a few of these things actually used to roam these streets, no wonder our founding fathers got scared."

  "Did they have magic, here?" Carlisle said abruptly.

  "Magic?"

  "Your magic," she said. "Witch magic... earth magic, whatever it's called."

  Kato nodded. "So they wrote."

  "There's rust on the lathe bits," Stevenson said, as he walked around. "No machinist would allow that to happen. Even normal use wouldn't allow rust to form." He pointed to the engine. "Perpetual motion... the riddle of the ages, and they solved it. But now, the factory keeps working even though the workers are gone and there's nothing else to make."

  "You know, you really are a pretty smart boy when you're not drunk," Carlisle said.

  "It keeps getting weirder, doesn't it," he said. "Not my drinking; I mean this city. Where did they get the knowledge to build a perpetual motion engine? That technology doesn't exist. Period. All of our knowledge says it can't exist. Yet, here it is, still working on its own after being abandoned for years."

  "Let's try some other buildings," Carlisle said. She snapped a few pictures, particularly of the engine and the overhead mechanism. "Do things fly down here? I mean balloons, helium stuff."

  "No reason why they wouldn't," Stevenson said. "The physics would be a bit different because of the air pressure, but they should fly."

  "If I lived in a dome and was afraid of being attacked, I'd figure out a way to get to the ceiling," she said, as they left the building. She opened her case and took out a cigar. Stevenson had his lighter in her face and she gave him the one he lit and took out another for herself. "Auntie doesn't need one; hers never runs out."

  Kato looked up. "I think, if there are bodies, they're up there in those caves," she said. The others looked up.

  "Would they have taken the thing you're looking for with them?" Carlisle said.

  Kato nodded. "I'm pretty sure, if it's here, it's up there." She dropped her head and took a big puff from her pipe. "So, we can go home now."

  "Oh," Carlisle said. She looked at Stevenson and shrugged. It did seem they had reached the end of the journey.

  "Now, if they went up there, maybe there are still balloons down here," he said. "We should look around." He looked up at the ceiling and the many dozens of cave openings. "But, it might take days to check all of them out, even if we can find a balloon and get it flying."

  Kato smiled. "Thanks," she said. "The both of you." She pointed. "We don't need to search them all, though, it would be that one."

  "Why that one?" Carlisle said.

  "Because it's aligned properly," Kato said. "There are alignments in here, following the tunnel as a ley line, and then crossing with the energy in the lake," she said. "You can see it in the way the torches are spiraling. The entire city is laid out in a magic circle." Carlisle and Stevenson were staring at her. It was something else that was always going to be over their heads.

  "If you're as weird in bed as you are here, I want you so bad!" the professor said.

  "We'll see," Kato said, almost absentmindedly.

  "So, let's see if we can dig up a balloon, then, and get this job done so we can get on to other things!" Stevenson said. He looked around. None of the buildings were marked with shop signs. "Does your magic eight ball tell us where they are?"

  "Sorry," Kato said. "Should we split up and look around?"

  "I don't think so," Carlisle said. "We don't know what we're going to run into, here, especially if we go around opening doors."

  "She's right," Stevenson said. "There might be more flying lizards locked up in some buildings, or who knows what. They exist, so anything is possible."

  They started walking. The one big difference between the underground city and ones on the surface was a lack of grass... in fact, a lack of all plant life. It must have been a problem for the people living there, too, because many of the stone yards were painted green.

  "They might have been safe and further advanced that we are," Stevenson said, "but I can't imagine they had much fun here. It's not a city I'd want to live in."

  Kato shrugged. "I think they lost track of everything except survival," she said. "They thought they were preserving humanity. I guess they forgot the most important thing we humans have worth preserving... the ability to have fun."

  Carlisle nodded. "Pretty deep thoughts for a girl raised by wolves."

  "Call me a wolf-girl one more time and I'm..."

  "Going to bite me?" the professor said.

  Kato tried to hold back a laugh, but she failed.

  -17-

  Finding Wings

  "Okay, there's another big garage-type building, let's find the door," Carlisle said. They had been around most of the industrial-looking buildings in the city and although they had discovered all sorts of odd and curious things, a balloon was not one of them. And it was hot! She had decided several times to take all of her clothes off and walk around butt naked, but she just knew as soon as she did, they'd discover a building full of school children, or a church group, or someone who knew her mother. Fortunately one of the houses had a closet full of clothes and she and Kato had changed into similar outfits: men's plaid boxer shorts and thin white tanktops which soon became transparent with sweat. But Kato still had her sword strapped around her waist and the professor still held on to her shotgun. Stevenson had stripped down and was wearing only pants, his sidearm, and the flamethrower. They were a weird bunch; there was little doubt about that from any of them. Three weird people who had gotten together on not much more than a lark and had somehow become even weirder as a team.

  "Door!" Stevenson said. He had to bang on it the get it open because years of sweltering heat on the outside had rusted the hinges. But they had found the balloon hangar.

  "Woah!" Carlisle said, as they slipped through the partially opened door. "These things are huge!" She walked across the floor and stood underneath one of the flying machines, taking pictures as she went. It was a semi-rigid helium balloon ship, big enough for several people and seemed to be the best shape of all of them. The others, mostly smaller, were sagging or completely collapsed. All were dirty and none inspired confidence, even though some were decked out as full military machines. "Can helium stay in a balloon like this for a long time?"

  "Shouldn't be a problem," Stevenson said. "But, if the meals we ate earlier were just a few years old, these could be, too. Cooler in here, too. The natural ground temperature is held in by the building." He looked up and around and his eye caught a few cables which he followed down to a large combustion engine generator and electric wench. "Not sure if any of that stuff works, though." He pointe
d. "That's the mechanism for opening the roof. Or was. Might take a lot of work to get it going, if at all."

  "So, I assume that's the only problem, though?" Carlisle said. "You can pilot one of these things?"

  "I can," Kato yelled. She had climbed the ladder stairs and was standing in the ship's glass-enclosed cockpit. "It was one of my jobs back in my slave days, taking the old man to town."

  "Okay, problem solved there," he said. "See, I told you we needed a witch."

  "Right," Carlisle said, as they both climbed the steps into the cockpit. "Oh look, it's Captain Hairdo."

  Kato was sitting at the controls, a massive board full of brass levers, knobs, and steering mechanisms. But the moment was broken by a loud clanging sound on the floor below and all of them ran to the edge of the cockpit and looked down.

  "Can you see anything?" Stevenson said.

  Carlisle had her shotgun pointed toward where the sound had come from and was prepared to shoot through the glass, but there was nothing she could pick out as the cause of the noise. "It came from there, right?"

  He nodded. "Around the door engine," he said.

  "No good just standing here waiting," Kato said, as she headed down the ladder. The professor and the shop teacher followed her down, though, not allowing the little witch to get too far ahead. There was safety in numbers, at least that was the common thought.

  "Be careful," Stevenson said. "We really don't know how smart the lizards are." He paused for a second. "Or aliens."

  They walked around, Carlisle and her shotgun in the lead, Stevenson and Kato had their swords drawn. But, they found nothing. The building was empty. And then they heard the same sound again. It was more obvious that time and easier to figure out. A loose bit of tin on the wall was causing the noise.

  "Damn it," Stevenson said.

  "Were you wanting it to be aliens?" Carlisle said.

  "Well, we should get this over with, right, before we scare ourselves to death," Kato said. "The controls on the ship work, but not sure about the engine. We'll need that to steer the thing. "Is it steam or air?"

  "I can see it's a combustion engine," Stevenson said. "A bit more complicated than a steam engine."

  "We have combustion engines on the surface though, right?" Carlisle said. "Actually, I've never noticed."

  "Some exist from the old days, but they don't work as far as I know," he said. "We've not figured out how to wind electronic coils and generators like they used. They won't run on our simple little batteries."

  "But these have them? The coils?"

  "These didn't go through what the ones on the surface did," he said. "Solar flares... whatever, alien weapons, maybe, that fused everything together. Everything just shorted out someway." He looked around the building and nodded his head. "If one of these barrels has petrol in it, shouldn't be a problem as long as we get a spark. I can tear it down and rebuilt it as long as there's fuel, except for the electrics."

  "What about that tank marked 'Gasoline'?" Carlisle said.

  "Oh," he said. "Didn't see that." He smiled. "Your nipples were blocking my view." He knelt down beside the large engine generator and pulled the starter rope. "This has to work, too. It still pulls freely and it's got compression, so hopefully the coil is still good." He stood up and went through the scattered tools on the table until he found a sparkplug wrench and leaned over the engine and took the plug out. He let it rest on the edge of the cylinder head and pulled the starter again. "Got spark." He walked over to the gasoline tank and cranked the pump handle. "These would have killed them down here... the exhaust fumes from combustion engines. I guess that's the reason for the huge circulation fans up there. It's not something you learn by trial and error, either, so they understood combustion engines before this city was built. But that's probably why they still relied a lot on steam down here, to keep the CO2 levels down."

  "He does know what he's doing, doesn't he," Kato said.

  Carlisle nodded. "Yep, surprising as hell, but the man knows what he's doing when it comes to machinery," she said.

  "A quart will do," he said, holding up a glass jar full of gas.

  "Nice guy, too."

  "He'd make someone a good butler," Carlisle said.

  Kato nodded. "Or husband," she said.

  Carlisle paused for a moment and shook her head. "Let's stick with 'butler' for now. After we get this all figured out I'll explain to you the benefits of a three-way marriage."

  "You know me, always happy to listen to reason," Stevenson said as he knelt beside the engine and started filling up the fuel tank. "She's a very smart woman, Kato. Listen to her!"

  "I'm outnumbered!" Kato said. But she couldn't help cracking a slight smile, even though she wasn't sure where jokes ended and actual propositions began.

  "Okay, that should do it," Stevenson said, as he screwed the gas cap back on the engine tank. "Got gas, got spark, so let's see if the carb is still functioning." He gave the engine a pull and nothing happened. Again. It didn't hit. But on the third pull, the engine hit and a big puff of smoke came out of the muffler. "There you go! Come on, baby!" On the fourth pull of the rope, the engine clanged to life; the large four-cycle rumbled and shook, but it ran. He knelt down in front of the generator section and tugged on some wires. "It needs to keep running under the strain of the generator. He flipped the switch and the engine bogged down but then smoothed out.

  All three of them stared at the generator. There was a light on the panel. It was the brightest electric light any of them had ever seen. They were witnessing real electricity for the first time in their lives.

  "Real electric light?" Carlisle said, and pointed.

  He nodded. "Yep! Alternating current. This thing is putting out over a hundred regulated volts. Could light an entire house." He smacked the electric motor connected to the mechanism that operated the overhead door cables. "I'm going to turn the motor on, now. Hopefully the engine governor will still work!" He flipped the toggle switch and the gas engine nearly quit; it coughed and sputtered, but after a few seconds smoothed out again. It was running at much lower RPM, but the electric motor was running and the doors were creaking above them as they slowly opened, the steel cables taut and squeaking on their pulleys.

  Kato gave a thumbs up and smiled at him. "Good job!"

  They all stood and watched as the doors rattled but continued to move until the hole in the roof was fully open. The electric motor kicked off by itself and Stevenson quickly hit the kill button for the engine and it sputtered down to a stop. "Built-in kick-off on the electric motor to keep it from binding and arcing the armature. Got a reverse switch here, too, for closing them."

  "I thought so," Carlisle said with a smile. "Regardless, that's half the job done." She snapped a picture of the machinery.

  "It's the most important part," Kato said. "As long as we can get the ship out, we can wing it if we have to, since there's no real breeze down here, if we just get the ship lined up with the cave, we can float straight up by jettisoning some of the ballast." She looked at Stevenson. "But, it would be a lot faster if the engine was working."

  "I'll check it out," he said. He grabbed the plug wrench and walked to the back of the ship's carriage where the small swivel-mounted prop engine was perched on an aluminum cage and climbed up an attached ladder, pulling himself around like a monkey in a tree. "When we're all married, will you two have separate bedrooms?"

  "No way!" Carlisle said. "One big bed! For me and Kato. "You'll have a separate bedroom."

  "Uh, no," Kato said.

  "Okay, then, he can stay in our bedroom, too," the professor said.

  "I'm not a lesbian, you know," she said. But she couldn't help having a little chuckle in her voice.

  "I'll teach you!" Carlisle said. "All it takes is a little practice!"

  "Listen to her, Kato! She taught me!"

  "She taught you how to be a lesbian?"

  "I'm amazingly gifted in that area!" Carlisle said.

  "Let's just get the
air ship going for now," the little witch said.

  "Notice she's not saying 'no'," Stevenson said.

  "Noticed," Carlisle said.

  -18-

  The Sky Is Moving

  "Okay, the battery is charged," Stevenson said. He spun the wingnuts back down on the posts and motioned from the back of the ship for Kato to push the starter button. The airship had an electric starter for its engine and they had to get that going before he could mess with the engine itself.

  She pushed the button on the dashboard and it worked. The engine turned over, and surprisingly, actually hit. "Good, right?" she said.

  "Great!" he said. "Electrics are good, so should just need a quick flush out and tank of gas."

  Carlisle was sitting on the bench seat, watching the others work. "How'd you learn about gas engines and electricity?" she said. "We don't have this stuff anymore."

  "Unlike you, I read more in the library than just porn," he said. He pulled the fuel hose off the carburetor and blew through it. "All of this stuff existed thirty years ago on the surface. It was everywhere."

  "So, you learn just from reading?" she said. "I'll have to start picking your books for you."

  He looked through the framework holding the engine and smiled. "Kato, can you get a jar of gas for me? It's pumped up, just need to squeeze the handle."

  "Sure," she said.

  "I started to ask Carlisle, but we don't need a fuel fire right now."

  "I can pump gas," the professor said. "How different can it be from pumping water from the faucet?"

  "Well, water doesn't explode in a massive fireball when you accidentally flick your cigar ashes in it," he said.

  She stuck her tongue out at him. "Shop teacher is being mean, Kato!" There was no answer. "Kato?!"

  Stevenson looked down from his perch on the back of the air ship. She was gone. He quickly climbed through the framework and down the ladder, and was right behind Carlisle as she hopped off the last rug of the cockpit ladder. "Kato?" he said. "Where you at, girl?"