The Brothers Cabal

by Jonathan L. Howard

  ‘“Mr Cabal” was my father. These days he’s my younger brother, assuming he’s still alive. I’m just Horst.’ He looked at them, but they seemed in no great hurry to leave. It seemed likely that he was going to be wandering around in crumpled clothes the following night. ‘Where I stand is next to my box. It’s not as nice as my old box, but you have to make do, don’t you? The sun will be up soon, so if this is going to be an involved conversation, can it wait until the evening?’

  ‘What we would like to know, Horst,’ said the professor, ‘is if we can count upon you as an ally in the coming war?’

  ‘War?’ Horst slouched against the box. ‘Look, I know the Ministerium is made up of bad people, but do you really see a war happening here? As a country, this place is already dead. Did you see the locals get involved the other night? They just locked their doors and let it happen. Monsters running loose all over the place and nobody even tried to stop them. There’ll be no war here.’ He lofted a leg over the side of the box and started to climb in. ‘There’s no elegant way of doing this,’ he said with a slightly embarrassed smile.

  None of the others seemed to care so very much about the deportment of vampires. ‘Mr Cabal,’ said the major, ‘is that honestly what you think is all the Ministerium have in mind? A safe haven for poor, hapless monsters to escape the prejudices of humans?’

  Horst was now inside the box, both hands on its edge as he faced them. He felt like a defendant in court. ‘Yes?’ he said, a little uncertainly.

  ‘The country is in a state of collapse and anarchy,’ said the professor. ‘It is useless in all respects to the needs of the Ministerium Tenebrae. All but one.’

  ‘They’ll kill everyone, Horst,’ said Alisha. ‘They’ll make them into new monsters. Everybody.’

  Horst could not reply. Dawn was so close now. He wanted to rest, to sleep. He did not want to reply.

  ‘So,’ said the major. ‘Where do you stand?’

  An Interlude

  ‘I note,’ said Johannes Cabal, while making notes, ‘that there is a certain warmth in your tone when you refer to Fräulein Bartos.’

  ‘No, there isn’t,’ said Horst a little too abruptly.

  ‘There is. Even when you recounted how she shot you in the lungs, it was described in much the same mode one would expect if she’d sent you a poem of poor scansion and cloying sentimentality such as the ones that Greta Thorndike used to send you.’

  Horst looked offended. ‘You read Greta’s poems?’

  ‘You used to read them to yourself, sigh happily, and leave them littering the place like dandruff. Of course I read them. You obviously intended them to be read, so I indulged your ego by doing so.’

  ‘I’m sure I intended no such thing,’ protested Horst, not at all sure he intended no such thing.

  ‘Execrable poetry aside—the one likening you to a robin redbreast and herself to a turtledove in particular still causes me to flinch involuntarily when it comes to mind, not least because of the biological unlikelihood of it all—that aside, you have a mooncalf air about you at such times. I see elements of it when Alisha Bartos is mentioned.’

  ‘Honestly, Johannes, you really say…’

  ‘Don’t,’ said Cabal peremptorily. ‘Simply don’t.’

  Horst rocked his head in indecision between moral outrage and gleeful agreement, and gave in to the inevitable at speed. He smiled. No. He grinned.

  ‘She is a bit wonderful,’ he said.

  ‘She’s a trained killer, practised dissimulator, and a sworn enemy of necromancers.’

  ‘I know, and she’s really pretty, too!’ He looked at Cabal with uncharacteristic nervousness. ‘I say, Johannes. You don’t think … you know … a fellow like me, and a lady like that might somehow…’

  ‘A monster and a killer of monsters. Oh, yes, Horst. Romance is certainly on the cards.’

  Horst’s enthusiasm waned a little. ‘You think that might be a problem?’

  ‘Honestly? Yes, I think it might put a few brass tacks in your path.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Horst. His shoulders sank. ‘Oh.’

  Cabal looked at Horst and sighed. ‘Do you recall the offer I made you when I first liberated you from the crypt?’

  ‘The crypt you locked me in for eight years?’

  ‘The same,’ said Cabal, unperturbed. ‘Eight years and thirty-seven days, as I recall. Do you remember the offer?’

  ‘That you’d try to cure me.’

  ‘It still stands.’

  Horst crossed his arms. ‘Why should I believe you?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t you? You did then…’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it that strongly.’

  ‘… and you have far more reason to do so now. Horst…’ He lowered his voice, ashamed. ‘I’ve done things since then. Things you don’t know about.’ The confession almost choked him, but somehow he forced the words out. ‘I’ve done good things.’

  Horst feigned astonishment. ‘Good Lord.’

  Cabal was distracted, lost in terrible memories of altruism. ‘Awful, selfless things. Sometimes I commit sensible, rational acts and I get a pain in my chest. And then undoing what I’ve done makes me feel better. Sometimes it even makes me feel good.

  ‘Horst, I think I may have a conscience.’

  His brother bursting into laughter did not help Cabal’s metaphysical suffering in the slightest.

  Chapter 10

  IN WHICH BIRDS FLY AND DEATH COMES TO TOWN

  As dawn arrived and Horst slipped into a deep sleep from which only the next night would rouse him, the small community awoke to find Miss Virginia Montgomery’s Flying Circus among them.

  The locals were moderately excited by this development, and a great milling throng of perhaps eight people gathered at a respectful distance from the train and the row of gaudy entomopters that stood before it along the access road, gleaming and so out of place in the determinedly bucolic setting that they may as well have just set down after a long migration from Mars.

  Miss Virginia herself approached the worthies and spoke to them of aerial thrills, adventures, excitement, and very good crop-dusting rates. This last raised most interest and, along with a few courier requests to carry reasonable loads for reasonable distances, represented the first part of the Circus’s trade for the day. The afternoon would feature a display, providing the media blitz represented by a foolscap-sized poster placed within the covered town notice board a fortnight before proved sufficient to provide a viable audience. The town, for all its profound failure to whelm, was still the centre of a substantial farming area and should, according to Miss Virginia’s calculations, provide enough financial reasons to linger for three days. She had been wrong before, though.

  Deals were made between the exotic visitors and the locals. All seemed workable enough, but for one request to send a spiced ham to an émigré family in Chicago and another to transport a prize heifer sixty miles. After brief explanations of just exactly how far away Chicago was, and how unhappy a heifer would be strapped to the underside of an entomopter as it gamely hopped hedgerows and rivers for sixty miles because there was no way it could hope to fly with that much weight, business was concluded and jobs assigned. Three of the entomopters would be carrying packages distances of up to a hundred miles, while Miss Virginia’s own Spirit of ’76 with its relatively capacious cargo capability would be sporting spray wings and flying the stars and stripes over several fields of cabbage threatened by caterpillars, leaving a vapour trail of DDT in its wake.

  The major had seen plenty of entomopter flights in his time so, while Alisha and the professor watched the aircraft lift and depart on their sundry missions, he busied himself with encoding a detailed message and then standing over the telegraph operator at the station as it was sent. He rejoined his colleagues and said, ‘Well, it’s out of our hands now.’

  ‘How many of the others do you think survived the assault?’ asked Professor Stone.

  ‘I’m reasonably optimistic about that,’
replied the major. ‘The enemy focussed their efforts upon us, and we were the smaller part of the force. I think the mortars may have antagonised them somewhat. In any case, I didn’t see them attempt to attack any of our people in the square. It would have meant rousting out all the poor wretches in the shanties, and we were far more obvious. Unless the Ministerium and its minions performed some sort of follow-up action of which we are unaware, then our people should have had ample opportunity to fade into the night. We’ll know within a few hours in any case. They should have fallen back to the rendezvous points and reported in to London as I’ve just done. When the committee sends their reply, we should have a better idea how things stand.’

  ‘Did you mention Horst Cabal to them?’ asked Alisha, her indifference a little too studious to be convincing. The major looked at her oddly.

  ‘Of course I did. How could I fail to mention that the Lord of the Dead has come over to our side?’

  ‘What do you think they will say?’

  ‘That it’s a bloody good thing, I would expect.’

  ‘You’re sure of his sincerity?’

  ‘As sure as I can be. Look, Miss Bartos, there is always the chance that this is all some sort of devilishly clever plot to make us deliver the rest of our forces into a cunningly laid trap. I’ve racked my mind over it, though, and I can’t see how such a plan could have been created in the time they had. Unless Mr Cabal is entirely committed to their cause and is busking his way towards betraying us, I cannot believe there is such a plan.’

  ‘What,’ asked the professor, ‘if that is exactly what he is doing?’

  ‘Then we’re doomed,’ said the major. ‘Obviously.’ He nodded to where they could make out the distant shape of Miss Virginia’s Copperhead performing tight turns and swoops as it rained a fine mist of insecticide across cabbages and dismayed caterpillars. ‘She’s good in that thing, isn’t she? It looks about as manoeuvrable as a coal barge, but it’s actually quite nippy.’

  * * *

  Midday brought the return of the couriers, Daisy with a story of having to fight off the advances of a station agent at her destination who apparently harboured a secret lust for cowgirls, inspired by cheap novels bearing ridiculously romanticised renderings of Calamity Jane and Annie Oakley upon their covers. ‘He kept saying, “I lof der cowgirls”. I was telling him that was all very flattering, but would he just sign for the damn package? Then he got grabby, so I drew on him.’

  ‘You drew on him?’ asked the professor, imagining something involving pen and ink, and having difficulty seeing how this was an appropriate response.

  ‘Sure,’ she said, laughing, and tapped a finger to the grip of her revolver where it showed in the shoulder holsters all the women wore, presumably because it was easier to reach the weapons there when in a cockpit.

  ‘Oh,’ said the professor, both relieved by the explanation and embarrassed by his slowness.

  ‘I bet that quieted him down,’ said Dea Boom of the explosive name that, disappointingly, only meant ‘tree’ in Dutch.

  ‘You’d have thought so, wouldn’t you? But, no. Having a cowgirl draw down on him was about the most exciting thing that had happened to him since his voice broke.’

  ‘So what happened then?’

  ‘He signed. Thanked me, signed, thanked me again, proposed, took it like a trouper when I said no, and waved when I went.’

  ‘He proposed?’ interrupted the professor. ‘On a first meeting? He actually proposed marriage?’

  Daisy grinned at him. ‘Marriage? Heck, no, Prof. He didn’t propose marriage.’

  And she and her colleagues left the professor in his slowly deepening scandalisation to go and ready their aircraft for the afternoon’s show.

  * * *

  A decent little crowd of perhaps fifty had gathered at two o’clock. The major, however, regarded them with an air of concerned disappointment. ‘This can’t possibly be economically practical for Miss Montgomery and her girls,’ he said, pronouncing it ‘ghels’.

  ‘It can’t be cheap running an operation like this,’ agreed Professor Stone. ‘How much do you expect to make from this?’ he asked Becky, who was standing nearby with a collection box.

  ‘This? Drinking money and a few washers. The idea is we do a couple of small shows to get people talking and spread the word. Then we do the big one on market day and that should see us through until we reach the next place.’

  Stone looked at the size of the crowd and asked, ‘This last big show; how many people would you anticipate turning up?’

  ‘More or less everyone in the area. There’s not much entertainment around here, so people grab what they can while they can. I’d say’—she pulled an estimative face—‘perhaps two thousand or so.’

  Haskins and Stone were visibly surprised. ‘That many?’ asked the former.

  ‘It’s true. Happens just about every time. They’ll come in from all over, bringing their families. We’ll have a good crowd.’

  The crowd they had was therefore small, but appreciative. The ‘show’ was informal to say the least, but no great buildup was necessary as the onlookers were already eager for diversion. Necks craned this way and that as they searched the cool blue sky for the entomopters, distantly audible but hidden from view.

  Becky leaned closer to Haskins and Stone. ‘Hold on to your hats,’ she said quietly.

  Even as they were drawing breath to inquire why that might be necessary, their hats were blown off by the shockingly low passage of Mink’s and Dea Boom’s entomopters appearing from behind the train. They must have been approaching rapidly, close abeam, their craft almost brushing the grass beyond the line of carriages to have made such a stealthy approach, before opening their throttles and hopping over the roof of the carriage by which the professor, the major, and Becky were standing. This also brought them up behind the crowd, who, collectively bamboozled by the engine tones more easily audible ahead of them, had assumed that this would be the direction of approach.

  Alisha arrived with a bag full of supplies she had just bought at the general store in time to see her colleagues chasing their headwear. She put down the bag by the fence alongside the access road and leaned against it to watch as Mink and Dea broke in opposite directions and into the area of open sky framed by their craft, two oncoming entomopters appeared, rising from behind a stand of trees. Miss Virginia Montgomery’s Spirit of ’76 was plainly in the lead, its silhouette rounded and luxuriant, a lioness flanked by a jaguar. The crowd were still laughing in delighted surprise from the first approach when they realised that the two newcomers were also heading dead towards them. To their credit, they limited their nervousness at this development with some more nervous laughter and perhaps a surreptitious communal crouch that only knocked an inch or so from their individual heights, but served to make them feel a little bit safer.

  They had nothing to fear, however. Miss Virginia shot over their heads with a clearance of a good ten feet, while Daisy broke right at the same moment, moving off to re-form with Dea while Mink fell in line astern to Spirit of ’76.

  Although Becky claimed that the display had been cobbled together only a few hours beforehand based on the lay of the land, it remained terrifically impressive. It was true that the ringmistress was there primarily to top and tail each sequence of barnstorming, powering through a scattering formation to punctuate rather than participate, but she was clearly no mean pilot if not nearly as impressive as those she led. They had the advantage of leaner, more agile aircraft, too, and while the Copperhead might not have been quite the flying version of a No. 24 to Pimlico that Becky had suggested, it could not hope to compete in anything but cargo capacity, and that attribute was not usually considered much of a crowd pleaser.

  A small piece of genius that both Alisha and Haskins noted was the way by which the display hinted that the entomopters were capable of doing far more. They would bank so hard that it seemed likely that they would roll, but they did not. They would climb so steeply and d
ive so precipitously that there was always the hint that continued pressure on the yoke would finish in a loop, either upwards or in a bunted inverse finish. Yet they never quite followed through on these, but only stall turned, or pulled out. It was a tease; a great beckoning finger drawn across the sky to lure the punters on to the big show in two days’ time, and to make them excited enough to talk about it. The flying display that afternoon did not last long—only perhaps fifteen minutes—but that was just long enough to whet appetites for more without overstaying their welcome.

  ‘Masterful,’ murmured Professor Stone as the four aircraft performed a last flyby in line astern, the pilots waving to their small but highly appreciative audience as they passed before curling off towards the distance, then returning and performing simultaneous vertical landings in a neat line along the length of the field they had hired as their showground. Becky was already ahead of the crowd, collecting coins and washers while simultaneously keeping them a healthy distance from the blurred wings of the insectlike aircraft as the engines wound down, for it is a truth universally acknowledged that knocking an arm off a local will put a dampener on subsequent relations.

  * * *

  It had its effect, too. The next day (after a night in which Horst was told of the skills of Miss Virginia Montgomery’s Flying Circus and spent the rest of his waking hours in a mild sulk because he would never see them at firsthand), the crowd was somewhat larger, numbering perhaps eighty, of whom the great majority of the previous day’s audience constituted a part in addition to those excited enough by word of mouth to skip tasks and chores to spend a few minutes watching the flying wonderment of it all.