Whatever the Prussians' other faults, their maintenance of the pantry was superb. Sardines, cracknels, tinned steak and kidney pie, a roast pheasant, and Yorkshire pudding with hard sauce came rapidly to light. It was not quite my club in London, but with a few bottles of wine to fortify ourselves, it was more than adequate. A nation that produces an '89 Trockenbeerenauslese cannot be entirely beyond hope of redemption. Parker intruded once on my preparations to call attention to the eastern horizon, where it appeared briefly that a little fire burned, barely above the half-seen line separating sea from stars. At first the glow was ruddy, then brilliantly white like a photographer's flare, sinking slowly towards the water. Finally it winked out.
It was not until the next day that I learned the meaning of this apparition. That flare had been the death throes of the Prussian dirigible, the hydrogen flame of its burning gas reservoirs searing its frame to incandescent whiteness. Despite his wound, Parker was a superb conversationalist, so that we spent the last part of the evening sitting by the fireplace, pondering the future of Europe over a good Port [MM2] and fully ripened Stilton cheese, followed by some superb Belgian chocolates. A properly made sweet Champagne completed our evening.
In the morning, a torpedo-boat destroyer of the Fleet rescued us. On shore a special train fetched us back to London. Helmesham assured me that all was well. The treaty was safe in Paris, while the Prussians and their puppet had been sent to a watery grave.
"But, Helmesham, what clues led you to all this? And what befell the airship? Surely there was something I had not seen?" I later asked.
"Sir John, there was nothing but the elementary process of rational deduction from the plethora of information at hand," Helmesham said. "The train had clearly passed through Woking and not reached Overshaw. It had not gone off either side of the tracks, or onto some siding. Hence it had either been swallowed up by the earth or sailed off into the sky. The most revealing clue was the spring you found, precisely where lay the cap and bottle."
"The spring? A little patch of green in the middle of a great drouth?" I said.
"Ah, Sir John, but the patch was not green, it was only wet," Helmesham explained. "Had you looked underfoot, you would undoubtedly have noted that the grass in that puddle was nearly as sere as that elsewhere in the field. No, that was no spring, it was the remains of the tonnes of water ballast which the airship dumped precisely at the moment it lifted Oglethorpe's car from the rails. From the trolley's speed, and our astronomer-who will be on the honors list as soon as the matter's not a secret-the exact instant of the disappearance could be calculated. The churchbell report revealed the course and speed of the airship, showing it was too overburdened to reach Heligoland in a single night. The paper's back pages gave the ludicrous statement of two fishermen, who saw a dragon stoop low here and lay a monstrous egg.
"You make it sound so obvious," I said.
"Dispatching the airship was far easier than deducing its existence," Helmesham explained. "We pursued the airship, flying directly above it. We dropped on it wine bottles filled with petrol, swathed in burning cloth, and set fire to its broad flat back, in turn igniting the hydrogen cells within. A diligent search by the fleet has revealed no wreckage, though with a submarine boat the trolley might yet be recovered. Oglethorpe's a greater mystery, one I've not yet penetrated. He was a noted Francophobe, who might have set his hatred for the French above his duty to King and Empire."
But I had not looked underfoot, not at the color of the grass, and thus it was Helmesham who deduced that Oglethorpe's trolley had been winched into the sky by Prussian airmen. Thus it came to pass, at the end of the War of the Austro-Hungarian Succession, that Helmesham received the most prized medal of the Royal Flying Corps, the St. Michael's Cross, given for successful single-handed combat against a Hunnish Dirigible. The appearance of "1913" as the year of combat, in the Official History of the Corps, is widely taken to be a typographic error.
On a personal note, I was delighted to procure from an anonymous source a complete set of Oglethorpe's dental records, to be included in my search for final proof that the criminal mentality inevitably reveals itself in the miscreant's dentition.
Naturally, this tale will not be read by others, at least not in my lifetime. I am, after all, an honorable man, who would not dream of profiting from the confidences of my friends, a point of honor not always seen among the close acquaintances of private investigators. Those who wish to read an historical work from my pen should instead consult my Brief History of the Great Invasions of 1896 and 1906, in a mere eleven volumes, thereby educating themselves and at the same time learning the errors of that libertine socialist, whose works have the Martians die of plague rather than the exertions of the Army and Fleet, even though it is far less likely that a Martian could contract an earthly disease than a man could lose his teeth to the chestnut blight.
****
Astromonkeys
Tony Frazier
So I slide onto the barstool, and Jill says, "Digger! I haven't seen you in a while. Been out fighting crime? Or was it monsters?"
"Lawyers," I say. "Long story. I told you, I'm retired from the superhero business."
"Right," she says. "So who's your friend?"
"This is Dave," I say, and then, noticing the way Jill's looking at him, I add, "And he's way too young for you."
"Is he?" Jill says. I can't blame her for looking. Dave's a good-looking guy. Better-looking than me, although that's not saying much. "So Dave, do you have an ID?" she asks.
Dave looks panicked for a second and says, "Uh."
"It's cool, Jill," I say. "He turns twenty-one today. I promised that I would buy him his first beer on his twenty-first birthday, and it's important that I keep that promise, so could you just bring us two beers? Please?"
"Oh, you're vouching for him, so that makes it okay? It's my liquor license on the line, you know," she says.
"Just bring the beers," I say. "I promise, there won't be any problem."
"And you keep your promises," she says.
"I try."
Jill brings us each a mug and draws one for herself. "First one's on me," she says. "Happy birthday."
"Thanks," Dave says.
"No, first one's on me," I say, gently moving Dave's mug to the side. I'd hate to accidentally knock over the kid's first beer with the Driller Beam Generator grafted onto my wrist. They're such a pain in the ass, sometimes. I swear to God, someday I'm just going to cut 'em off with a hacksaw. The only reason I haven't so far is then I'd have to change my name, and I wouldn't know what to call myself. "I told you, I made a promise."
"What's so im�
�portant about this promise?" Jill asks.
"Long story," I say.
"Tell her," Dave says.
"You sure?" I ask.
"Sure, I don't mind," he says. "It's a good story, and she wants to hear it. You want to hear it, don't you?" he asks Jill.
Jill nods, because of course, she wants to hear anything I don't feel like telling her.
"Okay," I say. "So I was eating this burger. This was back in L.A., what, eight years ago, when I was working solo before we formed GoDS 2.0."
"The ones who died," she says.
"Yeah, them," I say. "So like I said, I was at Tommy's eating this burger. Tommy's was like a local legend. They made the most disgusting chili burgers on earth. Absolutely fantastic.
"So I'm standing outside, because there is no dining room. I take a bite of this burger and get chili all over my face. And they don't have napkins there, just these paper towel dispensers mounted to the walls like you'd find in a public restroom. So I'm reaching for this paper towel, and suddenly, my burger's gone. Just snatched right out of my hand.
"I look around to see who took my burger, and everybody's looking up. So I look up, and there, sitting on the roof, holding my burger, is this big, green monkey."
"A monkey," Jill says. I nod. "And it's green."
"What I said. And he's just sitting there looking at me, like 'Yeah, I took your burger. What are you going to do about it?' Cause he doesn't know how high I can jump, right? So I jump up there after him, and he screeches and throws the burger at me. Hits me right in the face. Chili everywhere."
Jill suppresses a giggle.
"Yeah, real funny. So I'm up on the roof, wiping the chili out of my eyes. I look around, and now he's on the other end of the building, still screeching at me."
"So what did you do?" Jill asks.
"What was I supposed to do? I couldn't leave this monkey running around loose. I went after him. He tried to get away, but I'm, you know, really fast, so before he could take two steps, I had him pinned down with my hand around his scrawny little neck."
"Aw," Jill pouts.
"Don't feel sorry for him," I say. "Because now he was pissed off, and the next thing you know, his eyes glow green and he zaps me with this eyebeam that sends me flying."
"Well, I hope it hurt," Jill says. "Picking on a poor little monkey."
"It didn't feel good," I say. "So he takes off down the street, and I go after him. I spot this trashcan, one of those heavy, steel barrels. I grab it and take this huge leap, fifty feet, easy. I come down right on top of him. Slam! Barrel o' monkey.
"And by the way, whoever came up with that phrase, 'More fun than a barrel of monkeys,' oughta' be bitchslapped, because I had one, and it was no fun at all. The monkey's screeching and slamming and banging inside this thing, and then I hear the eyebeams start zapping, and these dents start popping out like big metal zits. Poink-poink-poink! But the barrel stays in one piece, so I figure it's over. I've got him.
"And then something lands on my head and starts screeching and pulling my hair."
"Another one?" Jill asks.
"Exactly. I grab it by the scruff of the neck and peel it off my head, and it's snarling and spitting, and then its eyes start to glow. Well, I know what's coming next, so I say to myself, 'I don't care if it is an endangered species,' and I spike it like a football."
"Poor monkey," Jill says, pouting.
"Yeah, poor monkey," I say. "So then something zaps me from behind, and I turn around, and there's three more of the things. And I'm like, 'How many of these green, radioactive space monkeys are there?' Then the barrel goes, FOOMP! Fifty feet straight up into the air, and now that one's loose, and they all take off down the street."
Jill looks at Dave and asks, "Do you ever show up in this story?"
"Not for a while," Dave says.
"'Kay." She turns back to me. "Go ahead."
"All right, so I'm chasing these things down the street, and there's more showing up all the time, so now there's like ten of them. I have no idea how I'm supposed to wrangle all these space monkeys, and right about then is when this dude comes swooping down out of the sky, wearing this blue costume with a big yellow star on his chest."
"Another hero," Jill says.
"Guy named Astro," I say. "I'd run into him a few times before, back when GoDS 1.0 was still together. He would be fighting this monster-that was his thing, fighting these random space monsters-and we'd show up to help out. I thought he was okay, but the other guys didn't like him much."
"Why not?" Jill asks.
"Well, he was kind of a dork. No offense," I say, turning to Dave. Dave waves it off. "He didn't seem all that bright, and he could be a show-off at times. Like, we'd be fighting this monster, and I'd look over at him, and he'd shoot me this cocky little grin, like 'Watch this shit,' and then he'd pull the craziest damn stunt you ever saw. Hell of it is, it'd usually work. Then the monster would dissolve to nothing, cause that's what space monsters do when they die, apparently, and just as we'd start to clean up the mess, Astro would get this 'emergency call' and disappear. Turn to light and fly away."
"Turn to light?" Jill said.
"Yeah, that was his other deal, turning to light. We might've tried to follow him, except, you know, speed of light. Hard to keep up. Anyway, he'd take off and leave us with the mess, and the other guys kind of resented him for it. It got to where, after a while. I was the only who'd even respond to 'Astro alerts' anymore. It was almost like I was his only friend."
"I see," Jill says.
"So he comes swooping down out of the sky, and he's got this stop sign that he's yanked out of the ground somewhere, and he's popping these monkeys on the head with it. And the monkeys are running every which way. Like, you ever see North by Northwest? When the biplane's chasing Cary Grant? Kinda' like that, only with, you know, green monkeys.
"So now we've got to figure out what to do with all these unconscious monkeys. I grab a tarp from this nearby construction site and start wrapping them up. At some point, this cop pulls up and sees me with this tarp full of monkeys slung over my shoulder like Santa Claus. I start to say something like, 'Officer, I'm glad you're here. We've got these monkeys.'
"And he says, 'You've got monkeys? Where've you been? Everybody's got monkeys! There's hundreds of them popping up all over the city! We got 'em in Santa Monica heading east. They're in Hollywood heading south. They're in Watts heading north.'
"'Like they're converging on one central point,' I say.
"And by this time, Astro's there listening in, and he gets this startled look on his face, and says, 'I know where they're going. Grab onto my back.'
"I drop the tarp and wrap my arms around his neck. The cop starts yelling about the stop sign being city property, so Astro drops that, too, and we take off. We get about twenty feet up, and the cop goes, 'Hey!'
"We look down, and the cop's got the tarp unfolded, and it's empty. Just a little green mist drifting up from the fabric. The cop looks up at us and says, 'I thought you said you had monkeys.'
"I open my mouth to tell
him we did, but Astro says, 'Let's go,' and shoots straight up into the air. Did I ever mention I hate flying?"
"Yes," Jill says.
"I hate it," I say. "So we're flying around up there, and now I'm glad I didn't get the chance to eat any more of my chili burger, because just the smell from my shirt is making me want to hurl. I'm hanging on tight, and I'm scared to death that Astro will turn his head and smile at me, like 'Watch this shit,' and then start doing barrel rolls or something. But he just says, 'Look,' and points down, and there's hundreds of green space monkeys down there. And if you know anything about L.A. traffic at the best of times, you can imagine the mess. We get past the worst of it, and then we come down into this neighborhood, and we land in front of this little house.
"We walk up to the front door, and Astro knocks, and a couple of seconds later, this woman answers. Mid-thirties, shabbily dressed. Red eyes, like she'd been crying. She looked. exhausted. Just worn out in general. And she looks up at Astro, and she gets this look on her face, like she's seen a ghost, and she says, 'Davey?'"
Jill looks at Dave. "So you're Astro?"
Dave shakes his head. "It's complicated."
I keep talking. "So Astro walks past this woman without a word, right into the house, and I follow him because, what else am I gonna' do? We walk through this living room, and there's all these pictures, like family portraits. Mom, Dad, little kid. And the mom is the woman who answered the door, only less tired. And the dad looks kinda' like Astro. Older, but similar.
Jim Baen’s Universe Page 62
