by Andrew Mayne
There was a clatter as April brought the carriage to a stop in the street behind them. “They’re heading to the docks!”
Smith climbed aboard. “Yes! How did you know? But which one?”
She cracked the reins and sent the horses into a gallop. “I have a hunch.”
Goddess of War
Smith had barely sat down on the bench next to April before she sent the carriage racing down 5th Avenue. They passed the intersection he’d seen the pump truck turn into.
“They went that way!” said Smith.
“Only to lose you.” She steered the horses down the middle of the avenue.
Oncoming traffic veered toward the far side of the street to avoid them. Men shouted angry insults.
Smith eyed the carriage they were in. “Do I want to ask?”
“We made a polite request,” said Felix from the back of the carriage.
Smith turned around and saw the hairy dwarf and Harry holding on for dear life. Harry had managed to wipe most of the green dye off, but his ears were still green.
April charged through an intersection. A police sergeant blew an angry whistle at them. He did a double take when he saw the two riders clinging to the back.
“Does anybody have a weapon?” Smith asked.
Harry shouted over the sound of the horses’ hooves hitting the pavement, “Only our wits!”
“In a word, no,” said Felix.
April pushed his umbrella toward him. Smith grabbed it and checked the amount of rocket fuel still left and then sat back down and held on. He wasn’t sure which was worse, Brutus the rhino’s bucking or April’s mad-woman weaving through traffic. She turned onto 34th Street and he almost fell off the bench.
“Where are we headed?”
“Pier 43,” she said.
“Why?”
“I asked one of the naval men what the largest ship in port was that didn’t belong to them. He mentioned a hospital ship.”
“A hospital ship?”
“The Adrestria. It’s supposed to be a German hospital ship,” said April.
“Adrestria? As in the Greek goddess?”
“A goddess of war. Sister of Phobos,” said April.
“They must have rechristened the ship that! Of course. The man in the opium den was too confused to remember the cover name. Miss Malone, you’re brilliant!”
Tall masts were visible over the rooftops ahead. April turned south on 12th. They passed rows of old warehouses that lined the Hudson River. Smith was certain they’d been searched. The irony was the ship was right behind them, out in the open. The airship could have been launched from the decks in the still of the night and nobody would have noticed, especially if they had their smokestack spewing. Smith cursed himself for not having thought of that.
“There!” April pointed to a white ship pulling away from the wharf.
“Take us onto the pier!” The ship was already a hundred feet away from the dock. Smith had no idea what he could do to stop it.
The carriage raced down the wooden pier. Sailors and longshoremen shouted at them to slow down. April ignored them and took the carriage all the way to the end.
“Isn’t that the mayor?” shouted Houdini.
They looked to the side and saw a scruffy man with his wrists tied walking across the dock in a confused state. Houdini jumped off the back to help him.
Smith hopped down and stood at the edge of the dock and tried to figure out what to do about the fleeing boat. He glanced down at his umbrella. There was enough fuel for him to make it. But then what? There had to be at least twenty crewmen on board.
White smoke billowed out of the smokestack as the ship’s boilers pushed the steam engine to top speed. Smith could also hear the low-pitched sound of a dynamo. The Martian Emperor had likely made some kind of hybrid power plant. Smith suspected it would be able to outrun any blockade.
Smith lifted the umbrella and pointed it over the ship. He turned the handle and it sprung open.
“No!” shouted April.
“I don’t have a choice. He’s going to get away, and it’s my fault.”
Flames shot out of the umbrella, and Smith began to lift off the ground. Something jumped onto his back.
“I can’t let you go alone,” said Felix as he clung to his shoulders.
They were too far off the ground for Smith to protest.
They flew across the Hudson like an obnoxious firework. The sparks and the smoke from the rockets lit up the night around them. Smith arced the umbrella toward the ship.
“Ze men. They are jumping!” said Felix.
“What?” Smith was too focused on making sure they landed on the deck and not the river. Between the flames of his umbrella, he saw several men diving into the water. They must have thought the rocket-propelled umbrella was some kind of missile. But the men seemed even more afraid than that. Smith realized they must have been in a hurry to pull out of port. There had to have been an accident.
“Felix, can you swim?”
“Oui?”
“Jump!”
The wolf man dove into the water. Without his weight, Smith accelerated toward the ship. He let go of the umbrella. The flaming rocket shot toward the ship and ignited the leaking hydrogen. The last thing he saw before he blacked out was a bright ball of fire and the silhouettes of men diving into the water.
Beside Manner
When Smith came to, he was lying on a hospital bed. He panicked for a moment when he couldn’t feel his feet. He looked down and saw that April had fallen asleep on them as she sat in a chair.
“They tried to remove her. They won’t make that mistake again.” Roosevelt pulled up another chair and sat next to Smith’s bed. “I know you have intermittent amnesia. How much do you recall?”
“Everything until the explosion. Felix?”
“Back at Coney Island. Houdini as well. It was he who pulled you out of the water. Extraordinary young man.”
“What about the Martian Emperor?”
“We captured several of his men. They said he died in the explosion. A likely story. They said he’s actually the Viscount Von Marcus. Our European allies say that’s probably a dubious alias. We’re trying to track down his operations over there to find out more. The sailors only seem to know a little. They didn’t have much grasp of what he was up to. Typical Hessian obedience. After Miss Malone explained the chemical process, the government was able to get its gold back from the tank. The Navy also found some interesting things to look at on that ship. I didn’t point out to them that they looked a lot like some of your gadgets .…”
Smith bit his lip. “This man, he looked familiar. But I don’t know why. It’s as if he managed to copy many of my ideas. I’ve used lots of different machinists to help build my toys, but I always try to separate the work so no one person has the whole picture. Unless …” his voice trailed off.
“We’ve found a number of devices he used to corrupt the telegraph system. A disturbing number. If anything, this man had a gift for espionage. The men from the Navy are very interested in that. It’s embarrassing how easily it was done.” He eyed Smith. “Makes you wonder who else might have done such a thing .…”
“I’m sure they had good reason.” Smith paused for a moment. “But I suspect the Martian Emperor felt the same way. This Von Marcus, or whatever, despite the theatrics. He managed to do quite a lot without firing a shot. I think he may have been after more than just the gold.”
“Such as?”
“He’s a man who has read too much Jules Verne, for certain. But he reminds me of a younger version of myself. I, too, had dreams of unifying the world,” said Smith.
“What happened?”
“I realized that you can’t do that by force. Men have to work together as individuals, not at the point of a gun. Sadly, I fear this is an ideal that is being forgotten. I think we’re in for dark times as more men try to force others into their vision of peace and unity. This Martian Emperor was just the beginning. And I wo
rry what he’ll do next time if he’s still alive.” Smith stared out the window. He was still hazy and out of sorts. A memory came back to him. “I started a society once, a salon of sorts. The goal was the scientific unity of man. It sounded like a grandiose idea. But I made a mistake. Thomas tried to explain it to me. But I wouldn’t listen. I was so headstrong and arrogant back then. I believed that a just society could be created by using force to make men act justly. But that’s a delusion as old as the pharaohs. Thomas tried to make me understand that a just society is one that allows men to act justly. The first fails by coercion. Look in any prison. The second succeeds by understanding that most men want to live in a just society.” Smith waved at the window and the buildings outside. “Most of those people out there want to live in a city free of corruption and crime. Give them that and the world will really prosper. You don’t elevate the society by putting a different set of crooks in charge to steal and put their boots on our necks. You elevate society by not putting the crooks in charge. You keep the ones out of power who would sell their votes or betray their office by handing out jobs and using public debt to buy favor.” Smith looked back to Roosevelt. “I’m sorry. You know all this. I forgot who I was talking to.”
Roosevelt nodded. “I see progress. Fleeting at times. But it’s there. Back to the Viscount. You have no recollection of who he is?”
Smith shook his head.
“Not a lost relative?”
“I have none other than my little sister.”
Roosevelt tilted his head toward April. “Does she know why you take your long sleeps?”
“No. I don’t want to burden her with it. It’s too much for me to bear at times.”
“Sometimes in not letting people know our burdens, we burden them even more by forcing them to carry us, as well,” said Roosevelt.
“I know. I know.”
“She thinks the world of you.”
“I’m quite fond of her.” Smith tried to avoid looking down at her sleeping form.
“Fond? There’s a funny word, Schmitty. When I see you two look at each other, ‘fond’ isn’t exactly the word I’d use. It’s the word someone uses to hide a deeper feeling.”
Smith said nothing.
“That look is rare, Smith. You’re both two exceptional individuals.”
“I’m a little too old for her, don’t you think?”
“You’re a little too old for Methuselah’s mother. I don’t think she would care.”
“There’s just too much to deal with. Now is not the right time.”
“Unlike you, she can’t wait forever. She might try, but in the end, she’s like the rest of us. It would be cruel for you to make her do so.”
“I know. I know. I think I … I mean I know … I know I love her. I knew it the moment I stepped out of my chamber. I knew it before I knew her name. I knew it even in the deepest bout of amnesia.” Smith lowered his voice. “I knew it when I slept. I dreamed about her. Even though I never dream when I take those long sleeps.” Smith stared up at the ceiling. “I need a nap. Then I need to get back to my train.”
“I’ll leave you be.” Roosevelt patted Smith on the head and then shut the door behind him.
Smith traced patterns in the ceiling and tried to make sense of things. His eyes drifted down to April. He wanted to say something to wake her. He wanted to see her brilliant green eyes gaze back at him. He wanted to tell her what he just told Roosevelt. Instead, he closed his eyes.
At the foot of his bed, April pretended to sleep while a tear rolled down her cheek.
Epilogue
Arnaud Sylvestre sat in the king-sized bed of the master suite of the Hotel Flatrock and looked through a telescope and out the terrace window at the city. It wasn’t the masterful view he had from his mirror chamber on Park Avenue, but that was merely meant as a piece of scenery to confound Smith. The view here was much more important to him. He was both frustrated and delighted that his mentor finally unraveled the hoax. Frustrated that his plot, both simple and absurd, didn’t work out the way he had planned. But in a small way, delighted that Smith was able to see through it despite the obstructions thrown in his path. Besting Smith in that way was a distraction. Arnaud knew it was the kind of trivial and petty thing a student ultimately tries to pull to prove that he has surpassed his master and only satisfies the ego. But he tried anyway and sacrificed his attention to his plan. Where Smith was a master of machines, Arnaud’s gifts were in understanding man. The intellectual side of him knew that seeing Smith defeated would bring him more sadness than delight. Words couldn’t measure how much he respected the Promethean fire of the man’s intellect. Nor could they describe how much Arnaud felt Smith wasted them on his toys and hobbies and devotion to his sickly sister locked away in her hibernation vault.
When he climbed ashore from the sinking ship, he was filled with rage. At first he thought his fury was simply the failure of his machinations and the great cost of the ploy. As he recuperated and made his plans to return to Europe to start anew, he had a deeper realization, one that continued to sadden him. He was a wealthy man and could launch scores of ventures like the one he’d tried. Like Smith, he had all the time in the world to see to it that his plans eventually succeeded – and next time he’d spend less time trying to distract Smith with a pointless sideshow. What bothered him most was the look on Smith’s face when his helmet came off. None. There was a glimmer of recognition when Smith saw his face but only that. There was no connection. There was no emotional reaction. There was no spark. To Smith, he was nothing more than a vaguely familiar shape. It had been a long time, for sure. Arnaud also made use of Smith’s life-extending – or postponing – chamber technology, and his face didn’t betray his own years. But still .…
Arnaud adjusted the eyepiece and looked through the hospital window once more. His chest hurt from the exertion, but he wouldn’t be satisfied until he saw the image again. He watched Smith gaze down at the green-eyed young lady and was filled with envy. Arnaud knew that Smith’s lapses of amnesia caused great missing sections of his life and even knowledge of relationships – a vulnerability that Arnaud had learned to exploit to personal benefit. But that didn’t make him feel any better for it. He could tell that even in his darkest bouts, Smith would still recognize and know that woman meant something special to him. There was an obvious connection on a cellular level. A connection Arnaud thought he had and now realized he’d irrevocably severed.
Arnaud suspected that had he succeeded, his triumph would have been hollow if Smith didn’t appreciate the true identity of the man who had accomplished it and their relationship to each other. It was a guilty realization. Up until recently, Arnaud had thought his intentions were pure: the unification of mankind under any means necessary. Now he knew it was more subtle than that. He must also prove Smith wrong and have him know it. And he must earn Smith’s respect in the process.
He got out of bed and swept the telescope aside with an angry strike, shattering the glass lenses on the wooden floor. His ribcage seared in pain, but he ignored it. An attendant came running from the salon. Arnaud spoke sharply to the man and they were on a carriage within the hour, passage booked to Europe on the fastest vessel he could charter. There was much to be done. His mistake had been thinking he had all the time in the world. He could sit there and watch Smith through his telescope and pretend the connection wasn’t lost, or he could set about on his grander vision and make the man realize, no, long for, the connection he once had with his protege. Plans needed to be made. Machines had to be built. Men were to be recruited. The Emperor of the Sky’s reign was truly about to begin.
Author’s note
Final note
I apologize to the mysterious Smith for any errors or omissions in telling his story. Any mistakes are mine and not his.
I’ve endeavored to make this story as accurate as possible; and still tell a wild adventure involving airships, saucer men and wolf-man dwarves. I’ve taken a certain amount of license w
ith the historical figures described, but have done my best to reflect who they were at this interesting period of time. As far as the technology described, I’ve used patent searches, court documents and scans of trade journals to describe machines and devices that very well could have existed during that period.
Origins are a funny thing. French magician and inventor Eugene Robert-Houdin had electric lights on display decades before Edison turned on his first light switch. There are hundreds of other examples of inventions that have no fixed point of origin. Where necessary I’ve taken tremendous liberties. Where possible, I’ve relied upon known historical facts.
Sincerely,
Andrew Mayne
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