“Oh, and we certainly wish you the best with yours,” said Joseph.
The four of them wished each other good day and Detective Thomas followed his unformed underling out through the wreckage.
Gideon looked to Joseph. “I’m really glad that you didn’t tell him about the horse. I made eye contact with you hoping you’d know what I meant.”
“I’m not a fool, son. I like the police well enough, but in affairs such as these, they’re lost.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like—”
Joseph put his hand on Gideon’s shoulder. “It’s ok. I’m not actually insulted,” he said with a fatherly smile. “You’ve got to learn how to relax. Unlike in Washington, not everyone out here has a pole up their rear.” Joseph looked to George, who hitherto had been standing quietly. “George.” George responded with a wide, goofy smile. “Have at it,” Joseph said, motioning toward the horse.
George ran over to the metal horse and began inspecting it. He ran his hands over the multitude of polished, silver-colored metal panels that ran all over the outside of the body. Small copper and gold detailing gave the horse a glinting web of shiny yellows, oranges, and browns. Most of the intricate panels were held on with small, polished bolts and screws. George squatted down and looked under the horse and found bundles of small hydraulic pistons, wires, and tubes exiting the inside of the legs and going up into the torso. He brought his face close and squinted.
Coming out from under the horse, he looked to Joseph and Gideon. “Do we have any lights in here?” Gideon and Joseph began looking around the room. Gideon walked over to the entrance and analyzed a large switch situated on the wall. He pressed, and with a forceful push, the switch thunked into place, causing a variety of incandescent lamps throughout the room to illuminate.
“How’s that?” asked Gideon.
“No,” replied George. “He would have needed a much brighter light if he was doing work on this in the office.” George began looking around the room. “Maybe… he has… a…” George’s eyes rested on a large, black metal box standing atop a wheeled tripod on the other side of the room. “Ah ha.” George walked over to the device. “How much you want to bet that this is an arc lamp of some sort.”
“Uh, sure. I’ll take that bet,” said Joseph.
George paused. “… I don’t know how to respond to that.”
“That’s good, because I don’t know what an arc lamp is,” said Joseph.
“It’s a lamp that emits light from a small gap between two electrodes,” said George as he leaned behind the tripod and dug around in the shadows. “It is incredibly bright and perfect for this kind of work.” George rummaged around for a second more before coming out with a thick cable that ran to the lamp box on top of the tripod. “Jackpot!” George wheeled the light over to the horse. He stopped and held the cable up. “Ok, this is only about ten feet long, so look for a socket or plug or something that we can put this into. They all looked around for a moment before Joseph spotted a conspicuous metal box on the side of the devastated cabinet that had been their shield.
“Ummm,” he said, pointing to the cabinet.
“Oh shit,” said George. “I hope it still works.” George walked the cable over to the cabinet and lifted up the metal cover, revealing a heavy duty socket. He plugged the cable into the socket, walked over to the lamp, and flipped a large, red switch on the back of the lamp. It flashed and then glowed like the sun. “Heeeey! It’s a good day!” He walked around to the front and opened the barn doors covering the front of the light, which promptly bathed the room in a blinding light that caused everyone to squint and grimace.
“Jeezus,” said Joseph.
“Oh right,” said George as he ran back over to where the lamp had been stored. He picked up a small, square piece of tinted glass before coming back over to the lamp and dropping it into a bracket in front of the lamp, dimming the light. “I forgot. When you’re this close to arc lamps, you have to put a piece of tinted glass in front of it or else you’ll get burned.”
“I’ll bet,” said Joseph.
“Now, back to business,” said George, as he went back under the horse.
“Yes,” said Joseph.
---
Cassidy was busily looking around the vehicle, seeing what was available to her. She pried at the seats, punched at panels. She opened a compartment under one of the rear seats and found binoculars and a shoe. Cassidy looked at the shoe with an almost-annoyed expression. “One shoe? What the hell are you gonna' do with one shoe,” she said, before throwing it out the door and giving one last look in the compartment before folding the seat back down. She crawled out to the platform for controlling the Gatling gun and stood up, trying to get it to work. She pulled the triggers, rattled the belt of ammunition running into it, and crouched down, looking for anything of use. She straitened her back up while remaining crouched, looking behind the car and seeing the buildings of the city disappearing in the distance. She then looked forward, squinting, as the sun glowed and flickered through the trees as the speed-machine blazed down the narrow, country road, kicking up a cloud of dust in rocks in its wake.
Cassidy dropped back down into the primary cabin. Where she found another compartment under the second rear seat. She opened it and began pawing around when a loud BOOMF and bright light knocked her back. She sat with her back against the driver's cabin wall, shaking her head and blinking widely and rapidly before burying her eyes in the palms of her hands. A light smoke was cascading out of her hair.
After waiting a moment, she took her hands away and kept blinking, with tears streaming down her face, as she squinted at where the light had originated. The seats were now all on fire. “fantastic,” she said. She looked up and behind her at the closed window. She then leaned out the side door and looked to see that the driver's cabin had doors on both sides. She leaned back in breathed deeply before buttoning up her jacket tightly and heading on to the outside of the vehicle.
As she felt around on the body of the car for grips to get closer to the window, the driver saw her in his side-view mirrors. “Oh, you want a ride, huh?” he said. He started to turn the vehicle hard to the left and right, sending Cassidy's body flying off the side of the vehicle, barely clinging on with her hands, only to be slammed back against the roaring metal beast when he turned right.
Cassidy crawled onto the top of the vehicle as the driver continued to swerve, trying to shake her loose. Her body slid from left to right as she strained to maintain her grip. She eventually grabbed the upturned gullwing door with her right leg, allowing her to stabilize herself somewhat. The driver stopped and scrutinized his side-view mirrors for any sight of her body. Cassidy exhaled loudly, puffing out her cheeks in relief. She glanced to the left and looked at the large rocks and trees directly abutting the road, creating a natural wall of grinding death. “No,” she whispered to herself. She then looked to the right — a more open incline into some shrubs — and started to shuffle over in an attempt to drop down by the right-side window. The driver looked around quickly as he heard the sound of her moving and started to swerve again, sending her flying off the right side of the vehicle, just barely holding on with her left hand, her legs flying out. A large turn in the road forced the driver to turn hard to the right and sustain the direction, causing her body to slam solidly against the vehicle. She took the momentary reprieve to pull her gun and point it at the driver through the right-side window.
“Drive up close to the other machine!” The driver smiled and mouthed the words “fuck you” to Cassidy. Cassidy responded by shooting the window, which suffered a circular fracture pattern and nothing else. The driver smiled and gave her the middle finger. “Oh yeah?!” Cassidy yelled. She then cocked the secondary rounds in her St. Claire Revolver and fired an explosive shell into the window, which exploded in grand fashion, sending glass everywhere.
Cassidy gave her head a good shake to get her billowing crimson hair out of her face and then pointed her gun at t
he driver again. “I'll say it again, asshole! Drive up close to the other machine!” she yelled. The driver stared at her for a moment with a wide-eyed but blank expression. “Do it!” she commanded. Instead, the left-side door suddenly opened and the driver threw himself out the door, hitting the ground and violently rolling as he disappeared in the dust and smoke behind them. Cassidy just stared where the driver had previously been with a blank expression. “Well... that was unexpected.” She looked forward briefly then quickly did a double-take. “AHHH!” she yelled, seeing an upcoming sharp turn, abutted by a severe cliff. She threw herself from the vehicle's side at the last minute, hitting the ground with a thud and skidding right up to the cliff edge as the vehicle, smoke billowing behind it, flew off the cliff. It sailed through the air, slamming into rocks a hundred feet below, exploding in a massive fireball, and setting the surrounding brush on fire.
Cassidy grimaced in pain as she stood and straightened her body, covered in dust, twigs, and blood. She stood at the edge of the cliff, streams of late-day sunlight beaming through the cloud of dust that swirled slowly behind her, her hair billowing in the wind. She watched as smaller explosions, cracks, crackles, and pops fired out of the now-burning wreckage. She turned to look up the road. The first vehicle was stopped in the middle of the trail, the slim man standing next to it. They stared at each other for a moment, their eyes making locked on one another. After a moment, he got into the vehicle and closed the door. With a loud burp and rumble of the engine, the vehicle kicked up some dirt and stones as it accelerated off into the distance.
Cassidy sighed and ran her hands through her hair, removing a large stick from it. As the dust cleared around her, with her brow furrowed, she looked up the road with her arms akimbo. She turned and looked off the cliff. Then she turned again and looked down the road. “Where the hell am I?”
---
The sun was completely down, with only the faintest glow of its light remaining on the horizon. The streets of San Francisco were well-lit with the warming caress of the sidewalk gas lamps. People wandered about everywhere, enjoying the cool spring night. The Professor’s house was glowing like a furnace, with brilliant light beaming out from the giant hole in the wall. The horse-drawn carriage pulled up in front of the Professor’s house, next to Cassidy’s carriage. The sound of clucking chickens emanated from the feather-strewn cages. Cassidy’s boot-shod feet stiffly and wearily fell to the ground from the carriage seat. She turned, her hair tangled and covered in feathers, and gave the carriage a pat.
“Thank you very much for the ride, Miss O’Mally. Good luck with your chickens.”
“No problem, dearie,” the old woman, clothed in a frontierswoman dress, replied. “Good luck with your… everything.”
Cassidy nodded wearily and waved as Miss O’Mally and her chicken cart rattled down the road. Cassidy walked up to the front door just as Miss Hernandez, the housekeeper, was leaving.
“Miss Hernandez. Where are you going?” asked Cassidy.
“I can’t take it anymore! I can’t! I’m moving back to Mexico. I was poor, but machines didn’t attack people. Guns, guns, guns! No! No more! I’m going back to my children!” Miss Hernandez pushed past Cassidy with her suitcases and put them inside of a waiting carriage, already loaded with luggage. She then got in, and the carriage clopped off.
Cassidy, tired, watched her leave before turning and walking in the door. A pillar of bright light stretched out from the entrance to the office. She walked in, squinting. Joseph and Gideon, both leaning on the decimated cabinet, both looked up with surprise. “Cassidy!” Yelled Joseph. “Where the hell have you been?”
“I have no idea. South. Somewhere,” Cassidy said as she walked over to them. “Trees. A nice old woman driving a chicken cart to Market Street was able to give me a ride. She seemed to know where we were.”
Joseph leaned over and gave an audible sniff to Cassidy. “Good god, you smell like shit.”
“And you smell like shut the hell up.”
George and Sheng snorted with barely restrained laughs from behind the horse.
“I'm assuming that you guys didn't make that gigantic, incredibly conspicuous hole.” She then turned and faced the wall opposite the windows. “Or these fifty thousand bullet holes.”
“Uhhh, no. No,” said Joseph. “And I’m assuming that your chase did not end as you would have hoped.”
“Nope. But we did destroy a neighborhood. That was fun.” Cassidy turned again and stared at the wreckage for awhile, then sighed deeply. “The Professor?”
“Gone. Gone but not dead. It was a dart, apparently intended to simply knock The Professor unconscious.” said Joseph.
“God dammit,” Cassidy whispered to herself. She motioned at the broken wall and spoke loudly and angrily. “We're not making any real progress, we're just. Wrecking. Everything.”
Joseph chuckled. “The wrecking part, yes. But I think we have some progress staring us right in the face.” He removed his hands from his pockets to make a ta-dah motion at the horse.
Cassidy turned to Joseph. “How so?”
“Just before the professor passed out completely, he directed us to this metal horse. He kept going Hhhh. Hhhh while pointing to it. It was only after the dart hit. I think he may have been betrayed and he tried to spill the secret he had been protecting before being taken.”
“Well, he could have made this a whole lot easier by not being a jackass to begin with,” said Cassidy, annoyed.
“Regardless, this horse is important. George has been at it for the past three hours.”
“Did you find anything else?”
“Yeah!” interrupted George from under the horse. “He has a really amazing lab in the back of the house. Brand-new everything. I'm jealous.”
“And?” asked Cassidy.
“Oh, and nothing. That's it. It's a nice lab but doesn't have anything else in it.”
Cassidy sighed. “Not today, but tomorrow, we're ripping this house apart. Gideon, you think that you can gain access to his space at the university?”
“Possibly. I would have to try.”
Cassidy nodded. “Alright. Are you sure you have the authority?” she asked with mock concern.
Gideon visibly thought about it.
“No, Gideon, you... I don't care if you have the authority. Just try.”
“Not to underestimate the possible value from all that, I think we should focus on the thing we have at hand. The Professor pointed to this, not anything else. This,” said Joseph.
“Yes, yes. You're absolutely right. George?” asked Cassidy, looking at George, who was now standing behind the horse.
“Nothing,” George sighed. “It’s going to take me awhile. This thing is locked up tight. And what I can see is almost as complex as that hand. We did find this series of five wheels in the chest under a small cover,” he said, walking around to the side facing everyone. “They have letters on them and I think that it’s a combination lock.”
“Have you been trying it?” asked Cassidy.
“Of course!” said George, somewhat insulted. “Gideon’s working on that pad, coming up with words.” George pointed to Gideon, who was bent over the destroyed cabinet with a pad and pencil. “Each wheel doesn’t have the full alphabet, so the possible number of words is small… er.”
Cassidy leaned in to inspect the wheels, seeing them currently set to the word beach. “Are you sure he set a word?”
“Well, no. But I think it’s safe to assume that he did. Letters, words, it just makes sense.”
“We started off with words starting with H, since that was the sound he was making. Our first guess was horse,” added Joseph.
“You tried horse?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Oh for... why would someone set the password to a secret compartment as the compartment. That would be like setting the password to something as password. Only an idiot would do that.”
“I don't know! Maybe The Professor was an idio
t. He pointed at the thing going Hhhhh, Hhhhh. It's a horse. What would you think?”
“How do we even know that he was trying to say the password. He may have just been saying horse.”
“Oh and I'm the idiot? In what may have been his dying breaths, he points at a horse to say horse.” Joseph started pointing at things in the room and mimicking the Professor's breathy final word. “C-cab-i-net... D-d-doooor...”
“My assumption makes more sense than yours. He may have been trying to be clear.”
“Don't feel bad, Cassidy. I tried five H's and they teased me for an hour,” said Sheng.
“Win... doooowwwww...” continued Joseph.
“You know that smell you had, a minute ago. The smell of shut the hell up. Yeah, you smell like it again.”
Gideon looked at Cassidy. “Cassidy. Five letter word, starts with H.”
Cassidy paused for a moment. “Heart.”
“Hey! I don't think we tried that!” George dialed in HEART into the device, and as soon as the last letter slid into place, a loud click emanated from the body of the horse.
“Lucky bitch,” said Joseph. Cassidy made a snide face at him.
They all stood there, looking at the horse. “So what happened?” asked Cassidy.
“I... don't know,” replied George. He reached up and touched the chest of the horse, then touched the body of metal surrounding the five combination reels in the lock. He pressed lightly on the reels and found that it moved slightly, so he pressed harder. The entire combination assembly depressed down about half-an-inch, causing an arrangement of metal plates on the side of the horse’s chest to lift away from the rest of the body. They all stood there, holding their breath, as George reached up with both hands and fit his fingers under the metal plates and lifted. The metal plates were revealed to be a door that swung up from the body, covering a cavity in the chest. Small incandescent lights turned on illuminating a cavity filled with gears, wires, tubes, and moving bladders.
And at the center, connected to various tubes and contained within a glass sphere, was a real, beating heart. The foursome stood there, aghast.
Cassidy St. Claire and The Fountain of Youth Parts I, II, & III Page 16
