Steam City Pirates

by Jim Musgrave

  Biggs-Pemberton’s description was very accurate. This monster alien was an ochre color, and I could see its five arms revolving in the air above its bulbous head. This was no small assassin, as it must have been over fifteen feet tall. The distance out into the surf meant the octopi must have been standing in at least ten feet of water.

  In addition, I could see that the Ooor already had its knives in hands. The sun glinted off each of the five blades as they were being wielded through the air. I withdrew my pistol from my coat, and I aimed it at the creature. I thought perhaps I should wait until the octopus came into shore to pursue Doctor Adler, but I wanted to stop it right then and there.

  I held my right arm steady with my left hand at the right wrist, and I drew a bead down upon the creature’s head. I should not miss such a big target at this distance. I took a deep breath, placed my index finger over the trigger, and squeezed, the way one beckons one’s lover to come hither.

  “Wham! Ba-zinggg!” I saw my direct hit as it ricocheted off the monster. The skin of this alien being must have been tremendously thick! I saw it coming into shore at a rapid pace, and I squeezed off another round: the same result. The bullet bounced off the bulbous head as if the ammunition were made of rubber.

  I saw one of the knives flashing in the sun, and then it came hurtling through the air. It struck me in the upper part of my right shoulder. I had the queer thought that this was the same place I was shot by that Rebel sniper who tried to kill my general, Billy Sherman. I won the Congressional Medal of Honor for taking that bullet, but this knife was in my shoulder like an insidious dagger from Hell. Initially, as I fell to my knees into the surf, I thought that the knife must contain poison, but I did not hit the water face-first. Instead, I looked out at the oncoming assassin, and I saw another creature behind it! This creature looked like it was coming through the water at a tremendous rate of speed. Was it a shark? No, nothing in the sea could move that swiftly.

  “Ka-boom!” The dark, cylindrical object struck the Ooor Cefallusca and exploded. For about fifty yards on either side of me, it began to rain down pieces of ochre flesh with bluish, gory edges. I looked out in the water directly in front of me, and I saw an eye. It was about ten inches around and was looking directly at me as it bobbed in the waves.

  I reached up to the knife stuck in my shoulder, grabbed the crimson handle, and yanked hard. The shooting pain made me scream out, and I could see sympathetic grimaces on the faces of several citizens standing near me. I threw the knife out to sea as far as I could cast it with my good arm. It plopped into the surf and sank immediately to the bottom.

  A woman ran up to me. “I’m a nurse. You must get some pressure on that wound immediately,” she said, and she tore off part of her petticoat and pressed it against my bleeding shoulder.

  I put my hand to my injury to hold it in place. “Thank you, Miss,” I told her.

  What was it that had burst open the octopus assassin? It only took me a few moments to remember. The Mocha Dick! I stood up on my tiptoes and looked out at sea beyond the surf. There it was! The seventy-foot cigar-shape of the white submarine of inventor Señor Narcis Monturiol i Estarriol. It looked like Moby Dick of Mister Melville’s book, and it had destroyed an unnatural creature from another universe. Manette and his pirates must have called off the attack on the merchant ships. However, there were still four more such assassins to confront in the coming days, and there would be no white whale to come to the rescue.

  I turned around and headed back up the beach toward the tent arena. I wanted to tell Doctor Adler that he was now out of danger. Tomorrow, I would need to protect little Seth, our mazikeen, from the hideous Svebo Murr’n, whose shriek could explode rocks and burst vital organs. We needed to discuss a way to counter its method of assassination before it could terminate our Seth. I kept thinking about Seth’s father, Arthur, and how the Eugenics Collective wanted to exterminate him and all the Jews. And tomorrow, another anti-Semite—this time from another universe—wanted to eradicate the little Jewish boy.

  The Second Day

  The Society was an ally. This was the news we shared when we had finally returned to our sanctuary, the Temple Emanu-El. The other news was spreading like a wildfire into the New York City newspapers. “Assassins Loose in the City!” headlines screamed in the Examiner. “Death Cult Mechanical Monster Seen Inside Amusement Park Tent!” the title to The Sun article exclaimed. It seemed that not even The Daily Sun, which published fantastic stories all the time for its eager readers, could believe in the wild story about aliens from other planets. Everything had to be reduced to our mechanical age to be believed at all by the “discerning” public.

  I thought the motives probably had more to do with Tammany Hall’s connection to the Society and its new carnival and other steam-powered investments. Boss Tweed and his gang did not want the public to know they were affiliated in any way with such assassination attempts, even if it did not threaten any of Tammany Hall’s Ring members. Any hint to the public that they were in danger was enough to keep the story limited to “mechanical men” chasing down “specific individuals who are now known.” The news stories all mentioned each person in our group by name and when each monster was going to attempt its attack. There were quotes from Mayor Hoffman that “Our Metropolitan Police will be protecting these citizens and keeping all of New York safe.”

  Our job at the moment was to keep our little mazikeen, Seth, safe. This was a noble purpose, I suppose, but the mazikeen in our ointment was the fact that Seth was nowhere to be found. Missus Mergenthaler, Bessie, was frantic and yelling orders to anyone who would listen.

  “You must find him before it’s too late! Patrick! Doctor! McKenzie! We can’t trust the police. I know Seth. He’s trying to do this alone. He’s just like his father, and he’ll get himself killed!” She was a dark mistress—a hysterical Queen Victoria—running around the laboratory, grabbing each of us in turn to implore.

  When she came up to me, I took both of her wrists into my hands and held her at arms’ length. “Bessie, my dear, you can’t be like this. We have very little time. We must decide what we can do to find Seth and keep him from meeting this Svebo Murr’n. Every second we waste could mean he is closer to being harmed.”

  “I know!” she cried. “My baby is so small. You know he can be killed. You all think he’s so intelligent and indestructible because he can fly, disappear and change shape. He is half human! He can be killed just as his father was killed!”

  Doctor Adler came over to us and placed his arm around Bessie. “Eema,” he said. “I will go with Detective O’Malley, and we shall find him before it’s too late. I have a method I came up with based on the reflective power of rubber to prevent sound waves from penetrating his small body.”

  The doctor walked over to the blackboard and wrote on it. “Sound travels at 330 m/s in air, and roughly 1480 m/s in water. The reflection coefficient R = (1 - Z_rel) / (1 + Z_rel). Z_rel is the ratio of relative impedances of the media, which is proportional to the density and propagation velocity of the media, i.e. Z_rel ~ p1c1/p2c2.”

  “Please, Doctor, could ya be speakin’ in English?” said Walter McKenzie.

  “Let me do better. I’ll show you,” the rabbi said, walking over to a chest, opening it, and taking out what looked like a rubber cloak of some kind. He brought it back over to us and held it up. “This cloak can reflect sound waves. It will reduce the incoming sound waves to render them harmless. If we can get this over Seth’s body in time, then we can reflect the sound waves coming from this shriek monster.”

  “Where will you look for him?” asked Becky, her green eyes flashing with emotional turmoil.

  “I think he’ll be at the Steam City Amusement Park. Where else would a boy want to be?” I said. “Come, Doctor, let’s get over there now. I would imagine Doctor Franklin Biggs-Pemberton could be having the same idea. Remember. These outlaws can communicate with their thoughts. They may be way ahead of us.” I ran over to the stairs and wa
ited there.

  “All right. We shall return with your son, Bessie. I promise,” said Doctor Adler, and he carried his rubber cloak over his frock coat as he ran over to me.

  I wore my usual attire of Army wool coat and gabardine trousers with my infantry hat. I also had my Colt inside my coat. We climbed quickly up the ladder stairs and out into the rush of the city’s traffic.

  We reached the entrance to the park in about an hour, and we spread ourselves about twenty yards apart to be able to watch for Seth. We also looked up into the air in order to see if he were flying about freely or riding inside a balloon. The boy could be anywhere. I didn’t think he would be invisible or change his shape unless he were aware of who was tracking him down. While we were in the tent the day before, Seth was over our heads in Professor’s Lowe’s balloon. When Bessie saw my knife wound, she made me promise not to tell Seth anything about the assassins. This was a big mistake. He was now under immediate threat of losing his young life, and I felt responsible.

  I heard the screams coming from the midway section of the park. It was the children’s area, and I looked over at Doctor Adler and nodded. We both began to run toward the sound of the screams.

  The singassassin was standing in the center of the miniature version of the giant Octospinner near the roller coaster. Just as Biggs-Pemberton had described, Svebo Murr’n was tall and skinny, about six feet in height, and his glossy, pale green skin made him resemble a tall asparagus with appendages. The Octospinner for children was about fifty feet in circumference, with the same eight tentacles that moved up and down, while it spun around. And inside one of the little red cars at the end of a tentacle was Seth Mergenthaler.

  “It’s him!” I yelled over at Doctor Adler, who was standing next to the ride’s ticket booth. “I’m going to have them stop the ride, and then you can try to throw the cloak over him,” I said.

  Doctor Adler nodded his head vigorously, and then he ran over to the Octospinner’s perimeter in order to get a better throwing aim.

  Visitors were watching the curious green man with horrified interest. The screams, we discovered, came from his earlier shrieks. Several of the empty cars on the ends of the Octopinner’s tentacles had been blown up by Svebo Murr’n’s deadly sound waves. It seemed like he was toying with the boy, and we needed to act immediately. If the shriek’s aim was so good that he could explode the cars while they were moving, then it was highly probable he could do the same to Seth’s car or even if Seth attempted to fly.

  I ran over to the operator of the ride, and I whispered into his ear over the sound of the crowd and the whirring steam engine of the Octospinner. “You must stop it! We have to save the boy,” I told him.

  The man, a portly gentlemen with suspendered trousers and a scraggly-gray beard, nodded his head gravely at me. He then walked over to the vertical metal lever that controlled the steam engine of the Octospinner. Just as he grabbed onto the lever, the shriek erupted. I could see the sound waves surge from his wide green mouth. They shot across the length of the ride and struck the pot belly of the attendant, who had not yet pulled down on the lever. It was like watching a lightning bolt strike, except that the sound waves struck so fast that there was silence at first. After the poor old man’s stomach exploded, the supersonic wail of a doomed fanatic was heard. It vibrated and shook all of us; the ticket booth rattled, and people answered this shriek with screams of their own.

  I knew we still had to act if we wanted to save Seth. I shouted over at the rabbi at the top of my voice. “Doctor! You have to throw it now!”

  When I said this, the green assassin started saying something that was unintelligible. It must have been some racist jargon because I could see him jump up on his spindly legs to point at Seth. I also noticed a medallion around Svebo’s neck for the first time. I moved closer to get a better look at it. On the face of the medallion was the image of the evil eye that Rabbi Adler had informed us about on the first day inside the temple’s sanctuary. This fanatic from another universe had adapted to the anti-Semitism of this world, and he was about to kill a very important Jew.

  I was also concerned that in the face of this immediate danger Seth was not using his flying or invisibility powers. Could it be the curse of the medallion around the alien’s neck? What was it Rabbi Adler called it? Ayin-horeh? We only had seconds before the singassassin would be wailing Seth’s “swan song.”

  I watched as Doctor Adler prepared to throw the rubber cloak. He was waiting patiently for the Octospinner to twirl around to his side. Once, twice, it spun past him. Then, it came again, and he was ready. The little car at the end of the tentacle containing Seth Mergenthaler came around and was on the level of Doctor Adler and his outstretched arms holding the cloak. The rabbi waited until the last second, and then he tossed it up at the passing boy. The rubber cloak was suspended in the air for hours, it seemed, until it finally grazed the boy’s arm and fell to the sawdust-covered floor of the midway!

  I pulled out my pistol and aimed. When I fired off three rounds in rapid succession, the ricochets repeated the same way they had done when I had shot at the Ooor. The bullets bounced off the green head of the singassasin and pinged off into the air.

  The green shriek then rose up on his twelve toes and was ready to send forth the deadly waves of sound. From behind him, however, a flying figure appeared. She had a large smile on her face, and her gold teeth were shimmering in the sun. When the murderer attempted to send out his shriek, the waves shot through the air, but they hovered in the middle of the path between Svebo Murr’n and Seth. After ten seconds, the force of the sound waves reversed, and they shot back into the head of the green monster. The force of the waves caused the wrinkled asparagus to explode into the air, and the willowy alien fell to the earth in a smoking heap.

  I ran over to the controls on the Octospinner and pulled the lever. The ride came to a gradual stop. When Seth climbed out of the car, I saw the female mazikeen fly away, her butcher’s bib flowing in the Coney Island wind. I ran up to the boy shaking my head.

  “What did you do? How did you know about this killer?” I asked my obvious questions.

  “Remember, Detective. We mazikeen are like opposite poles of a magnet. When we are close, the space between us becomes immune to any force fields, including sound waves, radio waves and, in the future, digital or television waves. We knew this beforehand. When you made an alliance with Inquisitor Manette, the female mazikeen and I were no longer rivals.” Seth smiled up at me.

  I tossed Seth’s black hair with my hand. “How did you know about the shriek? Your mother made me promise not to tell you.”

  “I had a vision. This angel part of me seems to be quite receptive to difficulties pertaining to anti-Semitic forces within my universe. I suppose, when one considers it, all racist behavior is universal,” the boy pointed out.

  “We still have three assassins waiting for us in the coming three days. Come back with Doctor Adler and me to the temple. We must make further plans,” I told the boy.

  Doctor Adler approached us holding his rubber cloak. “It would have worked, you know,” he said. “I have a souvenir for you, Seth,” said the rabbi, and he handed the lad the medallion with the Ayin-horeh on it that the doctor had taken from the songassassin. “This was beshert, and I want to congratulate you on your ingenuity. This day was so much more valuable than a Bar Mitzvah!”

  The Third Day

  Again, we did not accomplish much in the way of planning when we were inside our temple sanctuary. We spent more time talking about how Seth had escaped his assassin and how close he came to being executed. Bessie was livid that the boy had not informed her about his vision and what his plans entailed. He informed her that if he had told her about the plan with his doppelganger, she would have forbade him from going at all. Sneaking out was so much more fun!

  As for the anti-Semitic nature of the singassasin, Doctor Adler believed that the evil eye and anti-Semitism existed wherever evil existed, including in sepa
rate universes. “We must confront it whenever and wherever it rears its ugly head or deadly singing voice,” he told us. We all agreed.

  We also commented upon the nature of the Society and how ever since we had formed an alliance with Manette and the Steam City Pirates they had come to our rescue in one form or another. First, the white submarine, Mocha Dick, had successfully fired its lethal torpedo at the Ooor Cefallusca in the waters off Coney Island. Next, the female mazikeen came to Seth’s rescue with her opposite magnetic force. These developments made me think about Seth’s dictum early on about the Hegelian Dialectic and synthesis. His thesis also seemed to be coming true.

  But the day became new, and we had to face a new threat. The Zoftnist was developed by Biggs-Pemberton’s genetic engineering skills, so we knew this assassin would be an additional problem. Bessie suggested that we keep Becky inside our temple sanctuary, but we knew this would only be postponing the inevitable.

  “As long as Franklin Biggs-Pemberton is alive, he will send out his prisoners whenever he knows we have left the confines of the temple. We cannot hide from this threat, as he has also threatened the entire New York population with a personal invention that he said he would unveil when he came after me.” I was adamant about going out to confront these monsters because I had read the most excellent book on conflict strategy by Sun Tzu called The Art of War. In it, he advised that the best defense is a potent offensive. As long as we searched out our enemy, we could gain the upper hand. It did not pay to sit and wait.

  Becky came up with the idea of attracting her personal assassin. I should have known her enterprising mind would be the first to develop a plan of subterfuge. She was wearing one of the military outfits she used to wear to titillate my sleeping libido during the Edgar Allan Poe case. The French Foreign Legion uniform was quite appropriate attire for being hunted by a female assassin. Becky had a blue top with gold epaulettes and the kepi, or cap, with a rounded, flat top, black duck bill, and white cloth draped down the sides for life in the desert. However, she did not wear the usual pantaloons. Instead, she walked toward me in high heeled shoes and fishnet stockings--also of the French variety, but far more sensually attractive.