Inconvenient Magic 01 - Potatoes, Come Forth!

by H. Jonas Rhynedahll

  Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Will you be able to operate the engines continuously?”

  “Once we confirm that all of our metal fabrications are sufficient to the heat and stress, yes," Ellen answered. "Initially, however, our plan is to run them only for regulated intervals during daylight hours. We will descend and moor at night.”

  As Sarah continued her questioning, Everett began to worry that her single-minded intensity might offend the family of mystical tradesmen.

  “So we will cover approximately three hundred miles a day?”

  “Perhaps more nearer two hundred and fifty,” Rorche supplied. “But we fully intend to eventually run the engines from beginning of voyage till end. We conservatively expect to be able to travel between Eriis and Eyrchelle in less than three days!”

  “But this first trip will take five days?”

  “Yes, that is correct.” Rorche looked as if he were about to expound, but the approach of one of his esnes, a grizzled, solid looking fellow with a long, prominent scar on the side of his neck, caused him to turn about. Coming from the warehouse at a fast trot, the man gave the impression of restrained agitation.

  “What is it, Sergeant Tekle?”

  The sergeant clicked his heels. “Sir, a squad of Baronial Gendarmes is at the street entrance. They're demanding admittance.”

  Rorche scowled briefly. “I expect that the vapor cells have finally been noticed. I must ask all of you to please excuse me. I will need to attend this matter. Eylis, would you do me the favor of showing Everett and Susan to their cabin? Algis, I think it would be wise if you tried to complete the installation in as short a period as possible. Once the Baron’s men leave, I am going to send word to Edwin and the others. We may need to launch on short notice.”

  The elder technician clenched his brow. “Franz, we probably need at least another hour on this engine.”

  “Do what you can. I suspect if we do not launch quickly that the city officials will enforce ridiculous delays.” The Baronet nodded tersely to them all and moved off rapidly with the sergeant.

  While Algis, Ellen, and Josline attacked the engine with controlled urgency, Eylis set off briskly, striding to the temporary platform and mounting the stairs in two energetic bounds.

  As he and Sarah rushed to catch up, Everett quickly asked the younger magicker, “Will there be trouble with the Baron?”

  Although she did not slow her pace, Eylis did not appear concerned. “I wouldn’t think so, but we neglected to seek licenses or permits for our work here. We thought it best to keep the air carriage project out of the public eye. It’s going to be a new business venture, after all, and we didn't want word getting out till we were ready. I've heard that the Baron is having cash flow problems and they may try to make a fuss about fees and taxes. That might make it difficult for us. Our budget doesn't have allowances for any extra expenses.”

  “I thought the Alarsarians were footing the bill for the gunboats?” Sarah asked.

  “That’s the rumor,” Eylis confirmed. “But Baron Heimgelberg has been pretty close-mouthed about the subject. All of the new bank notes have been printed by his own banking house, so who’s to say?”

  As they reached the rounded metal door, the sharp report of pistols rang inside the warehouse behind them.

  TEN

  Shocked, Everett whipped his head about.

  Within moments, Rorche and Tekle ran at full speed into the yard, dragging a staggering man with a nasty scalp wound that leaked bright crimson blood down the front of his gray jacket. Half a dozen of Rorche’s esnes charged out following them and hurried to slide the tall doors closed.

  “Come on!” Eylis yelled, snatching open the door and leaping inside.

  Sarah clasped Everett’s arm. “Let’s go!” She lunged through the door after Eylis.

  Everett followed into a corridor hardly wider than his shoulders that ran forward the length of the port side. Light from the doorway and the portholes lit the passage dimly. Two men rushed from the bow, their pounding steps making booming sounds on the sheet metal deck and sending bouncing vibrations through the soles of Everett’s boots.

  “Eylis! What’s going on?” the one in front cried. He was a shorter, stocky man with black hair and a full, trimmed beard.

  “I don’t know, Bennett! There are Gendarmes at the front entrance!”

  Bennett turned about. “Aldo, get back to the bow and close all the circuits on the batteries! We’ll have to launch!”

  The second man whirled and ran back without a word. Bennett slid by Eylis and sprang for the still open exit. Without glancing back, Eylis immediately bolted after Aldo. Sarah, having backed up to get out of Bennett’s way, jammed against Everett, forcing him aft against the lightweight door that closed the end of the corridor. He reached to catch both her arms as she made to follow the Common Magicker.

  “We’d better get out of here!” he hissed at her.

  Sarah twisted loose from his grasp. “You can leave if you want. I’m going with the air carriage.” She sprinted to catch up with Eylis.

  Cursing, Everett vacillated for a moment and then went after her.

  At an open compartment in the windowed bow, Aldo and Eylis were frantically closing large knife-bladed switches on a floor-to-ceiling panel mounted on heavy insulators to the rear bulkhead. Arcs flashed and the space began to fill with an acrid smell.

  “What can I do to help?” Sarah gasped.

  “We’re going to have to dump all the ballast at once to gain altitude quickly,” Aldo told her. “Open those eight valves all the way. I’ll have the water pumps going in just a second.” He pointed at a manifold of two-inch diameter pipes that rose out of the deck at the starboard bulkhead.

  As the last electrical switch closed, Sarah dashed to the manifold and began to spin valve wheels. The manifold rattled as water began to surge through it.

  Eylis turned to Everett. “Come with me!” Without looking to see if he followed, the young woman disappeared down the starboard side corridor. Drawn by her intensity, he raced to follow.

  Eylis skidded to a stop in front of a one-foot square metal panel inset into the hull at about waist height. Everett had vaguely noticed similar panels all along the port corridor.

  A finger-ring handle protruded from the upper right corner. She snatched on the ring to swing the panel open, pulled a now revealed hammer from a clip, and with one sharp blow drove a tapered brass bin out of a shaft that extended through a round support. The shaft, under tension, disappeared suddenly down into the support, leaving a round circle of daylight shining through. The deck beneath Everett’s feet jolted slightly.

  “We must release all the mooring rings! Do just like I did on all the panels along this side but leave one in the middle! I’ll get the port side!” With that, Eylis sprinted toward a cross-corridor and vanished.

  “To the Outer Moon with that!” Everett mumbled. He decided, five thousand silver or not, that he did not want to be involved with Baronet Franz Rorche, his insane flying mechanism, or the niece of the Elector of Kleinsvench any longer. He trotted down the corridor seeking an exit, found a door, flung open the latch, and found himself face to face with a man in the black trousers, jackboots, and red trimmed butternut tunic of one of Baron Heimgelberg’s gendarmes. The startled man raised his pistol and pointed it at Everett’s head.

  Everett threw up his hand reflexively, knocking the gun aside as it went off with a deafening roar. Luckily, it wasn't a double-barreled model and so the man only had but the one shot. Everett grabbed for the weapon, but the gendarme kicked him viciously in the belly and he doubled over, gagging.

  Backing up on the wooden platform, the gendarme broke open his pistol with a practiced slap, snatched a cartridge from a belt loop, shoved it home in the chamber, and snapped it shut. Panicked, Everett rammed headfirst into the soldier with all his weight before he could bring the pistol to bear. The two of them crashed onto the rough planks. More afraid than he had ever been in his life, Evere
tt fought the man for the pistol as they grappled and rolled. With savage desperation, he managed to grab the mechanism just as the hammer slammed down again, pinching his index finger excruciatingly but not driving the pin into the cartridge. Within seconds, his opponent, larger and stronger, abandoned the pistol, wrenched around, and wrapped the magicker in a strangling hold. The edge of Everett’s vision dimmed and began to go dark.

  “Give me strength!”

  The terms of the spell whispered unbidden from Everett’s lips. A shock surged through him as he sensed the most powerful actuation that he had experienced in his entire life. Sudden energy infused his arms with phenomenal power. With unbelievable ease, he ripped the gendarme’s rock hard bicep from about his neck, snapping both forearm bones in the process. As the man screamed hideously, Everett raised him above his head and threw him ten yards out into the yard, where he bounced, rolled, and flopped.

  Then, just as suddenly, the magical energy that had made Everett inhumanly strong evaporated and he was left standing impotently as he wondered what had just happened.

  “Impressive.”

  Everett whirled.

  Sarah stood in the doorway, her expression guarded and unreadable. “Are you coming?” A shout echoing down the corridor inside the air carriage drew her away from the opening. The flying craft shifted, swaying. On this side, only one mooring ring and its ropes remained attached.

  He drew a deep, ragged breath, but did not move.

  A pistol cracked and a bullet splintered the handrail a few inches from his left hand. Reflexively, he leapt for cover, diving for the doorway and landing inside just as the air carriage heaved and rocketed upward. With the sounds of other shots and the chilling zing of bullets passing through the hull ringing in his ears, he rebounded off the corridor wall, scrambled to catch hold on the nearly featureless wood panels, and felt himself falling back toward the banging door.

  Sarah’s arms encircled him and she used her weight to pull them both away from the opening as the air carriage surged skyward. For several terrifying moments, the vessel rocked and danced erratically, tossing them about. When the violent movement finally subsided, Sarah released him but remained seated with her back against the outer corridor wall and her feet braced against the inner. It was clear she was taking no chances.

  As the craft continued to shudder and creak ominously, but with gradually diminishing force, she regarded him as if seeing him for the first time. “Congratulations.”

  “Uhm, thanks.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “Being a wizard?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just the same.”

  “Thought so.”

  Everett sat quietly for a few moments then said, “You released the mooring rings?”

  “Yes. Bennett sent me to help you. He thought you'd fallen behind Eylis and said that there was a danger that the uneven strain might warp the frame of the air carriage.”

  After a few more minutes, when it seemed that the air carriage had steadied, they rose and looked out.

  The ground was far below and rapidly falling away. The buildings of Eriis, tiny and fading, were still visible in the far distance but were sliding toward the horizon at a rapid pace. Below, a checkerboard of fields and pastures unfolded somewhat leisurely. At least, that is what Everett thought until he took into account the effects of scale.

  “We must be traveling thirty or forty miles an hour,” he said.

  “I wonder why there's so little sound from the wind?”

  “No idea. Seems like there should be quite a bit of noise though.”

  The air coming through the door was cooler than the balmy temperature that had prevailed on the ground in Eriis and it continued to cool as the air carriage climbed. Within another couple of minutes the light dimmed as if they had passed into shadow and the air became progressively damper, then filled with mist, and finally a fog abruptly cut off their view.

  “Clouds!” Sarah exclaimed in amazement.

  Everett caught hold of a stanchion alongside the door, leaned out to catch the latch, and swung the door closed.

  “This doesn’t seem right,” Everett told her. “The air carriage isn’t under power. It’s just drifting with the wind. We should go find the others.”

  A full complement crowded the forward compartment: Aldo, Bennett, the Coldridges, Millicent, Baronet Rorche, Sergeant Tekle, and the eight gray clad esnes, including the injured man, who reclined against one wall as one of his comrades tended the bullet crease in his scalp. Some were looking out at the clouds shrouding the forward view; others were simply standing or sitting quietly. Conspicuous for their absence were Edwin and the other magicians and technicians of Roche’s group, abandoned in Eriis due to the abruptness of the crisis.

  Baronet Rorche, who stood in the center of the compartment, looked around as Everett and Sarah emerged from the corridor. “Everett, Susan, I am pleased to see you. We did not know if you were still with us. It seems that indeed all present at the warehouse managed to board.”

  Everett wanted to say something to the effect that he was not at all pleased to be aboard, but kept his mouth shut.

  “A gendarme tried to get in through the starboard exterior door,” Sarah told the group with no animation or emotion. “Everett had to throw him out.”

  Everett kept his face blank. He knew intrinsically that the young woman continued to keep secrets from him, but was glad to see that she was also willing to keep his. At that moment, it seemed wise to keep the capabilities provided by his newest spell to himself.

  “We were just discussing our predicament,” Rorche went on.

  “We’re adrift?” Sarah asked.

  “Yes, the unexpected nature of our departure prevented the completion of the installation of the port engine and thus far we have been unable to start its starboard companion.”

  “Why are we still rising?” Everett wondered aloud. “I’d think that you would want to bring the air carriage back to the ground.”

  Aldo, standing with Bennett at a curved panel of gauges, levers, and rotary dials in the forward section of the compartment, made a disgusted face. “That was my fault. I was only thinking of launching quickly and was blind to my obvious error. I shouldn’t have dropped all the ballast.”

  “I don’t understand,” Everett admitted.

  “We control the altitude of the air carriage by releasing ballast or vapor. The first causes it to ascend. The second causes it to descend,” the Baronet explained.

  “So what’s the problem? You can still release vapor, yes?”

  “Yes,” Bennett groused. “But if we release enough vapor to descend to the ground, with no ballast to compensate, we'll be unable to ascend again. We’ll be stranded wherever the air carriage comes to earth. Due to the inherent complexity of the conduit system, it's only possible to release the vapor at a moderate rate and therefore such a descent will take hours. At the speed that the wind is carrying us, once we land we might be two hundred miles or even more from the city.”

  “Which means,” Rorche emphasized, “that the air carriage might never fly again. The vapor production mechanisms in Eriis are too large and heavy to be transported whole and would need to be disassembled and brought overland. This almost certainly would take months, provided that Baron Heimgelberg permitted us access to them. Considering the less than peaceful nature of our departure, his cooperation seems highly unlikely.”

  “What happened, Franz?” Algis Coldridge asked with some concern. “Why were the Baron’s men firing at us?”

  The Baronet looked grave. “I accept full responsibility for this disaster. When I arrived at the entrance, the warden with the squad announced that they had come to arrest me and impound the air carriage. Without warning, the gendarmes seized me. When my esnes tried to intervene, the Heimgelberg's men drew their weapons and one of them shot Wrelton. In the ensuing melee, we managed to hurl them back long enough to seal the doors and retreat to the yard.”

 
Ellen Coldridge looked confused. “But why would they want to arrest you?”

  Rorche shrugged. “I had thought that our efforts had remained unnoticed by the authorities but it appears that I had deluded myself. As we all know, the commercial potential of the technology of human flight is significant and my suspicion is that Baron Heimgelberg intended to insure that he controlled and profited from it. As lord and master of this demesne, he clearly has the legal standing to confiscate the air carriage.”

  Bennett, monitoring the controls, waved to get the Baronet’s attention. “Franz, the Koerp’s Mechanism shows that we have just passed eight thousand feet, but our rate of climb has slowed to seventy feet per minute and is still dropping. Also, we are traveling south by south-east by the compass.”

  “The gulf is only two hundred seventy miles due south of Eriis,” Aldo stated. “If we are moving at twenty-five miles an hour, and it seems to me that we are moving much faster than that, we have perhaps only ten or twelve hours until we are out over the ocean.”

  Millicent pulled a pad and pencil from a pocket, and scribbled on it for a moment. “I can only estimate the bulk of the air carriage and its load, but I believe that we will level out around nine thousand.”

  When he spoke in response to these new facts, Rorche looked around to include all assembled. “We must decide what we shall do, and quickly. It appears to me that our only option is to descend immediately before we travel much farther. Once again, this will likely mean the complete loss of the air carriage.”

  Sergeant Tekle clicked his heels. “My lord, the men and I defer to your judgment.”

  The Coldridges held a whispered colloquium, then Algis announced, “There is nothing else to be done.”

  Bennett, Aldo, and Millicent all nodded without comment.

  Then the Baronet surprised Everett by turning to him and Sarah. “I know you have only recently joined us, but in my opinion you have as much right to be a part of the decision as the rest of us.”

  Everett shrugged. The sooner he was off this doomed mechanism, the happier he would be.