He was a rather interesting man, old Scheckendale. He was as interesting as he was grimy and he was plenty grimy. He spoke in slurs; wheezing between words when he wore thin of breath. He seemed a bit out of place in this fancy country home. He definitely belonged in a metro setting, perhaps in a back alley between rubbish bins, his airship sails set to the wind. Though, he also spoke with something behind his words, an education, a confidence. Perhaps it was over-confidence, something along the lines of flippant and arrogant, but it was subdued. He was almost pure eloquence tainted by gilded aspirations and a lust for the booze.
Interesting, maybe colorful was more accurate a word. His employer, though, seemed interesting already. I looked forward to chatting with him. His collection of works in the foyer alone was tantalizing.
Slipping away with or without notice in this instance wasn’t going to be necessary. Though, it seemed they had made certain I had no option of not hearing them out. Where was I to go? Just take to the road by foot? Would the steamdriver take me back? I didn’t quite like the feeling of being trapped even if I was there willingly.
I found it rare that I remembered the name of an artist. While art history isn’t my particular specialty, I do fancy artistry of all sorts. Meaningful expression, even if it is nonsense, is an important aspect of human nature. From the jester to the musician, from the illustrator to the grand painter, from a sculptor who uses clay to one who uses scrap metal, all artistic expression stems from a humanistic truth, none of which should be denied outright or without further critique. It fascinated me that which was born in the minds of men and women became something of art. It was the representation of an idea, or that of many ideas, for everyone to experience. Sometimes it was something an artist just needed to get out of his or her own head before it consumed them.
I could appreciate a landscape made of colorful dots on a canvas just as I could appreciate fantastical scientifical theories. Or the way history pieces together like a strange puzzle. Just as the sun sets and rises, like that of the moon, my heart flutters a beat to steam powered mechanical marvels and clockwork engineering wonders.
I could look upon paint, abstractly applied, and wonder and think and see what emotions arise, just as I could the intricate workings of the clockwork automaton and feel the same.
This all does remind me of the times, on quite a few occasions to be more exact, I found myself drawn to a piece of artwork. It’s something inside, my gaze is caught, and I can be literally pulled towards a painting, wanting to see each bit of paint. And I never learn, always leaning in enough to bump my old nose against the canvas. I’m certain the oil of my skin has marked many an artwork throughout history. Each and every time this happens, I’m caught surprised like it’s the first time. And sometimes a gentleman needs to slip away, hopefully unnoticed, yet still feverish with embarrassment. I’ve seen other patrons of the arts do it as well. Like they’re staring into the abyss, caught within brush strokes and memories and emotions once thought dormant. Though when you see some old ninny of the upper class smash her face into an 11th century Renfrajeyk, you can’t help but giggle. Often another time in which it is best to slip away without notice.
I remember Abigail’s gallery displayed some of the finest sculptures from far and wide. There were tapestries woven with such detail. She kept a space for old technological items, but I do believe she did that on my behalf. She admitted on more than one occasion that she could find similar beauty in an item created for measuring some aspect of the world. There was a lass whom very much noticeably disappeared and was gone.
15
“I’m an art collector. Antiques, mainly.”
“I hope you don’t plan on keeping this antique before you.”
“You disparage yourself far too harshly, Sir Doctor. Amusing, nonetheless. But I do mean antique books, antique art, antique furnishings, of course.”
As he invited me into his study I was taken with his collection. I suppose this is where he kept the good stuff. I browsed unabashedly with a keen eye directed toward every detail searching for forgeries or evidence of historical misrepresentation, where one item of a more recent historical period is mistaken for a much older item. Although, all of his artifacts seemed to be in order upon first glance.
Mr. Kilmarten had a private word with his client and left us, closing the study doors behind him.
“Quite a collection. Are these all housed here permanently?” I asked, hoping the man was not so selfish as to keep these treasures for himself.
“Oh, dear no,” he exclaimed. He walked through the study gracefully, almost as if he were just gliding along. He had a smoothness about him. “I often donate pieces to museums, schools, and sideshows for limited engagements,” he explained.
“Interesting, I’ve indeed seen some of these very pieces within The University halls and The Foundation Museum, but never attributed to anyone.”
“I donate anonymously, I haven’t a need for praise or acclaim.”
“Yes, but, you could perhaps finagle yourself a deal or two here or there; even perhaps a hefty grant through a Clockwork Foundation historical bureau-”
“I assure you, Sir Doctor,” he interrupted, “I am not in need or want of assistance from a bureaucratic entity certain to hinder any progress I would make in strides alone.”
“I see.” I didn’t, but I left it at that.
“Interestingly, this is why I’ve asked of your company, Sir Doctor,” he poured seavenly into wonderfully ornate teacups. “If you are not aware, The Chasm has broken out into war.”
“I am.”
“Well, below that battlefield, if it can be referred to as such, deep into The Chasm, rests a very important piece of history that I fear lies in peril.”
He handed me my tea, but I was far too intrigued and drawn to what he was telling me to even register the cup in my hands.
“Some time ago, I had traveled to The Chasm for leisure-”
“You took holiday in that awful crevice?” I blurted out.
“Now, Sir Doctor, The Chasm is a new frontier-”
“I do not dispute that, I find it odd that one would take time off to visit such a treacherous hole for leisure, but please, do continue, you’ve intrigued me already.”
“Sir Doctor, The Chasm, while treacherous, is an undeniable wealth of culture. Consider my leisure time that of adventure-teering. I think you can understand that?”
“Certainly. You must understand I do come from a world of both real and armchair adventurers. And it is rare to hear of such feats of exploration these days. Please, do go on.”
“Well, I started off by finding and hiring a local guide, someone who knew every single level of Chasm City and New Haverton inside and out. Through a few connections and getting to know the right people, I was introduced to a hidden history of The Chasm. While getting to know the locals, I was told stories of the origination of Chasm City from some direct descendants of the original settlers.”
Somewhere in the back of my brain, a bell sounded. It was brief, but noticeable. Perhaps I should have taken a better look at his collection for fakeries and forgeries. My intrigue crumbled, nay, shattered. Shattered like a window. “Master Keypers? That is keepers, spelled with the word key? Yes? I’ve heard these stories, Mist-” His named escaped me, but he interrupted me, anyhow.
“I do realize you are about to call these tales conspiratorial theorems or pure bunkum or utter tomfoolery, or the myths of the metros, but I assure you, these tales are truth. A small, but veritable group of the cultists took refuge within the new frontier. And they left something behind. My guide, he took me to a young man in New Haverton. Bedridden, sickly. He was mangled, Sir Doctor. He was being kept alive by clockwork. Contraptions that needed to be wound and rewound constantly to sustain his life. He could communicate just fine, but he would never live the life he had before the incident that put him in his tortured state.”
I finally took a sip of tea. New Haverton was known as a refuge for
the poor, but original founding members of Chasm City. And he was right, there was a group of the Master Keyper sect that came along to the new frontier.
“What took you to New Haverton?” I asked.
“My guide,” he smiled, and I in return, “I didn’t purposefully attempt to be so flippant with my answer, Sir Doctor.” We both gave a good laugh. “But it was my guide who suggested this young man may in fact have something for my art collection, which turned out to be this piece of map. My guide did not entirely understand my taste in art. Often his final suggestion was to frame it and it would become art. Put it on a pedestal and it would suddenly become art. As if there were something magical about how we displayed art that made it so.”
He handed me the map, burned a bit about the edges. I gave it a good long look. I hadn’t the faintest idea of what I was looking at. It was one sketch that represented the length of The Chasm marked off equidistantly by hash marks, a mathematical formula of sorts, three dates without specific years. The map was full of sketches, symbols, and what seemed to be writing in a language I recognized as being Flynnish, but Flynnish that seemed to be coded.
“Really, though, he wasn’t suggesting I hang up the map as art, but that I go where the map lead. Of course, what you’re looking at is The Chasm from the west. The three dates I plotted out on the map as to where the sun would rise in relation to The Chasm. These three marks along The Chasm map represent where the sun rises on each of these dates. The middle one south of Chasm City is the drop point.”
“Drop point?”
“The point at which, if you traveled directly downwards, you would reach where the map was hiding whatever it was it wanted to be found.”
“Did the young man know what it lead to? Or was he just your average grave robber?”
“He said it was a key.”
“A key. And what do you think?”
“I don’t know for absolute fact, to be honest. I’ve looked into it deeply enough to know something is down there. What I do know for certain is, is that as war moves into southern Chasm City, that piece of history is lost to time. As a collector, a purveyor of the arts, and a proponent of historical preservation and education, I wanted to hire you, a man of like mind, to retrieve it.”
My heart skipped a beat and then began palpitating a worrisome cadence. There was a vibration in my toes that made my knees want to bounce with delight. I remained calm and free of emotion.
“I do understand The Clockwork Foundation has declared The Chasm off limits to all uncleared citizens and personnel,” he said woefully.
“That shouldn’t be a problem.”
“How do you figure?”
“Well,” I said quite plainly, “I’m Dr. Monocle.”
“Even you, Sir Doctor, I’m afraid can not be allowed passage to Chasm City. All train service ends at Fenterwig Station at the edge of the desert. Besides The University will not be granted permission to endeavor into a war torn area. I’ve read through the official statement issued through BureauWorks. You can read it if you’d like, but no one goes in.” He lifted a document of a sizable thickness from his desk to show me the report. I declined politely.
“What about a crew? I would certainly need a crew.”
“You’d have to go alone to avoid suspicion, Sir Doctor. I will have a contact awaiting you at the station in Fenterwig to take you to The Chasm. In New Haverton, you’ll meet your second contact to provide you with a crew.”
I looked him in the eye as I thought about it. I blatantly showed my dislike for his plan in my expression. What I suppose I really didn’t like, though, was that I knew I couldn’t do it alone. “I’ll need an assistant. If I can’t have my own crew, allow me my own assistant.”
He thought for a moment. He leaned against his writing desk with his arms crossed over his chest and stared, unblinking, before making a decision, “Fine. No journalographers, please. And no oculargraphists whatsoever. I would like to remain anonymous through all of this. No press, no pictures. I relish my privacy, Sir Doctor. In fact, I almost prefer no one else know of this until after you find the piece and it is sitting in my collection and safe. You saw what GhostWurks went through. And I do really hate to ask, but must you really bring along an assistant?” He seemed slightly bashful with his inquiry, almost embarrassed to ask.
“When you invited me here, you were expecting an old man, yes?”
“Well...”
“In my books, I am one thing. Time has stopped momentarily within those pages to allow for a tale to be told. In real life, where we stand now,” I explained to him, “I am something else. Old.”
“I do understand, Sir Doctor.”
And I believe he did. He had a softness in his voice, an understanding of sorts. “Why me?” I inquired simply.
“I’ve read your work on The Chasm.” He walked over to one of many bookshelves and produced a book from his library shelf, and another, and another. I recognized the books from where I sat, but he made his case, “The one about The WingedMen and your integral part in the origination of that policing force that turned Chasm City from a metro of lawlessness to a metro that rivaled some of the largest within Orbis Minor.”
“That book was a terrible exaggeration peppered with falsities and fabrications.” I remarked.
He pulled one book after another from the shelf, “There was your series in The Gazette about underdwellars that was referenced, along with your lecture on underdwellars from 1857, by Gerard Francois is his book, The Underdwellar, Lesser, but Equal. Your book of sketches and history on architectural advancement within The Chasm walls, was especially interesting. A WingedMan’s Guide and Training Manual references you, as well. It goes on and on. My point being, Sir Doctor, you know The Chasm.”
“While I haven’t been there in years, I do know The Chasm, indeed. And I do know about these stories, my dear gentleman. The Master Keypers, the secret societies, the cultists, and I assure you, none of it is true. Stories. Stories made up by and spread by those in The Monarch set out to discredit this new country. Exaggerations. It is the equivalent of being attacked by a kitten and telling everyone it was some maldeviantized, overgrown beast.”
“Sir Doctor, this map-”
“This map is most likely a hoax. Do you also believe the conspiracy theory, the one where The Chasm is actually a puppet metro, if you will, set up by factions within The Clockwork Foundation? The idea being that it would forever have a source of turmoil and turmoil creates work and work creates coin. The stories of the cultists who left the Clockwork Foundation to start their own country, that being the metros of The Chasm, are just exaggerations.”
“The young man, Sir Doctor, the man who gave me this map was mangled as a result of venturing down into The Chasm on a search for whatever was rumored to be down there. He says he was part of a crew. They figured out, or someone figured out the dates and the points on the map. The first point revealed this gear,” he lifted the piece from a wooden box on his desk, it was a small plate-sized gear, looked like it had never been used, it was decorated with carvings seared into the metal, and upon closer review, there was clockwork within the gear, “but unfortunately, half of the crew was killed. They regrouped, went to the second point where everyone was killed except for this young man. He said what they found there was a key surrounded by a strange contraption. Before they could get it open, they were attacked by a group of underdwellars.”
The underdwellar problem in the lower depths of The Chasm was only a problem if one ventured into their territory. If someone wanted something hidden, what better place to leave it than at the bottom of The Chasm?
“You could have saved us a lot of time by just showing me this in the first place, my dear fellow. What about the third point?” I pointed to the dot on the right of the map, “Did anyone check that?”
“Indeed people did, Sir Doctor, they never returned.” He said flatly, “The team that went to rescue them never came back. The rescue team for the rescue team never came ba
ck. No one wanted to form a rescue team after that and that’s when they stopped looking.”
“I’ve never heard of anything like this,” was all I could muster. “This must certainly be a hoax.” My disbelief was stubborn, but beginning to give way.
“An awful long way to go for a hoax, don’t you think, Sir Doctor?” He laughed. “I asked around New Haverton about the gear and the key.”
“Stories about the Master Keypers?” I asked rhetorically with a grin. “If it wouldn’t be a bother, another cup of seavenly, please.” I would need it to bare another conspiratorial yarn concerning this cultist, fringe group.
He took my cup and poured from a teapot that I recognized almost immediately and nearly fell into shock to see. It was a Northward Village pot. Quite rare. I couldn’t believe he was using such an old piece normally used for ceremonial purposes for a trivial matter like seavenly during conversations concerning conspiratorial nutter talk. I stammered, “You’re using such an antique for tea, dear sir?!”
“Excuse me?” He looked at the teapot as if it were just a teapot, “Oh, this old thing?” He laughed, “I see your concern, but I’ve been using this for ages. Not a part of the collection, although Mr. Rendleshine and the maid do sometimes return it to my collection shelves.”
“That teapot is nearly three hundred years old.” I smiled about how casually he treated such a piece of artwork. “That tribe has long gone and you’re using it? Your maid is correct in returning it to a shelf.”
“I dare not invite you over for dinner, Sir Doctor,” he handed me my tea, “for everything I use is antique.”
“I’m sorry, do go on with your story,” I sipped my tea awaiting his silly tale.
“Well, Sir Doctor, I purchased the map and the gear from the young man,” he paced his study, “and was able to find a few more people to talk to. The most consistent story was that they were crafted by a Master Keyper artist and the man most responsible for the design of Bridgeport, Sir Alexander Noosebaum.”
Spectacular Moments of Wonder with Dr. Monocle: That Certain Gentleman Page 15