Agatha H. and the Airship City (20 page)

“Agatha Clay.”

A faint frown flitted across Zulenna’s face and the hand was smoothly withdrawn. “Clay,” she mused. “Not a… noble house. Which member of your family possesses the Spark?”

“Ah, none of them. My father’s a blacksmith,” she offered hopefully.

“A blacksmith. How utilitarian.” Zulenna sat down on her bed and surveyed Agatha. “So, why
are
you here?”

“Baron Wulfenbach captured my… my boyfriend. He’s a Spark.”

“A captured…” Zulenna’s eyes narrowed. “Do you mean Moloch von Zinzer?”

“You’ve heard of him?”

“I keep tabs on all of the Sparks aboard Castle Wulfenbach. So
you
are Herr von Zinzer’s bed warmer.” She jumped up, obviously greatly annoyed, and leaned into Agatha. “I have heard about you, and I trust there will be no nonsense within this room.”

Agatha found that she was so tired that her outrage barely flickered. “Look,” she said evenly, “there seems to be a mistaken impression that I’m some sort of—”

“How
dare
you!” Zulenna interrupted furiously. Startled, Agatha saw that she was holding the tray she’d seen the cat eating from. “This was
my
dinner. I work the late shift. The kitchen is closed! It was on
my
desk! How
dare
you touch it! And how dare you make such a mess!” Indeed, food was scattered across the desktop.

“Oh, now wait a minute!” Agatha objected hotly, “I didn’t
touch
your stuff. The cat was up on the desk eating it when I came in!”

Zulenna cocked an eyebrow. “What cat?”

“I thought it was yours. It’s a big white cat. It’s under your bed.”

Zulenna looked at Agatha for a moment, a look of uncertainty passed over her face, and she gracefully dropped to her knees and raised the coverlet to peer under the bed. When her head came back up, she was glaring furiously. “You can’t even
lie
competently.”

“What?” Agatha looked under the bed. No cat. Hurriedly she looked under her bed. No cat. A quick look around the small room showed that there was certainly no place a cat could hide, and she knew it hadn’t left when Zulenna opened the door…

“But it
was
there!” Agatha looked under Zulenna’s bed again. A small, flat underbed chest, which would have to be removed to be opened, and a ventilation grate were all that were to be seen.

“There’s a ventilation grate here, maybe it—”

Zulenna’s hand snapped down and whipped the coverlet out of Agatha’s hand. Her voice was icy with disdain. “That vent cover is held in place with two snaps. I doubt that any cat, even one as fabulous as the one you saw, could open them. Therefore I must conclude that in addition to being a person of low moral character, you are a liar as well as a thief. I expect nothing less from the lower classes, but I’ll be damned if I will sleep in the same room with you. I imagine your parents expected you to sleep in the foundry; I suggest—”

The smack to her face caught Zulenna by surprise. The force of it spun her around causing her to slam into the wall. Before she could recover, she found herself hoisted up off the floor by an Agatha who was radiating rage.

Agatha felt the fury roaring through her body like a lightning storm. A part of her realized that she had never been
allowed
to be this angry before. Whenever she got mad, a headache seemed to come along to snuff out the rage. But not this time. For the first time in her life, Agatha could vent all the fury that she was capable of feeling, and a part of her reveled in it. She screamed as years of pent-up emotions found voice.

Zulenna had been about to deliver a solid kick to Agatha’s stomach, but an older part of her brain looked into Agatha’s face, overrode her conscious mind, and she stopped struggling and went limp.

“One thing my parents taught me,” Agatha said in a voice that set off fresh alarms, “was that nobody gets to badmouth my family. I will tell you this one last time. I didn’t eat your dinner. There was a cat. I have had a very long day. And I am
not—”
this was emphasized with another slam into the wall—”von Zinzer’s… like that.” The embarrassment she felt over this last admission seemed to sap her strength. Zulenna felt her feet touch the ground. She eyed Agatha warily.

Agatha was fading fast now. She felt a great weariness roaring over her, and merely stood there, her hands still grasping Zulenna’s clothes.

Zulenna gingerly reached up, and found that she could remove Agatha’s hands without effort. She stepped sideways. Agatha didn’t move.

Zulenna considered slamming Agatha face first into the wall, but at that moment, Agatha’s face turned towards her, and the thought fled. She stepped back and tried to project self-assurance. She jerked her clothes straight.

“Never touch me again.” She braced herself for another attack, but Agatha ignored her and simply shuffled past her to drop onto her bed. “And I want you out of my room.”

Agatha looked at her, and then closed her eyes. As… exhilarating as the rage had been while she was experiencing it, now that it was gone, she felt sick, exhausted and ashamed. “Nothing would please me more,” she whispered, “but tonight I’m sleeping here.”

Zulenna glared at her and stepped forward, then hesitated. With a disdainful sniff, she turned, disrobed and got into her own bed. She reached out to extinguish the light and stopped. Agatha was already asleep. Zulenna began to ease out of her bed, then reached up and touched the tender spot on her face. Agatha made an odd humming noise in her sleep, then began to breathe deeply. Zulenna crept out of bed, selected one of the fencing foils that was on the rack, and carefully climbed back into bed with it placed between her and Agatha. She left the light on. It was quite a while before she slept.

In Agatha’s dreams, the great celestial machine warped itself slightly. The teeth of the gears grew longer and sharper, and began to fly off and chase Von Pinn, and Zulenna, and Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, and as they ran squealing in terror, Agatha found herself enjoying the show until she realized that the largest and sharpest gear was bearing down upon herself.

She came awake with a jerk, dropping a jeweler’s wrench upon a benchtop which was littered with parts. She looked around in surprise. She was in an empty machine shop. But it wasn’t Adam’s. Where was she? A voice behind her—

“Miss Clay? Good heavens.”

Swinging about, Agatha saw the Baron’s secretary Boris, and Moloch, both looking rather dumbfounded.

Years of training as Dr. Beetle’s assistant kicked in and she leapt to her feet, smoothed back her hair and stood at attention. “Good morning, sir. I… I was asleep, but I am ready to begin.”

This only seemed to make Boris even more uncomfortable. He glared at Moloch. “I dare say she is.”

Moloch tried to control a grin. “Um… Didn’t you
forget
something—er—darling?”

Agatha looked at them blankly. “What do you—” belatedly she noticed the direction of Moloch’s gaze. Looking downward she saw that she was dressed in naught but her camisole and pantalets. With a shriek she barreled between the two men and dashed from the room.

Once she had vanished around the corner, Boris rounded on Moloch and shook several fingers at him reprovingly. “You are expected to get
work
done, Herr von Zinzer. Perhaps a
different
assistant…”

“No!” The last thing Moloch wanted was someone who could tell he knew nothing. “Um… she’s… it’s just—the science stuff, it… um… it really gets her… excited.”

Boris rolled his eyes. “Ah. One of
those.”
He shrugged. “Well, as long as you’re discreet and it does not interfere with your work. But—” he warned. “Tell Miss Clay not to flaunt herself in front of the Baron or his son. They have no tolerance for such things.” Satisfied that he had cleared up the matter, he steered Moloch deeper into the lab. “Now the one example we saw of your work was rather crude, but the Baron found aspects of the design quite remarkable.
He
believes that with access to
proper
materials, your work might be well worth his full attention.”

Moloch smiled weakly. “Great.”

Boris nodded. “If this is so, you will subsequently report to the Baron directly. For now, however he is interested in seeing what you can produce independently.”

“I’ll bet.”

There followed a quick tour of the lab, ending with Boris indicating a small electric bell. “And finally, whatever you need, be it supplies, assistants or food, simply ring this and it will be provided. We look forward to seeing what you will do.” As he left, he passed a fully dressed Agatha coming the other way. Tactfully, neither said anything.

Agatha entered the lab to find a despondent Moloch rummaging about in the chemical locker. With a grunt of satisfaction, he pulled out a large carboy of clear liquid and filled a beaker. He swigged fully a third of it down before he sat on the nearest stool.

Agatha examined the label. “That’s supposed to be used for cleaning machine tools,” she pointed out.

“So I’ll die clean.” Moloch saluted her with his glass and polished off another third. “Now what the heck were you doing? Do you
always
work in your underclothes?”

“No!” Agatha began to pace back and forth in agitation. “I don’t
know!
I
never
used to walk in my sleep!”

“Well you sure made a mess of the workbench.” The two of them examined the bench, which did show all the signs of heavy use. “But I don’t see what you were working
on.”
It was true. Tools and parts littered the area, but there was no device anywhere in sight.

Agatha slumped against the bench. “Probably nothing,” she admitted. She straightened up and turned away. “Well, at least I don’t have another
failure
staring at me.”

From an upper shelf, a small device paused in its labors. A small lens focused on her, ascertained that she did not require its assistance, and resumed its task.

Moloch finished off his drink just as the beaker began to dissolve. He tossed it into the trash. “So now what?”

Agatha grinned. “Take a look at this!” She turned away and reached into her shirt and hauled out the airship manual and handed it to him.

Moloch looked surprised. “Where’d you get this?”

Agatha shrugged. “Just found it.”

Moloch paged through it, then handed it back. “This has possibilities. There’s a lot of traffic, there’s supply balloons coming and going all day long. Unfortunately, stuff like this will be guarded all the time. But look over here—” He took Agatha’s arm and brought her over to a rack of packages mounted on the wall near the main exit to the lab. A small sign explained how to prepare the devices for use. “This might be easier. These are personal balloon gliders for if they have to abandon the dirigible. You can use these to just glide down to earth, and they’re located throughout the Castle. The problem with these, is that people would see you jumping off the Castle. At night the damn things glow.”

Agatha nodded. “Hmm. Modifying one of them might be our best bet. It glows? We could paint it with tar or something.”

Moloch looked surprised. “That’s a good idea.”

“I want to get out of here too.” She thought for a minute. “I’ll bet they notice if we start messing about with one of these things, in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised—” She stepped over to the rack and examined it closely. She gave a grunt of satisfaction and motioned Moloch over. “Look. See this? There’s a wire running through these rings. Probably some sort of tripwire, I’ll bet. When one of these things is pulled off the rack, it sounds an alarm somewhere. Makes sense, really, even if it’s a genuine emergency.” She studied the wire closely. “This is going to be tricky.” She looked at Moloch. “We can’t afford to do it wrong the first time.”

Moloch sat down heavily. “I wouldn’t even have looked for something like that,” he admitted. He brightened up. “On the other hand, I got to be pretty good at disarming booby traps.”

“How good?”

“I’m still here, ain’t I?”

“Fair enough. I think I might be able to build some stuff that could help.”

Moloch looked at her askance. “You said you couldn’t build anything.”

Agatha paused. “Yes, but I… I think I know what I did wrong. I have some ideas…” She shook herself. “But whatever we do, it’s going to take some time, and we’ve got to make it look like you’re doing
something.”
She looked around. “An inventory.”

Moloch looked up. “That’s always a good one. Place like this, we could kill a day or two at least before they expect us to produce anything.”

“It’ll work better if you can fake it a bit.” She snatched up a tool from the nearest bench. “Now this, is a wrench.”

Moloch glared at her. “I
know
it’s a wrench.”

“Ah, but what
kind
of wrench?

“A 3/17 Occipital Left-Leaning Heterodyne wrench.”

Agatha whipped the wrench up to her face and stared at it. It was. She glared at Moloch. “How did you know
that?”
she demanded.

Moloch smiled bitterly at her from his chair.
“These
days, machines are more important than soldiers. If you know how to
fix
machines, it makes you more valuable.” He stared off into the distance. “My brothers and I, there were nine of us, we crewed this walking gunboat for the Duke D’Omas. Mad as a bag of clams, of course, but it was a good berth. Snappy uniforms, fresh food, and plenty of it, and he paid in gold.” Moloch sighed. “Then it all turned to dung. Wulfenbach blew up the Duke’s mountain and we had to start raiding the countryside to keep the gunship repaired.”

“But why would you do that?”

“Ah, well, you see, the peasants didn’t like the Duke. Which meant they didn’t like
us
. After the Baron took him down, the gun was the only thing keeping us alive. We figured our best bet was to get out of there, so we headed for Paris. We had to go through Wulfenbach land, sure, but if you keep to the Wastelands and the dead towns, you can travel for days without seeing a soul, which was the plan. But just our luck, we ran into one of the Baron’s patrols, led by this… this
crazy
woman! We’d have
surrendered
if she’d
asked.”
Moloch’s eyes showed that he was far away. “I think Bruno and the kid made it, but I don’t know about anyone else. Nobody but Omar and me. And now it’s just me.”