Agatha H. And the Clockwork Princess (64 page)

4 The town of Mechanicsburg, the traditional home of the Heterodyne family, sits upon a large fossil deposit. The most ubiquitous of these are indeed, trilobites. The trilobite appears in the city’s coat-of-arms, is a popular and traditional shape for seasonal baked goods—most notably the gingerbread, and is usually the perfect size to slip into an old sock for use upon the odd, unsuspecting tourist.

5 This is one of those instances where legends are surprisingly accurate. Castle Wulfenbach was a gigantic airship, close to a kilometer in length, that, at this time served as the de facto capitol of the Wulfenbach Empire—and the heart of the Pax Transylvania. Subsequent stories have tried to downsize this structure, but the evidence for its existence is incontrovertible. Thousands of personnel lived onboard, and many of them had not touched the ground in years.

6 It was commonplace in Europa for professional entertainers to look down upon acts that displayed or utilized genuine artifacts of mad science without obfuscation. A talking cat act (for example) consisting of an actual cat—that actually spoke —would have been considered “cheating.” On the other hand, a talking cat disguised and billed as a “talking dog” would be greatly admired. It’s all about how you play the game.

7 Heterodyne shows were a recent variation of the venerable tradition known as commedia dell’arte. Actors assumed various iconic roles, and while the plays themselves varied, the personalities of the main characters generally remained the same, and were well-known to the audience. Heterodyne stories were quite popular—so much so that many troupes came to specialize in them, and to bill themselves directly as “Heterodyne” shows. At the time that our story takes place, The Empire’s Department of Entertainments, Circuses, Carnivals, Traveling Shows and Smugglers estimated that there were over a hundred and twenty such shows, though surely few were as elaborate as Master Payne’s Circus of Adventure.

8 While slavery was not tolerated within the Wulfenbach Empire, there were other lands, and other empires with no such rules. Also, it was a sad truth that certain unethical Sparks of the time paid quite handsomely for “laboratory volunteers” when they could get them…

9 Zzxzm was easily one of the Heterodyne Boys’ odder companions. The result of a laboratory accident involving an experimental compass and an unattended lightning generator, he eventually retired to the North Pole.

10 There are many who question why as tightly a regulated government as the Pax Transylvania allowed a
wild card
like Othar Tryggvassen the freedom to meddle as extensively as he did for as long as he did. The simple answer, gleaned from newly unearthed records, suggest that Klaus, who hated wasting resources, human or otherwise, made use of him. It is no secret that there were many Sparks who utilized their own people as experimental subjects. Sometimes with horrifying results. The problem was that legally, as long as a Spark did not attack anyone outside their own borders, the Empire could not interfere with a kingdom’s internal affairs. Thus it now appears that Klaus’ own agents steered Othar toward situations where he would be useful. The reason he was arrested was that he had begun to successfully eliminate some of the Empire’s more useful Sparks. The arrest had to be made in secret, due to his popularity with the general public. Officially arresting Othar would have been a public relations disaster.

11 Castle Heterodyne, located in Mechanicsburg, the home of the Heterodyne family, was, at this period, being used as a punishment detail for Sparks and other troublesome people that the Empire wanted to get rid of. In this, it did a superlative job. Further details will be revealed in future volumes. Honest.

12 Bangladesh DuPree was one of Klaus’ more flamboyant employees. She was a former air pirate, a deposed princess, and a cheerful homicidal maniac. By any rights, she should have been jailed or executed. However, as has been said before, Klaus hated to waste potential resources, and whereas DuPree wasn’t the most dangerous monster on his payroll, she was one of the most terrifying.

13 Both Bangladesh and Gilgamesh would have been distressed to read the field reports that assessed the two of them as being an excellent team. It had certainly kept the Baron from sleeping for several nights.

14 By now, the keen student of Spark history will be asking, “Is this the same Count Leovanovitch Pieotre Rasmussin who was responsible for the destruction of the Royal Palace of St. Petersburg through the cunning use of excessive syncopated dancing , which caused a resonance disaster after the Tsar seduced his wife, Zolenka? The answer is, we don’t know. But it wouldn’t surprise us.

15 The Spark in question, one Hugo Von Bodé, had enjoyed sending his creations out on random voyages of chaos and destruction “Just to keep things from getting boring!” Klaus had taken some pains to ensure that his last minutes had been anything but.

16 Boris Vasily Konstantin Andrei Myshkin Dolokhov was one of the most fascinating of Baron Wulfenbach’s inner circle. The Baron had rescued him from slavery and Boris repaid him with a lifetime of loyalty. Although he frequently assumed total control of the Empire when the Baron was injured or indisposed, he never seems to have been tempted to exploit this power for his own ends. He simply took joy in things functioning smoothly and efficiently. By all accounts, he was reckoned the most boring man in the Empire.

17 Lilith, Agatha’s foster mother, had been an exuberant proponent of the preserving, canning, drying and pickling of various fruits and vegetables. Agatha had once complained that this might make sense if the Clays managed a farm, but in fact, they lived in town, and all of the produce they processed was purchased from local green-grocers. Lilith had said nothing at the time, but that night, Agatha awakened and discovered that, after midnight, her parents’ forge served as a gathering place for constructs she had never seen before. These were twisted, bizarre creations. Things that could never feel comfortable out in public, despite the Baron’s laws enforcing tolerance. They labored in the many unseen jobs offered by the University. Despite their often horrific appearance, Agatha found them to be intelligent, well-read, and urbane, in their own strange way. It was these creatures who received the bulk of the preserved food. The Clays always refused direct payment, but Agatha now understood the source of the many odd and useful things that appeared overnight upon the Clay’s doorstep.

18 Then, as now, Paris has always been a safe guess when outlandish or bizarre fashion is the topic.

19 Historically, the construct, Punch, had been one of the Heterodyne Boys’ constant companions, along with his wife, Judy. In the Heterodyne plays, Punch was portrayed as an oafish, freakishly strong clown. This greatly annoyed Agatha’s foster-father, Adam, who had in fact, been Punch, before he changed his name.

20 Professional traveling entertainers were expected to be able to sing, dance, juggle, tell jokes, and play several musical instruments. In addition, they were supposed to have some secondary side-show skill, such as knife throwing, fire eating, acrobatics, or being short. At any given time they had to be able to memorize enough material that the circus could perform two full shows, in excess of two hours, every day, for two weeks without repeating anything. Proficiency with weapons was also considered a plus. To join a quality show such as Master Payne’s, one would also need some non-entertainment skill that would be useful to the troupe, such as brewing, mycology, or picking pockets. But hey, it beat working.

21 The language of the Geisterdamen, developing as it did without any Indo-European influences, has always been a thing of unfamiliar cadences and bizarre word structure. To recreate the sense of confusion and unfamiliarity that the linguistically cosmopolitan Lady Heterodyne must have experienced the first time she heard it, we have helpfully rendered all of the Geisterdamen’s dialogue as gibberish.

22 It is true that most madboy devices are built for purely utilitarian purposes: I want to go faster; How can one person stack all of these starfish; I will gain the respect of my peers if I can turn this entire town into ham, and so on. But there are some things that burst forth from their creator’s brain simply because they want to make the world more aesthetically pleasing. So what if it doesn’t help one conquer the world? It looks awesome. It’s Art.

23 This sort of historical revisionism is quite common amongst entertainers. If something amazing or terrible happens to them out in the wilderness, then by golly, when it gets told to the paying customers, it’s going to have a satisfying conclusion. It’s analogous to writing a business loss off on one’s taxes.

24 The troupe’s dressmaker, Organza Fifield, had once won a bet by visually deducing the correct clothing sizes of an unfamiliar group of men who had, at the time, been dressed respectively, as an armored knight, a monk, a construct with three arms, and a pantomime horse.

25 In the Transylvanian region, Saint Nikkolaus is known as a benevolent Spark who has learned how to bend time and space in such a way that he can deliver presents to good children everywhere in one night. His companion, Blank Peter, is a construct, who does all the heavy lifting. So onerous is this job, that Blank Peter actually wears out from the strain (cookies depicting him are a holiday favorite, and small children take a sadistic joy in “nibbling Blank Peter Down.”). Jolly old St. Nikkolaus then selects several “Bad Children,” takes them back home to Spain and uses them to create a new Blank Peter. Thus the Christmas season continues to be a time of both joy and terror, as it should be.

26 Yeti was a very tall Asiatic man covered in a coat of soft, golden fur. He claimed that he came from an enlightened, five-thousand-year-old utopia, the last remnant of a lost civilization that had deliberately hidden itself away from the eyes of mankind high in the Himalayan Mountains near Tibet. He further claimed that everyone there was as tall, as furry, and as Sparky as himself. Nobody believed this, of course, since Yeti’s accent sounded exactly like the ones found in the Chinese neighborhoods in Istanbul, but they agreed that it was a great story.

27 Science has proven that this position actually improves memorization. One of the reasons older people have difficulty remembering things is that they refuse to sit like this because they feel foolish doing so. More fool they.

28 Admittedly, attacks these days were few and far between, but Zumzum had a fair number of young people who maintained a fine old tradition of nighttime assignations. This assured that the scope was manned almost constantly. Sergeant Zulli always glumly predicted that when the town was attacked, it would be on a cold and rainy night.

29 It wasn’t.

30 While mercantile trade was common within the Empire, there were certain local specialties that simply didn’t travel well. For the best Viennese pastries, for example, you had to go to Vienna. Every town had a local beer, seasonal fruit, wine, fried dough recipe or scam for cheating tourists that the locals were proud of.

31 Grounded was the term used when a Spark was sane enough to function on a day-to-day basis. It says a lot that many people, including Sparks, are unfamiliar with the term.

32 Regular travelers throughout the Empire were issued warning signs by the Empire and required to post them, as well as report on problems they’d encountered. The penalties for anyone except the Baron’s troops removing a warning sign usually involved becoming a warning sign yourself.

33 In addition to rewarding travelers who posted warning signs, the Baron’s agents were known to pay well for unusual specimens. Initially, there had been a number of people who had decided to “put one over” on the Baron by constructing and selling him fake madboy tech and handmade chimeras. The Baron bought them all, and the counterfeiters had a good laugh—until these same fakes appeared at various museums and auction houses, where they made the Empire significantly more money than it had paid out.

34 Krosp did indeed try to run Moxana. The experiment was abandoned after he got his whiskers caught in the mechanisms for the second time.

35 The High Priestess was a favorite stock character in the Heterodyne Plays. She represented all of the exotic Sparks who ruled mysterious, far-off lands and lost, barbaric civilizations who started out as antagonists, but invariably fell in love with Barry Heterodyne.

36 Indeed, one Herr Doktor Flatmo actually left the circus in disgrace when Agatha’s mathematics revealed that his so-called “perpetual motion engine” actually required a slight push every ten and a half years in order to keep running. Oh, everyone was very nice about it in public, of course, but still…

37 The Cylinder of Touch was a breathtaking creation of colored glass and wire. Its creator, Herr Doktor Potrzebie Spün, invited customers to place their hands on it to “Feel something extraordinary!” It evidently had been quite extraordinary, considering how much they screamed.

38 On the surface, this was a legitimate observation. In his carefree youth, Klaus Wulfenbach had been a frequent companion-in-arms to Bill and Barry. But in subsequent years, as he had become more prominent, the Muse of Comedy had not been kind to him. In the Heterodyne plays, young Klaus was usually portrayed as an excitable coward. The first to turn tail, the first to gloat when he had the upper hand, the first to beg piteously for his life when captured, and after the inevitable victory, the first to claim the credit. Klaus was perfectly aware of these portrayals, yet allowed them to continue. The reason was simple: he found them hilarious.

39 As has been mentioned, Agatha’s foster-mother, the construct Lilith (AKA Judy, the famous construct companion to the Heterodyne Boys), not only played the piano, but gave lessons in Beetleburg. According to anecdotal evidence, while young Agatha had trouble concentrating on tasks that involved engineering or math, music apparently came easier. At Lilith’s insistence, Dr. Beetle arranged for her to receive advanced training from some of the music masters at Transylvania Polygnostic University. An assessment from when Agatha was fourteen reads; “Subject has a refreshing appreciation of music. Superior mechanical aptitude. However it is my considered opinion that she lacks the fire and raw emotion required of a great player.” (from The Heterodyne Collection/ Transylvania Polygnostic Library, Beetleburg)