Brechalon

  Following a series of alleys that would have confused anyone not intimately familiar with the area, Terrence brought the vehicle to a stop in front of a nondescript house. He peeled off his driving gloves and tossed them onto the seat next to him, and then he climbed down. The only light came from the dim headlamps and the tiny sliver of moon, but Terrence didn't need either to detect the three men coming toward him from the shadows between two houses on the other side of the street. The foremost had a knife. The second carried a cricket bat. The third one was a big man. He didn't seem to have a weapon; probably thought he didn't need one.

  "Hey blue coat. You can't park here unless you pay the?" The man stopped talking when Terrence shoved the barrel of his .45 into the man's mouth.

  "You're not going to talk to me anymore," said Terrence. He looked at the other two. "Either one of you talk?"

  "Put that away," said the second man.

  "I'm not taking orders right now either. This fellow a friend of yours?"

  "My brother."

  "Then I take it you don't want me to splatter his brains across the street."

  "You won't. People like you follow the law."

  "People like me are the law," said Terrence. "Your brother and I are going inside. When we come out again, I'll pay your toll or whatever you want to call it. But. Anybody touches my car, bothers me, or brasses me off in any way, and I make you a little closer to being an only child."

  Terrence guided the man, still sucking on the barrel of his pistol and now walking backwards, around the car and to the door of the building. He rapped the door three times and it opened an inch.

  "I'm here to see Blackwood," said Terrence.

  The door opened and Terrence pushed himself and his unwilling companion through. Inside was a large dark room. The fellow who had let them in turned out to be at least as large as the muscle in the street. He loomed over both of them and most people would have been intimidated. There was no furniture in the room and the dozen or so people there in various states of unconsciousness were sprawled out across the floor.

  "I'm here to see Blackwood," said Terrence again.

  "Nobody sees him unless I say they do," said the big man, his deep voice just as menacing as his physical presence.

  "'Salright, Teddy. Dechantagne's an old friend."

  Blackwood came down the stairs at the far end of the room. He was a small man with a head of thick, curly, red hair and a cigar clenched in the corner of his mouth. His appearance and his attitude reminded Terrence of a bantam rooster.

  "'Dja bring a friend with you, Dechantagne?" he asked in his thick brogue.

  "A fellow I picked up on the street."

  "Would'ja mind lettin'm go?"

  Terrence pulled the barrel of his .45 from the man's mouth, and wiping it on the fellow's shirt, he tucked it back into his belt.

  "You're dead mister."

  "Shut your damn mouth, Mika. Don't go thinkin' that because Dechantagne here is a pretty boy he won't kill you dead. He will. On the other hand, if you give him any trouble, I'll kill you and your whole family."

  The man-Mika went white.

  "Now get on outa' here."

  "Thanks," said Terrence blandly, after the other man had hurried out the door.

  "You know I'm not sentimental, Dechantagne. You're just worth a lot more alive to me than he is. That changes; you'll be the first to know. Now what can I do for you, as if I didn't know."

  "Ten bottles."

  "Ten bottles? Kafira, you're gon'ta kill yourself." Blackwood chuckled. "It's still a hundred a bottle."

  Terrence growled but nodded.

  "I know you can get if for twenty out in the wilderness from some savage in a loin-cloth, but this is the good stuff, ya know."

  Terrence pulled a roll of bills from his tunic and peeled off a thousand marks. It was about a third of his pocket cash. He shoved it into Blackwood's hand.

  "Ya know I've got other products-things that will actually make you feel good. Ya might want ta give them a try sometime."

  "Just get the spice."

  "I'll be down in a minute."

  Blackwood headed up the stairs in the back, while his muscle took his position once again at the door. Suddenly Terrence felt a tugging at his pants leg. Looking down he found a pale-faced man with bloodshot eyes looking up. He couldn't have been more than thirty, but he looked far older than that.

  "I see a castle," said the man. "She's in a castle. What do you see? Is she in a castle for you?"

  Terrence kicked the hands free of this clothing. The man looked up resentfully.

  "You don't see a castle, do you? You live in a castle here. You don't need to see a castle there. She probably comes to you in a shack in the middle of nowhere."

  "Bugger off," said Terrence.

  "You see the purple flowers though, don't you? You see those."

  Blackwood returned with a small wooden box, which Terrence opened. Inside were ten tiny cylindrical bottles, made of dark indigo glass. Each was filled with a milky white liquid and topped with a cork stopper. There it was-White Opthalium. Visio as it was sometimes called, or See Spice, was made from rare enchanted lotus blossoms and blue fungus from Southern Enclep, whipped together with magic. Just looking at it made Terrence's mouth and eyes water.

  "Ya sure there's nothin' else?"

  Terrence shook his head and left. The street punks were gone, though he hardly noticed. His attention was fixed only on the small box now in his possession. It was a quick drive back to the Old City and back to Avenue Dragon. He parked the car in the motor shed, but walked around to the west side of the house and went in through an almost never used entrance. This was part of the house that Iolanthe had closed off. He found a bedroom and locked himself in. Then he pulled aside the drop cloth that covered the bed and sat down with his back against the headboard. Opening the box, he pulled out one of the small indigo bottles and pulled off the stopper. He could just detect its florid smell.

  Placing a finger on the tiny open mouth, he overturned the bottle to moisten his finger with the milky white liquid inside. Then he reached up and rubbed it directly onto his left eyeball and then his right, quickly recapping the bottle and tossing it next to him on the bed as the room around him suddenly drained of color. He was seeing it.

  No longer on the bed in an unused bedroom in the house at Number One, Avenue Dragon, he was now sitting in the middle of a great field of purple flowers that stretched into the distance as far as the eye could see. Each flower was a foot tall, with a blossom as big around as his hand, with five purple petals, dark purple along the edge merging with the same indigo as the little blue bottle in the middle. Each flower featured, in its center, a very human looking eyeball. Terrence stood up and turned around. Twenty yards away was a small yellow cottage, with a green roof and door and two windows with green shutters. And beyond, the field of purple flowers stretched away to the horizon.

 

  Chapter Three: Life in the City of Brech

  Iolanthe Dechantagne sat in her parlor and sipped her tea. Across the table her guest mirrored her activity. He was a tall sandy-haired man with deep-set, intelligent, blue eyes. His pin-striped suit was carefully tailored and his paper collar was tight around his neck. As he sipped his tea, he nodded appreciatively.

  "Very nice. An Enclepian blend, if I'm not mistaken."

  "You are quite right, Professor Calliere," said Iolanthe, her aquamarine eyes sparkling. "Not many people can pick it out so easily."

  "Well, I've made more than a few trips to Nutooka. Collecting specimens for the university, you know."

  "How is your work going?" Iolanthe didn't need to feign interest. She found all knowledge interesting and it usually proved valuable as well.

  "Oh, zoology is nothing but a hobby of mine." Professor Calliere set down his teacup and leaned forward. "Not that I haven't made a few interesting discoveries. But no, my real wo
rk is in the mechanical engineering lab. I just filed a patent on a very important invention and I expect to be able to live quite comfortably off the proceeds for the rest of my life."

  "You won't stop your work?" asked Iolanthe with one arched brow.

  "Of course not, but this will allow me to concentrate on my next project without having to worry about day to day finances. Money is so? bourgeois."

  "Careful now Mr. Calliere. People will think you are a socialist."

  He chuckled. "Of course not. I just prefer to have somebody else deal with the tiresomeness of money."

  "So what was this very important invention?"

  "Brakes. Brakes for trains."

  "Don't trains already have brakes?" wondered Iolanthe. "It seems that all the trains I've ridden on did eventually stop."

  "Yes, but the old brakes must be worked manually. My brakes are pneumatic, which is to say, they work on air power. They will be much safer and will allow trains to operate with a single brakeman instead of several. Best of all, engineers won't have to start stopping so soon, so travel speeds will actually increase."

  "Professor Calliere, you amaze me. Brakes that actually make a train travel faster?" Iolanthe set down her own teacup and reached for a tiny cress sandwich. "Try one of these."

  "My next project is far more advanced," Calliere paused to bite into the sandwich. "Mechanically speaking, I mean. I already have my assistant Mr. Murty doing the groundwork."

  "Oh? And just what is it?"

  "It's a calculating machine. It's actually an expansion of a device I built several years ago. This one will be far more complex."

  "What exactly do you mean, 'a calculating machine'?" asked Iolanthe.

  "Just that. It will be a machine, steam powered of course, which adds and subtracts, multiplies and divides large numbers, both large in the sense of being very big numbers and large in the sense of there being a great many of them. It will calculate and it will do it hundreds of times faster than a human being. It will be a marvelous test of mechanics."

  "It will be more than a mechanical test," said Iolanthe. "I can imagine that there will be quite a few applications for such a device."'

  "Really? Like what?"

  "Well for one thing, you could calculate artillery trajectories, taking into account force and angle and such."

  "My dear Miss Dechantagne, I had no idea you were so well versed in the art of artillery."

  "My brother is an artillery officer."

  "Indeed. And may I say how attractive it is to see a woman who has such a keen intellect beyond the usual fields of art, music, and literature."

  "You may," said Iolanthe.

  Calliere looked toward the ceiling and stroked his chin thoughtfully.

  "Yes. Charts. Tables. Artillery. Latitude and longitude. Train schedules. Surveying. Yes, this bears thinking about. I need someone to create a mechanical language. I may know just the person?"

  "Professor?"

  "Hmm? Yes?"

  "This machine will be quite expensive, will it not?"

  "I will need a bit of capital for the work. I was going to go to the University for the funds."

  "No need." Iolanthe smiled and poured more tea into the man's cup. "I will finance it for you."

  * * * * *

  "What do you think of him then?" asked Mrs. Colbshallow. "He is tall."

  "Yes, he is tall," replied Yuah, looking down the hallway toward the parlor.

  "You don't like him?"

  "I didn't say I didn't like him. He is rather queer though, isn't he?"

  "I don't think he is."

  "Well, I guess I don't mean that he is," Yuah explained, turning around. "But is that the type of man you imagined she would go for? I always thought she would be trying to land a sturdy war hero type."

  "That's your type, dear, not hers."

  "Don't be thick, Mrs. C. I don't have a type."

  "Whatever you say." Mrs. Colbshallow returned to the kitchen and gave the tea tray one more check before sending it off to the parlor with Tilda, the downstairs maid. "You might as well sit down. She'll be busy with him for another half hour at least."

  "I still don't see the attraction," said Yuah.

  "Not that you have a type."

  "Not that I have a type," Yuah sat down.

  At that moment, Zeah entered the servant's hall carrying the mail.

  "You have a letter from Mrs. Godwin, Mrs. C," he said.

  "Bless her heart," said Mrs. Colbshallow. "Poor Mrs. Godwin, running around that great country estate, practically all alone now that Miss Dechantagne and the boys have moved away. I would be going half wobbly if it was me."

  "I wouldn't mind a bit of peace and quiet, I can tell you that," said Yuah. "It's all Yuah fetch me this, and Yuah put that away, and Yuah I need you for something."

  "Yuah," called a stern voice from the doorway. Everyone in the room jumped and hastily attempted to look busy. Nobody needed to look to see that it was Miss Dechantagne who spoke. Then in a low purr, she said, "Yuah, I need you for something."

  Mrs. Colbshallow, who was facing away from the mistress of the house, rolled her eyes as Yuah passed.

  * * * * *

  Senta didn't mind working at Caf? Carlo in the Great Plaza. For the most part it was great fun watching people. Horse drawn trolleys loaded with passengers, passed every three minutes. Most of the men wore suits, though a few of them were dressed as laborers. The ladies were dressed nicely, and wore huge bustles that made their rear ends stick out two feet behind them. Some people rode by in horse drawn carriages. There were also many, many pedestrians. The most interesting travelers though, were those riding in steam-powered carriages, which spewed smoke and hissed steam.

  The bad part about working at Caf? Carlo was that Carlo himself, the chubby proprietor of the establishment, treated her like an idiot. She was young, but she wasn't stupid. He handed her a huge push-broom and told her "sweep," as if she didn't know what a broom was for. Senta swept the walkway all around the caf?, starting on the far right and sweeping left one day and then on the next day, starting left and working her way right. It usually took her an hour and a half to sweep along the entire breadth of the caf?. Then she took the enormous broom around the building to the janitorial closet in back-the one that could only be reached from the outside, and she would put it away. Then Carlo would hand her a bucket of warm soapy water and a bristle brush and say "clean," as if she didn't know what a bucket of warm soapy water and a bristle brush were for.

  The wrought iron railing that encircled the caf? was covered with soot. Everything in the entire city was covered in soot. The soot came from the smoke stacks of the factories that lined the waterfront. It came from the trains that rolled through the city to the great station four blocks north of the plaza. It came from almost all of the steam-powered carriages that drove about the wide streets of the city. It was a good thing too. Now Senta and other children would be able to earn enough money cleaning that soot to pay their keep.

  Senta started scrubbing the wrought iron railing, starting on the side opposite that on which she had started sweeping, so that if she swept from left to right, then she cleaned soot from right to left. Soon it was cleaned and she took the bucket of warm soapy water and bristle brush back to the janitorial closet. Then Carlo would hand her a clean cloth and a jar of polish. Next she would polish the brass dragon at the entrance to Caf? Carlo. It was about three feet long, including its serpentine tail, and about four feet wide, its wings outstretched. It sat on a stone plinth, so that it could just about look Senta in the face. She took great care to polish the entire body. While she did, she talked to the little statue.

  "It's all quite funny when you think about it," she told the dragon. "I live in the city of Brech, so I'm a Brech aren't I? But if I lived in the Kingdom of Greater Brechalon, but not in the city of Brech, I'd still be a Brech. That's just odd, that is."

&
nbsp; The dragon, completely unmoving, professed no opinion.

  "What do you think about the steam carriages," she asked it. "I bet you could breathe enough fire to make one of them go, couldn't you?"

  Once she had finished polishing the brass dragon, she hurried home. The fact that a six year old crossed the length of the city, through busy traffic and alone, raised no eyebrows. She was just one more of the endless supply of ragamuffins that was one of Brech's greatest resources. Though tired, she managed her way up the twelve flights of stairs to Granny's apartment without too much difficulty.

  When Senta entered her home, she didn't find the warm, pleasant atmosphere that she was used to. Fifteen-year-old Bertice, who was usually at work this time of day, was home, and she and Granny stood in the front room holding each other. They both had faces red from crying. Ten-year-old Geert sat on the beat up old couch, and though he hadn't been crying, he looked as though he wanted to.

  "What's the matter?" asked Senta.

  Granny raised a hand, silently inviting Senta to her side, and then pulled her close.

  "There has been an accident at the print shop. Maro was hurt."

  "Where is he?"

  "He's in on Granny's bed, dear. Why don't you go in? I know he'd love to see you."

  Senta walked into the only other room in the apartment, the kitchen and living room being for all practical purposes a single one. Propped up in the center of the bed was Maro. Though his eyes were closed, it was obvious that he was awake. He was gritting his teeth and tears were squeezing out from the corners of his eyes. His right hand was wrapped up in bandages so completely that it looked to be three times its size. On a crate next to the right side of the bed was a large brown bottle of laudanum. Stepping over near it, Senta reached out and touched the boy's left arm.

  Maro started and opened his eyes. They were red from crying.

  "My fingers got cut off," he said.

  "All of 'em?"

  "No, just two."