The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions

  ‘We can’t go that way, sir,’ said the bootboy, all a-shiver. ‘The anarchists are in the trees, sniping at us with rifles.’

  ‘Indeed?’ said George. ‘And I thought to detect a hint of smoke in the corridor. Are we ablaze, by any chance?’

  ‘We are, sir, yes. A bomb went off in the Kinema. A terrible fire there is.’

  ‘Kinema?’ queried George.

  ‘It’s on the upper deck, between the indoor golf course and the ice rink.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said George. Quite slowly. ‘Well, it is stay and fry or risk the porthole. What think you to this?’

  ‘I will follow you through the porthole,’ said the lad. Thoughtfully.

  ‘The porthole is quite high,’ said George. With equal thought. ‘Best if I help you up and through it, I am thinking.’

  And the bootboy was smaller than George. And George was, after all, saving him from death by smoke and flame.

  ‘And out you go,’ went George as he pushed the bootboy through the open porthole.

  He did not tumble to his doom, nor indeed get sniped by a sniper. He dropped safely onto the service deck three feet beneath the porthole, as George had known he would. It was a bit of a squeeze for George, but fear of impending doom will put a spring into your step and spur you on to greater efforts than might otherwise be the norm.

  George tumbled down to the deck beside the lad. ‘It looks safe enough,’ said he. ‘Which way is the Kinema?’

  The bootboy pointed.

  ‘Then we should flee in the other direction. Come, stay close to me.’

  Now George knew, as many aboard the great airship did know, that its mighty bladder was filled with helium. And that helium was an inert and non-flammable gas. So there was not likely to be an almighty, all-encompassing explosion that would wipe the airship’s passengers, the airship itself, Central Park and a chunk of New York from the map. But fire was fire and a fearful mob was fearsome.

  Folk were already throwing themselves over the side. They were dropping into the trees and some into the lake. And the lake was probably where those who were thoroughly over-crowding the lifeboats were hoping to head for.

  In the ballroom the band played on. As was ever the way.

  ‘I am thinking,’ said George to the bootboy, as the two of them caught glimpses of chaos and mayhem, ‘that, although this might appear counter-intuitive—’

  ‘Counter-what?’ asked the lad.

  ‘Against common sense,’ George explained. ‘But I think we would do well to climb higher, rather than risk jumping down.’

  ‘Climb higher?’ asked the lad, and he strained to lean back his head and peer up at the vast acreages of silver canvas filling most of the sky. ‘Climb up there? Are you mad?’

  ‘They will probably get the fire put out soon,’ said George. ‘And if you jump down there, you will probably break something, or someone will fall on you, or one of the anarchist snipers will shoot you. What think you of this?’

  ‘I think I will follow you once more,’ said the lad, who lacked not for astuteness.

  So they climbed up. Up service gangways, up hawsers and lines, hand over hand and so forth. It was as if they were scaling a wondrous mountain, fairy-tale silver and shining. The wonder of it was not lost upon George, although he did harbour certain fears regarding what might happen if the gas bag got well and truly punctured. It would be a very, very long way to fall indeed, and although George naturally worried for his own welfare, he actually worried even more for that of the bootboy, who had now become, to George’s mind, his responsibility.

  ‘If the gas bag gets punctured—’ began the lad.

  ‘It will not,’ said George, ‘trust me.’

  The views were rather splendid from the heights of the Empress of Mars. The chaos below was thankfully obscured by the airship’s bulging sides, so the views were mostly panoramic and pleasurable. The parkland and the high-rising buildings beyond. A pall of smoke billowing from the Empress of Mars did blot out much of what lay to the east, however.

  ‘Are you all right?’ George asked the lad. ‘Make sure you hold on tightly to something.’

  The lad looked into George’s face and managed a bit of a smile. ‘You’re not like those other toffs, sir,’ said he. ‘You saved me from a squashing for sure. I’ve you to thank for the life of me, I’m thinking.’

  ‘I did what anybody would have done,’ said George. But he knew in his heart of hearts that this was not the case.

  ‘I wonder why anarchists would want to blow up this airship?’ he wondered aloud.

  ‘Because probably they ain’t anarchists,’ replied the bootboy. ‘They probably is them Creationists that hate them Venusian people.’

  ‘What of this?’ asked George.

  ‘It’s been in all the papers here, sir,’ said the lad. ‘I reads the papers, me. Read them in England, then picked up some here to read. I am hoping to be a writer, sir. When I grow up.’

  ‘A laudable ambition,’ said George. ‘Writing is a noble profession.’

  ‘Not the kind of writing I have in mind, sir. I want to specialise in adult literature. Erotic works, or smut as it is more commonly known. But like I says, no mention in the London papers that this here airship was going to be under threat the moment it arrived in New York. The papers here say that a Fundamentalist Christian group, a “cult” the papers call them, seeks to destroy the Empress of Mars and all aboard her. They claim she is a sky-flying Sodom and Gomorrah and that Venusians and Jupiterians are the spawn of Satan, come to Earth to bring on the End Times before these times are truly due.’

  George managed a slack-jawed, ‘Indeed?’ but that was as far as it went.

  ‘They ain’t got souls, you see,’ said the bootboy.

  ‘Who?’ George managed. ‘The Fundamentalist Christians? ’

  ‘No, the blokes from Venus and Jupiter. They ain’t like us. We’ve got souls because the Garden of Eden was here on this planet. We are God’s true people. Them lot up there are the Devil’s brood. They should all go back to their own evil worlds.’

  ‘And the Christian Fundamentalists believe this, do they?’ George asked.

  ‘Doesn’t everyone?’ asked the bootboy. ‘Makes common sense to me.’

  George shook his head somewhat sadly. ‘I think we should all try to live in peace with one another,’ said he.

  ‘Oh, me too, sir. Once we’ve sent those alien swine back to where they come from.’

  George momentarily considered pitching the bootboy over the side. Did the world really need a racist pornographer? Did it already have sufficient? Or if it had none, did it actually need any at all?

  ‘You’re looking at me in a right queer fashion,’ said the bootboy. ‘In case there is any misunderstanding, please allow me to disillusion you. Just because a young man chooses to pursue a career in filthy literature, it does not necessarily follow that such a young man is a sexual pervert eager to engage in acts of sodomy.’

  ‘Stop right there,’ said George. ‘I was certainly not thinking what you might think that I am thinking.’

  ‘I am thinking that, to judge by that sentence, a career in any kind of literature is probably not for you,’ said the lad.

  And for his outspokenness he received a buffet to the head that sent him reeling.

  ‘Sorry,’ said George. ‘But you really asked for that.’

  ‘Quite so, sir,’ said the bootboy. ‘Violence is the eloquence of the unlettered, I always say. And always safer meted out to one smaller than yourself.’

  ‘That is quite enough,’ said George. ‘Sit quietly there until things calm down and the fire is extinguished, then we will descend and go about our separate business. Do you understand?’

  ‘I do, sir, yes.’ And the bootboy took to silence.

  But not quite as a duck will do to water.

  He fidgeted about, eager to hold forth upon anything and everything. George sighed inwardly and stared all around and about. Somewhere in the distance he caug
ht a glimpse of colour upon the airship’s silver upper parts. A little glimpse of red amidst that silver. George shielded his eyes to the setting sun and stared very hard indeed. And then he told the bootboy to stay where he was and George marched off across the vast surface at a trot.

  She was seated most comfortably. She had a picnic hamper open beside her. Freshly cut sandwiches laid out on two plates. A fine selection of cakes. As George approached, she smiled upon him and raised a champagne glass.

  ‘I rather hoped,’ said Ada Lovelace, passing up a glass of bubbly to George, ‘that if anyone had the presence of mind to climb up, rather than jump down, that someone might be you.’

  George smiled hugely, accepted the glass and sipped champagne from it. ‘How lovely to meet you once more,’ he said. ‘Would you mind if I joined you for tea?’

  But George did not get to take tea, because another explosion and yet another shock wave knocked him from his feet.

  20

  Flat on his back on the top of an airship, George gazed up at the sky. The sun was sinking low now and the stars were coming out. George could just see Venus rising with them, winking its mystical eye . . .

  When an awful rushing roaring sound banged his ears about.

  ‘What now?’ moaned George, and, ‘When will this madness end?’

  ‘Quite shortly, I believe,’ said Ada Lovelace, helping George into a seated position and refilling his rather spilled glass.

  ‘That noise?’ George did bashings at the side of his head, whilst holding his glass steadily in the other hand to avoid any further champagne spillage. ‘What was that horrible noise?’

  Then George followed this question up with another, to the effect of, ‘What is happening now?’

  ‘The Empress of Mars is taking off,’ said Ada Lovelace, carefully pouring champagne. ‘And in answer to your first question – “What was that horrible noise?” – that would be the ship’s onboard defence and retaliatory systems finally engaging. One of Mr Tesla’s innovations. Reverse-engineered Martian technology. A heat ray, it’s commonly called.’

  ‘What?’ went George, and now most seriously all agape, he sought to make some kind of sense of all that was going on around him.

  Had George been granted a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree all-around overview of what was happening beneath, he would have seen that the great airship was now ringed by a wall of fire. The trees of Central Park were ablaze. Anarchist snipers, or perhaps they were Christian Fundamentalists, were leaping on-fire from branches. Surviving jumpers were patting at their flaming selves. And the great airship was rising. Up and up and up some more. It was most alarming.

  Mooring lines strained and snapped, the Empress of Mars swung about, cleaving the sky in a mighty arc. And fire poured down from its weaponry, raking over Central Park, striking the high office towers surrounding it.

  Ada Lovelace clung to George and George was glad for this clinging. Up and away went the Empress of Mars, trailing fire behind her.

  George and Ada remained atop the airship. They watched as New York fell astern, as the flames became but a dim and distant glow that presently was gone into the evening.

  ‘I do believe,’ said George, ‘that a great deal of New York City is now gone up in flames.’

  Ada Lovelace shrugged and said, ‘They started it.’

  Which caused George to think of the bootboy and wonder whether he had survived.

  ‘If you are thinking of me, I’m fine, guv’nor,’ said that very lad. Who was safely to be seen sitting by Ada’s picnic hamper and tucking into the fruit cake.

  ‘This is madness,’ said George, much rattled. ‘All of this is madness.’

  ‘I do not think that the crew that manned the heat ray actually meant to do that amount of damage,’ said Ada. ‘Although they might have got carried away in all the excitement.’

  ‘How do you know about this heat ray, anyway?’ George asked.

  ‘I know every inch of this craft,’ said Ada. ‘I’ve been living aboard it since it was first launched. They have many secrets hidden on this ship, but none are hidden from me.’

  ‘You are a most extraordinary young woman,’ George observed. ‘Do you think that it is safe to go down now?’

  ‘I should think so. But I expect that tonight’s Kinematic presentation will have to be cancelled.’

  The promenade deck had lost much of its charm. Wounded folk were laid out on the steamer chairs. Others who had moved beyond the wounded state, into that state known as death, were covered head to toe with towels and blankets. There was general all-around moaning and grief and all traces of the previous gaiety had departed. Those who could walk were for the most part doing their best to minister to those who could not, but the deck had the look of a war zone to it, very grim indeed.

  George caught with difficulty the eye of a wine waiter, who was doing his best to avoid eye contact and make himself appear as tiny as could be.

  ‘Do you know what is happening?’ George asked this fellow. ‘Are we heading back to London, do you know?’

  ‘I don’t think so, sir,’ the other replied. ‘San Francisco next stop and making good time with the wind behind us.’

  ‘We are going on with the journey?’ George said.

  ‘According to the captain.’ The wine waiter put on a professional face. ‘People have paid a lot of money for this trip, sir. We can’t go letting them down now, can we?’

  ‘What?’ went George. ‘Not let them down? How many dead, I ask you?’

  ‘Dead?’ said the wine waiter. ‘Dead? Dead is such an ugly word, isn’t it? I myself prefer the term “non-dining passengers”.’

  ‘How many dead?’ George demanded to be told.

  ‘I believe there will be one hundred and eighty-nine vacant seats in the dining hall tonight, sir. I might possibly be able to give you and your lovely companion here an upgrade. Lord Brentford’s table has become available. But for his monkey butler and I am sure you would not mind sharing with him.’

  George looked the wine waiter up and down. That was insolence, wasn’t it? Just like the bootboy. The menials aboard this sky-ship really held the passengers in considerable contempt.

  ‘Yes,’ said George. ‘My name is Lord George Fox and Lord Brentford’s table will be fine. Lead us to it at once, my man. And bring us a bottle of bubbly.’

  The folk in the dining hall were not looking altogether well. Those who weren’t actually charred were rather red of face, sunburned in appearance, peripheral victims of the airship’s onboard defence and retaliatory systems. Most appeared to be in a state of shock. Few were actually eating.

  The wine waiter did polite pullings-out and pushingsback of chairs. George and Ada smiled upon him.

  ‘Bring the champagne,’ said George.

  The wine waiter sauntered away without haste.

  George shrugged his shoulders to Ada.

  Ada, however, did not see this shrug. She was leafing through the vellum pages of the menu and salivating somewhat as she did so. She did, however, look up, just the once, at George.

  ‘Can I order anything?’ she asked him.

  ‘Anything you like,’ said George. ‘Anything you like.’

  And then he thought about the settling up of the bill. Which caused him to think about Professor Coffin. Which in turn caused George to think about what a terrible person he, George, must be, not to have thought about the professor earlier. What if he was dead?

  ‘Oh no,’ said George. ‘How terrible of me. What a foul fellow am I?’

  ‘Are you?’ asked Ada, without looking up.

  ‘My travelling companion, the professor – he might be dead and I am sitting here with you and—’

  ‘He isn’t dead,’ said Ada.

  ‘You know him?’ George asked. ‘You know who I am talking about?’

  ‘The shifty fellow who took you to Barnum’s American Museum this morning.’

  ‘What?’ went George, of a sudden.

  ‘I slipped off the a
irship just after you, George. I saw you enter the cab. I heard him tell the cabbie where to drive to.’

  ‘The American Museum?’ George did wrackings of his brain, but no memories of the American Museum came to him.

  ‘It is all very odd,’ said George. ‘But how do you know the professor is not dead?’

  ‘Because he is coming this way now,’ said Ada. ‘Do you think I should leave?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ George told her. ‘I do not really approve of lying, but I will not contradict anything you care to tell him. Should you wish to elevate your social status to “Her Ladyship”, or whatever.’