Mechanykal Phantasmagoria ..... Xenoclea
“Velcome one, velcome all, velcome, velcome, velcome!” The excited voice dashed out from their mustached and bespectacled tour guide. “Velcome to the greatest museum of man-made marvels in all of Germany! Hold on to your hats and spats, Damen und Herren, because you’re all in for the time of your lives!”
Annemarie rolled her eyes and clutched her parasol tighter in her hands. “Why are we here, again?” she muttered under her breath to Scot, who was squished up against a large, colorful poster.
“The job, Captain.”
“But did it have to be here?” The tiny museum was crowded with her crew and other visitors, all jostling to get a better look at the contraptions on display. “This man obviously is a fraud. His accent isn’t even real!”
“’Ow do you know, eh?”
“He’s trying to fake a German accent. I should think that I of all people would be able to tell.” Annemarie jumped as a man nearly backed into her. Adalè put a hand on her arm reassuringly, but it didn’t help to calm her nerves. Not only was she stuffed tight into a room crowded with people, but she was in Germany of all places. The accents of the other guests were familiar but far from comforting.
“Yes, Doktor Milton Bandersnatch’s Mechanykal Phantasmagoria Emporium is the one place in the Vorld, of all places, for you to experience the amazing results of science, mechanics, and pure genius!” The crowd shifted so the crew caught a glimpse of an automaton, shaped like a little girl in a dress, moving her arms and head up and down. Jameson snorted.
“I agree, Captain. This ‘automaton’ of his is most likely nothing but a puppet with a few gears attached. Are you sure this is where our client wanted us to go?”
“He said he wanted us to come here to find his missing inventions,” Adalè reminded him as they shuffled past a few more shabby displays.
“I still find it rather unlikely that this fraud has anything of worth hiding here,” said Annemarie, jerking her chin towards the “Doktor” with obvious distaste. “This place is just one large, decrepit sham. It’s astounding that people are actually taken in by all of this... con-artistry.”
“The man may be a fake, Captain, but that engine over there sounds real to me,” said Jameson, listening intently to the whirring hum that filled the stuffy air. “It’s small but sounds pretty powerful. Excuse me,” he said as he politely but forcefully shoved his way through a group of gawkers towards a highlighted exhibit. Annemarie stood on her tiptoes in her high-heeled boots, trying to peer over the mob that was murmuring excitedly in soft German. She was naturally tall, but even in her three-inch heels she couldn’t see over the looming top hats towering over her. From the front of the queue, she heard the doctor’s soft gasp of surprise.
“What is it?” hissed tiny Maria, stuck in the back next to Adalè, Scot, and Rogers. She looked ready to hop up and down to catch a glimpse. “I can’t see! Can you tell me what it is?”
As if answering her question, the voice of their showman guide, clad in its faulty accent, rose of the babble of the crowd. “Ja, meine Damen und Herren, here is the vunder of my magnificent museum for your viewing pleasure. Not only my sweat, my blood, my tears, have gone into this wonder I now present to you, but my very soul!” The speaker paused for dramatic effect. Annemarie could almost picture him with his hand on him chest or forehead. “I give you my prize invention, the Mechanical Aerial Engineered Clockwork/Electric Engine!”
The crowd broke into frantic applause and Annemarie seized her chance. She shoved her way through the gap until she stood, breathless, next to Jameson. In front of the pair stretched a curtain of copper rings linked together to form a translucent mesh, which, the captain realized, was one wall of a cage. Clinging to the copper curtain with disturbingly humanoid fingers hung a creature unlike any machine or mammal Annemarie had ever seen.
It’s small head resembled a squirrel’s or even a lemur’s, if that tree-dwelling mammal had been made of what looked like tarnished brass with silvery rivets holding together its seamed face. The plates were bolted together in a thick line between its large, greenglass eyes. Its body was another mass of rivets and brass which springs, copper wire, and cogwheels wove around and clicked away inside. The jointed tail and body gave of the feel of a large cat like a jaguar in mechanical miniature. Protruding from its arched shoulder blades (literally blades; Annemarie saw that the sharp bones in the creature were polished and gleaming metal) were two long, tinny wings.
“My God in heaven,” breathed Jameson, reaching out a slender hand as if he wanted to caress the machine. It skittered up the copper wall, fingers grasping like claws. The doctor’s eyes glowed with a kind of light found in the countenance of one looking at a newborn babe or a visitor gazing at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. “My God, Annemarie, it’s beautiful. Look at the wiring here- and on the joints, see how it’s built to flex?” He whirled around in the crowd to face her. “Annie, I simply must study this. An exquisite piece like this could not conceivably be the work of a fraud like that. I know it’s one of the missing inventions. Please, let me take it back to the Arrow, Annie…” Jameson said to her, then blinked hard. He uncomfortably stepped away from her. “I mean, Captain.”
Annemarie let out a breath that she had apparently been holding. “Of course I agree with you completely. We shall somehow manage to create a diversion and bring the contraption aboard, but first, doctor, we shall complete the tour. There may be other items of value in this trash heap.”
As Annemarie walked briskly away from the complex machine, Scot snuck up behind her. “So, Cap’n, dinnae appear ruther funny that the dandy doctor over yon can call you by a jolly nick-name without getting’ a scoldin’ and I can’t? Thas’ a conundrum, that is,” he said with a knowing smirk.
“Commander MacMillan, if you wish to avoid getting kicked in a rather unsavory area by an annoyed captain, I suggest you make yourself useful and search for more of the inventions we were sent to find.”
“Aye… Annie.”
The rest of the museum contained absolutely nothing of import. Jameson walked past the other displays in a daze. He kept thinking of that wonderful little feline engine, the way the sheets of metal so smoothly made up the body, the mechanical grace of the flowing tail and curved wings, how the joints in the smooth neck and stomach accordioned into a thousand perfect folds. He wanted to see inside the machine and find out what made it tick. His fingers longed to brush the inner walls of the polished metal sheets, maybe oil the crevices to make the thick joints slick and coolly frictionless. He closed his eyes to imagine what secrets lay inside- and walked into a wall.
“Are you all right, doctor?” Maria cried in mild alarm.
“I’m fine; nothing injured but my pride,” he replied, probing his forehead with tentative fingertips. “I’ll probably have a lump there tomorrow, but other than that, everything is in perfect working order.”
“Er, doctor, if I may ask, how did you run into the wall in the first place? It didn’t exactly jump in front of you.”
“My imagination simply ran away with me.” He smiled sheepishly at Maria and leaned against the wall where he had whacked his head. Instead of supporting him in his casual pose, the wooden slats buckled and, with a loud snap, broke. Jameson fell backwards through the splintering hole, landing hard on the store floor concealed on the other side.
A man’s face, hidden beneath a large bandana, appeared from behind the fractured boards. “Scheiße!” he swore in German. “Ach, Arschloch, was hast du gemacht?” The man kicked at the boards with a booted foot until it swung open on cleverly concealed hinges. As the man jumped out, Annemarie saw that the “automaton” the crowd had been staring at before the confusion had slumped over like a marionette with no master. Looking closer, she saw that that was exactly what had actually happened.
The man shouted in German and all around them, rough-looking men started crawling of doors hidden in the polished wooden walls, leaving their puppets behind them. The flamboyant Doktor Bandersnatch cried out in alarm. “Come back! Get back to your posts!” he squawked, his shabby accent dropped entirely. He sounded American, a New Yorker perhaps. “Where the hells do you think you’re going?”
The rough-hewn man that Jameson had flushed out of the wall turned to the tour guide. “What are we doing? We’re abandoning a sinking ship. You’re a transparent fraud and a worthless showman, Doktor, and now that people know it, I hope they take you for all you’re worth. Find yourself some new puppet masters.” The man turned and slouched out of the room with his comrades.
A dreadful row ensued. Tourists everywhere in the crowded room raged at the man of whom just moments ago they had claimed genius. Now they flogged him with angry voices and a few fists. Annemarie stood at the back of the mob and watched with something like satisfaction as the faulty inventor handed back the money he had duped.
After Bandersnatch had slunk away and the triumphant crowd had marched out, the building’s brightly colored posters and displays seemed to wilt; once garish colors grew dim and sad. The crew marched down the wood-paneled corridor towards the locked office door at the end of the hoax-filled hallway. Annemarie boldly walked up to the polished door and slammed on it with the side of her fist in a thumping knock. “Are you in there, uh, Doktor Bandersnatch?” she asked commandingly.
“Go away! I don’t have any money left, anyway,” the man moaned from inside. He sounded drunk.
“We don’t want money, we just want to talk to you,” Maria called softly. “About some of the inventions in your museum. I can make us all some tea, and then we can sit down and have a nice little chat.” Annemarie smiled. She was glad that Maria was here. It seemed that sometimes she was the only person on the ship able to bring stubborn or shy acquaintances out of their shells.
Behind the door, the con artist hesitated. “Well… all right,” he finally sighed. There was a sharp click as the door was unlocked. The office was tiny, barely more than a closet, but somehow the owner had managed to cram in a huge desk, armchair, cabinet, tall bookshelves, and a device that was reminiscent of a phonograph. However, behind the rich furnishings, the wallpaper was spotted and peeling and there was an open bottle of cheap gin on the desk, nearly empty.
Much like his office, Bandersnatch’s gaudy clothes concealed the wear from far off, but up close, the man looked much older than he probably was. His eyes, crusted with obvious black face paint, were pouched; his curled handlebar moustache was graying under the black-tinted wax.
“I don’t have any money, so don’t ask for a refund,” Bandersnatch said, sighing, leaning against his desk. “And as for the inventions, take ‘em. You know they’re all puppets anyway.”
“All of them?” asked Jameson suspiciously. “Even that little engine that looks like a cat with wings?”
The man’s brow furrowed, his eyes suddenly showing concern beneath his weariness. “You know what, mister? I take it back. You can’t have all of them.”
“Doktor Bandersnatch-“
He chuckled wearily and straightened up from his desk. “You folks can’t honestly think that’s my real name. Oh no, it’s Jonathan Dawes, fraud extraordinaire, at your service,” he said, then bowed mockingly low to the group. He took Maria’s gloved hand and kissed it, lips lingering on the fabric. “I’m extra-specially at your service, darling. Con men like me are very good at getting themselves into trouble, and I’d say you look like trouble to me.”
Maria deftly yanked her hand out of his grasp and slapped him firmly across the face, her lips tightened in revulsion. Scot loosened his instinctual grip on his gun only when he saw that her smack would leave a nasty mark. “That’s repulsive,” she told him quietly but fiercely.
“I really am sorry,” Dawes told her from the floor, holding his stinging cheek. “But it was worth a shot. What have I got to lose? Money gone, gin gone, pride gone, and virtue ain’t worth shit these days anyhow.” He let himself flop back in his chair with a sigh. "So you lot want to talk over my inventions, huh?”
“Yes. More specifically, we would like to talk about the inventions that aren’t yours.” Dawes looked puzzled, so Annemarie continued, “we know that you stole complex machinery from a celebrated English inventor, probably including that little cat contraption we saw on the tour. You apparently tried to pass the stolen inventions as your own designs. The real inventor has hired us to return them to him, along with any blueprints you may have also taken.”
Scot grimly grinned at him, teeth white and even under his bushy beard. He fingered his gun almost lovingly as he leered at the con man. “He didn’t say what methods to you on you if you refused to give them things you stole over, but I think that can be left to my imagination.” He apparently hadn’t forgiven Dawes for his comment to Maria earlier.
“Stole them, did I? Might I ask who this ‘celebrated inventor’ is, exactly?”
“Is it relevant?” asked Annemarie coldly.
“Might be.”
Should she tell him? She couldn’t see the harm, but wondered why he was so keen to know. “I don’t know why it concerns you, but the man’s name is Harrow, if I’m not mistaken. Doctor Andrew Harrow.”
He sat straight up in his seat, then started to giggle. The entire crew jumped when he erupted into a fit of madman’s laughter. “Drew!” he roared, still laughing. “I should have known, what with that slippery son of a whore running loose. I’m sure the real inventor is quite intent on getting his inventions returned. Why don’t you all come into my laboratory,” the man said, laughter gone but a maniac glint in his eyes. He gestured at a doorway half-hidden behind the overstuffed armchair. “I have something I’d very much like to show you.”
He led them into the small room behind the door. Jameson let out a small yelp. He stood, half unconscious with horror, in the middle of Jonathon Dawes’s laboratory. “What have you done to them?” he said in a weak voice. "God’s Hooks, what have you done?”
Lying on the table, as if displayed for the crew to gape at as another exhibit, were half a dozen small automatons, gutted and dissected like cadavers. Metallic bits and scraps of metal lay haphazardly on the wooden tabletop. Annemarie nearly expected to smell the sickly scent of formaldehyde steaming out of the machines as she gazed down at the thick cables and springs that polled on the table like intestines. Even though the automatons were mostly disassembled, she could see that they were beautiful, that the remains were filled with a haunting, flowing grace. Here, the smooth lines of feathers of a falcon-like machine reflected back a dull, steady light; the glassy eyes of a metallic wolf seemed to shine up at her with the same frozen stare of a freshly slain deer. She looked down at the robotic dissection table.
Jameson moaned from behind her. “You ruined them, you know. You tore them apart, killed them, ripped out their engines. How could you?” he asked in an empty whisper, turning to gaze sadly a Dawes, who was standing casually against the wall.
“How could I? It’s not as if they live. Anyhow, I simply wanted to remember how they worked.”
“You destroyed this man’s inventions, which may have very well have been his life’s work and a great scientific and mechanical achievement, simply to see how they worked?”
“Remember,” sighed Dawes, looking bored.
“What?”
“I wanted to remember how they worked. I already knew, if you follow me, but it seems I forgot. You see, I was the one who made them.”
Part Two coming soon!