Falling Against Gravity Read online

  “That's it, then. According to the data collected this evening we could be in the air in three, maybe four days. That should do it. As long as nothing goes awry,” Fort stated, his voice packed with determination.

  CHAPTER 6

  As much as the dastardly men from the Black Dock fiasco were on Fort’s mind, he was the focus of their deliberations, as well. Both parties had left deep impressions on each other. After their narrow escape from the police, the duo reconvened at one of their workshops located behind the old Lexington railyard. Neither of them mentioned Fort to the other, but they knew he preoccupied each of their innermost thoughts. A small coal stove heated the space, but it did nothing to warm Blake’s mood. His comrade was dead, and it was Fort’s fault. After he put another scoop of coal in the firebox, he moved over to the window and moved the curtain to the side so he could see the stockyard. Someone was exiting an expensive-looking vehicle directly in front of the nondescript building. Blake quickly turned to his remaining companion. “He’s here,” he muttered, walking over to release several deadbolts to the only entrance.

  The door creaked open and Cyrus confidently strut inside. He placed his long, dark coat on an ornate hanger near the door. The juxtaposition between the run-down building and the tidy well-ordered workbench and shelves was jarring. A lone light hung over a small table littered with tools where the pneumatic steamborg sat tracing his human finger along a schematic diagram of his mechanical arm/appendage. Blake propped a white painted board up against the wall near the workbench.

  Cyrus sat on a small wooden chair wordlessly staring at the two men. Cyrus was a very dapper man with chiseled features and sharply pointed, dark goatee. He exuded a strange mix of discretion, poise, and power. Even though Cyrus looked out of place in the rough workshop, he radiated comfort and control.

  “Show him,” Blake demanded once the board was in place.

  The pneumatic man looked at Blake with his natural eye and gave an expression of reluctant acceptance as he lifted his dysfunctional arm into a sling that already hung around his neck. He ran his hand through his long hair pulling it away from his metallic scalp. He then rifled through the various screwdrivers and instruments scattered on the table in front of him. Choosing a simple flat head screwdriver he stood up and walked toward the white board Blake had placed upright. He slid open a small port access tab above the hinge of his jaw then inserted the screwdriver into a hole in the mechanical half of his face, slowly and surprisingly deep.

  Cyrus uncrossed his legs and leaned forward with interest. The steamborg then gingerly moved the screwdriver around in the cavity in his head until it locked onto whatever he was looking for. Several lenses opened inside his eye and a beam of light projected out of his artificial eyepiece. He readjusted the screwdriver angle and moved it around some more until it slid in a little further. His human eye flitted around like he was trying to visualize something. He slowly turned the screwdriver inside his head as it made a muffled ratcheting sound.

  A series of ghostly and grainy images projected on the white board. Cyrus squinted, straining to make out what he was seeing. The mechanical man started twisting the screwdriver in his head and various images flickered by. He twisted it quicker at first as seemingly random images were cast upon the makeshift screen. The twisting of the screwdriver began to slow down and the half man/half machine looked as if he, too, was watching the images for something. He moved a little closer to the white board and then the images started to come into better focus. Then, as a darkened image of Kane, his former associate, getting crushed at the Black Dock appeared on the screen, Blake’s lips pursed together in frustration. “Keep going,” he growled.

  The next image was a distorted version of Fort’s face at the end of the mechanical arm. “Go back one more, Wyatt,” Blake demanded.

  He turned the screwdriver one more ratchet click and there in front of them was a perfect portrait of Fort caught mid-sentence.

  “That’s him!” Blake sneered, seething with anger. Wyatt made a low double click sound in his throat.

  Cyrus slowly stood and walked up to the ghostly black and white image cast upon the white board. He looked it up and down before speaking. “Yes. Yes, I encountered this man before. In fact, I put a tracer coin on him a few weeks ago. We should be able to find him.” There was a short pause before Cyrus spoke again. “And this was the same man at the Texas clean-up?”

  Blake nodded. “We don't know what he's up to, but the mercury is curious. Combined with Texas...”

  “Most interesting. Watch him and disrupt him if you can without being seen. We need more time to build his file,” Cyrus directed, flatly.

  Blake rubbed his bottom lip that Fort split open with his punch. “Certainly, Cyrus. It’ll be a pleasure to see this Charles Fort again.”

  Cyrus looked at Blake and then at the man working on the broken arm. “We may need him alive. Don’t kill him.”

  Blake tilted his head and looked away with thinly suppressed disgust. “I won’t kill him…yet.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Zoya wiped her brow with her forearm to stop the sweat from pooling into her eyes. She busily tightened one end of a tensioner in the steering system on the bridge of the Nimbus. Ripley clumsily tried to assist her on the other end. He turned the wrench with all his might until he could turn it no further. Winded, he stepped back and Zoya handily reached in and tightened some more. The muscle tone in her arms and shoulders gave a sense of how much of her life she’d spent cranking a wrench. Ripley was torn between being dazzled and intimidated by her strength. He hadn’t met many women so obviously stronger than himself. Regardless, he loved watching her work. Realizing he was staring, he stepped away and wandered about the bridge.

  Ripley took a moment to lean on the rail and look downstairs towards the forward engine room compartment. He could hear Fort and Nikola talking below. They were placing a round stone in one half of a spherical housing made of brass. The housing was constructed of small triangular plates riveted to one another with a hinge holding the two hemispheres together. In each plate there was a place to screw in fine rods. It was delicate, meticulous work and there was little room for error. The men placed the stone in position and Fort carefully screwed the long rods into the stone’s surface, holding it suspended in the center. After Fort completed his task, Nikola gently closed one hemisphere over the other, latching it.

  “I think we should call it Fortium,” Fort confidently declared.

  “I'm not calling it that. Teslum would sound better. Plus, it is more accurate,” Nikola tersely responded as he adjusted a rod.

  Fort took a step back, surprised. “And how do you figure that?”

  “Because I unlocked its secrets.”

  Fort stared at him. “But I discovered it!” he exclaimed, exasperated.

  Nikola snorted and laughed so hard his whole body shook. “Discovered it? Really! Consolation gift, more so.”

  Fort was visibly offended. “That's just rude,” he crankily replied, his bottom lip subconsciously protruding like a child. Fort then launched into a long diatribe expounding upon his rationale for naming the stone Fortium, while Nikola made mocking faces behind his back.

  Upstairs, hidden from their view, Ripley chuckled to himself. Zoya was standing behind him, also listening to their conversation while taking a little break to wipe the grease from her hands. “Men and their egos,” she whispered to Ripley, as if they were sharing a secret. “We have no time for such foolishness. Come, pass me that wrench over there,” she directed as she maneuvered under a console with a handful a small fittings.

  Ripley did as he was told, but she gave it back. “No – next size smaller, please,” she said with subtle remnants of her Slavic accent.

  Ripley promptly handed her another wrench. “That's it, thanks. It's so nice to have your help, Leroy. The day of a mechanic is usually very solitary, mostly talking to one’s self.”

  “My pleasure, Zoya. It's nice to help out. I'm usually u
seless at most practical things.”

  Zoya laughed. “Well, I doubt that is true. But you are very helpful here to me. And you are light-hearted. That is a nice change around here ... those two are self-absorbed egotistical bores.”

  “Charles is obsessive, but a very good man,” Ripley interrupted. “And he's very reliable. And trustworthy. I'd trust him with my life.”

  “I don't know if I'd say that. He's a bit of a dandy ... and cold. I don't like that.”

  “I don't think you've really gotten to know the true Charles yet. But you are right, he does keep people at a distance. He has his reasons.”

  “I'm sure he does,” Zoya said, seeming to be distracted as she did her work. She stopped moving for a moment. ”We all do,” she said after a bit of silence. Her comment hung awkwardly in the air. After a few moments, she rolled out from the console. “Now, you must tell me more about the spaceman in Texas.”

  “Well, let's see. After Charles found out that they threw the crash wreckage down the well and buried the spaceman, he went after the local doctor who performed the post mortem autopsy...”

  ***

  Garfield sat outside Doc Conway's home office on his veranda. He tried to peek inside through the window curtains. An older male patient with a cloth tying his jaw shut was sitting beside the boy. It was just another day in a rural doctor’s office. Unbeknownst to anyone, however, Kane was around the corner at the back of the house, listening at another window. Even though he was in the house, Fort's voice could be clearly heard outside.

  “And how, pray tell, could you be sure it was dead?” he loudly demanded. It was obvious he was upset.

  Garfield widened his eyes and looked at the elderly man beside him to see his reaction. There was none. The old guy was leaning his head against the back of the bench and was sleeping. Or at least Garfield hoped he was sleeping. He quietly gulped at the alternative and turned toward the window to see what was going on inside. Through the unmoving crocheted curtains he could see Fort pacing and wildly gesticulating his arms.

  Doc Conway calmly sat at his desk, smoking a pipe. He took a huge draw and exhaled slowly. “Well, he had no living functions that I saw. And he looked like someone tried to make juice outta him. Arm ripped off, face half tore off, legs twisted around, terrible injuries.” The doctor shuddered in spite of himself. He had seen a lot in his years of practice, but the memory of that corpse would stay with him for a long, long time. It was as if someone had tried to make ground chuck out of a man.

  “But if it's from another planet maybe its biology operates differently! Perhaps it was in a metamorphic state of deep healing?”

  Doc Conway took another draw from his pipe. “Metamorphic-my-ass!” he sneered. “His face was torn off! And it was no spaceman, it was just a feller in a fancy suit. Probably trying some new-fangled flying machine. Lots of those idiots around now,” he said as he swirled his pipe in the air for emphasis.

  “Any tissue samples? Photographs? Drawings? Did you even do an autopsy?”

  Doc Conway shook his head. “No. It was a mashed-up man that fell from the sky! Can you hear me – from the sky! Have you ever heard of such things? Besides, if the fall didn't do him in, I think the windmill did!”

  “Did you perform any treatments on the body at all?”

  “Nah, I just wrapped up his head and his stump, so he would stop bleeding all over everything and everyone.”

  Fort grew more agitated. “Mrs. Proctor said it spoke to her.”

  “In case you haven't noticed, Mrs. Proctor's nerves are gone. She hasn't been right since that fella scared the wits outta her, poor dear. I don’t know what her husband is going to do. He’ll have to put her away in a sanatorium for some respite, I suppose. Women just don’t have the constitution to deal with these things.”

  “It seems like she is the only one with any wits in this town. You are a disappointment to all the institutions of science, medicine, research, and investigation. Good day, doctor.” Fort shook his head and then stormed out of the office.

  Doc Conway made a thick smoke ring. “Yeah, well you've been a reeeeal treat too, Yank,” he said, sarcasm dripping off each word.

  Garfield stood to attention as Fort launched out the door. The boy dutifully tried to run to keep up with him. As he ran, he looked at the dark foreboding clouds starting to build outside of town.

  “W-what next, Mr. Fort?” he asked as soon as he caught up.

  Fort stopped quickly in his tracks and looked Garfield straight in the eyes. “Son, we’re going to need to find some shovels.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Later that evening, Fort and Garfield found themselves on the far end of the main street in tiny little Aurora. If you ran quickly, it took about eight minutes to dash from one end of town to the other. Garfield and Will had tested it many times. But tonight, the town felt different for Garfield. The town seemed more mature. Or maybe it was him. He was out later than usual. And Mr. Fort was a relative stranger, but he was nice and interesting. His mother was so impressed Mr. Fort had paid them for Garfield’s help showing him around town during the day that it made it very easy for her to agree to let Garfield continue to help out after supper. This financial compensation was a big deal to the boy. Money was so scarce these days and Garfield had never earned so much before. He felt like a proper man of his household.

  As they walked along, Garfield looked at the low-lit houses with curtains drawn and the locked businesses that lined the streets. A chill ran up his back when he thought of where they were headed this night – the old town. Aside from its small, quaint and conservative stature, Aurora was a ghost of a town with living inhabitants haunted by the past. The original Aurora had been a larger bustling town, with a pretty lively nightlife. Between the saloon and brothel, there was rampant drinking and revelry most evenings, but it all changed in a night of great shame.

  As the story goes, thirty odd years ago, Mr. Atticus Cuddy, a struggling and mostly unsuccessful flop of a prospector, came into a tiny fortune when he found a single gold nugget in a dried river bed not far from Aurora. He came gallivanting into town, swinging his shovel overhead and hollering to everyone he met along the way. He turned the nugget into a tidy sum of cash as soon as he could. By noon, he was drunk with his twenty new best friends, buying dances for everyone. Old Atticus never had so much fun in all of his unlucky life. Unscrupulous men and women fawned over him and poured liquor into him well past dark. By the end of the night, folks were just taking money out of his pockets as he lay passed out in a heap in the street.

  Men urinated on him while they partied with his money the whole next day and no one in the town stopped them. Whenever he started to come to, someone poured a big swig of whiskey down his throat. The righteous amongst the townsfolk thought he’d reaped what he’d sown. Around midnight, old Atticus Cuddy woke up with the worst hangover he had ever experienced – and he had experienced many. He had no pants on and he knew his money was gone. He went in to the saloon where his new best friends all laughed and jeered at him. Atticus cursed and demanded his money back. The bartender offered him a round on the house and the place burst into uproarious laughter. Atticus shoved and spit on his mockers. After several punches in the face and gut, two men dragged him out of the saloon and threw him in the same puddle of urine and vomit he woke up in.

  In the wee hours before dawn, after the revelers and townsfolk were asleep or passed out, Atticus Cuddy made his way to the livery and knocked the boy working there unconscious with his trusty shovel. He then took can after can of kerosene and poured them generously on the front of every building from one end of the town to the other. Then, with the flick of a match, and in one giant conflagration, Atticus Cuddy burnt the whole town to the ground.

  Two days later, they tied Atticus up and drowned him in a well while the town’s red ashes still crackled and smoldered.

  The townsfolk who survived the shame and the fires that night eventually went on to rebuild their town a few miles away o
ver the next bluff. They hoped that if they didn’t have to look at the burnt past, they might move forward. Maybe even shed their guilt.

  There were very few other citizens walking the streets that evening, which made Fort feel a bit better. It was opportune if they weren’t noticed. He threw the shovels and tarpaulins into a simple wagon that was hitched to a rented horse from the livery yard. The corpulent boy lit the two lanterns that hung on the rails of the wagon. The horse was twitchy and uneasy, stomping her front leg. Garfield ran his hand along the horse’s neck, calming her down. She was getting nervous, almost as if she knew something unsavory was afoot. As the wind gusted, Garfield looked up and wrinkled his forehead at the ominous cloudy sky showing the last thin traces of the setting sun. If he had looked across the street instead of up in the sky, he might have noticed two strange men sitting inside Edgar’s Canteen, watching the parting duo closely. Or maybe he wouldn’t have seen them. They were quite skilled at being unobtrusive.

  Fort paid for his supplies and helped the pudgy boy onto the long driver’s seat before hopping up beside him. Fort looked at the boy, “Are we ready?”

  “Yes, sir!” Garfield couldn’t believe that Fort was bringing him along. It felt like they were heading on an adventure, like Lewis and Clark, or Stanley and Livingstone. The boy grinned from ear to ear as Fort snapped the reins and they started off with a jolt. This was the best day ever.

  Fort and Garfield rolled along out of the town proper, the growing darkness warmed by the two lanterns gently swinging on the wagon. Fort held the reins, awkwardly guiding the horse along the old roadway. Fort was never very good with horses and felt they didn’t like him. He was mostly correct. Garfield attentively sat beside Fort as he pointed at different stars in the twilight. Garfield wasn’t certain that Mr. Fort was right but he seemed to know the names of them all. Mr. Fort explained something called the zodiac which sounded really interesting. Slowly, a scattering of very old and abandoned, burnt-out structures started to line the road. An eeriness set in, making Fort shiver in spite of himself. The sound of rolling thunder far off in the distance didn’t help.