Agatha H. and the Airship City Read online

  Agatha cleared the last of the shops and angled across the greensward that circled the walls of Transylvania Polygnostic University, and towards the great front gates and the cyclopean figure that guarded them.

  Mr. Tock was the largest mechanical construct anyone had ever seen, and was still considered the Tyrant’s greatest feat of engineering to date. It towered almost twenty meters high. The great clock in his chest was the timepiece the town set its watches by. As intricately decorated as the smaller clanks that comprised the city Watch, but infinitely deadlier. It appeared to move slowly, but this was an illusion brought about by its great size. Those who had underestimated its fighting ability had done so to their regret. Tock had been known to single-handedly quash several small rebellions, one (admittedly poorly organized) army, and an invasion of giant slugs, an event nobody ever wanted to talk about, especially over dinner.

  Each year the various schools within the University vied for the honor of polishing the behemoth for its quarterly parade through and around the town, and as a result, his brass exterior gleamed in the morning sun.

  As Agatha approached, the glowing blue eyes swiveled down at her, and a plume of steam puffed out from his upper lip, much like an old man puffing out his moustache before speaking. Its great metallic voice tolled out across the grounds: “IDENTIFY YOURSELF.” Agatha groaned. Students were expected to be within the gates by a certain time.

  “Mr. Tock, it’s me! You’ve seen me every day for eleven years! I’m late and—”

  “IDENTIFY OR BE—”

  “Agatha Clay! Student 8734195!”

  “WORKING…”

  “Come on.”

  “WORKING…”

  “Come ON!”

  “WORKING…”

  “Oh please come on!”

  “ACCEPTED. ENTER STUDENT.” The great feet began to shuffle aside, and then, maddeningly, paused. “YOU ARE… LATE.”

  “I KNOW!” Agatha screamed and darted past the giant.

  The T.P.U. campus was a large complex, and the building Agatha was aiming for was near its center. Clusters of students talked together, many of them discussing the electrical phenomenon of that morning. Several groups were disrupted by Agatha cannoning through them at full speed, leaving nothing but a barely heard “Late!” fading behind her.

  Agatha was a familiar figure on the campus, and many of the students simply rolled their eyes at her retreating back. Agatha would have been astonished, and rather appalled, to know that she was the subject of many a speculation. Most of those who tried to strike up a conversation with her were put off by her odd behavior, the more persistent or outspoken found themselves hauled in and given a quiet talk by university officials. Agatha Clay was the Tyrant’s assistant and thus Off Limits. This, of course, only added fuel to the speculative fires.

  As she approached the massive stone edifice that was Laboratory Number One, the door-clank swung the great bronze portal open in time for her to dart through. Helpfully, it informed her that she was late, eliciting a howl of despair.

  Finally she slammed through the blast doors into the Central Laboratory and clung to a railing and gasped as she caught her breath. Below her, on the main floor, Dr. Hugo Glassvitch turned away from a humming device and mildly remarked, “Mademoiselle Clay? You’re late.”

  “I KNOOOOOWW!”

  The doctor picked himself up off the floor in time to find his arms full of a sobbing Agatha. “You’re only a little late,” he said comfortingly.

  “My locket! Oh, Doctor, they stole my locket!” Quickly she filled him in on what had happened that morning. “It had the only pictures I have of my parents and it belonged to my mother and now it’s gone!”

  Dr. Glassvitch looked surprised. “I didn’t know that. You never showed—”

  Agatha interrupted. “My uncle gave it to me before he went away. He made me promise to never take it off and now it’s gone and he’ll be disappointed in me again and he’ll… he’ll never come back because I’m… I’m stupid and damaged!” To Glassvitch’s horror, she slid to her knees and began to sob even louder. “Why? Why can’t I do anything right? What’s wrong with meeeee?”

  “Agatha! Mon Dieu!” Agatha only sobbed louder. Glassvitch’s specialty was chemical engineering, which minimized his experience with hysterically sobbing young ladies. Up until now, that had seemed like a perk, but now he realized he had no idea what to do. He cast about desperately and his eye fell upon a bulge in Agatha’s greatcoat pocket. “Agatha!” He gently shook her shoulder. “Show me your latest machine!”

  Agatha’s cries stopped as if a switch had been thrown. She blinked up at Glassvitch through her tears. “My machine?”

  “Oui!” Glassvitch patted her pocket. “Your petite clank? Does it work?”

  Agatha got to her feet and smoothed down her skirt. “I… I don’t know.” She pulled the little device out of the pocket. It looked like an excessively large brass pocket watch. She wound the stem at the top as she talked. “I… I wanted to show it to you before I showed it to the Master.”

  Glassvitch nodded encouragingly. “Ah. Good idea. We don’t want to waste his time, eh? Let’s see it.”

  “All right.” Agatha smiled nervously at him and placed the device on a lab bench. Her index finger hovered for an instant, and then pushed down the stem with a sudden click. Immediately, the sound of gears grinding emanated from within. The device shuddered and a small dome on the face snapped up, revealing a crude eye that jerkily surveyed its surroundings. With a lurch, a pair of legs unfolded from the bottom and it shakily stood, then took an uncertain step forward. Suddenly, the ticking of the gears ended with a Poink! A horrible grinding rattle came from the little device and it began to shake uncontrollably. Its single eye rolled up out of sight, the body twisted violently and exploded in a shower of tiny gears and springs that sent half of the body casing shooting past a startled Agatha and Glassvitch and out through a window pane. The remaining small bits showered down throughout the room.

  Agatha looked at her shoes and whispered, “Sorry. I… I was so sure…”

  Glassvitch shrugged and patted her shoulder. “Well, at least this one actually moved before it blew up. That is improvement, no?”

  Agatha looked up at him in surprise. She opened her mouth—

  “I should have guessed.”

  The two flinched and turned. At the door stood the Tyrant’s second in command, Dr. Silas Merlot. A small, thin, elderly man who owed his current position not to the Spark, but to procedural brilliance and a dogged perseverance in his work. He was rubbing his head and clutching the piece of Agatha’s device that had shot out the window. Agatha groaned mentally. Dr. Merlot hardly needed this additional excuse to cause her trouble.

  Dr. Glassvitch smiled. He was one of the few friends the cranky scientist had, and often interceded on Agatha’s behalf. “Good Morning, Dr.—”

  Merlot interrupted him. “I don’t know why you encourage her, Glassvitch, we have enough problems today.”

  “Problems?”

  “Baron Wulfenbach is here.”

  The smile drained from Glassvitch’s face. “WHAT? He’s early! Weeks early! We’re not ready!”

  “He’s with the Master, if you’d care to complain.”

  “No! I meant… What do we do?”

  “We’ve got to remove all traces of the Master’s project from the secondary labs. Miss Clay, get this lab cleaned up. You’ve got half an hour.”

  Agatha started and looked wildly around the lab. It was a rat’s nest of equipment and papers strewn about the room. The Master always demanded that it remain untouched during an ongoing project. “Cleaned up? By myself? In half an hour? This room is a disaster area!”

  Merlot narrowed his eyes. “Don’t be impertinent with me, Miss Clay. The Master may derive some twisted amusement from your pathetic antics, but if this lab is anything less than spotless, you’ll see how patient Baron Wulfenbach is with incompetents. Now move!”

  As the
two scientists hurried to the secondary lab, Glassvitch frowned. “Silas… there’s no need to frighten the girl—”

  Merlot cut him off. “Listen. The Master’s little pet may actually prove useful for once. With her crashing around, perhaps the Baron will not look too closely at the rest of us, understand?” Glassvitch frowned, but after a moment, reluctantly nodded.

  Meanwhile a stunned Agatha surveyed the mountains of equipment. “Half an hour?” she whispered to herself. “How can I possibly—” Her eye was caught by a storage closet. Her jaw firmed, she nodded to herself and rolled up her sleeves.

  Twenty-nine minutes later, Merlot and Glassvitch were striding back to the lab, muttering to each other.

  “Have we forgotten anything?”

  “Ssh. Hugo, we have done the best we can. This whole project was a mistake just waiting to destroy everything we’ve—”

  They turned the final corner and stopped dead in their tracks. Before them was the main lab. Every surface was cleared. Every shelf was tidy. The floor was swept and the instruments had been neatly laid out in geometrically perfect rows. In the exact center of the room, a deeply breathing Agatha stood with her hands clasped behind her back.

  Dr. Merlot blinked, opened his mouth once or twice and in a dazed voice said, “Well…” It almost choked him to say it. “Well done, Miss Clay.” And, because he was an honest man, “I’m… impressed.”

  Dr. Glassvitch nonchalantly slid his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels with an enormous grin lighting up his face. “Not quite so incompetent after all, hm?”

  Agatha smiled demurely, “Thank you, doctors.”

  Suddenly the main door slammed open and a harsh voice commanded, “No von move! Dis is you only varning!”

  The hairy face of a Jägermonster quickly surveyed them and as quickly dismissed them, although his weapon never left them. He made a quick motion with his free hand and, with a crash and a hiss, two large Wulfenbach trooper clanks lumbered into the room. The tops of their shakos barely cleared the doorway and their gigantic machine cannons never stopped moving. Agatha saw at once that everything she’d heard about them was correct.

  Unlike the Clockwork Army, these clanks moved as smoothly as animals. You knew these machines were dangerous.

  Behind them came a group of four people. At the center was Baron Klaus Wulfenbach, the man who currently controlled a significant part of Europe. He loomed above the rest of the group, and his movements were those of a jungle cat kept in check. No one knew how old he truly was, the only sign of age was the silver color of his hair. Klaus had been an adventurer in his youth, and indeed had traveled with the Heterodyne Boys. It was known that Klaus and Bill Heterodyne had both vied for the favors of the beautiful but villainous Lucrezia Mongfish, with Klaus finally losing out to his more heroic rival, who had managed to win her over to the side of the angels when he took her as his bride.

  Klaus had vanished before the wedding, off to nurse a broken heart it was said. He reappeared six years later, when Europa was deep in chaos and ruin with the Heterodynes, as well as most of the other Great Sparks, gone. The final blow came when he found his ancestral castle, as well as the town around it, completely destroyed.

  He had reestablished the town, and declared that anyone who attacked it would be mercilessly wiped out and their lands absorbed.

  Up until that point Baron Klaus Wulfenbach had been considered a minor Spark adventurer, who had never been taken very seriously, as he had always allowed himself to be overshadowed by his more charismatic companions. His proclamation was considered mere bravado. Nearly fifteen years later, thanks to this simple policy, the Wulfenbach Empire stretched from the great bronze gates of Istanbul almost to the Atlantic Ocean.

  Next to him was his son, Gilgamesh, who, though fully grown, had only recently been revealed to the world.

  Physically, he resembled his sire. Not quite as tall, nor as broad at the shoulder, perhaps, but impressive none the less. His face was set in lines that seemed too grim for one his age. This was no doubt brought about by the numerous attempts on his life that had occurred since his identity had become known. There were many who had reluctantly knuckled under to the Empire, telling themselves that Klaus was but one man, and thus could be endured. These arguments went out the window with the appearance of an heir. The additional knowledge that he was supposedly possessed of a Spark nearly as strong as his father’s, just made things worse.

  Quietly standing at the Baron’s right hand was his secretary, Boris Vasily Konstantin Andrei Myshkin Dolokhov, a man feared throughout the Empire almost as much as the Baron himself. He had started out in life with two arms and an eidetic memory, which had brought him to the attention of the Spark who ruled his homeland. Said Spark had given him enhanced speed, strength, balance, and an additional two arms in an attempt to build the ultimate juggler. Sadly, for Boris, he succeeded.

  Boris spent several miserable years as court jester before his master had sent an ill-conceived army of land squids against the Baron. This had resulted in the area quickly being absorbed into the Wulfenbach Empire.

  Klaus has a sharp eye for talent, and quickly realized that Boris was not born to the stage. However he was a natural secretary, and had quickly risen to become Klaus’ second in command.

  Buzzing angrily around the Baron was the Tyrant of Beetleburg, the Master of the Unstoppable Army, Owner and Headmaster of Transylvania Polygnostic University, Dr. Tarsus Beetle.

  Dr. Beetle was a third-generation Spark whose family had established and run the university and its environs for the last hundred and twenty years, maintaining and defending it against other Sparks and their armies. Like the great city-state of Paris, Beetleburg was considered neutral ground. Thus many of the Great Houses of Europa, and elsewhere, had T.P.U. alumnae on staff. About ten years ago, after a particularly hard winter had strained the resources of the area, Klaus, a former student of the University, had offered to absorb both the University and the surrounding town into his expanding empire and extend it his protection, while the Tyrant retained control. Dr. Beetle accepted. This arrangement had worked out well for all concerned, which was why the apparent anger of the Tyrant toward the Baron was so surprising. Indeed he was yelling nonstop as the group entered the room.

  The Baron interrupted him in mid-shout and addressed the Jägermonster: “Thank you, Unit-Commander, stand at ease.”

  “Jah, Herr Baron.” The soldier’s weapon never faltered, but he allowed himself to slouch a bit. This, for some reason, merely made him look more dangerous.

  Beetle resumed his diatribe. “Blast it, Klaus, you’re too early! I told you—”

  The Baron effortlessly cut him off and strode over to the group in the middle of the floor. “You’ve had plenty of time, Doctor. Now who are these people?”

  Dr. Beetle swallowed his annoyance, and brusquely nodded to each of the staffers as he introduced them. “Dr. Silas Merlot, my second in command.”

  As he paused, the Baron broke in, “Ah. I read your latest report with great interest.”

  Merlot bowed and clicked his heels together. “I am honored, Herr Baron.”

  “Dr. Hugo Glassvitch, my Chief of Research.”

  “Welcome, Herr Baron.”

  “And this is our lab assistant, Miss Clay.” As he said this, he turned away dismissively. “Now the machine—” Suddenly he stopped, and with a snap, turned to stare at Agatha. “Miss Clay!” He barked, “Where is your locket?”

  Agatha blinked. “It… it was stolen, sir. There was an electrical anomaly of some sort and I was accosted by some soldiers while trying to get away.”

  The Baron’s eyebrows rose at this. Beetle looked shaken. “Accosted? Stolen?” His voice rose, “In my city?” He clutched at his forehead. “Oh no! This is terrible! Terrible!”

  Agatha tried to address his obvious distress. “I’m feeling better, sir, I—”

  At this Dr. Beetle snapped out of his distracted state and grabbed Agatha by
the elbow and began to hustle her towards the door. “Sh! No! You’re obviously distraught, my dear. I want you to go home. Yes! Go home and have a nice lie down and I’ll have the Watch find your locket as quickly as possible!”

  “Wait.” The force of the Baron’s voice arrested Beetle’s movement as if he’d been grasped physically. Agatha looked up to see the Baron studying her with interest. “You actually saw the event in the town?” he asked.

  “Yes, Herr Baron, I was right in the middle of it.”

  The Baron nodded. “Stay. I would like your observations of the event when I am done here.”

  Beetle went pale. “Klaus, the poor girl has had a terrible shock! You must let her go home!”

  Agatha tried to calm the distraught scientist. “Master, please! I’m all right. Really.”

  Klaus nodded to signal that the affair was closed. “I’m impressed by your concern for your people, Beetle, but the young lady appears stable. Let us get down to business.”

  He turned to Merlot and Glassvitch. He gestured towards a large, obviously half-finished device that sat in the center of the room. It was a bizarre collection of tubes and coils that bent and twisted back on themselves in a most peculiar manner. “Doctors. My Dihoxulator. Why is it not finished? I’d thought I’d explained the underlying theory rather succinctly.”

  Merlot took a deep breath. “We do not know, Herr Baron. We were able to construct the machine up to a point, but then we hit a block.” Beside him, Glassvitch nodded vigorously. “We cannot reconcile the final linkages with the rest of the assembly,” he added. “We just don’t know what to do to make it work.”

  The Baron stared at him steadily for moment. “I see.” He raised his voice. “Gilgamesh?”

  The young man looked up from the device he was examining. “Yes, Father?”