Фил Фоглио - Agatha H. and the Voice of the Castle

6Until Recently, Ardsley Wooster had served aboard Castle Wulfenbach as Gilgamesh Wulfenbachs’s valet. In actuality, he was working for British Intelligence. It would have been an extraordinarily useful position from which to winnow out the secrets of the Empire, if it wasn’t for the fact that both Gilgamesh and his father had been aware of Wooster’s true allegiances from the get-go and had been cheerfully feeding him false information. Spies find this sort of thing terribly embarrassing and are loath to mention it on their résumés.

7The Seven Mad Wonders of the World is an informal list kept by the British Museum. Castle Heterodyne was indeed on it for at least two centuries (One must remember that neither the penchant for odd creations nor the British Museum are new institutions).

In addition to Castle Heterodyne, there are listed the Storm King’s Muses, the Awful Tower in Paris, the London Dome, Mr. Tock of Beetleburg, the Secret Library, and a semi-open spot which was whimsically referred to as the “Impossibility of the Day.” Since its fall into ruin, Castle Heterodyne’s spot on the list had been usurped by Castle Wulfenbach.

8Professor Mordechai Donowitz, PhD. Tampering Within God’s Domain and Chair of the Department of the Non-Humanities. The father of Hezekiah Donowitz, whom Agatha met while aboard Castle Wulfenbach. See our earlier textbook; Agatha H. and the Airship City .

9The Heterodyne Boys traveled the world righting wrongs and fighting evil. Once they disappeared, publishers realized that people still wanted to hear about their adventures, and The Heterodyne Library of Spark Snapping Adventure was born. These books purported to chronicle the actual adventures of the boys, but as your humble professors are well aware, and do our best to avoid, it is the rare recitation of facts that suffers from the injection of blood and thunder, egregious villainy, and spicy romance. Thus, after a few volumes, the facts of the Heterodynes’ lives became more and more unimportant, while the books themselves became more and more exciting.

CHAPTER 2

Like most towns, Mechanicsburg has located its airship terminals and freight yards outside of the old city walls. There are many fine things one can say about modern airship travel, but on the ground, it does require an inordinate amount of real estate. Luckily, the airship terminal that serves Mechanicsburg is located near a Corbettite rail terminal. If one is of a patient disposition, one may hop a slow freight shuttle directly into the town for free. For the traveler with more money than time, carriages, carts, rickshaws, and horses are available for rent. If one feels like a spot of exercise, it is less than a kilometer by foot to the North Gate. The intervening area is primarily farmland, which does allow one to appreciate the size and grandeur of the surrounding mountains. Some do like that sort of thing .

Due to one of the more fanciful of Airshipman traditions, no ship will ever fly directly over the town itself. This is a shame, as theoretically, the aerial views of Castle Heterodyne alone would be spectacular .

—Out and About the Empire on Ten Guilders a Day —Dame Mòrag MacTavish/Waterzoon Press/ Amsterdam

The air was tense aboard the shocking pink airship that hung over Mechanicsburg. The captain stood quietly, apparently enjoying the glorious view of the mountains on the horizon, but his hands, clasped behind his back, were white knuckled. On the surface, everything appeared ship shape, polished, and crisp, but in his heart he knew that everything about this berth stank like bad balloon wax.

When the Aerofleet Merchant Board had first outlined the job it had seemed like a dream come true. Captain of a brand new ship—from the Stockholm Yards, no less! Conveying a lost heir to her new kingdom, along with her royal sponsors, who would win over the town with a display of loose wealth and largesse. If all went well, there was even the possibility of a permanent commission.

Then the rip panel had been pulled. The town? Mechanicsburg. The girl was a supposed Heterodyne heir, and her noble sponsors were a pair of privileged, overbearing ne’er-do-wells that he would as soon have had jettisoned before the ship warped away from the dock.

In addition, the preparations had been rushed, less than twenty-four hours from oath to float. He hadn’t had the time to properly vet or shake down either the crew or the airship before they’d left, and he’d run them blue doing inspections and drills while on the fly. The old-timers, at least, had appreciated that. The fledglings had been too busy running to grumble.

The supposed heir had boarded ship in Vienna and no one had seen her since. She kept to her cabin—her needs seen to by her sponsors and the flock of silent minions she had brought with her.

The captain smiled humorlessly. Well, he’d done his part. The girl had been delivered safely. They’d touched down right in the main square of the town and she’d been escorted off in style. He’d been ordered to take the ship back up, to hover at an unnervingly low two hundred meters and await further orders.

The gentlemen who paid the bills stood in the main Observation Bay. The tall, equine one—Duke Strinbeck 10—had been watching the girl’s progress through an elegant brass telescope. Finally, he let out a huge gust of breath and lowered the scope.

“She’s in the castle,” he announced.

His companion, a portly, white-haired man who called himself Baron Krassimir Oublenmach, had been striding back and forth, seemingly deep in thought. Now, he positively beamed. “Excellent!”

Strinbeck regarded him with a slight frown, swung the tube up again and idly scanned the town. “I certainly hope so,” he muttered.

Oublenmach grinned. He knew he made his fellow nobles feel uncomfortable. He clapped Strinbeck on the back. Oh yes, as stiff as a board. He could feel that even through his metal gloves.

“Come, come, young fellow, you’re still worried?”

Strinbeck, who had never been much into the whole “fellowship” thing to begin with, pointedly detached himself from his overly familiar companion. “Of course I am,” he snapped. “It’s too soon. I don’t like being rushed.”

To his surprise, the older man took him seriously. In a rare flash of insight, Strinbeck realized that Oublenmach was as worried as he was—but better at hiding his misgivings. “You think Zola isn’t ready?”

Strinbeck waved a hand irritably. “No, no. She’s perfect.” The hand flicked towards the window. “I’m worried about the castle.”

Oublenmach regarded Castle Heterodyne with a frown. “Ah yes, the castle is the unpredictable element, is it not?” He faced Strinbeck and grinned that disquietingly evil grin of his. “But it always will be, sir. No matter how much we prepare. No, we had to move! All that lovely build-up in Balan’s Gap? Old Klaus wounded? Either one of them would have been temptation enough, but both together? Carpe diem!”

Strinbeck irritably snapped his telescope shut and wondered what fish had to do with anything. “But what about that giant Heterodyne girl over Sturmhalten? Even your people haven’t found her yet! Which is inexcusable! I mean, she was bloody enormous!”

Oublenmach began to laugh at the joke, and then his eyes glazed slightly as he realized that Strinbeck was quite serious. “One thing at a time, sir. One thing at a time. Once everything is in place, our girl will effectively be the new Heterodyne. Vox machinae, vox populi , eh?

“Then, when do we capture the other…aheh…no doubt enormous…girl, she’ll just be another pathetic Heterodyne impersonator, and if she does give us the slip as it were and get in, why then, Zola will simply see to it that she’s ‘killed by the castle.’ That is what it does best, is it not?”