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

Tarvek absentmindedly flicked a bit of burnt metal off his coat and squarely onto Gil’s shirt. “Ah, Wulfenbach. I must apologize,” he said in his most courtly manner. “I imagine when you discovered that your magnificent selfless gesture would actually inconvenience you for more then fifteen minutes—well, it must have been quite vexing. So sorry for the trouble.”

The two men stood eye-to-eye for several heartbeats, smiling beatifically.

Then, simultaneously, they lunged for each other’s throats, snarling.

Zeetha blinked, then looked around. “Agatha! You’re missing the show!”

Agatha strode over, still operating a screwdriver within a half-finished device. Zeetha saw that it was another one of Agatha’s little clanks. “Don’t we have enough of those? …By which I mean too many?”

Agatha sighed. “It’s just an idea I had. What’s the problem?”

Zeetha indicated the two men rolling about on the ground, shouting. Each was clearly determined to beat the other into submission.

Agatha nodded. “Oh, dear. Understandable, though.”

Zeetha grinned and raised her thumb approvingly. “This girl’s ego? Back up to speed!”

Agatha rolled her eyes and blew a lock of hair from her face. “What I mean is that all three of us are still suffering from a huge build-up of raw energy. I can feel it, too. It’s pressing against the inside of my head, filling my entire body with this urge to do something! We need to burn it off, preferably with short sustained bursts of physical or mental activity.” She hefted the small clank. “I myself was getting through it by assembling a new device. But since I’m apparently not allowed to work in peace… I’ll just have to join in.” She tossed the device to Zeetha and leapt toward Gil and Tarvek feet first. “You two ought to be ashamed of yourselves!” she thundered. “You fight like ducks!”

Tarvek and Gil looked up in shock, but it was too late. Agatha landed several well-aimed blows that had Zeetha alternatively nodding in approval and wincing sympathetically. In self-defense, the two turned from each other and tackled Agatha, trying to dodge her blows and catch her at the same time. All three were alternately laughing madly and yelping in pain.

Agatha tackled Gil and brought him down hard on Tarvek. She fell on top of them and struggled for purchase, wrapping one arm around Gil’s neck and grabbing the short knot of hair at the back of Tarvek’s head.

She was trying to shove her knee in Gil’s back when a sudden wave of water drenched all three. The combatants froze in place, blinking.

“Wow. That worked. I feel better now!” Agatha gasped.

Gil rubbed water out of his eyes. “Yeah, me too.”

“Same here.” Tarvek agreed.

Von Zinzer lowered his bucket.

“Um…good job,” Zeetha said.

Von Zinzer sniffed disapprovingly. “If that hadn’t worked, I’d have started hitting them with the bucket.”

Wet and dripping, Agatha, Gil and Tarvek stared at each other.

“But…it actually worked,” Agatha said. “We really did it. Wow.”

They threw their arms around each other and shouted with triumph.

“Yes! Amazing! A successful triple Si Vales Valeo shutdown!” Tarvek gave Gil a squeeze around the shoulders. “That was brilliant!”

“Yeah!” Agatha said. “And no one’s a ravening monster or anything!”

“Ooh! Ooh!” Gil said. “You know what we should try next? Let’s hook everyone up to a larger array, and—”

Another bucket of water hit them. Von Zinzer glared at them. “Well?”

Agatha held up a sodden hand. “I said we’re better!” she protested.

Violetta stared in naked admiration at von Zinzer. Then she glanced sideways to see her expression mirrored on Snaug’s face. The woman looked ridiculous. Violetta shook herself and scowled.

Von Zinzer noticed none of this. “Think they’ll stay focused now?” he asked Zeetha.

“…Get another bucket,” she told him.

Agatha was back in control. “Okay, okay, that was great!” she grinned. “But work now, fun later. I’ve still got the Castle to sort out, and the town to defend.”

She hurried to the angel clank, which tipped its head to one side. “You-you-you—ah—” it muttered. A grinding noise began to rise, and a gout of steam blasted from one side of its head. The clank continued slowly tipping until it crashed to one side.

Agatha gave a shout of fear and fell to her knees at its side. “My Castle!” She tried to raise it in her arms, but it was too heavy.

“I-I-I malfun-fun-function…I-I—” the clank stammered.

“No, no, no, no! No malfunctioning!” Agatha cried. “I have plans for you!”

Gil looked interested. “Nice clank. How’d it get so messed up?”

“How indeed?” Zeetha eyed Higgs curiously.

Higgs looked unperturbed. “Hmmm. Sprocket weevils?”

Snaug nudged the clank with her foot. “What’s the big deal?” she asked.

Tarvek was angry. “Well, aside from the fact that the body is a Van Rijn, and therefore priceless, it’s apparently being run by the last operational part of Castle Heterodyne.”

Snaug squealed and leapt back like she’d seen a snake. Then she thought a moment. “Wait, didn’t she want the Castle dead?”

“Only temporarily,” Agatha said. “There were so many fractured personalities working at cross-purposes, that I had already considered shutting it all down, if only to sort them all out. That’s why I saved all the parts for the Lion.” She stood up. “But I didn’t get a chance to test the idea before I had to do it.”

Gil looked serious. “So, you’re thinking we can still get the Castle running in time?” he asked Agatha.

She paced furiously. “Yes! We’ve got to! It’s the only way I can protect the town!”

She strode over to the hole in the floor and looked down. “Having this fragment could speed things up enough to save us, but not if it shuts down, too. She waved a hand at the depths. “Fortunately, I have a pretty good idea that there’s something down there I can use.”

Gil and Tarvek looked at her quizzically, but didn’t argue.

“Well, let’s go have a look, then,” said Gil.

Soon, a small party had crowded onto the platform and was descending farther down the shaft. Von Zinzer manned the controls, glancing up nervously. “I hope these cables hold,” he fretted.

Gil shone a lantern down into the darkness. “From the way the Castle was talking, I didn’t think there was anything below the Great Movement Chamber.”

Agatha nodded slowly. “I…I don’t think it knew.”

Von Zinzer looked astonished. “What? How could it not know? That thing knows everything!”

“Well,” Agatha said, “I’m not yet sure, but I suspect this is my mother’s secret laboratory.”

The angel clank flicked to life in Airman Higg’s arms. “That is-is cor-re-rect. It was hidden. A-a-a secret place beneath my-my very heart. The audacity…”

At that moment, the platform descended into a large cavern.

Von Zinzer kept his eyes on the cables, but asked. “But how did you know this was here?”

Agatha looked thoughtful, and checked the clasp on her locket. “I didn’t. Not exactly, but it just…made sense…”

In apparent reaction to the movement of the platform, lights began flickering on. They revealed a large natural cavern that had been extensively shaped. Banks of machinery lined the walls and collected in islands. Some were covered in dust cloths, others simply left exposed. Furniture lay scattered, tables were stacked with books. Tattered chairs, abandoned machinery, and mildew-covered rugs had been tossed about by some unknown agency long ago. Something violent had happened here. There was evidence of a fire that had burned and melted a huge collection of chemical apparatus. Machinery was tipped and shattered, and debris from a seismic-level event had left dust and shards from the ceiling scattered everywhere.