As they finally cleared the tunnel through the great wall, Agatha had a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. Mechanicsburg! She’d heard so much about it. It was the home of the Heterodyne Boys, after all, and for the last two months, she’d been slowly wending her way here—because she’d been told that she was a Heterodyne as well.
As far as the rest of the world knew, the Heterodyne Boys had vanished years ago, putting a stop to the devastations of the Other: the secretive power that had nearly broken Europa nearly two decades ago. Agatha sighed. She had learned much in her travels, and almost all of it bizarre and unsettling. She, Agatha, was the daughter of the hero Bill Heterodyne, and the Other had been her own, equally brilliant mother, Lucrezia Mongfish. Agatha figured that she was now the only person in Europa who found the Other not just mysterious and terrifying, but horribly embarrassing.
It would have been nice to be able to discount this as hearsay, but as Agatha currently had a copy of her mother’s mind lodged inside her own head, determined to break free and wreak havoc, she had to accept that hers was a family with…special problems.
As the horses ambled down the street, they were approached by swarms of touts for many of the local establishments.
“Try the Rusty Trilobite, sir! Soft beds! Hot running water! And you can’t even see the tannery!”
“Nothing like a hot mug of golden rum to clear the dust of the road, ma’am! Come on over to the Laughing Construct! And don’t you pay attention to what anyone says—he’s laughing ’cause he’s happy!”
“Hoy! You look like a man of the world, squire. Stow the ball and chain and get yourself over to Mamma Gkika’s. They’ll treat you right.”
“Would the poor little fellow like a fried trilobite? Just—Sweet lightning! Those eyes! Hospital’s that way! Clear the road, you lot!”
Like magic, the crowd thinned, and they proceeded relatively unhindered. This allowed Agatha a chance to look around a bit. According to the books she had read, the city of Mechanicsburg was almost a thousand years old and had been the home base of the Heterodynes from the beginning. The architecture varied wildly. Over there was a row of shops, equipped with fully modern plate-glass windows, yet hanging above the doorways were old-fashioned pictograph signboards. Over here was a row of mullion-windowed apartments, easily several hundred years old, but a set of peculiar-looking wind turbines thrummed away on the roof.
And trilobites were everywhere. Mechanicsburg was built on a fossil deposit and the peculiar little creatures had been so common that there was even a trilobite incorporated into the city’s famous coat-of-arms. So, Agatha had expected to see them, but in actuality, their presence was overwhelming. They were chiseled upon buildings as assorted architectural features, and emblazoned upon the numerous posters, signs, and broadsheets plastered upon almost every vertical surface. These advertised everything from local attractions to a wide range of products, all of which were (apparently) personally associated with, or endorsed by, the Heterodyne Boys themselves.
As for Bill and Barry, their likeness shone forth from pictures, statuettes, key-chains, mugs, belt buckles, and a thousand other bizarre and inappropriate items.
Zeetha saw Agatha’s expression and leaned over. “It is a tourist town. Aside from the Great Hospital and the memory of the Heterodyne Boys, Mechanicsburg has nothing else worth selling…or so I’ve heard.”
Ardsley Wooster snorted. “That is a perception promoted quite heavily by the Mechanicsburg Chamber of Commerce. They neglect to mention that they are the leading exporter of snails to most of Eastern Europa.”
Agatha blinked. Over the last ten years, snails had become a dietary staple on more and more tables.
“But that’s something to be proud of, I’d think. Why downplay it?”
Wooster glanced about and lowered his voice. “Because, according to the Baron’s agents, Mechanicsburg is also the center of at least three major smuggling and black market operations. Thus they take pains to dismiss the importance of shipments to and from the city.” He shook his head in admiration. “They are aided by the simple fact that it is a rare customs agent that is willing to burrow through a shipment of live snails—”
Agatha nodded. “I can see that.”
“Especially since some of the fancier varieties bite,” he finished.
Suddenly Agatha reined in her horse and pulled it about. The others realized that she had stopped and looked at her questioningly. She frowned and scrutinized the street they had ridden up. It looked normal enough—bustling with crowds of people, merchants calling out their wares, hawkers, and street performers…
It’s all for show, she realized. The merchants might be ebullient and boisterous while enticing passersby, but the moment their audience passed, their grins faded and their posture changed. Agatha thought they looked like poorly maintained automata. The town itself was similar. While the shop areas seen by visitors were reasonably clean and maintained, from here she could see that the upper stories were in serious need of paint and repair. It was like the people of the town no longer cared.
Agatha pondered this as she swung her horse about and continued forward.
Wooster claimed to know his way around the town. He led them up several ramps and before too long, Agatha saw that they were on a raised highway that circled Mechanicsburg’s inner core.
Before them lay the bulk of the town, dominated by a massive black stone crag that loomed in the center of it all. Apparently growing from the top of the natural promontory was a ruined castle, partially hewn from the crag itself.
It was a huge structure. The main tower, a square pagoda-like affair, was easily ten stories tall, emblazoned with an enormous gilded trilobite. To Agatha’s eye, it was apparent that the structure had been built over the course of centuries. Assorted architectural styles and fashions were jumbled together in a most disturbing way. The rest of the castle—Agatha’s breath caught as she took in the scope of the devastation. Many of the barbicans and towers were leaning away from the center. Atop the various roofs, the remains of assorted aerials, towers, and lightning rods could be seen drooping in disrepair. Vast sections of the curtain wall were blown out or were in danger of crumbling. The slopes of the crag were littered with chunks of the castle that looked small, but once you identified features such as windows, you realized that they must be several stories tall. From the base of the structure, where the masonry met the cliffs, an enormous gargoyle head spat a frothing torrent of water toward the rocks far below where it disappeared into a cloud of perpetual mist. This was the source of the Dyne, the river that meandered through the town before flowing through an elaborate set of gates to the valley beyond.
Wooster saw the look on Agatha’s face and nodded in satisfaction. “Yes, that’s it. Happy?”
Agatha still gazed up at the castle. “It’s a mess. But, to be honest? From everything I’d heard, I’d thought it would be much worse.”
Next, she turned her attention to the rest of the town. It was built on uneven ground, with stairways and bridges connecting neighborhoods as often as streets. The buildings were mostly three-and four-story houses, many with a business tucked underneath. To the west, an immense factory complex dominated the skyline. Striking black and white clouds of smoke and steam poured from tall, slender smokestacks. To the north, an ornate, red stone Gothic cathedral rose, defiant beside the dark bulk of the ruined castle. To the east, a miniature lake and several acres of greensward gave way to orchards—which abutted a large white building that could only be the Great Hospital. Before them was a vast open area lined with what looked like rather dilapidated barracks.