«Yes sir!» he replied.
The house was raised on scaffolding that extended out of a building directly below it. Another building had been carefully erected around the house so as not to encroach on its property, and then after a respectful seven stories, jutted out again and resumed its upward climb. The result was that the house was perpetually blocked from the sun and existing in a shade of gloom and fog all the day long.
They landed on the platform and Rachelle paid the growler pilot. When he'd gone, the duo walked up the creaking porch stairs and knocked on the door.
«It's open!» came a voice inside.
So this is the ‘Cape and Cane’, Bantam thought.
It was dark inside. The place seemed a horrible mess already. On the far wall, a large moving image of a naughty dancing girl flickered. The projection was thrown there by some kind of gas lamp-powered kinematoscope embedded in the far wall. The girl’s ethereal form moved to the tinkling of an elaborate gold-leafed music box nearby. She was like a ghost pixie whose doom it was to dance for eternity. The only other sound in the house was that of the gears of the music box: a steady oil-on-metal whirring purr.
«Need a coggler," muttered the voice of a man who stepped now into the straylight. «A good coggler could get rid of that noise.» The man was thin, like he hadn't eaten in days. His forehead was bandaged, and he wore a tattered trenchcoat over dirty longjohns. He gripped a bottle of bright green absinthe. «Then, I could hear my music right and proper and think!»
«You're with the Cape and Cane," Rachelle asked.
The man cackled. «Ha! I am the Cape and Cane! What’s left of her, anyway.» He looked around drearily and then lifted a pinky ring to his nose and snapped it open. «Hold a minute. Just up from the weeping willow, have a mercy. Need to pack the snozzler.» He snorted.
«Are you doing … cocaine?» Bantam asked.
«Why … yes. Yes I am,” the man replied yawning. «Whysoever would you inquire?»
Bantam fumed, not knowing where to begin. Rachelle took over: «You’re a friend of Doctor Hardin.»
«More like an online friend,” the man mused. «He knows me as DionySYS. We had lengthy confabulations on ferroequinology and the aetheric sciences. Debates about logiducts and aquagates, mostly. And throng plates. One must always have a discussion about throng plates. He found my delineation in an online salon and we went from there. Why?’
Bantam surged forward and grabbed the absinthe from his hand with one swift movement and smashed the bottle into the far wall. A splash of green and glass soiled the phantasm of the dancing girl.
«Because the Volzstrang Pin has been destroyed,” Bantam yelled. «Because you have a lead on who did it. We need your help and we need you to sober up and give it to us right now. For the sake of your country! You have no idea what’s at stake!» Swastikas emblazoned on Growlers … Bantam pushed the thought from his mind.
The man blinked. «Sober up? But I am far more useful polluted. My intellect expands. Vistas unavailable to it in temperance are laid bare, nude and raw. Oooh, I like saying that: nude. It’s like naked, but nuder. You could call me a useful kanurd.No, really. Hold your applause and astonishment. What is it you wish to know?»
«Hardin said you’d hacked a communication to the saboteur of the Pin,” Rachelle said.
«Hmm. My aren’t you tasty?» DionySYS’s gaze became watery and dull with lust. «Are you a ladybird? Hardin never mentioned you. Hardin. Hard-on.» He burst into laughter at the pun.
Bantam slammed him into a wall. «Talk. Now.»
«Okay! Okay! Jesus. Glocky, isn’t he? Yes. Yes, I do have something, it’s true. Me and some cracksmen vented a tube weeks back. The Air Clankers were down for the night, and the Blue Bottles couldn’t see us in the soup. So we culled us some polly. One was a cylinder addressed to a ‘Ton. I know what you’re thinking. Since when did ‘Ton’s get p-mail, right? Well, this one did.»
«Which ‘Ton?» Rachelle asked.
«A performing unit. A slang cove magician. A hypnotist. An illusionist. Works a club nearby, called the Magfly. It calls itself ‘Gaspar the Great’. You know, after the — “
«Yes, yes. After only the most famous magician of all time. Of course I know that,” Rachelle said irritably.
«Leave me alone!» DionySYS suddenly shrieked, collapsing against the wall and protecting his head with his hands. «Please! You have to go now!»
«There’s no reason to go all Hunter S. Thompson on us,” Bantam said. «Settle down. We’re leaving.» He nodded to Rachelle.
And then they did.
As they sailed across the sky Bantam smiled when he saw a sign that read:
A Poor Boy's Hat
The Novel of the Age!
Thrill to the story that enchants young and old alike
Eight: Gaspar The Great
AT THE NIGHTCLUB Magfly, Bantam and Rachelle watched the Automaton Gaspar the Great run through his act. Humans no longer performed, Hardin had said. It was beneath them now. It was predicted that in the century to come, automation would quickly replace every human endeavor, Rachelle explained. And this was a worry: Mankind would be at leisure always. The plague of convenience would lead to boredom — and suicide in mass numbers. Rachelle could not fathom why Bantam found this hilarious.
Gaspar’s magic act involved sawing a woman in two — which was much more horrifying when performed by cold hands of steel than by human hands, Bantam had to admit. There were levitations and vanishings, and re-appearances and reconstitution of destroyed items. There was even Automaton ESP. And every act actually chilled Bantam further. In each, the ‘robot’ lorded over his human audience: pathetic, foolable, fallible bags of blood and water. The message was clear: the Automaton, a being of perfect clockwork and precision, was the clever one, the one with the secrets, the one who would triumph in the end.
Gaspar was the one God should have made. Had He done so, there would have been no Fall, and a clockwork Eden would still hold dominion over the Earth.
When the show was done, Bantam led Rachelle to the dressing room backstage.
Bantam did not knock; he entered unannounced. The ‘Ton spun from the mirror. «Ho there! Hi there! No one is allowed in here after the performance! But I can be seen in rare public appearances on Thursdays at — “
«No, Gaspar,” Bantam interjected. «We’re not here for autographs.»
When he looked down, Bantam was astonished to see a small herd of miniature horses. They pranced over to him tentatively, curious. They seemed to be Gaspar’s pets.
«Oh? But whatever for why not? And I see you met the prads. Don’t you nobble them!»
«We have something far more important to discuss with you,” Bantam continued. «Have you ever seen — “
Suddenly, without transition, Bantam and Rachelle were standing on a building ledge, thousands of feet above the street below. The wind was ferocious.
Bantam registered this with shock as his hand lurched out to steady the horrified Rachelle and barely kept her from plunging to her death.
«What happened?» Bantam shouted. «How did we get here?»
Rachelle shook her head. «I don’t — I don’t know! You were just talking to that ‘Ton, and then, we were here … ?»
«Sonofabitch,” Bantam breathed. «How did he do that?»
«I think he mesmerized us," Rachelle shouted into the wind.
«What? No," Bantam disagreed. «Impossible. There wasn’t enough time!»
«I assure you it is possible," Rachelle said, inching along the ledge. «There's an open window just around the corner … It is possible. I've seen it work, actually. He is a water-based automaton. Hydrologic circuitry. And humans are ninety-percent water. So all he needs to do is set up a sympathetic resonance to put our organic minds into a suggestive state. It can happen in an instant.»