A Company of Heroes Book Four: The Scientist (8 page)

BOOK: A Company of Heroes Book Four: The Scientist
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She smelled perfume and incense and warm bread.

There was soft music on the piccolo.

This catalog of wonders has not yet mentioned the most amazing thing Rykkla saw. What had stopped her dead in her tracks were the hundred and sixty nude women who had lazily turned to look at her when she came through the door.

There were all shapes, colors and sizes of nude women, though they were all of an age, more or less. That is, there were none who were very, very young, nor any who were very, very old. There were yellow women who had complexions like ancient ivory or sweet cream rich with butterfat; white women with skins like parchment or vellum, milk or rose quartz, with skin so much like white silk that the blue veins beneath looked like the complex chart of a continental watershed; black women in every imaginable shade from a honey-on-toast not much different than Rykkla’s own caramel skin, to milk chocolate and mahoghany and bitter chocolate, to ebony or the shimmering purple-black of the eggplant; red women who glowed like warm copper or terra cotta fresh from the kiln. Three hundred and twenty eyes turned toward her, eyes round and slit, wide-awake and sleepy, innocent and hooded; grey, green, blue, hazel, brown, violet, even yellow and black. Around and behind these were faces round and thin, square and triangular, high-cheekboned and pudgily baby-like; full-lipped and thin, aquiline-nosed and pugged, haughty and servile, intelligent and stupid, strong and weak. Supporting this variety of heads, which were topped with every imaginable permutation of hirsuity: from wooly bushes to glossy baldness, was a veritable catalog of the bodies available to the human female. There were bodies taller and leaner and lankier than Rykkla’s, bodies shorter and fatter, bodies as muscled as a Peigambar warrior, bodies as small and sleek and rounded as an infant, bodies all bone and bodies sinuously boneless, bodies with breasts like teacups and bodies with breasts as large as grainsacks. Every change that could be rung upon these belles seemed to have been made.

Rykkla turned to the chamberlain, mouth agape. She started to speak, not at all certain what she was going to say, but ak-Poom forestalled her.

“Should there be anything you want, just ask.”

“What is this place? A spa?”

“Spa? Oh ha ha ha.”
Musrum! He laughs like he’s reading a word that he’s never seen before.
“No. No. Not a
spa
. For Musrum’s sake! Ha ha ha ha. This is the Baudad’s personal harem.”

CHAPTER SIX

BRONWYN DEPARTS THIS WORLD

The day set for the launch of the big rocket had arrived and, faced with the reality, Bronwyn wondered, and not for the first time in her life, what in the world she was doing. It was, she realized, perhaps a little late to be considering the doubtfulness of her wisdom, which, the present situation considered, was doubtful indeed.

She was strapped onto a reclining couch in the nose of the rocket, in what she hoped had been well-named the “life compartment”. To her left was Professor Wittenoom, his long legs causing his feet to dangle beyond the end of his couch; to her right was the third passenger, whom she considered with an icy and disapproving eye. Unaware of, or disregarding, this arctic scrutiny was a small, lean, dark-visaged man. Although the princess had only just been briefly introduced to him, she had already decided that she dis-liked him. His name was Sandor Hughenden, one of Dr. Tudela’s most trusted assistants and a distinguished doctor of science in his own right. At their first meeting he had clicked his heels together, murmured “Princess” in a sibilant voice and kissed the back of her hand. His complexion was oily, his thin nose speckled with blackheads, but his dry lips, she remembered, felt reptilian.

Hughenden had been supervising Tudela’s electrical laboratory since the doctor’s unexplained and sudden leave of absence more than six months earlier. He oversaw its operation with precision; one would hardly have noticed Tudela’s absence, except that Tudela’s presence had filled the room with energy in exactly the way that his glass and bakelite and amber machines charged the atmosphere with power. Without that presence, the vast loft seemed somehow rarified, as though a vacuum pump had sucked away its vitality. Hughenden was efficient and certainly brilliant, but he was not the human spark coil that his master was. Bronwyn had never liked Doctor Tudela very much, since he had much the same personality as a rheostat, and did not particularly miss him; frankly, he had always frightened her not a little. But if he did, it was the sort of supernatural fear that an electrical storm generates, perhaps it was his frightfulness that was part of the inexorable fascination Bronwyn felt. His aloof superiority kept him distant from her (and everyone else, for that matter), but she could never find it in her to resent that aloofness because it was so clear to her that the man was indeed superior. His assistant, on the other hand, was equally aloof and superior, though these manifested themselves only as a kind of sneering superciliousness, and only slightly less frightening, but of these three qualities he only truly deserved to be accused of the latter. The man frightened Bronwyn for much more earthly reasons than the ethereal awe Tudela inspired. Hughenden simply reminded her too much of a snake, rat or cockroach.

Bronwyn knew nothing of the machinations or politics that had been involved in the scientist’s selection over all the other candidates. Tudela, she knew, was, for all of his misanthropy, perhaps the only one of the Institute’s scientists who was well-known to the general public. The people of Londeac might easily tolerate the presence of the princess, as a kind of self-indulgence, but they were a little more critical about the scientists whom they were treating to such an expensive excursion. They might not have ever heard of Wittenoom, but his title as director of the institute was at least comprehensible and impressive-sounding. Tudela, however, was something of a household word, if for no other reason than that there was scarcely a home that had not benefitted from at least one of his inventions or some derivative. If Tudela were involved in the moon expedition, then there must certainly be something to it. And if Tudela himself were not available, than his designated agent would do as well.

At Wittenoom’s fingertips were the controls that would set in motion the automatic firing mechanism, which was a kind of electrical clock encased in the central column. This would take care of firing the hundreds of individual rockets in their proper sequence. Hughenden was in charge of the equipment that maintained the oxygen, temperature and other environmental necessities. Once beyond the atmosphere, the two of them in concert would undertake the mathematics of translunar navigation as well as make whatever scientific observations that seemed necessary.

This left very little for Bronwyn to do, except do what she often did so well, which was to brood.

Did she consider what was about to happen to her as some sort of unconscious attempt at suicide? While of a morbid turn of mind, it is certainly doubtful that this extremity would ever have occurred to her. Bronwyn had a too well-developed sense of self worth for any such hasty, irrevocable and irreversible action as suicide. Nor would there be any point in causing people to weep and wail over her if she would not be there to appreciate it. Of itself, the knowledge that there were those who might so dramatically mourn her passing was not sufficiently compelling. Was she hoping that Gyven would wrench open the hatch at the last moment, to snatch her from her imminent and foolish peril? Perhaps. In fact, she was considering that very scenario and was wondering if it was because of such a far-fetched possibility that she was where she was: to be rescued. Or, put more bluntly: to give Gyven a jolt he couldn’t ignore.

Bronwyn considered the letter she had left propped against the lamp on the desk in her room at the Academy. On the outside of the sealed envelope she had written in her positive, barbed-wire--like handwriting:
To Gyven.
On the crisply folded sheet inside was:

Dear gyven,,

I have alwa
s
ys felt that my life has been as relent;lessly ti
m
cking like as
a clock’s
the scond hand of a clock. while I see,med to be going somewhere from moMent to moment, on the big circle I was going nowhere at all. like the second hannd, I not only kneow whre I’d b
v
een but where i”d ever bee. I thought that renouncung my throne and coming to Londeac w
ip
ould break the rythm of that remorseless pendulum byt I find that i have just swithched sides on the seesaw.

I wish that you’d beenhere. If you’d been , perhaps someonw else woud be in the third couch on the spaceship. If it
is
me, I’m not sure what I’m doing there, perhaps committing suicide in very uniquely: shooting my self in the most lteratel way posssible.

Love, bBronwyn.

She had written the letter on one of the Academy’s writing machines and hoped that Gyven would make an allowance for her lack of practice while reading it.
What will I do if he doesn’t come in time?,
she thought, just a moment too late.

Wittenoom said, “Ready?”

Hughenden replied, “Ready.”

Bronwyn said, “What?” and the professor’s hand fell on the great switch.

Instantly there was a roar that was more physical sensation than sound. She felt as though she were being shaken into a jelly at the same time that she was being pressed into her couch by a weary elephant which, mistaking her for a footstool or cushion, had just then decided to snuggle its great haunches onto her for a rest. She gasped for the breath that was squeezed from her lungs, but she couldn’t expand her chest against the great weight, which was, horrible thought!, increasing steadily. She wanted to turn her head and see what was happening to the two men, but she was afraid that if she moved it her eyes would fall out. She felt as though her pupils were being pressed through the back of her head and the two or three freckles she possessed were drilling into her face like panicked gophers. Even her hair was beginning to feel like thousands of individual iron cables. She tried to raise an arm and found that it had turned into a lead pipe.

The roar increased to a thundering shriek, then stopped, suddenly, sharply, as though cut off by a knife. Her abused eardrums seemed to bulge at the unexpected release of pressure; at the same time the intolerable weight lifted from her body. For less than a second she believed that it was all over and was about to voice her relief when the sound began all over again and once more she was pressed into her couch, whose thick padding now felt like a sheet of iron. It was worse than before; she could feel her ribs creaking; she was certain that her skeleton was going to give way suddenly and that she would be spread in a thin layer of Bronwyn jam over couch and floor.

For a second time the sound and pressure ceased and a split second later began again; unbelievably, it was worse than the first two times. Halfway through this third period of acceleration something strange happened, though Bronwyn was only dimly conscious of it at the time: the roar of the hundreds of flaming rockets gradually faded until the interior of the life compartment was as silent as the grave. All that she was aware of was the steady ticking of the clockwork in the central column as relay after relay was tripped. Had the rockets stopped firing again? If so, why was there no relief this time from the pressure? As she wondered about this, even if semiconsciously, there was a third diminution in the acceleration and a moment later a fourth increase . . . though mysteriously there still was no accompanying sound. How could there be acceleration without the rockets firing? How could they fire without producing a sound? Had her ears failed? Had her brain been squeezed so flat, -like a sponge in a mangle, that no sound could penetrate it? Were all of her thoughts and memories now oozing from her ears and nose? She wished that she could ask what was happening, but could not draw a breath into her flattened lungs. It was horribly uncanny: she could still hear the clock ticking on the wall above her head and the steady clacking of the firing mechanism. She glanced at the former through bleary, squashed eyes.
Great Musrum! Less than ten seconds have passed!

The round face of the clock wobbled like an uncooked egg white just before everything dissolved into an amorphous grey fog.

She dreamed that she was a mermaid, gliding as sinuously as an eel through the slippery seawater, her graceful tail leaving behind a luminous track as phosphorescent as a meteor’s. She was enjoying a kind of freedom that even birds must envy, for she could stop in midflight and relax as motionlessly and listlessly as thistledown amidst the wavering light that wove vertical curtains around her like a chlorine aurora, painting glaucus, reticulated patterns that shimmered over her streamlined body, making her look as luminous and translucent as a blown glass figurine. Poor weightful birds, who had to work constantly to stay aloft; they could not rest for a second or they would drop like feathery rocks. How indeed they must envy Bronwyn, supported on all sides by a comforting, encompassing, unfailing fluid, embedded like a fly in amber, a bubble in treacle, a stray thought wandering like a bacterium in the brain of Musrum, lost in his infinite convolutions like a rat in a maze.

But,
she wondered in surprise
, if this is such a splended sensation why do I feel so sick to my stomach? It can’t be possible that mermaids get seasick!

They must, however, because she could feel her duodenum give a sudden, spasmodic lurch.

She opened her eyes and found herself looking down on the professor and Hughenden as they still lay on their couches. There was a momentary overlap as dream segued into reality, during which half second or two the princess wondered what in the world the two scientists were doing underwater. Then, as her vision became steadier, she wondered what they were doing on the ceiling, stuck there as
nonchalant
as a pair of houseflies. As she fully awakened, her brain reeled in sympathy with her stomach; there was a nasty reversal, an inversion of perception: why was she looking
down
on the two men? Why was she hovering somewhere near the apex of the cabin? Why was
she
stuck there like the
nonchalant
housefly? Why was there this horrible sensation of falling when she could so clearly see that she was not moving? And why, oh why, had she been so silly as to have eaten before she boarded the rocket?

All around her swirled the forgotten paraphernalia, the unnoticed minutiae of life, coins, bits of paper, pencils and a penknife, a twenty-crown banknote, a cancelled train ticket, a comb, paper clips, a safety pin, a piece of candy, a few small pebbles, nuts and bolts, spinning around her like anxious ballroom suitors vying for her hand in a grand aerial waltz. As Bronwyn spun slowly on her long axis, like a spindle, she closed her eyes and thought,
I’m like the clockwork dancer atop a music box. I will turn and turn even after the spring runs down and the music stops; I will waltz here until I die. Then my corpse will waltz; it will waltz until the flesh falls from its bones. My bones will waltz until their ligaments disintegrate and the bones spin away from one another, revolving until they become dust. Then every separate mote of dust will revolve until it dissolves into its every particular atom and molecule, and these will then continue to revolve and dance and waltz with each other forever and ever and ever . . .

“Bronwyn!” cried the professor. “Keep your eyes open!” His warning was, however, too late and the miserable princess erupted like an overtaxed pressure cooker. “Oh, my dear!” commiserated Wittenoom, while the other scientist only glared darkly, making no attempt to disguise his disgust. The professor unlatched his harness and, with a gentle push, drifted toward Bronwyn, who had curled into a ball, now the center of her own miniature planetary system of orbiting globules of digestive débris.

“Doctor Hughenden,” the professor said, while catching hold of the girl’s ankle, “please find something with which to gather up this mess.”

As Wittenoom drew the princess toward the floor of the compartment, like a captive balloon, the other scientist, with a snarl, unfastened his restraining belts and began the distasteful job of carefully gathering Bronwyn’s effluvia in a bag woven of a fine mesh.

“Are you all right now?” asked the professor as he fastened Bronwyn into her couch.

“I feel much better,” she replied weakly. “But what happened? What’s going on? Are we falling?”

“No. Or at least not exactly. Not the way you mean, anyway.”

BOOK: A Company of Heroes Book Four: The Scientist
8.65Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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