Flaming Zeppelins (20 page)

From Earth the eruption was noted by astronomers, but there were no definite conclusions as to the cause. Nothing like it had ever been seen.

Twenty-six objects sped toward Earth. They were observed in our day and night skies as twenty-six flaming streaks.

They all smacked the Earth or its waters. Several in America, several in Europe, one just outside of London, one in a lake in Darkest Africa, another in India, several in the Siberian wastes, four in the Atlantic, four in the Pacific. One in the Sandwich Islands.

There were all kinds of guesses as to the source of these objects, but no one knew at the time that it was the beginning of an invasion from Mars, or that more flashes of light would follow.

And no one knew about another problem.

The very fabric of time and space was in jeopardy.

In the Casbah of Tangier, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, sweaty as nitroglycerine, drunk as a skunk and just as smelly, resided in his stained white suit on a loose mattress that bled goose down and dust, and by lamplight he pondered the loss of his shoes and the bloated body of his pet monkey, Huck Finn.

Huck lay on the only bookshelf in the little sweat hole, and he was swollen and beaded with big blue flies. A turd about the size and shape of a fig was hanging out of his ass, and his tongue protruded from his mouth as if it were hoping to crawl away to safety. He still wore the little red hat with chin strap and the green vest Twain had put on him, but the red shorts with the ass cut out for business were missing.

Twain was uncertain what had done the old boy in, but he was dead and pantsless for whatever reason, and had managed in a final gastronomic burst to stick that one fig-sized turd to one of the two books on the shelf,
Moby-Dick,
and his distended tongue lay not far from the other book,
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,
written by Twain's good friend Jules Verne.

Huck, bookended by sea stories, lay in dry dock.

Twain rose slowly, bent over his pet and sighed. The room stank of monkey and monkey poo. With reluctance, Twain clutched Huck by the feet, and as he lifted him, the tenacious turd took hold of the heavy tome of
Moby-Dick
and lifted it as well. Twain shook Huck, and
Moby-Dick,
along with the turd, came loose. Twain then peeked carefully out the only window at the darkness of the Casbah below, and tossed Huck through the opening.

It was a good toss and Huck sailed.

Twain heard a kind of whapping sound, realized he had tossed Huck with such enthusiasm, he had smacked the wall on the other side of the narrow alley.

It was a cold way to end a good friendship, but Twain hardly felt up to burying the little bastard, and was actually pissed that the beast had died on him. Huck had wandered off for a day, come back sickly, vomited a few times, then set about as if to doze on the bookshelf.

Sometime during the night, Twain heard a sound that he thought was the release of his own gas, but upon lighting the lamp, found it in fact to be Huck who had launched that sticky, fig-shaped turd. He saw the little monkey kick a few times and go still.

Twain, too drunk to do anything, too drunk to care, put out the lamp and went back to sleep.

A few hours later, hung over, but sober enough to wonder if it had all been a dream, lit his lamp to find that Huck was indeed dead as the Victorian novel, but without the shelf life. Flies were enjoying themselves by surveying every inch of Huck, and due to the intense African heat, Huck had acquired an aroma that would have swooned a vulture.

No question about it. He had to go.

With Huck dead and tossed, Twain decided to pour himself a drink, but discovered he had none. The goatskin of wine was empty. Twain dropped it on the stone floor, stood on it, hoping to coax a few drops to the nozzle, but, alas, nothing. Dry as a Moroccan ditch in mid-summer.

Twain removed his coat, shook it out, draped it over the back of the chair, seated himself. He sat there and thought about what to do next. He had sold all of his book collection, except
20,000 Leagues,
which was signed, and the be-turded
Moby-Dick.
He didn't even have copies of his own books.

It was depressing.

When he was strong enough, he rose and made coffee in his little glass pot. It was weak coffee because there were only yesterday's grounds left, and the biscuit tin contained only a couple of stale biscuits which he managed to eat by dipping them in the coffee.

By the time he had finished breakfast, light was oozing through the window and he could hear the sounds of the Casbah below. Blowing out his lamp, he recovered
Moby-Dick
from the floor, wiped it clean with a cloth and the remains of the coffee. It left a slight stain, coffee, not shit, but he hoped it wouldn't damage what value the book might have. Tangier was full of readers of most anything in English (except his books, it seemed)
20,000 Leagues.

It would be just enough money for a real meal of fruit and olives, and a bit of wine, as well as the rent. Which seemed pointless.

What after that? There was no place for him to work, and his new novel was going about as well as his life had. Everyone he knew and loved was dead. Well, almost. There were a few friends, Verne among them.

Twain searched about and found his missing shoes, then he grabbed a big white canvas bag and stuffed it with a few belongings, his manuscript in progress, gathered up the two books and headed out into the Casbah. As he climbed down the narrow stairs and rushed into the street, he came upon Huck's body being feasted upon by dogs.

The biggest of the dogs, a mongrel with one eye and scum around it, wrestled Huck away from the others, and darted down the street with his prize, the monkey's tail dragging on the flagstones.

Twain sighed.

Perhaps when he died, that was what was to become of him. Tossed in the street, eaten by dogs.

It was better than being savaged to death by book critics. The sonsabitches.

The street stank of yesterday's fish and today's fresh fish. Blood dripped from the tables and gathered in little rust-colored pools and slipped in between the grooves in the stones. The reek of ripe olives bit the air and chewed at Twain's nostrils. He wandered the crooked streets, which just six months ago he would have found harder to navigate than the Minotaur's maze, and came upon Abdul laying out his sales goods on a worn but still beautiful Moroccan rug of blue, green and violet. Among the items on the rug were a few books. Twain recognized titles he had written, books from his very own collection. Each one of them reminded him of the few coins he had contributed to drink and women, mostly drink.

Abdul eyed Twain with his bag and two books under his arm.

“My friend. More books. You can see I do not need them.”

“These are my last books, Abdul. I sell these, I'm taking the ferry to Spain.”

“And what there? You should stay here among friends.”

“You old pirate. You've given me little for what I've sold you. These are fine books.”

“They are not worth much.”

“I sold you copies of my own novels, signed.”

“Alas, they are not worth much either. Perhaps had they not been signed.”

“Very funny, Abdul. If I didn't feel like an elephant had sat on my head, I would give you a good old-fashioned American ass whipping.”

Abdul pulled back his robe and revealed in his belt a curved, holstered blade with an ornate handle of jewels and silver.

“Well, maybe I wouldn't,” Twain said. “Will you buy the books, Abdul?”

“Promise you have no more?”

“I promise.”

Twain squatted, laid them on the blanket Abdul had stretched out on the ground.

“What's this stain on
Moby-Dick?
”

“A fig got squashed on it. My monkey did it.”

“Where is Huck?”

“He leaped out of the window this morning and committed suicide. Landed right on his head.”

Abdul looked at him.

“Even monkeys fall out of trees,” Twain said.

“Very well, I will give you…”

“In dollars, Abdul.”

“Very well, I will give you four dollars.”

“Jesus Christ, the
20,000 Leagues
is signed to me by Jules Verne. The both of us certainly have some coinage for collectors.”

“Okay. How about I give you ten dollars?”

“How about you give me fifteen?”

“Deal.”

It was more money than Twain expected to receive for the books, so he bought some figs, a skin of water, and boarded the ferry to Spain. It took most of the day, and the sea was choppy. Twain lost his figs and water early on, throwing them up in a brown stream over the side.

As he leaned over the railing, watched the water churn below, he considered losing himself as well, but gradually came to his senses. He realized that he was feeling better as the wine wore off, realized too this was the first time in six months he had been truly sober.

It wasn't a great feeling, but it really wasn't that bad either.

Upon arriving on the coast of Spain, he and the passengers, as well as a dozen goats and a cage of chickens, disembarked. It felt good to be on solid ground, and after buying some coffee in a little outdoor cafe, fending off a half-dozen souvenir peddlers and a fat Spanish whore who wanted to sell him a quickie, or for half the price, squeeze him off between her legs, he decided to splurge another coin and catch a cart ride to where Verne was staying, working on yet another successful novel.

Twain envied Verne. He seemed able to write at any time and under any circumstance. As of late, all Twain could think about was the death of his wife, Olivia, and the death of his daughters. Susy by disease, Jean, drowned in a tub while having a fit, and Clara, married and gone from him, living somewhere in Europe, a place unbeknownst to him since beginning his wanderings. He hoped her life was good. He hoped he would find her again someday. He hoped even more that some of his old self would return to him, like a lost dog, worn out and tired, looking for a familiar bed, a currycomb, a pat on the head and a good meal.

As the cart clattered along, Twain noted the beautiful coast. Perhaps this was the key to Verne's success. A beautiful view. The Casbah was interesting and exciting in its own way, but it wasn't beautiful, and too much excitement and noise did not a good writer make. Here you had the ocean and the shoreline with natural white sand, and there were the rocks upon which the ocean foamed, and way out beyond that fine blue water, a thin brown strip that was Africa, the coast of Morocco from which he had come.

As they neared Verne's residence, Twain stopped the driver, paid him, and in spite of his old aching bones, decided to walk along the coast and wind his way to where Verne lived in a beautiful villa on a rise of white rocks overlooking the sea.

As he walked along the beach, his bag slung over his shoulder, Twain discovered a strange thing. A large black shape with something shiny attached to it lay near the ocean on the sand. At first he couldn't place what it was. It appeared to be an oilskin bag with something metal hanging out of one end, but upon closer examination he was amazed to discover it was a seal. A seal with a metal object, a box, fastened to its head. There were a number of deep red cuts in the seal's body, and a chunk had been taken out of one flipper by what were obviously some very nasty teeth.

Shark teeth, Twain figured.

Twain bent over the seal, nudged it with his foot. The seal opened one eye.

Very slowly the seal rolled over. Twain saw there was a cord around his neck, and fastened to that was a writing tablet without paper, and a stubby pencil. There was also a chain around the seal's neck, and from that hung a pair of sand-sprinkled spectacles.

He discovered there was another thing even more amazing than a seal with a metal cap, pad and pencil, and reading glasses about its neck.

There were little thumbs growing from its flippers.

When Twain arrived at Verne's villa pulling the seal on his formerly white coat, Verne was on the second-floor landing, sitting with pen and paper, working on a dark novel about Paris, thinking about how old he felt, the loss of his wife and children, who had gone off to live somewhere in France with the explorer Phileas Fogg.

The dirty bastard.

Verne tried to concentrate on his work.

He had submitted pages of his novel to his editor, but the editor had been appalled. Much too noir for them, lacked the glitter of his other novels, and they felt his readers would be disappointed.

It certainly was a dark book, and not optimistic in the least, but the thing was, Verne wasn't feeling too optimistic right then, and the novel reflected that. He felt he had fallen into a trap of writing only what many were now calling children's adventure stories. He longed to reach deeper and write darker. He wished he had his children back, and his wife had a hot croissant up her ass, and Fogg had one too. Neither croissant buttered, and both day old and stiff.

He did have his experiments, his plans for devices that he worked on from time to time, and they had of course made some impact on the world, but so far their use and knowledge of them were restricted primarily to himself and his servant, Passepartout, and to a handful of rich associates; the devices were far too expensive to give away, and patents had to be protected.

He was thinking about these things as he pondered his maligned manuscript with distracted concentration, so when he saw his old friend Samuel, Mark Twain to the world, he was surprised and heartened to have a break from his work and editorial troubles, as well as curious to discover what his bedraggled friend was pulling on top of his coat.

Downstairs, Verne met Twain in the front yard and saw what he had. When Verne spoke English, his French accent was noticeable, but not too heavy. He had been practicing his English for some time, and had learned much about American colloquialism from the works of Twain, though he still had the occasional French phrasing. When he spoke to his friend, he called him by his real name, Samuel.