Flaming Zeppelins (24 page)

“When the box was opened,” Verne said, “the lever was pulled, and it was rushed full of the helium.”

“Helium?”

“A gas. It works very good to make things float. Passepartout designed it so that a small compressor filled the balloon instantly.”

“All of that helium out of that little box.”

“A new design,” Verne said. “A new way to condense helium. You will note the compressor in the bottom of the box.”

“Amazing,” Twain said.

“Yes,” Verne said. “It is. The gas is very hard to come by, and it is very seriously compressed. Passepartout's design is years and years ahead of anything anyone else is doing.”

“Thank you, sir,” Passepartout said.

“You are quite welcome, my friend.”

“It's certainly obvious that it is advanced,” Twain said. “Like the boat.”

Verne nodded, “Like the boat.”

That got Twain to thinking.

“Is this a prototype too?” he asked.

“In a way, my friend, it is. Yes,” Verne said. “We have never used it before, but, it is better constructed… But…”

“But what?”

“There is a problem.”

“Figures. And that is?”

“It is not designed for the too long flight, you know. It will lose its buoyancy after a time.”

“A short time?” Twain asked.

“Maybe not so short,” Verne said.

“Maybe?”

“Who knows?”

“Great,” Twain said. “We might as well shit on ourselves and call it lilac water.”

The balloon kept rising and the sun was high and yellow and dripping over their balloon like a runny egg yolk. They sat in the shadow made by the balloon, and the wind carried them along, very fast, along the coast of Spain. Down below they could see the stalking machines.

Many of them.

Rays flashed. Farmhouses burned. They could see people running.

“Sweet Virgin,” said Verne.

“I hope they don't look up,” Twain said. “Those rays have quite a range.”

They didn't look up.

Our heroes sailed along for some time, and then from under one of the cushions, Passepartout brought out a container of water, some food, bread and honey, utensils, and they ate and drank.

“How do we know we're going in the right direction?” Twain asked.

“That is one of the drawbacks,” Passepartout said. “We do not. We have no navigational equipment on board.”

“Oh, good,” Twain said. “And, for that matter, what is the right direction? Where are we going? If we had a compass, at least, we could chart a course.”

“If we could control the balloon's direction,” Verne said. “We can not.”

“No,” Passepartout said. “We can not.”

“Priceless,” Mr. Twain said. “You don't have a plan?”

“My plan was to save our asses,” Verne said. “Our asses are saved. At least for the moment.”

“We won't go any higher, will we?” Twain said.

“No,” Verne said. “Or, we shouldn't. And, in time, when land is near, we will leak the helium, bring us down. The important thing is we are away from those machines and our dissolving boat.”

“I suppose,” Twain said, finishing off a slice of bread with honey, “that is for the better.”

In time they all lay about on the cushions and slept, Ned snuggled up close with Twain, his nose under Twain's chin.

The balloon, a giant tangerine in the sky, sailed on.

The storm hit them like a fist.

It came down out of the sky like the howling vengeance of Zeus, wrapped itself around the balloon and tossed it this way and that, nearly throwing them all into the foaming ocean below. They managed from one of the containers under the couch cushions a large tarp that fitted almost snugly over the top of the basket. They fastened it there with the ties sewn to it, cowered under it, fearing any moment the balloon would be snapped from its cables. Or the basket would rip. Or the tarp would be torn off and they would be tossed like dice into the ocean.

The storm raged on and the balloon sailed on, making Ned so sick he stuck his nose out between tarp and basket and let loose with a stream of fish-smelling vomit.

The smell of long-ago eaten fish came back to him on the wind, and strangely, made him a bit peckish.

When Ned was finished with this, he poked his head completely free of the tarp and looked out and tried to determine most anything there might be to determine. This proved no small feat.

He could not tell if they were directly over the water or high in the sky. The storm had become so furious it had balled up the world.

All Ned knew was that the ball he was in was a mixture of black and gray and bursts of lightning. And that in some manner, shape or form, they were between sea and sky, but if they were high or low, he could not determine.

He thought that if it were not for gravity, they could be flying upside down and he would never know it. He listened for the crash of his friend, the sea, but nothing.

There was just the howl and cry of the wind, the pounding rain and the strips of lightning that tossed about them as if they were spears being thrown from heaven.

How long before one hits, thought Ned? How long?

After a particularly ugly chain-reaction of hot lightning, so close the smell of ozone stuffed his nostrils like a rag, the wet-nosed seal pulled his head in under the tarp and lay down and tried to sleep to the toss and whirl of the basket. The sleep of the exhausted and the fearful overcame him as it did the others, and he spiraled down deep. In his dreams he was tossed into the sea, his home. The sea, though turbulent and frothed with storm, was smooth and silent beneath the waves. Full of fish. Great fish. And he took the fish, and he ate the fish, and finally he dreamed not at all.

The basket became a kind of bassinet, rocked by Mother Wind, rolled to the slam-pat-whammy of the cold, driving rain, the unmelodious lullaby given voice by the loud mouth of Captain Thunder and the snap crackle pop percussion of Old Man Lightning.

Sometime while they slept, the storm ran its course. The sun poked out and it grew warm, finally hot. Twain rose up in a sweat and removed the tarp, folded it, put it away. The air was dry and heavy as chains.

None of the others moved. Ned lay on his back, his tail flipper in the air, his arm flippers folded over his chest. Twain thought the look on his face was one of satisfaction, as if he had just gobbled a tuna. Verne and Passepartout lay back to back like an old married couple.

Twain peeked over the side. A calm blue sea. He looked out, up and around. A calm, clear, blue sky and a huge yellow sun. But there was one peculiarity.

The sky seemed to have a rip in it. Like a painting of the sky that had been torn and pushed back together. Between the edges of the rip, Twain thought he could see movement, but he couldn't identify it. The rip went from way on high, down to the sea, dropped into the horizon.

Peculiar, to say the least, Twain thought.

Cloud formation?

He couldn't decide. Gave it up.

They lived. That was the important thing. They lived.

Twain lay back down, surprised himself by falling asleep again. And he slept well.

There were flashes of light and waves of darkness in the crack in the sky. Shiny things. Dull things. Moving things. And then the crack narrowed.

Eventually it would be nothing more than a fine blue line.

Then that too would fade away.

But, before it did, something sailed out of the crack, onto the dark blue ocean below.

Black sails.

The Jolly Roger.

A large ship.

Pirates.

Once upon a time I was a normal seal. This was before I was captured by Captain Bemo and given a great brain in this tin hat beneath this fine fez by none other than the infamous Doctor Momo on his secret island. My memories of this time are hazy. Once my brain power was increased, and I was given thumbs attached to my flippers, I became ravenous to learn, and read all the books that Captain Bemo had in the library aboard the
Naughty Lass,
and most of those on the island owned by Doctor Momo.

I did skip a number of his more graphic erotica books, as these tended to arouse me, and there were no female seals in my vicinity. You see, with the increase in my brain power, my sexual desires had increased as well. This waiting around for a female to be in heat, that was a bore. Sex for recreation. I want to state here and now that I'm for it. Long as the partners are willing, then why not.

But I have veered.

The books I loved the most were the ones the sailors owned and shared, the dime novels of Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill Hickok and Annie Oakley. Books about people I eventually met. I might also add that I read a book called
Frankenstein,
and I met the monster of that book, as well. He was really nice. The book only gave one side of the story, and it is certainly not well known that Doctor Frankenstein died in a skating accident. This is how the monster told it, and I believe it. He seemed like a genuine sort of chap, and personally, I have no reason to doubt him.

The book, the biography of Frankenstein and his creation, takes quite a different slant, and gives the good doctor a different sort of demise, but as I said, I'm sticking with the monster's version. I got it straight from his dead lips, and he seemed as sincere as a hard-on.

Pardon my language, but I have been amongst a rough crowd.

Before the operation to make me smart, mostly what I remember is eating fish, mating with female seals (of course), and avoiding sharks.

I do not like sharks. Not in the least bit. I have my reasons. One of which is that they ate a friend of mine. Or what was left of him. A talking head in a jar. He was the aforementioned famous Buffalo Bill and my hero, and they ate him. They tried to eat me too.
¹

They did bite me a lot, but I survived and I washed up on the shore that is called Spain and was rescued by none other than the famous writer, Mark Twain.

He is known primarily as a humorist, but since I have known him, he has not been that funny. He seems profoundly sad. I am sad too. I miss Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill Hickok and Annie Oakley and Sitting Bull, and there was also Cat. She was beautiful, like Annie, only she had once been a cat of some kind before Doctor Momo operated on her. He operated on himself as well. He gave himself a horse-size penis. Actually, he literally gave himself a horse penis. I assisted in the operation. He conducted it while awake, under a mild anesthesia. I think he liked a bit of pain. That was Doctor Momo's way.

Then again, that is all part of another story, contained in my diaries, and perhaps someday I will write of them, perhaps as fiction, perhaps as autobiography, perhaps as both.

But this time I'm telling you about, I was way up high in a balloon, and the day grew hot. Along we sailed, like a great orange moth, gliding with the wind, willy-nilly, with no particular place to go. We had escaped being killed by what Mr. Verne believed to be Martian invaders, and what were certainly large octopus-looking things with two assholes. I saw the assholes when we came upon a dead one lying on the beach.

Anyway, we escaped from those eight-armed sonsabitches by boat, then by balloon.

At first I found the whole thing quite the adventure. But after going through a horrible storm that made me think we would crash into the sea, and then to hope we would, I began to feel otherwise. Even when the storm passed, I grew anxious and felt restricted by the constructs of the balloon. Its interior was covered quite briskly and there was little to see on a second tour. You also had to shit over the side, and this is a precarious feat at best. And for me, a very heavy seal (which is not to say I am not trim, but I am a seal after all) with my ass dangling over the edge of a balloon while my companions moved to the far side to balance my weight, held my flippers so that my ass would not overload my body and send me dropping, it was, to say the least, an embarrassing situation.

I held it a lot. Which, I don't have to tell you, is not healthy.

With me in the balloon was Mr. Twain, the great writer, and Mr. Verne, also a great writer and an inventor. With him was his servant, friend, and fellow inventor, Passepartout. They were all real nice guys. It saddens me… Well, I will not go there. Not yet.

There was also limited food and water, and though, since the alteration of my brain, I can eat things like bread and honey with a certain delight, it is still not the same as fish, and beyond thinking about fish, which I must confess I am frequent to do, I was concerned about the state of our water. Already we had consumed half of the bottle Passepartout had produced from under a cushion, which was the lid to our food container.

And though he assured us that there was yet another container of the same, as well as slightly different foods in tins, stuffed beneath another couch cushion, I was still nervous about our odds. I confess it also passed through my mind, without any true warranty, I should hasten to add, that for three hungry men, a plump seal might began to look quite tasty after a few days with one's belly gnawing at itself.

This, of course, was most likely a silly consideration, though I did think that once I caught Passepartout giving me the once over, the way a butcher might eye a prize hog at a stock show (or so I've read in dime novels). But the heat, the boredom, the fear of death makes one think and consider all sorts of strange things, and even if I were to know for sure this passed through his mind, I forgive him. I forgive him, too, because I sometimes saw the three of them as long white fish. And I thought about how those fish might taste. All I had to do was get them out of those clothes… Well, you see how it was.

Anyway, I thought about food a lot. I wondered if one of the tins inside the food container under the cushion had fish in it. If it did, I wondered if I could work the can opener, or cut into it with a pocket knife. I have thumbs, and I can do some things you wouldn't imagine a seal might do, but the use of really fine motor skills in the area of grabbing and such is not a specialty. I can pull my dick. I do that well. But I've discovered that this isn't an area of conversation that my companions wish to visit. They have, in fact, asked me not to do it while around them. Somewhere, in all my studies, perhaps due to my being around the foul and perverted Doctor Momo, I never learned that this whole yanking the tow line was a private matter.