Homunculus (37 page)

The blimp swayed in the night sky on winds which seemed to be blowing into the stars. The moon rode at anchor, heaving on a heavenly groundswell, encircled by a radiant halo of stellar light, as if the stars themselves were ship’s lamps that illuminated the invisible avenue down which rode Birdlip’s craft, its gondola creaking to and fro in practiced rhythms. St. Ives wondered how many people were mesmerized there on the green; how many were perched in the treetops, peered skyward through unshuttered windows, or stood craning their necks along the dark and muddy roads that led up out of smoky London. Hundreds of thousands? And all of them still - not even the peep of a slanting bat or the chirp of a cricket in the nearby wood broke the silence. There was simply the shrub-scented night, heavy, quiet, expectant, and the slow creak, creak, creak of the swaying gondola, lit now by the sliver of moon. There at the helm stood the skeletal Birdlip, the indomitable pilot, his coat a tatter of webby lace, wisping ’round the ivory swerve of his ribcage. The moon showed straight through the coat like lamplight through muslin - seemed magnified, if that were possible, as if the coat were a wonderful bit of glass spun of silk and silver that drew through it the accumulated light of the heavens.

St. Ives couldn’t move. What did it mean, this humming dirigible that had, after years of circuitous wanderings in the atmosphere, decided to wend its way homeward at last? What did it signify? Birdlip knew. He’d pursued something - a demon, a will o’ the wisp, the reflection of a phantom moon that beckoned on the night wind and receded toward unimagined horizons. Had Birdlip caught it? Had it eluded him? And what, in the name of all that was holy, would poor Parsons make of it? He’d shortly be faced with yet another fleshless visage. What, wondered St. Ives, did it all mean?

The blimp hovered fifty feet above the Heath, seeming actually to rise now, following the natural curve of the hill, intent upon landing not just anywhere, but at some predetermined spot, an utterly necessary spot, as if it were indeed piloted yet by the straddle-legged doctor. His French cocked hat was settled low over his forehead, shading his empty eye sockets, the jellied orbs within having long since been burned by a remorseless sun and picked away by seabirds. What strange eyesight did Birdlip retain? How clearly did he see?

TWENTY

BIRDLIP

B
ill Kraken, sitting astride the limb of an oak some five feet above the heads of the crowd below, wondered much the same thing. In none of Kraken’s investigations into science was there anything as grand, as majestic, as the homeward-bound Birdlip and his astonishing craft. Something, Kraken was certain, was pending. He could feel it in the air - a static charge that shivered through the masses who stood mute with anticipation.

The descending blimp swung low overhead. People leaned out of the uppermost branches of trees, endeavoring to touch it. It seemed to Kraken as if the sky was nothing but blimp. He glanced back over his shoulder, looking proudly at Langdon St. Ives who stood before his own incredible ship. The night, indeed, was full of marvels. And he, Bill Kraken, squid merchant, pea pod man, had a hand in them. The man beside him in the branches, an unshaven pinch-faced man in a stocking cap, hadn’t. Kraken smiled at him good-naturedly. It wasn’t his fault, after all, that he didn’t hobnob with geniuses. The man gave him a dark look, disliking the familiarity. Someone above trod on the top of Kraken’s head in an effort to boost himself even higher. Below him on the green, stumbling from shadow to shadow as if working his way surreptitiously toward where the blimp seemed destined to land, lurched a man who appeared to be sick or drunk. Kraken squinted at him, disbelieving. It was Willis Pule.

Kraken dangled one leg down along the trunk, feeling for the crotch of two great limbs that forked up some six feet from the ground. Things, apparently, were hotting up. Pule disappeared into the shadows, then reappeared again beyond a heaped bonfire, the dancing orange light of which seemed to intensify the darkness behind it.

Not twenty paces behind Pule, possessed by a determination that belied his age, Shiloh the New Messiah limped along, accompanied by a straggling covey of converts strung along like quail, half intent on catching up to the disappeared Pule, half intent on Birdlip’s craft. The blimp hung now over the green, suspended by the magic, perhaps, of its Keeble engine. The evangelist was lit for a moment by the same firelight which had illuminated Pule and which now betrayed on the old man a face twisted slantwise in a rictus of loathing, the messiah pursuing the worm, the devil who had made away with the head of his mother, and who now carried one of the fabulous boxes, quite conceivably the same box stolen hours ago by the imposter in the wagon.

And there, sliding along down the edge of the crowd, came Theophilus Godall, carrying with
him,
Kraken was horrified to see, a round, metallic object that could be nothing other than the Marseilles Pinkle, glinting in the firelight. He was clearly unseen either by Pule or the old man. But Bill Kraken saw him, and so did St. Ives. The tune had begun to be called, and it was time for Kraken to dance to it. He slid to the ground and set out, running straight on into Kelso Drake, an inch and a half of cigar protruding from Drake’s mouth like a blackened tongue.

If he’d had time to think, Kraken would have sailed back into his tree, scaled the slippery trunk like an ape. But he had no such time. He launched himself at the millionaire. “Here’s for Ashbless!” he cried, an obtuse reference to the bullet Billy Deener had drilled into his treasured volume. And he struck Drake squarely on the chin, snatching the Keeble box from his hands as Drake fell sputtering, stupefied with surprise, his hat sailing off to reveal a bandaged head.

Kraken turned and ran, holding the box before him as if it were a pitcher of water he daren’t spill. Drake pounded along behind, filling the suddenly tumultuous night with curses, drowned out when a hundred thousand voices arose in a sudden monumental cheer. The blimp, its time come round at last, shot forward and settled in onto the green, not twenty-five feet from St. Ives’ space vehicle. The bulk of the crowd surged up the hill behind it. The ghoul in the stuffed chair sat placid as a man at tea in front of it. The Royal Academy, directed by the indomitable Parsons, clustered around it, eager to have a look at the skeletal sailor, home at last from the sea.

Kraken angled away into the rushing crowd. There was the Captain, stumping along, and William Keeble at the heels of his stalwart wife, all of them charging toward the blimp, toward the fourth and final box that rode within. “Cap’n!” shouted Kraken, capering along behind them, carried in a rush by the swarming masses, A sea of heads cut off his view. Someone trod on his toe. He stumbled. A dozen people smashed past him. He was pushed from his knees onto his face, nearly trampled, lying atop the Keeble box.

“Filthy piece of dirt!” hissed a voice in his ear, and as he hunched forward in an effort to stand, he was borne down again by the weight of Kelso Drake, his cigar gone, his jaws working as if he were full of speeches too vile to utter.

Kraken plowed his elbow into Drake’s nose. A hand closed over his face, tugging his head back. He clamped his scattered teeth onto a finger and chewed away until the teeth closed against bone. A shriek erupted in his ear, and the hand was jerked away, nearly tearing the precious tooth away with it.

Kraken stumbled forward, half rose, and was elbowed sideways into a host of people, slowing now in the press. He was on his feet, though. Indeed, it would be difficult to fall, closed in as he was by the throng. Over his shoulder he could see Kelso Drake, cursing at the people around him - people who were in no mood to be cursed. A fist shot out and clipped Drake in the ear. He lurched aside. Kraken grinned. Drake was obviously possessed by the thought that millionaires ought not to be treated so. He railed at the man who he supposed had hit him - the wrong man, as it turned out, a man who had the general shape of a hogshead and the facial consistency of a bag of stones.

“Here now!” shouted the man, not wasting words, and he slammed Drake on the nose to the general encouragement of the crowd. Kraken pushed toward the erupting mêlée, shouting happily to see the color of Drake’s blood. The industrialist flailed like a windmill, utterly ineffectively, so far gone was he in his anger and loathing.

Kraken hoped to get in a blow or two of his own, but his hopes were dashed when, with sudden inspiration, he shouted: “That’s the man who murdered the child!” at the top of his lungs, pointing past the circle of Drake’s tormenters into the millionaire’s face. A cry of disgust and abandonment arose, and before Kraken could have a go at him, Drake disappeared beneath a monsoon of whirling fists. “Get him!” cried Kraken, but the suggestion, he quickly saw, was unnecessary. He pushed along toward the blimp, hugging his box.

Ahead of him, two dozen or so men scrambled to string ropes around the craft, cordoning it off against the possible rush of the masses. But the London populace, apparently, harbored suspicions, fears, and perhaps reverence, for they hovered round the perimeter of an oblong patch of ground on which sat the blimp, the corpse in the chair, and the starship. Parsons directed the roping efforts, arguing all the while with both the Captain and St. Ives. Captain Powers grew more heated by the moment, shouting that Parsons had no “jurisdiction.” Parsons attempted to ignore him, but cast meaningful glances at St. Ives, as if to encourage the scientist to calm his bellowing friend.

St. Ives, however, was distracted by a scuffling and shouting off to his right, beyond the bonfire, which blazed now with increased ferocity, fed by a hail of limbs and forest debris tossed by the enthusiastic mob. St. Ives stepped along toward the scuffle when he saw amid it the head and shoulders of Theophilus Godall. Bill Kraken sprang into view just then, hurrying toward St. Ives, carrying his Keeble box like a trophy.

Willis Pule writhed and grunted, heaving in a tangle of grasping fanatics that included Shiloh the New Messiah. Godall circled round, intent on the box that Pule clutched. Jack Owlesby circled gamely beside him, looking for an opportunity. Pule shrieked; the box jumped out of his hands and was snatched by a beefy young man in a soiled robe. Shiloh hauled the box away from the man and lurched toward clear ground, jabbering excitedly, having no earthly idea which of the many strange boxes he possessed, but certain that the lot of them were somehow holy and somehow rightfully his.

Jack Owlesby strode along after him. The several parishioners who made as if to stop Jack found themselves peering at the business end of Godall’s pistol. Jack reached past the old man and snatched the box, leaping away toward the blimp. Shiloh turned, an unuttered shriek stretching his mouth. Godall, smiling calmly, thrust the Pinkle into the old man’s outstretched hands.

“What!” cried the evangelist, setting in to pitch the thing away. He saw it clearly for the first time even as he threw it. His eyes, yellow in the light of the fire, seemed to expand like balloons. He checked his throw, warbling out a little deflating cry. But it was too late. The Pinkle threw out a spoonful of sparks that whirled around the thrusting rubber head and flew in a wheeling arc into a stand of shadowy bracken and broom that muffled the strange noises and lights emitted by the orb.

The evangelist stiffened, his mouth going suddenly slack. Jack was beyond his reach. The bird he’d had momentarily in hand had flown. But here was another in the bush. He turned, ignoring Godall, who made no move to stop him. In a second he was gone, creeping through the dark shrubs on his hands and knees, as unheeding of the apocalyptic gyrations on the Heath roundabout him as if he’d been one of Narbondo’s ghouls.

The evening, in the space of five minutes, had begun to look very satisfactory to St. Ives. Here was Jack Owlesby, toting a recovered Keeble box. Here was Bill Kraken, toting another. There was Theophilus Godall with yet another. St. Ives smiled at Jack and reached out to shake the lad’s hand. Evil, it was clear, was fairly literally being pummeled. Jack grinned, the flames roared, the Captain shouted, and Bill Kraken, with an alarming suddenness, pitched forward toward the edge of the fire.