Johnny Graphic and the Etheric Bomb (13 page)

Uncle Louie looked uncomfortably serious and a cold lump formed in the pit of Johnny’s stomach. “Yeah? What?”

“Two telegrams came in after you went to bed last night,” said Mel. “Both from Mr. Cargill.”

Johnny gulped. “Uh-huh?”

“A judge has forbidden the
Clarion
, or any news outlet, from publishing our stories in the Plains Republic.”

Johnny scowled. “Well, that stinks. Nobody at home’s gonna see our stuff. Without our stories, the
Clarion
’s circulation numbers won’t go up, like Mr. Cargill wants. So what’s he doing about it?”

“I guess the
Clarion
’s attorneys are going to court to try and get the government’s ban overturned,” said Uncle Louie. “But there’s no telling how long that’ll take.”

Mel and Uncle Louie and even Nina still looked pretty grim. That must mean the second item of news was even worse.

“And you know that Dame Honoria went to hide out on her island in Rotonesia,” Mel said.

Johnny nodded. “Yeah. Gorton Island. Her favorite place in the world outside of Gilbeyshire.”

Mel sighed dismally. “She’s vanished.”

“You mean she might be
dead?”
Johnny yelped.

Uncle Louie jumped in. “We don’t know that for a fact. Authorities searched all over the island. There wasn’t anybody there. No living people. No ghosts. The police talked to folks on nearby islands, but no one knows a thing.”

Johnny pulled himself bolt upright. “Then we have to forget about Mrs. Deng’s murder in Tor Chan. We’ve got to go to Gorton Island and figure out what happened to Dame Honoria. If she’s alive, we’ve got to rescue her.”

“No disagreement here,” Mel said.

“But we can’t leave for a few days,” said Uncle Louie. “Nina and I need a spot of training at the Zephyr Lines base. And, of course, our news photographer here has to heal up a little and get himself a new camera.”

“And I’m going to talk with Betty Mongke,” Mel added. “After all, we came to Silver City to report on her father’s murder. She might have some valuable info for us. If you feel up to it, Johnny, you ought to come with me tomorrow and take a few pictures.”

“So long as I can get that new camera,” said Johnny. “’Cause no sore leg’s going to keep me off the job.”

Chapter 25

Wednesday, October 23, 1935

Silver City

Mongke Eng’s daughter lived in a cramped, dingy Jadetown apartment three flights up. In a corner near a window sat a painter’s easel, which held an unfinished landscape of rocky outcroppings and gnarly evergreens.

When Johnny and Mel arrived, Betty Mongke greeted them warmly. With the arm that wasn’t in a sling, she motioned them toward her dilapidated kitchen table and mismatched chairs. “Can I offer you some tea?”

“Yes, please,” said Mel, sitting down on a spindly chair that swayed and creaked audibly.

“You don’t have a root beer, do you?” Johnny asked, delicately lowering himself onto his chair. His leg was still plenty sore and it had not been easy getting up those stairs. But no way was he going to miss taking photos of Betty to go with Mel’s story.

“Orange soda okay?” asked Betty.

“You betcha,” replied Johnny. He liked orange soda almost as much as root beer.

Their hostess shouted a few sharp words in Jade tongue and the specter of an old woman floated through the door of what must have been the bedroom. The ghost set about preparing tea, then fetched an orange soda from the refrigerator, opening the bottle and setting it on the counter.

“Mei Ling kept house and cooked for Father,” Betty explained. “He found her on a trip to the Jade Kingdom, after Mother died.”

Betty glanced over her shoulder at the ghost and sighed. Then she whispered, “I think Mei Ling fell in love with him a little. Of course, though he was fond of her, he had no romantic feelings. Still, father’s death devastated the poor thing. I hope she’ll be all right.”

After serving the drinks, Mei Ling bowed deeply, put the tray back on the counter, and disappeared into the kitchen wall.

“I knew about the murders, of course,” Betty Mongke said. “But I had no idea that Father was in such danger. If my sisters and I had realized, we would have taken him to a safe place.”

After a few sips of tea, the artist pushed back her chair and went over to a bookshelf next to her easel. From between two heavy volumes she extracted a battered brown envelope and a cardboard tube. She set the items on the table in front of Mel.

“The day Father died,” she said, “some Steppe Warriors broke into his apartment. He lived above a grocery store several blocks from here. They set the place on fire. Most of the building burned. A tenant, a crippled woman, died. Almost all of Father’s papers and research went up in smoke.”

“I don’t know if you’re aware of it,” said Mel, “but I was attacked by a Steppe Warrior, a female, in my own bedroom.”

“Oh yes,” answered Betty. “It was in all the papers.”

“Johnny tells me she was here in Jadetown yesterday. Back in Zenith she said that they were following the orders of a khan, a leader of some sort. Did your father know anything about that?”

Betty shook her head. “If he did, he never mentioned it. All he ever said is that no one in three centuries had been powerful enough to unite the Steppe clans as khan.”

“So what’re these?” Johnny tapped a finger on the brown envelope and the cardboard tube.

Betty allowed herself a little smile. “Father was a clever man. He saw a pattern in the murders and he knew to take precautions. So he gathered up certain material—”

She opened the big brown envelope first and spilled the contents out onto the table. There was a sheaf of handwritten papers crawling with equations, a carbon copy of a typewritten article, a single issue of
The Annals of the Oskar Hausenhofer Gesellschaft
, a small white envelope, and a color postcard showing one of Jadetown’s great ceremonial gates.

“—and he told Mei Ling that if anything unusual occurred, she was to get this envelope and this tube out of the house and safely to me. When the Steppe Warriors came, Mei Ling slipped away and brought them here. Read this first.” She picked up the postcard and handed it to Mel.

On the back of the card Johnny could see the cramped, spidery handwriting of an old man. Mel read it out loud:

“‘Betty, if you are reading this, something bad has happened. Mei Ling brings you papers of mine that reveal a terrible danger in the ether. And I am partly to blame. Tell no one. Hold this envelope until you are able to safely convey it to young Melanie Graphic, the daughter of my friends William and Lydia Graphic. I love you, my precious little girl.’”

Betty Mongke sighed and dabbed at the tears forming in the corners of her eyes with a paper napkin.

Mel riffled through the first handwritten sheets. “Holy cow! These are Mongke’s advanced notes and equations for the creation of an etheric bomb.”

Betty Mongke looked puzzled, but didn’t say anything.

“Your father didn’t come up with the idea, though,” Mel continued. “Here he credits someone else with putting him on the path, with providing the original science.”

“Who, then?” asked Johnny.

Mel shook her head in astonishment. “Mom and Dad.”

Johnny’s jaw dropped. This news defied belief. “They thought it up? They figured out how to create a bomb?”

“It’s based on their theories of etheric lighting in solid matter. Dad and Mom’s mining and medical work. Mongke says here he couldn’t have done it without them. The three of them thought it up at the big etherists’ conference in Neuport in 1929. And then Mongke worked out the details.”

Betty held up her hand, as if she were a student in a classroom. “Forgive me, but can you tell me what this is? This etheric bomb?”

Mel explained, and Betty’s look turned to horror.

Johnny still found it too incredible to accept. “But Mom and Pop wouldn’t hurt a fly. Why would they do that? Create an explosive so powerful, so destructive? It’s just not like them.”

“Maybe they didn’t think it would actually work,” Mel speculated. “Maybe they figured it’d be a new source of energy, something beneficial. Maybe it was just a big puzzle for them, something scientifically challenging.”

Johnny grabbed the smaller white envelope with Mel’s name scrawled on it. He assumed the handwriting on it was Mongke Eng’s. The old man’s daughter handed him a kitchen knife and he zipped it open. Out came a piece of blue stationery, which he unfolded and started to hand to his sister.

“You read it,” said Mel.

“Okay, this is what he says,” Johnny began. “‘My dear Melanie… If you are reading this, I am no longer among the living. It was my hope to discover what happened to your parents and, if they were alive, to rescue them. Word came from the Contessa di Altamonta, just months ago. And you will see her evidence with your own eyes. I am sure you will do the right thing. With deep affection, Mongke Eng.’”

“The contessa?” exclaimed Mel. “What does she have to do with this?”

Betty Mongke looked baffled. “Who is this woman? I’ve never heard of her.”

“She’s a dead artist and a noblewoman. My mother befriended her many years ago. But we haven’t heard from her in a long time. It’s kind of strange that your dad was in touch with her.”

“We better see what’s in the tube, Mel,” said Johnny, feeling suddenly very excited.

Mel nodded and reached into it, pulling out a piece of heavy paper. She uncurled it and scrutinized it closely. “I don’t understand,” she said. Then she held up the paper for Johnny and Betty to see.

The pencil drawing—nearly as sharp and detailed as one of Johnny’s press photos—showed a man and two women. The man had a bushy beard. He and the woman to his right wore tattered winter clothing, and appeared gaunt and exhausted. The second woman was quite pretty and wrapped in a fine fur coat. They were all standing before a yurt. Next to them, on its haunches, sat a giant ice wolf, almost the size of a pony.

Johnny suspected that the location was Okkatek Island, the only habitat of the ice wolf. And the animal must have been a ghost, because the actual species had become extinct over a century earlier.

“That’s Mom and Dad for sure,” gulped Mel. “I don’t know who that other woman is. The signature on the drawing is the contessa’s. I know that handwriting from her painting I have in my bedroom.” She paused for a few seconds. “But this is odd. The date on this drawing is 1935.
It was made this year
.”

Johnny felt as if he were about to explode. “Do you think it means they’re alive, Mel?”

“I don’t know. But it means that as soon as we’ve rescued Dame Honoria, we have to find the contessa. We have to learn what she knows.”

“Why didn’t she just come to us straightaway, Mel? Why did she go to Betty’s father?” That point simply bewildered Johnny. Wouldn’t it have made sense to contact them directly?

“Don’t know, kiddo,” Mel replied. “But we have to track her down and learn every single thing that she knows.”

Johnny nodded emphatically. Suddenly the whole world had shifted. There was now a real possibility that he and Mel might get their parents back. And that was the best news they’d had in five years.

“I knew they were still alive,” said Johnny with a huge smile. “
I just knew it!”

Chapter 26

Saturday, October 19, 1935

Gorton Island

Formerly a rubber plantation, Gorton Island was Dame Honoria’s most private refuge. The jungle isle had belonged originally to her father, Sir Roderick Gorton. It was situated some dozens of miles across the Straits of Biru Gelombang from the northern coast of Rotonesia.

Sitting on her screened front verandah, which overlooked a white sand beach, Dame Honoria and the dead novelist Sir Chauncey Holyfield were enjoying a rare moment of silence. For the first time in weeks she felt able to relax. A warm, gentle breeze ruffled the comfortable old silk bag dress she had on. Her sandals kicked off, she wriggled her bare toes with delight.

“Came here first as a little girl, Chauncey,” said Dame Honoria, sighing with pleasure. The view across the Straits was especially gorgeous today. “As a young mother, I watched my Sweetums, my Percy, play out there on the beach.”

“And now,” said Sir Chauncey, “Gorton Island is your hidey hole. A place to escape to, a place where you can unwind from the pressures of celebrity.”

“And a refuge from etheric assassins, I should hope. Ten days now, since my narrow squeak with the Neuport gangster ghost and his machine gun.”

“Glad that you survived, old girl,” observed the deceased novelist. “No one else I trust to take the red pencil to my scrawlings.” As he spoke, Holyfield’s ruddy face and several chins jiggled, and his mutton-chop whiskers bobbed up and down.

“Excuse me, ma’am, sir.”

Dame Honoria and Holyfield twisted around.

Standing by one of the mahogany pillars that supported the verandah, a specter regarded them. He wore a safari jacket with many pockets, a pith helmet, jodhpurs, and riding boots. Above his left ear was a deep chasm, with skull bone and brain still visible.

“Ozzie Eccleston,” Dame Honoria said. “Where in the devil have you been?”

He warily smiled at one corner of his mouth. “Well, you know—”

“I’d like you to meet my colleague, Sir Chauncey Holyfield.”

“Good to meet you, Sir Chauncey,” the weasel-faced wraith said.

“Likewise, I’m sure,” replied the novelist, who didn’t sound as if he meant it.

“We’re working on the final draft of Chauncey’s new novel,
Beatrice Periwinkle
,” explained Dame Honoria.

“One of Sir Chauncey’s scientific romances?”

Dame Honoria nodded. “Indeed, a time-travel adventure set in the days of the Great War. Young Beatrice Periwinkle is blessed—”

Ozzie fidgeted as he listened to Dame Honoria describe the plot. When she ran out of words, he sneered, “Always thought time travel a ridiculous notion, quite impossible. Who would believe it?”

“About a million readers who put down ten shillings every time one of my new books comes out,” replied Sir Chauncey with a self-satisfied smirk.