Agatha H. and the Airship City

this?”

With a hiss, part of the wall folded back to reveal a series of figures. They were animals, dressed in formal evening wear, arranged as an orchestra, equipped with instruments. From the center, a small figure, which looked disturbingly like the Baron, rose from a hidden cavity with a pneumatic hiss, and raised a slim baton. After a brief pause, the tip of the baton glowed, and the orchestra began to play a light waltz. Small statues that Agatha had thought were merely there to hold lighting fixtures began to sing a melodic counterpoint. Agatha began to notice the little details, how the rabbit playing the piccolo managed to twitch aside its ears every time the trombone slide approached from behind, the small mice with penny whistles that occasionally popped out of the bells of various horns. She was entranced until she felt a light tap upon her shoulder. Gil bowed. “Would milady care to dance?”

Agatha shyly curtsied. “I would.” She felt Gil’s strong hands grasp her hand and shoulder, but resisted slightly. He looked at her enquiringly. “But later, I want to see how it works.”

Gil smiled. “I expected nothing less,” and with that she allowed him to swirl her around in time to the music. Never had Agatha felt so grateful to Lilith as she did then, for the endless dance lessons that she had endured, acting as a prop for Lilith’s male students. Seeing that she was no novice, Gil nodded in appreciation, and increased the complexity of the steps. With a gleam in her eye, Agatha returned the favor, catching Gil off guard, but with a delighted laugh, he carried through on the change, and, locked together, they swirled around the floor in a graceful arabesque that, when the music ended, deposited them exactly where they had started. But now they were closer to each other, their eyes again locked, their hands grasping the other’s, and their breathing slightly faster than even the exertions they had completed would account for.

With a hiss, the orchestra bowed in unison and went still. After a moment, they both, reluctantly, released each other’s hands. “That…” Agatha ventured, “that was wonderful dance music. Who wrote that?”

Gil smiled modestly. “I did. When I was a student in Paris.”

“If that’s any indication, you really liked Paris.”

Gil nodded. “I loved it. It’s beautiful. You can be anything you want there.” He glanced at Agatha and visibly pulled himself back from the past. A calculating look flashed across his face. He crossed over to a large wall cabinet and, reaching inside, pulled out a large globe of blue glass which was mounted upon a small brass figure of a man holding it, Atlas fashion, upon his shoulders. Several nozzles and connectors were placed upon the exterior, and a small brass trilobite was mounted upon a band that ran down the center. “This is a genuine Heterodyne artifact I found at a curiosity shop. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to figure out what it is yet. What do you think?”

Agatha looked at the device for a moment and then looked at Gil over her glasses. “It looks like a lamp.”

Gil frowned and pulled it back. “It is not a lamp. I’ve been fiddling with it a bit. But nothing I run through it seems to do much. Unless it just takes an enormous amount of power, I must be doing something wrong.” He displayed several sides of the object to Agatha. “I’d like to open it up, but as you can see, there’s no visible screws, hinges or access plates. I’d hate to take a chance on breaking it just to find out what it does.”

Agatha nodded. “Your father knew the Heterodynes. Maybe he would know what it is.”

“I’m sure he would, but where’s the fun in that? I’ll get it eventually.”

As Gil was placing the globe back in the cabinet, Agatha’s eye was caught by a large ceramic tube festooned with cables that seemed to be surrounded by charred equipment. “What’s this?”

Gil’s eyes lit up. “Lightning generator. Watch.” So saying, he activated a small control unit and instantly a bolt of electricity crackled through the air and a copper globe vaporized into molten fragments.

Agatha whistled in admiration, but Gil was shaking his head in annoyance. He held up his hand with the control unit and clicked it a few times, but nothing happened. “It still needs work. At the moment it takes way too long to recharge.”

Agatha took the control unit and peered up at the glowing tip of the generator while flicking the switch a few times herself.

Over the next half hour, Gil showed Agatha the layout of the labs and explained the procedures she’d need to know. Eventually they came to a large room that looked to Agatha like a gymnasium, complete with several racks of fencing swords. There, the battered, spider-like clank that dominated the middle of the room looked even more out of place than it ordinarily might have. It had a large humanoid torso, with a single left arm, which clutched a dueling saber. Its lower half consisted of four triple jointed legs, which were crouched down, bringing the torso almost to the floor. The only ornamentation that Agatha could see was a small, cherry-red heart, which was located in the center of the clank’s chest.

“That looks nasty,” She remarked.

Gil nodded. “It is. I wanted a more… realistic fencing clank to practice with. The ones the students use are kind of tame, don’t you think?”

Agatha frowned. “I don’t fence, actually.”

Gil looked at her speculatively. “You should. It comes in useful.” He picked up a foil and tossed it to Agatha, and nodded in satisfaction at the way she snagged it out of the air. “Plus it’s fun. You should ask Zulenna to teach you. She’s really good.”

“Zulenna doesn’t like me.”

Gil grimaced. “Ah. That stupid ranking game of hers. That girl needs a good smack upside the head.”

“I tried that. It didn’t work.”

Gil stared at her. Agatha’s face reddened, and she concentrated on swinging her sword about. “I’m not proud of it, but she was asking for it. She was insulting my parents.”

Gil nodded. “That sounds like Zulenna, all right. Well, she’s going to do some occasional work for me here, so I’ll expect you to be civil to her, and I’ll expect the same of her. Is that clear?”

Agatha nodded. “Yes, Master Wulfenbach.”

Gil rolled his eyes. “Please, call me Gilgamesh.”

“Yes, Master Gilgamesh.”

“Miss Clay—”

At that moment, Agatha’s sword tip smacked into the small red heart of the fencing clank. With a burst of steam, the device reared up on its multijointed legs. Three slots irised open, and an additional three arms sprang forth. One was equipped with a Japanese sai, one carried a small but lethal-looking hand axe, and the last terminated in a circular sawblade, which began to spin faster and faster until the gleaming teeth faded into invisibility.

Agatha stared entranced until Gil pulled her aside as the axe swept through where she had been standing. “Amusing,” she commented. “How do you shut it off?”

Meanwhile Gil had grabbed a sword and was blocking the clank as it lashed out again with its own weapons. “You hit the

heart again!”

“Oh. Well that seems pretty straight forward.”

Gil moved to block the clank’s sawblade and found his sword trapped within the sai. With a quick twist, the blade was snapped. He dropped the weapon and found Agatha ready with another. He swept it up and deflected the other three arms in a flurry of motion. “Straight forward, yes, but it’s a really good fencing clank.”

A small oilcan flew through the air and smacked onto the heart. The clank froze, and with a hiss, began to relax. Gil turned in surprise and looked at Agatha. “I don’t fence,” she explained. “So how is this thing more realistic?”

“Ever traveled the Wastelands?”

“No, but I’ve heard… oh.”

“Uh-huh. But there are still some problems…”

With a roar, the fencing clank snapped back into action. Gil pushed Agatha back as the sawblade swung through the air in front of them. “There’s a forty-three percent chance of spontaneous restart within thirty seconds,” Gil shouted.

“Okay,” Agatha acknowledged. “That’s a problem.” She scooped up a small wrench and fired it at the heart. Casually, the clank brought up its axe and deflected the missile before it could hit.

“That’s not the problem,” corrected Gil, “that’s a design feature. The problem is