Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy

memorabilium, has always considered himself a progressive sort, and he has gone so far as to set aside one day each and every month when the city’s negroes, coolies, and red Indians are permitted access to his cabinet, free of charge. Professor Ogilvy would—and frequently has—referred to his museum as a most modest endeavor, one whose principal mission is to reveal, to all the populace of Cherry Creek, the long-buried mysteries of those fantastic, vanished cycles of the globe. Too few suspect the marvels that lie just beneath their feet or entombed in the ridges and peaks of the snowcapped Chippewan Mountains bordering the city to the west. Cherry Creek looks always to the problems of its present day, and to the riches and prosperity that may await those who reach its future, but with hardly a thought to spare for the past, and this is the sad oversight addressed by the Ogilvy Gallery of Natural Antiquities.

Before Professor Ogilvy leased the enormous redbrick building on Kipling Street (erected during the waning days of the silver boom of 1879), it served as a warehouse for a firm specializing in the import of exotic dry goods, mainly spices from Africa and the East Indies. And to this day, it retains a distinctive, piquant redolence. Indeed, at times the odor is so strong that a sobriquet has been bestowed upon the museum—Ogilvy’s Pepper Pot. It is not unusual to see visitors of either gender covering their noses with handkerchiefs and sleeves, and oftentimes the solemnity of the halls is shattered by hacking coughs and sudden fits of sneezing. Regardless, the professor has insisted time and again that the structure is perfectly matched to his particular needs, and how the curiosity of man is not to be deterred by so small an inconvenience as the stubborn ghosts of turmeric and curry powder, coriander and mustard seed. Besides, the apparently indelible odor helps to insure that his rents will stay reasonable.

On this June afternoon, the air in the building seems a bit fresher than usual, despite the oppressive heat that comes with the season. In the main hall, Jeremiah Ogilvy has been occupied for almost a full hour now, lecturing the ladies of the Cherry Creek chapter of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Mrs. Belford and her companions sit on folding chairs, fanning themselves and diligently listening while this slight, earnest, and bespectacled man describes for them the reconstructed fossil skeleton displayed behind him.

“The great anatomist, Baron Cuvier, wrote of the Plesiosaurus, ‘it presents the most monstrous assemblage of characteristics that has been met with among the races of the ancient world.’ Now, I would have you know it isn’t necessary to take this expression literally. There are no monsters in nature, as the Laws of Organization are never so positively infringed.”

“Well, it looks like a monster to me,” mutters Mrs. Larimer, seated near the front. “I would certainly hate to come upon such a thing slithering toward me along a riverbank. I should think I’d likely perish of fright, if nothing else.”

There’s a subdued titter of laughter from the group, and Mrs. Belford frowns. The professor forces a ragged smile and repositions his spectacles on the bridge of his nose.

“Indeed,” he sighs, and glances away from his audience, looking over his shoulder at the skillful marriage of plaster and stone and welded-steel armature.

“However,” he continues, “be that as it may, it is more accordant with the general perfection of Creation to see in an organization so special as this”—and, with his ashplant, he points once more to the plesiosaur—“to recognize in a structure which differs so notably from that of animals of our days—the simple augmentation of type, and sometimes also the beginning and successive perfecting of these beings. Therefore, let us dismiss this idea of monstrosity, my good Mrs. Larimer, a concept which can only mislead us, and only cause us to consider these antediluvian beasts as digressions. Instead, let us look upon them, not with disgust. Let us learn, on the contrary, to perceive in the plan traced for their organization, the handiwork of the Creator of all things, as well as the general plan of Creation.”

“How very inspirational.” Mrs. Belford beams, and when she softly claps her gloved hands, the others follow her example. Professor Ogilvy takes this as his cue that the ladies of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union have heard all they wish to hear this afternoon on the subject of the giant plesiosaur, recently excavated in Kansas from the chalky banks of the Smoky Hill River. As one of the newer additions to his menagerie, it now frequently forms the centerpiece of the professor’s daily presentations.

When the women have stopped clapping, Mrs. Larimer dabs at her nose with a swatch of perfumed silk and loudly clears her throat.

“Yes, Mrs. Larimer? A question?” Professor Ogilvy asks, turning back to the women. Mr. Larimer—an executive with the Front Range offices of the German airship company Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Luftschiffahrt—has donated a sizable sum to the museum’s coffers, and it’s no secret that his wife believes her husband’s charity would be best placed elsewhere.

“I mean no disrespect, professor, but it strikes me that perhaps you have gone and mistaken the provenance of that beast’s design. For my part, it’s far easier to imagine such a fiend being more at home in the sulfurous tributaries of Hell than the waters of any earthly ocean. Perhaps, my good doctor, it may be that you are merely mistaken about the demon’s having ever been buried. Possibly, to the contrary, it is something which clawed its way up from the Pit.”

Jeremiah Ogilvy stares at her a moment, aware that it’s surely wisest to humor this disagreeable woman. To nod and smile and make no direct reply to such absurd remarks. But he has always been loathe to suffer fools, and has never been renowned as the most politic of men, often to his detriment. He makes a steeple of his hands and rests his chin upon his fingertips as he replies.

“And yet,” he says, “oddly, you’ll note that on both its fore and hind limbs, each fashioned into paddles, this underworld fiend of yours entirely lacks claws. Don’t you think, Mrs. Larimer, that we might fairly expect such modifications, something not unlike the prominent ungula of a mole, perhaps? Or the robust nails of a Cape anteater? I mean, that’s a terrible lot of digging to do, all the way from Perdition to the prairies of Gove County.”

There’s more laughter, an uneasy smattering that echoes beneath the high ceiling beams, and it elicits another scowl from an embarrassed Mrs. Belford. But the professor has cast his lot, as it were, for better or worse, and he keeps his eyes fixed upon Mrs. Charles W. Larimer. She looks more chagrined than angry, and any trace of her former bluster has faded away.

“As you say, professor.” She manages to make the last three syllables sound like a badge of wickedness.

“Very well, then,” Professor Ogilvy says, turning to Mrs. Belford. “Perhaps I could interest you gentlewomen in the celebrated automatic mastodon, a bona fide masterpiece of clockwork engineering and steam power—so realistic in movement and appearance you might well mistake it for the living thing, newly resurrected from some boggy Pleistocene quagmire.”

“Oh, yes. I think that would be fascinating,” Mrs. Belford replies, and soon the women are being led from the main gallery up a steep flight of stairs to the mezzanine, where the automatic mastodon and the many engines and hydraulic hoses that control it have been installed. It stands alongside a finely preserved skeleton of Mammut americanum unearthed by prospectors in the Yukon and shipped to the gallery at some considerable expense.

“Why, it’s nothing but a great hairy elephant,” Mrs. Larimer protests, but this time none of the others appear to pay her much mind. Professor Ogilvy’s fingers move over the switches and dials on the brass control panel, and soon the automaton is stomping its massive feet and flapping its ears and filling the hot, pepper-scented air with the trumpeting of extinct Pachydermata.

2

When the ladies of the Temperance Union have gone, and after Jeremiah Ogilvy has seen to the arrival of five heavy crates of saurian bones from one of his collectors working out of Monterey, and, then, after he has spoken with his chief preparator about an overdue shipment of blond Kushmi shellac, ammonia, and sodium borate, he checks his pocket watch and locks the doors of the museum. Though there has been nothing excessively trying about the day—not even the disputatious Mrs. Larimer caused him more than a passing annoyance—Professor Ogilvy finds he’s somewhat more weary than usual and is looking forward to his bed with an especial zeal. All the others have gone, his small staff of technicians, sculptors, and naturalists, and he retires to his office and puts the