54
Most plans or devices created by Sparks tended to frustrate those non-Sparks who attempted to repair or duplicate them. Working on them excessively tended to drive those who did so quite mad. Disappointingly this didn’t help.
55
Klaus originally sent Bangladesh DuPree to Paris to teach Gilgamesh how to fight a crazy person (though this was not what he told Captain DuPree). There have been tantalizing hints that their relationship progressed beyond this, but many scholars regard this as unlikely since both were still alive.
56
Parisian scandal-sheets of the period in question do mention one “Gilgamesh Holzfaller” a surprising number of times. Usually in connection with assorted foiled robberies, captured rogue experiments, subdued out-of-control clanks, and exposed secret societies. In these exploits, he was invariably accompanied by a revolving cast of vivacious, under-dressed ladies who had required rescuing. This was really as close as Gil had ever got to “dating”.
57
Amongst the aristocracy, black envelopes were reserved for the deaths of nobility. Amongst the merchant class, it usually signified an everything-must-go sale.
58
A pirate queen, to be sure. But the aristocracy these days was feeling sufficiently under siege that they were prepared to overlook certain realities. As a result, many a formal banquet had been enlivened by someone foolishly inviting someone who was euphemistically referred to as “working royalty”.
59
Gilgamesh had written most of them down in a rather thick book.
60
In the three years since she had joined Klaus’ forces, Bangladesh’s unconventional fight against the air force’s traditional glass ceiling had produced a disturbing number of conventional casualties. Klaus did little about this, claiming that it was an internal problem that the service should work out itself. In truth, he had noticed that the newer officers, especially those who had helped bury their predecessors, tended to be a lot more open-minded about things. Plus, when he used female officers, a depressing number of foes of the Empire underestimated them—usually right up until they were blown from the sky.
61
Sometimes, when a madboy’s schemes were not producing the desired results, they actually had sufficient insight to blame themselves. However, instead of addressing their numerous psychological problems, behavioral issues or basic inability to grasp reality, a significant number of them tried to solve their problems by making themselves smarter. The results never failed to be entertaining. If they survived, Klaus found them to be quite useful. Admittedly, the Deep Thinkers’ ruminations were useless for day-to-day planning, but they were able to correlate vast amounts of seemingly unrelated data, and use it to predict future trends and outcomes, as well as enhance or prevent certain outcomes, usually by minutely affecting things that had no apparent connection. The downside was that Klaus grew weary knowing that every time he had oatmeal for breakfast, he was dooming humanity to a thousand years of war and slavery and that this terrible fate was only prevented by his having a banana with lunch.
62
Every Wulfenbach Bosun’s whistle was a marvel of acoustical engineering, and was tuned to a different pitch. These pitches were used to identify particular ships in fog and at night by dockhands as well as fleet commanders. While a Bosun might be transferred, the whistle itself was handed down within the ship. Particularly discordant or nerve-wracking whistles were a source of pride, and the sound of a dozen or so of them keening in the dawn air, growing louder as the great ships dropped out of the sky, had broken the nerve of more than one set of defenders.
63
Mad Behavioral Scientists didn’t get a lot of press, but Klaus had several of them on his payrolls. The morale of the forces of the Empire were often bolstered by statistically odd, but not all that uncommon occurrences that had been carefully woven into an efficient mythos of good luck. Similarly things that were seen as bad luck tended to be things that happened because of sloppiness (uncoiled ropes), foolishness (not checking your safety line when outside the gondola), or terminal ignorance (lighting a match inside a gasbag). As a result, the Wulfenbach troops did better overall because they felt lucky, and as one surveyed the wreckage of those who went up against them, it was a hard point to argue against. If only because it was unlucky.
64
