Chapter 1
THE SECRET LAB
"Invention is the path to all solutions, Igorr. An act of creation can resolve any problem,” Vyctor Frahnknshtyne, an eighteen-year-old inventor genius, declared his belief over his shoulder into the echo-prone main garage of the abandoned carriage house. It was located far on the outskirts of the vast tract of land owned by L’Institute Technologie. He stood just under six feet in height, with a pleasant face surrounded by brown hair that fell to his shoulders in wavy abundance. Some women called him handsome, but Vyctor remained clueless in all matters of attraction. He was dressed in a broadcloth white shirt, starched collar of moderate but fashionable height, a silken vest with a crest above the breast pocket, and woolen lab trousers with many pockets. His appearance telegraphed good status. It also revealed that he was a student who attended L’Institute as one of its upper classmen. In truth, Vyctor was a star pupil of some repute.
It had been six months since he’d moved his personal lab from the school to take up hidden occupancy in these environs. He’d done so at the urgings of his adoptive father, Grinnious Didge, the powerful Underdean of L’Institute Technologie. Grinnious had insisted that Vyctor should perform his extracurricular inventing activities far from others’ knowledge. His greatest concern was for the projects that exceeded his areas of study at the school. He’d insisted that none should speak of this private work to anyone. To Vyctor, this seemed an odd request, but seeing as the resulting move would grant him a great deal more space, he’d agreed. Vyctor loved to lose himself in his work so the lack of interruption had turned out to be a welcome upside.
“ISP seven hundred and forty-one,” Vyctor puzzled aloud hoping that spelling out the words and numbers on the pressure gauge in reverse would yield a recognizable word. That he sat astride a complicated two-wheeled boiler engine that was rapidly building up immense pressure didn’t prevent Vyctor from playing his private children’s game in his head.
“Master Frahnknshtyne, Sir?” Said Igorr Uhshva, rocking nervously from foot to foot. As Vyctor’s mustachioed manservant, Igorr wore rough wool pants and braces. “If I may, Sir? I might suggest settin’ the gyrostatic engine to the stand, Sir, while it builds to pressure.”
“You do realize, Igorr, that you’ve just said ‘Sir’ no less than four times in the span of two breaths.” Vyctor had to pitch his voice to be heard over the din and hiss of the boiler. “Once again, please try to just call me Vyctor.”
“Yes, Sir. Of course, Sir. I mean, Mr. Vyctor… Sir.”
Vyctor smiled slightly as he dropped his head to his chest in mock exasperation. A violent shuddering from the massive two-wheeled contraption quickly snapped Vyctor out of his affectionate grinning. The gauge, subject of his earlier distraction, now read nearly three hundred PSI and was fast approaching the red zone with its filigree Black Cross.
“Hell’s maidens, Igorr! The pressure is building far more quickly than I anticipated!” Vyctor lurched forward to grasp the brass steering grips to further steady the groaning mass. The sweat on his palms required that he crush the grips with all his strength to increase his purchase by driving the fine knurling into the skin of his palms.
He winced but still managed to call out: “I must say, I’m pleased that the new furnace chamber and liquid fuel is exceeding my expectations. Excellent energy source! Tonight may be just the night for our first run.” Vyctor smiled wider. “Quickly, draw open the pressure relief valve, and we’ll bleed off some of the pressure!”
“But Master, um Sir, um Vyctor, Sir. The valve is…” Igorr pursed his lips in concern as the needle surged another few degrees.
“Yes, I know it’s underneath!” Vyctor barked his reply as a loud knocking began beneath his legs. Instantly, he felt guilty for having snapped at Igorr. “I’ll steady it so it will be safe.”
For a moment, Vyctor wasn’t certain he could make good on that promise, but he banished the possibility from his mind with a headshake. “For gods sakes, my good man, get to it now or I fear we are all going to celebrate a Far Eastern New Year right here in the carriage house!”
Vyctor drove his toes onto the cobbled brick floor and slumped his crotch down as low as he could manage in the leather saddle attempting to get his heels to ground. This was not a position he could hold for long, and he made a mental note to himself to redesign the seat height and shape.
Igorr squeezed his eyes shut, gulped hard to gather his courage, and with his right hand, quickly crossed his forehead, chest, and shoulders. Dropping to his back, he began elbow crawling underneath the almost half ton of swaying rivets, plates, bolts, and gears.
Inching further beneath the behemoth, Igorr could see the gleaming piston guide rails, smeared with globs of grease, just inches from his forehead. There wasn’t much room for a man’s head beneath the mechanism, and he had to press his cheek uncomfortably against the brass guide bushings that would control the drive pushrods when all that pressure was redirected to the waiting steam piston. Most assuredly, he did not want to be beneath the Gyrostator when that occurred.
His eyes frantically scanned the inky mechanisms for the glint of the pressure release knob. Even with the din coming from the boiler, Igorr could hear his own heart pounding in his ears, roiling the thoughts one has when facing mortal danger. What if I can’t find it? Should I run to a safe distance? What about the missus? What about Mr. Vyctor?
Igorr had been with Master Frahnknshtyne for almost ten years now, assigned as his “man” when headmaster Didge brought him home from the Magistry at barely eight years of age. At first, it rankled him to be in the service of a lowborn child, but what a child this one turned out to be. He quickly became Mr. Didge’s brightest student and always treated Igorr with respect and honest cheer. He was an introverted but likeable genius for those few who could get through his complicated defenses. Igorr had grown to love this foundling prodigy. No, he would never abandon him.
Igorr lifted his hand and began carefully snaking it, inch by inch, past the swaying gears, tubes, and shafts, expecting the familiar shape to press into his palm at any moment. The vehicle lurched to the left, as Vyctor’s painfully arched foot gave out, dropping a much greater percentage of the weight to his left leg.
“Mr. Vyctor, Sir!!” Igorr cried out with genuine fear in his voice.
“Do it now, my good man!” Vyctor hissed through his clenched teeth, his entire body shaking with the strain of holding the tipped vehicle.
Igorr plunged his hand forward, closing his eyes as his palm pressed to the rounded contours of the knob. “Thank the Father!” he whispered to himself just as the sensation of extreme heat electrically raced from his hand to register alarms in his brain.
“Aaaaaah!” Igorr withdrew his singed hand in pain and panic. “It’s too hot, Sir! I’m sorry! I can’t turn it, Sir!”
Vyctor was nearly cracking his own teeth from biting down. He hunched forward and redoubled his efforts to hold the Gyrostator so as not to end his dear friend and assistant’s life.
“Get out of there, Igorr! Now! I can’t hold this much longer!” Igorr scuttled like a crab out from beneath the huge object, tearing his shirt and elbow. He leapt up and ran to Vyctor’s side to help right the heavy vehicle and settle it into a more neutral weight distribution on Vyctor’s feet and legs.
Vyctor, sweating profusely from the superhuman effort to hold the weight up, looked at his assistant and smiled a thin grin of momentary relief. “Thank you, my good man!”
Igorr smiled back. The shared relief lasted for an eye blink as the sound of a gunshot went off, and a hole perforated one of the high windows several bays down. Confused, the two men swiveled heads to look about the lantern-lit space, half expecting to see a thug had broken in during the confusion.
Another sharp report rang out, and this time it ricocheted off the overhead winch, impacting the cobbles right next to Vyctor’s trembling foot! Resting in a fresh little stone crater was not a bullet but a small copper shaft with a mushroomed dome on one end.
“Dammit! Igorr, it’s the rivets!” Several more rivets shot about the room in rapid succession. “I’ve got to engage the drive and dump the pressure!”
Igorr nodded curtly in understanding. He bolted towards the back wall where the looped chain hung to lift the heavy oak door.
Two more rivets shot out in rapid fire, one grazing Vyctor’s cheekbone, causing a gasp and a trickle of blood to escape the young man.
Vyctor looked down at the gauge to see the needle crossing the red line into the overload zone on the dial’s face. Vyctor’s brows steepled, squeezing out a drop of sweat that ran, burning, into his fresh cut. Wincing, he opened his left hand, reaching his fingers forward, squeezing the clutch lever tightly to the handle grip as he stomped the foot-operated gear lever into engagement.
“Keep going, Igorr, as fast as you can!” Vyctor drew in a deep breath and held it as he dumped the clutch while crushing the front brake lever to full-on.
The massive pressure in the boiler explosively exhaled down the feed lines to the drive pistons, hitting them with an audible bang. An instant later, the two main drive shafts either side of the back wheel leapt into action. They pummeled backwards with a force that threatened to tear Vyctor’s engineered marvel to pieces.
His remarkable brilliance for making things was liberally mixed with perfectionism. He had successfully calculated and built for even this overload condition, and the engineering held.
The locomotive-like drive whirred into action, quickly becoming a grayish pounding blur. He smiled briefly through the strain of holding the front brakes with all his eighteen-year-old strength.
Vyctor’s vision for this two-wheeled marvel included an entirely new design for the wheels. A vehicle that could achieve the speeds that this personal locomotive would be capable of needed cushioning on the uneven rock pavers and rutted dirt lanes of Travaille. Instead of steel bands around wooden carriage spokes, Vyctor had cast soft vulcanized rubber around loaf-sized mesh blocks of steel. He’d mounted those blocks around the sturdy iron wheel. These “tredds,” as he liked to call them, were now spinning at an impossible speed and creating quite a lot of choking smoke as Vyctor held the craft in place with tremendous effort.
The Gyrostator, now fully awakened, was like a young thoroughbred in the starting gates for the first time. The back end of the craft swung left with great momentum, crashing into the wooden workbench a few feet away. Metal tools cartwheeled into the room. Vyctor gritted his teeth and bellowed unintelligibly as he pulled the vehicle with all his might back to the right. As it swung back, building up momentum in the other direction, the experimental tredds found their purchase.
Twenty-pound cobbles tore from the floor and hurtled to the back of the room like cannonballs. They impacted the brick wall, showering the room in red masonry shrapnel.
Igorr found himself in a game of dodge-the-ball for his very life. It was impossible to remain in one place and pull the chain while leaping left and right and contorting wildly to avoid the rock missiles!
Were his attention not locked on holding the front brake with all his strength, Vyctor might have marveled at Igorr’s inspired gymnastics, but his attention was fully engaged in the struggle he was losing with his mechanical mount.
Vyctor couldn’t see more than a foot or so in front of himself. The room had filled up with steam, acrid rubber smoke, and roiling dust from the violence at work in this confined space. He had no way of knowing that Igorr’s ballet had prevented him from opening the door.
Vyctor grunted painfully, “Can’t… restrain… the Beast,” and released the front brake lever. At that moment, a gap cleared in the swirling atmosphere just long enough for Igorr to see the massive steel missile lurch forward.
“SIR!” Igorr cried out and lunged for the vehicle. He did so with no concern for himself, not thinking that had he been able to grab it, he would likely have parted ways with the arms of his slender one-hundred-and-sixty-pound body.
It was in that fraction of a second before impact that Vyctor finally saw the closed oak doors. More precisely, Vyctor’s obsessive attention to detail saw the doors but focused oddly on the peened rivets passing through the iron straps that held the massive oak beams together. Vyctor loved well-made things, and in that instant, simultaneously realized he was going to crash and that he had never noticed how beautifully made the doors were. He also heard a strange noise echoing in the room.
“DAAAAAAAAAMMNNN!” It was Vyctor.
Mr. Dodgy, the aging grounds cat at the school, was lazily licking his private bits in the middle of the weed-overgrown path that led to the long-unused carriage house. He often came here to hunt the mice that thought an abandoned structure was an invitation for rodent occupancy. They were wrong, and it was his job to teach them otherwise. He took great pride in his job and had been quite marvelous at it for over ten years.
Though it was well into the early hours of the morning. Mr. Dodgy was rewarding himself with a prideful cleaning after a successful night. Peering from beneath his uplifted leg, Mr. Dodgy was the only external witness to the explosive midnight rupturing of the southern-most door of the abandoned carriage house.
An angry glowing apparition belching hot soot burst from the doorway! His leg still raised, frozen in shock, Mr. Dodgy decided he would leave the carriage house to the mice from this moment forward.
Igorr stumbled through the clearing atmosphere to see the quickly receding silhouette of the Gyrostator.
“SIR!” The grounds felt oddly devoid of sound after the close clamor of moments before. He started at how loud his own voice sounded in the silence of the open night.
Igorr quickly felt exposed and embarrassed but still deeply concerned about Vyctor whom he could barely see in the distance. The night air carried his victory whoop back to Igorr.
“Woooo hoooo!”
Igorr whispered almost reverently to himself, “By the saint’s own trousers, Mr. Vyctor, Sir…”
He stood for a moment, uncertain what to do next. The evening had been far too much of an adventure, and Igorr was not at all pleased with the devil-may-care approach to his own safety that his young charge and master had shown in the matter. As the adrenaline passed, Igorr could feel his shoulders droop and his knees wobble. He used the last of his failing strength to shuffle to a rock at the side of the drive and plunk himself down on it.
Something sooty and grotesquely puffed walked past him with choppy steps as if it were unsure each stride would land on real earth.
“Mr. Dodgy? Don’t you look a fright?” The cat was an unrecognizable singed ball of feline indignity. Igorr reached out to stroke the shell-shocked animal to calm it, and perhaps himself as well.
“He’s done it, hasn’t he?” A clear baritone voice rumbled from the door at the back of the bay. Igorr’s back stiffened, and he suddenly felt like the schoolboy in Sister Margaret Menduli’s offices once again. He pushed off from his wobbly knees to stand with respect, eyes lowered, to reply.
“Come again, Sir?”
“He’s made the infernal contraption work, hasn’t he?” The man stepped from the shadow of the doorway into the carriage house’s swinging lantern light. He was a robust-chested man with brown skin, well into his fifties, with the official presence of an expensive leather-bound dictionary.
“I suppose Sir…”
“You suppose?”
“Yes Sir, well Sir, it was hot as a kitchen fire, Sir, and the pressure was right chasin’ up the dial like the blush on a virgin, and, Bloody Hell, it all cut loose like blowin’ Gabriel’s horn, Sir and…” Igorr was on a roll and his voice was getting higher and squeakier with each word.
“I see.” The honorable Grinnious Didge, Underdean of L’Institute Technologie, held up his hand and quickly plugged the verbal dam that was threatening to break and let out all the words that Igorr knew. Igorr held his breath.
“Wonderful, now we just have to keep it a secret and keep him alive until it is safe to let the soon-to-be-adoring public know of his latest invention,” Grinnious said. It was hard to tell if the honorable Mr. Didge was pleased about this turn of events or feeling burdened by it.
He looked up at the shattered door and frowned. “Fix it.” His gaze turned to Igorr, who bowed under its weight. “Quickly… and before dawn!”
“Yes Sir! Right away, Sir!” Igorr turned, breathed deeply squaring his shoulders, and began the arduous job of gathering the detritus from the evening’s chaos.
Grinnious looked out into the night’s moonlit landscape. He could see, far off in the distance, the faint glow of something moving quickly across the bridges over the city’s canals. His face quirked an unaccustomed soft smile.
“Careful, my dear Vyctor. There are those who peddle hope while denying change.” He turned and strode through the dust and debris, leaving out the back door of the carriage house without further words for the diligently toiling Igorr.
As Grinnious stepped outside, he gazed up the moonlit path before him. He had a twenty minute walk to return to the manor house. The winding path was barely perceptible, being quite overgrown from decades of non-use. He sighed, straightened his bow tie, causing a slight raspy noise sliding over his fashionably high starched collar.
“He is remarkable, isn’t he, my old friend?” a woman’s voice spoke from the shadows.
Startled, Grinnious spun to find an imposing figure outlined in moonlight sitting on a large rock at the edge of what used to be a garden verge. The figure lifted a glowing Lucifer to take another drag. The tip flared to bright red.
“Dammitall, Tosh, you startled me like the bloody ghost-of-the-moors herself.” Professor Emeritus Toshinbale Neff stood to her full height of six feet and one inch as she stretched her arms outward, arching her back to look at the sky. Her generously round shape was outlined by the touch of the moon’s illumination. Dressed in fine woolen hiker’s pants, leather braces, and a white ruffled shirt, she appeared as a wide floating torso in the dark. She chuckled, enjoying her friend’s moment of uncharacteristic fluster.
“Can’t a girl take in the night air and gaze upon this wonderful sky full of stars?”
Grinnious grumped.
“You are hardly just a girl, Dr. Neff.” The glint of pistol handles caught his attention in holsters on her belt. “Though I know well that you are quite the revolveress, do you often take your strolls armed as you are presently? I believe we are well within the grounds of my estate and not abroad on one of your adventurous sabbaticals.” He quirked his bushy left eyebrow up in query with a hint of disapproval.
“I am sure you have heard the rumors of savage attacks and missing persons, Grinnious. One can’t be too cautious when dealing with the unknown, don’t you agree?”
“Are you referring to those ridiculous accounts of a... what are the locals calling it? A Hell Beast of some sort? Their imaginative fantasy that walks about on two legs devouring unfortunate victims? Dr. Neff, that is pure poppycock and beneath you to entreat with such ideas.”
Tosh scowled a bit and inhaled to prepare for delivering a retort when Grinnious pressed on.
“And dare I say that your presence here tonight is not a happenstance?”
Professor Neff could see Grinnious’ glower in the blues and greys of evening light. Tosh chortled, shaking her broad shoulders gently, hijacking Grinnious’ serious tone as only she could do.
“Ha, ha, ha! If you could have seen yourself, my dear friend. No grasshopper has ever jumped so fine when the hen came pecking as you did when I said hello.”
Grinnious’ glower continued unchanged.
“All right, all right, I confess. I may have an agenda for my wanderings this evening,” Tosh said, her face taking on a more determined countenance. “Come, let us walk together along this path. You and I have business to discuss.”
“If it is regarding our meeting with the board of guidance for the school earlier today, you will not change my mind with further discussion. L’Institute has its own laws for a reason. It was created over three hundred fifty years ago to be the center of thought, ideas, and innovation. Not to decide where that innovation is applied nor whom it gets applied to. That is the job of the Shepherds, as you well know. We must remain respectful of our place in the Praetors’ vision for Travaille.” Grinnious’ tone would brook no further argument. Tosh breathed in dramatically, rising to her full and imposing height, only to exhale explosively and jovially drop her arm around Grinnious’ shoulder.
“Grinnious, you are the rock upon which all waves must break their vitality and pass. It has ever been so since we were shrieking children exploring the forests and fields with our friends. More than once, your steady hand pulled me from harm in some disastrous mess I had gotten myself into.” She shoulder-squeezed Grinnious and dropped her arm to her side.
“It is time for me to return the favor and prevent you from making a mistake that you would, most surely, come to regret,” she said, stopping on the path and turning to face Grinnious. “The Shepherds’ hand in guidance and governance has been waning. Things are changing throughout Travaille. The lot of the people is decaying, my friend, and I know you share my sorrow and shame at seeing this. The formation of the Council of City Fathers is an unfortunate result of that vacuum of leadership from our immortal Shepherds. Why is this so? I do not have the answers, and there is no question you can ask of them that will get a response other than a recital of the dogma we all live by. You know that we have tried!”
Shaking his head side to side, Grinnious turned to keep walking, leaving Tosh to quick step and catch up.
Tosh continued, “You cannot walk away from this Grinnious. We must do something. Create a plan of action before OTHER actions are taken... by those... who are incapable of leadership if it does not line their bottomless pockets.”
Grinnious stopped and rounded to face her. “We are merely today’s stewards of an historic entity whose role in the stability of Travaille is clearly prescribed and quite proven by centuries of refinement. That role has limits! And for very good reasons. We must hold to the Praetor’s laws or all is lost.”
“And what of Vyctor’s activities here? Are those within the laws and rules?” Tosh could feel her own regret as she was speaking the words. Grinnious’ spine stiffened. For a long moment, the two lifelong friends and colleagues stared at one another.
Tosh sighed, “I am sorry, my friend. I should not have said that, and I most assuredly am in support of that gifted young man. Please forgive the false outburst borne of frustration.”
A long and awkward silence hung in the air as both came to realize there was no common ground for compromise on this matter. Tosh slowly lowered her head and breathed out slowly. “Please enjoy this night of stars, and I will heckle you no further. I must be on my way.”
Grinnious humphed, a sound saved for strong disagreement between unbreakable friends. He turned and continued his walk, leaving Tosh to say to herself: “Let us hope you are right.” Tosh turned to walk away, “but I fear that you are not.”
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