Amidst Dark Satanic Mills (Folkestone & Hand Interplanetary Steampunk Adventures Book 2) Page 2

  “If Lord Khallimar has any questions, I am sure you will be informed,” Ahriman said.

  Martin shrugged. “Well, there you are.”

  Ahriman frowned in confusion at Martin’s colloquial phrase, but did not pursue it. The sooner he was away from this creature the better. He understood the little man was bright and useful to His Lordship, but he did not understand the latitude allowed him.

  Martin picked up the Machine code print-outs, began to scan them again, but looked up when Ahriman was almost out of the chamber. He cleared his throat softly.

  “Please tell Lord Khallimar the ghosts are walking again,” Martin said. “They are very interested in him.”

  Ahriman recalled Martin making enigmatic statements before. He gritted his teeth. The man was stark barking mad, driven insane by so many numbers in his head, but he was useful to Lord Khallimar, and MEDUSA, so had to be humored, for the moment.

  “Yes, I shall tell him,” Ahriman said. “I am sure His Lordship will be most appreciative.”

  Martin nodded vaguely and returned to his work.

  Ahriman fled the madman.

  Martin set aside the pages with their primitive codes and leaned back in his chair, massaging his temples with his fingertips. He did not believe Ahriman, doubted the brutish villain had ever delivered even one of his messages to Lord Khallimar. As he leaned back, his eyes closed, his temples throbbing, the voices came softly.

  The Cold One is amongst us…

  He comes as a shadow…

  His thoughts are cold as frozen gas in eternal night…

  We dwell amidst dark satanic Mills…

  As the voices faded, Martin dropped his hands, leaned forward and opened his eyes. It did not happen often that the voices came while he was fully awake. He was glad they had waited till after the departure of the bestial Ahriman. The pain was intense. These were no small still voices in the night, Martin mused.

  His pain faded, his nausea passed, and he once again picked up the papers. A last quick glance and he initialed each correction or notation. He rolled the papers into a tight cylinder and placed it into a brass capsule. He opened the breech at the side of his desk, inserted the capsule, coded the destination, and activated the pneumatic delivery system.

  There was a soft whoosh as the message-capsule shot through the tube into the wall, but Martin did not hear it. He wanted to lie down, wanted sleep to steal over him so when the voices returned their words would not cause him so much pain. He used to wonder, back when MEDUSA had first brought him here, if they were real, a part of this hellish place, of just a manifestation of madness.

  But now he felt it did not matter. Whether they existed or not, they were as real as anything else here—the plain of Mills, the disc of the Sun, himself, the ghosts, the numbers that ran unceasingly in his brain, the pleas of his victims.

  A small chirping sound intruded upon his thoughts, and it took him a few minutes to realize it was the alarm on his aether-wave communicator. He frowned at the interruption, not because it was an inconvenience (even though it was) but because the only person who contacted him in this manner was Lord Khallimar, generally in the person of an intermediary in Paris. Martin knew there had not been enough time for his master to even start back for Earth.

  He made sure his chamber door was securely dogged, then took off the false panel that hid the device. He flicked the switch.

  “Mr Martin, are you receiving?” asked a deep, thickly accented voice. “Can you reply?”

  It was not Lord Khallimar, Martin realized.

  “Yes, yes, I am, I can,” Martin stammered. Rarely did he ever find himself at a loss for words, usually talking down to those who were above him, but doing so with such a sly arrogance that people never realized they were being mocked. “I am…surprised to hear from you, sir.”

  The set was still for a long moment. Aether communication was instantaneous, unlike the lengthy delays one experienced with electromagnetic radio-waves which could only propagate at the speed of light, so Martin knew the speaker was quiet by choice.

  “I am listening, sir,” Martin said nervously.

  “You should not be surprised, Mr Martin,” the speaker said. “You knew this day would come.”

  Martin had only met the man behind the voice once, the same night he heard it for the first and last time, after MEDUSA recruited him. It was his last night in his Spitalfields flat, where he lived after his release from Wandsworth. The man on the aether-radio had appeared after midnight, opening the door as easily as if he had a key, though, later, Martin found the door still bolted from within. He wore the finest evening clothes but his features were obscured by the folds of a black silk mask. He was nearly seven feet tall.

  “I know who you are and what you have done, Mr Martin,” the man in the mask said. “Not the petty criminalities for which you were made a guest of Her Majesty at Wandsworth Prison, but the horrors you committed in secret, the blood upon your hands.”

  Even though nearly a year had elapsed since that meeting, Martin still recalled the utter sense of dread that gripped him. The detective from Scotland Yard had thought himself clever because he obtained a confession of wrongdoing from Martin, never suspecting the confession was nothing more than camouflage for deeds that would surely have come to light had the inspector been motivated to dig deeper into Martin’s life.

  Martin had taken great pains to hide the bodies, to conceal the elements of the crimes. That he had been taken into custody at all was quite a shock, a slip on his part, he admitted, but also proof that even dim-witted baboons can be underestimated. Six months spent in Wandsworth was a small price to pay to avoid the noose, a time spent as a model prisoner, working in the prison library and as a tutor to the less fortunate, earning respect, attracting notice.

  His detention made the prospect of finding a job rather more difficult, despite his facility with Machines and his affinity for the higher forms of mathematics. He became an accountant in an East End manufactory, taking coin from his inferiors and working with second-hand Babbage Machines. His humbled situation landed him in a Spitalfields cold-water flat.

  His gifts, however had not gone unnoticed. Word of his talents had reached the ear of someone determined to make the best use of those abilities. And so to his humble door had come a man from MEDUSA, offering good pay, exotic surroundings, the chance to work as a Machine Clerk with the latest steam and aether technology, and the opportunity to ride on the coattails of power.

  If Martin was honest with himself, and he occasionally was, it was this last possibility that attracted him most strongly. He had never known the feeling of power, not real power, the kind that had endurance. Yes, there had been the power of the blade, the exercise of terror, but that had always been fleeting, and because it always had to be kept secret it was ultimately unsatisfying.

  He kept his sins hidden even from MEDUSA, kept to himself the darkness and yearnings of his heart.

  But, now, here was an outlandish stranger reciting a litany of Martin’s sins, giving voice to names that even Martin had forgotten. This outsider could easily put a rope around his neck, but, worse than that, he could block his entry into the MEDUSA organization, deny him the opportunity to acquire the power he craved. His only weapon was the straight razor by the sink.

  “It would be a mistake to reach for that razor, Mr Martin,” the hooded figure cautioned. “I tell you the sins you know so well only to prove how well I know you, that you have nothing to hide.”

  “Who are you?” Martin asked. “What do you want of me?”

  “Who I am is of no importance,” the man replied. “At the moment I am merely a voice, a voice you should note carefully, for one day you shall hear my voice again. I am about to make an investment in you, an investment that will come to term when you again hear my voice. Do you understand?”

  Martin nodded. He at least understood the words if not the meaning of the words.

  “What I want of you is simple—your assistance whe
n I ask for it,” the man explained. “I am going to give you £100,000.”

  “A hundred…”

  “Enough to make you independently wealthy for the rest of your life, but it is merely money, and cannot buy what I know you crave most,” the man in the hood said. “I am investing in you, in your considerable talents, which have hitherto been squandered in base service to unimaginative and short-sighted men. Your recent induction into the ranks of MEDUSA will present you with…”

  Martin staggered back, for he had been told by the recruiter that betraying the organization in any way would result in death. He tried to deny any affiliation with the group, but was silenced with a gesture and a stance, much as a misbehaving dog would be silently chastised by a stern master.

  “…will present you with certain opportunities,” the stranger continued. “Your talents will bring you to the notice of personages of power and authority, will advance you to positions of trust and privilege, perhaps even present the occasion to whisper words of influence into the right ear.” He paused. “You supposed all that, however, when the offer to join MEDUSA was made, did you not?”

  Martin nodded. “It was what swayed me most of all.”

  “Good, you are being honest!” Though Martin could not see the face, he imagined a sly smile. “The money I offer, which has already been deposited in a secret account in the Confederation of Switzerland, is nothing but an inducement, a show of good faith on my part. You are to tell no one of its existence, will not draw upon it for many years…but you will have no need to do so, will you?”

  Martin shook his head. “No, I was told of my assignment, of a new Great Machine.”

  “And its location?”

  “Yes, that too,” Martin acknowledged. “I found that harder to believe than the fact that MEDUSA had approached me. Until that moment, both were mere whispers to me.”

  “Let that be your first lesson in the art of power,” the hooded man said. “True power is hidden. Think of all the people around us, Mr Martin, all the unimaginative souls who think the greatest power in the Solar System is vested in the form of an old woman sitting upon a throne in Buckingham Palace. That old woman does not realize it, but even now, shadows are gathering around her, forming a new world, one in which she will answer to people such as you and I. That is the world we shall create. Do you want to be part of that dark new world?”

  “Yes,” Martin answered enthusiastically, caught up in the fire of the moment. “Yes, I do.”

  “Then accept the money I offer and keep it to yourself,” the man said. “Use your talents with mathematics and Machines to bring notice to yourself, to distinguish yourself in the eyes of the overlords of MEDUSA, and bide your time…most of all, that, Mr Martin. Be patient. And curb your proclivities toward violence. Do you think you can do all that, Mr Martin, especially the last?”

  Martin nodded. “I am very focused on my work, can control my…urges. I can keep myself to myself.”

  The head beneath the hood nodded. “See that you are and that you do. I shall be monitoring your activities closely, will always have you under my scrutiny, even though you will never see any evidence of that scrutiny.”

  Martin suddenly realized his visitor must also be a member of MEDUSA. That realization chilled Martin more than had the initial appearance of his midnight visitor or even his knowledge of Martin’s deepest held secrets.

  “If you ever mention this meeting to anyone, I shall know of it and you shall die,” the man said solemnly. “Should you not fulfill your obligations to me within MEDUSA, your usefulness will be at and end, and so will your life. Should you refuse my orders, you will be killed. You can never protect yourself from me or my agents. You can never run far enough to escape my reach, nor dig a hole deep enough that I cannot pull you out. Do you understand, then, the conditions of your employment with me, the terms of your service, and your obligations to me?”

  “Yes, sir, I do.” Martin answered.

  “And the penalties?”

  “Yes, that as well.”

  “And you agree to it all?” the hooded man asked. “All of it?”

  “I agree…to everything.”

  “Very well, Mr Martin,” the visitor said softly. “I will not insult your intelligence by telling you that you shall not regret your choice for there will be times you shall curse yourself for making a deal with the devil, especially when your urges are strong and you must control them. But you have made a wise choice nonetheless. If it is power you crave, then you have started upon the correct path.”

  The man in the hood reached into a pocket of his waistcoat and retrieved a rectangular piece of pasteboard upon which the name of a Swiss Confederation bank and a series of numbers had been written. He handed it to Martin.

  “This is the information regarding your new bank account,” the man said. “Destroy this after you have memorized it.”

  Martin nodded and took the card.

  “You shall, of course, wish to verify it before you depart Earth, but do so very discreetly,” the stranger instructed. “There is no need for you to have further contact with the bank or any of its officers. I have taken the liberty of instructing a program of investment that will increase your principal at least tenfold.”

  The mysterious visitor turned toward the door.

  “If I should need to contact you…” Martin started to say.

  The hooded man whirled about and took a threatening step in Martin’s direction, making him cringe.

  “I will contact you!” the man hissed. “You have heard my voice tonight, can recognize it?”

  Martin nodded.

  “You shall hear it again.”

  And that voice spoke to him now, from out the aether-radio he had been given by Lord Khallimar. The day Martin had anticipated with equal measures of excitement and dread had finally come.

  “You have just analyzed a complex series of equations for Lord Khallimar,” the voice said from millions of miles away. “This is what you must do now…”

  Chapter 2

  “Blasted humans!” Phylus-Zant growled as he jotted upon a square of parchment. “Damned humans!”

  A slave, a barrel-chested little Highlander, cautiously entered the chamber carrying a sky-blue cape and an ivory-colored cone-shaped hat that terminated in a hemispherical knob.

  “What is it?” Phylus-Zant demanded. “What do you want?”

  The little fellow stopped in his tracks, mouth open in surprise and eyes wide with fear.

  “I am begging your pardon, noble master,” the Martian said. “I meant no interruption to your…”

  “Get on with it, Ganto-Ba!” bellowed the merchant. “What the deuce do you…” His gaze fell to the ceremonial clothing. “Oh. Is it that time already?”

  “Yes, master.”

  “I suppose I must propitiate the gods of Mars, but they can wait till I finish this, the arrogant bastards,” Phylus-Zant muttered.

  Ganto-Ba nodded, though hesitantly. His master was filing yet another complaint about humans with the office of Baphor-Ta, chief investigator for the Court of the Red Prince, but Phylus-Zant was also known to be a very profane man. By his words, the slave did not know whether his master was simply expressing his long-held hatred of humans or was committing blasphemy. He decided he did not want to know and went to stand patiently in a corner.

  Phylus-Zant was very large, even for a Lowlands Martian, over six feet tall, not much less than that wide (or so it seemed to Ganto-Ba, who was, among other things, his dresser), and weighed in at just over twenty-five stone. Chairs, beds, canal boats all creaked in protest against his movements, but like everything and everyone else in nature they had to endure him.

  Each morning, before the rising of the distant Sun, the merchant wrote a litany of complaints against humans, creatures he saw as both competitors and vermin. Each day he noted all slights and insults, all unfair trade practices; each night he lay fitfully awake and composed invectives against his perceived foes; and each mornin
g he vomited his words on paper for Baphor-Ta to read.

  Usually, he was up early enough to finish his task well before it was time to cant the dawn prayers and invoke the good will of the gods, important enough on any day, but absolutely vital on the eve of a trade mission among some of the lesser visited canal villages. Uncharacteristically, however, Phylus-Zant had overslept, ignoring the pleas of his chamber slave, who now carried welts on his back as a reminder to be more insistent with, yet still deferential to, his master when it came to the hour of waking.

  Of course, Phylus-Zant realized, he could have foregone, for a day at least, his obligatory flogging of Chief Investigator Baphor-Ta, or left it in the hands of one of his scribes, but one choice was just as unpalatable as the other. Berating the Chief Investigator for his shortcomings in controlling the human pests was as necessary as breathing. As for delegating the task, no one but he could verbally thrash Baphor-Ta adequately, just as no other hand but his held the whip in his own house.

  “Stand still, damn you!” the merchant shouted at Ganto-Ba, who had started to fidget at the approaching dawn. “You’re making it hard to concentrate.”

  “Yes, master, I am very…”

  “Shut up,” the Lowlander growled.

  He dipped his quill into the vial of squid-ink, and wrote the last of his complaints. He quickly read over his list, nodded approvingly at his own clever wording, and blotted it. He folded it carefully and slipped it into an envelope of tanned quisant-hide.

  “Alza-Lo!” he screamed.

  A thin, almost skeletal Lowlander burst breathlessly into the chamber. He dropped to one knee and started to cross his raised wrists in obeisance. Phylus-Zant pummeled the hapless scribe with the envelope.

  “Get up, get up, you worthless slug!” the merchant shouted. “Can you not see the time? Do you think I have time to waste with you? Now, take this to the Court of the Red…”