The Excavator Excavated

‘Slow down!’ yelled Ludo as the strange excavator hurtled on through the dark and winding network of drains.

‘No, go faster! Or we’ll all be crushed,’ shouted Wren as the rushing scrapheap grew increasingly louder behind them.

Then Swivel spied a heavy iron grille over the end of the drain ahead of them. ‘The young sir is correct, miss. We really need to brake.’ He frantically engaged another lever on the handlebars, and the feet beneath the machine dug in their many heels. But this only served to create sparks and make the excavator unstable.

‘There’s the end of the tunnel. We’re going to crash!’ Ludo raised his arms to shield his face.

‘No, look!’ said Wren. ‘It’s opening.’

The grille covering the tunnel exit began to rotate upwards and outwards with a nerve-jangling, mechanical squeal.

‘I do believe the way ahead’s clear,’ said Swivel, just as the colossal bolus of debris reached the rear of the excavator. The machine shot out of the end of the drain into thin air, along with the geyser of junk.

They had emerged on the far side of the crag high above a wide, deep pit. The butler operated another of his levers and a pair of scruffy wings unfolded from the top of the machine, flapping wildly. With the aid of the wings the contraption landed with a jarring bump in the bottom of the pit, just a few yards beyond the end of the outflow.

‘Phew, that was close,’ said Wren. ‘I thought we were done for when the face grabbed us. You saved us, Mel. Mel? Where’s Mel?’

‘He was just behind us.’ Ludo looked around for his friend.

‘I’m sorry, young sir, miss, but your companion parted company with us some way back,’ Swivel informed them.

‘What? You mean he’s still in there? We have to go back and get him,’ said Wren.

‘That’s impossible,’ said Ludo flatly. ‘That drain was miles long. There’s no way we could climb back up there. Besides, the grille’s closed again. You saw how many other drains branched off to the side. He could have gone down any one of them.’

‘The young sir’s right, miss. I’m afraid we’ve lost him for good.’

‘We can’t just abandon him. Perhaps he’s come out of another exit. We have to try and find him,’ pleaded Wren.

‘But where, Wren? We don’t know if there is another exit. We don’t even know where we are,’ said Ludo.

Wren looked desperately from one to the other. She sat down on the edge of the excavator and felt tears begin to well up behind her eyes. After a moment she choked them back. ‘No. That’s not going to help us find Mel. He’s still alive; I know he is. We came into the Mirrorscape to do a job and we owe it to Mel to complete it. We must go on and find the master.’ She wiped her eyes with her sleeve.

‘I agree, miss. The young sir struck me as an eminently resourceful chap. Why, he’s probably got out of the mine and is searching for us right now. He’ll surely make his own way to the master.’ The butler seemed to have a face for every occasion. This time it swivelled to display one with a sad but hopeful smile.

Wren was grateful for the reassuring gesture but felt no better. She knew as well as the others that the odds were against Mel.

‘At least we’ve still got the satchel and most of the stuff. We stand as much chance as we did before of finding the master,’ said Ludo.

They studied their surroundings. The pit had steep rocky sides from which the occasional gnarled tree grew out horizontally. Perched on them were strange birds whose forlorn cries echoed off the walls. There was a long, sloping pathway that spiralled around the inside of the pit to the top.

‘It’s an awfully long way up to the rim,’ said Ludo.

‘Why don’t we take the excavator?’ suggested Wren.

‘A splendid idea, miss. However, our supply of fuel has diminished considerably. Perhaps if you and the young sir would be so kind as to search the scrap and procure anything that is in any way combustible to fuel the boiler, we might proceed.’

Impatient at the delay, Wren and Ludo rushed around collecting anything from the ejected junk that might burn.

As they set off, neither Wren nor Swivel noticed the yellow arrow pointing up the path behind them.

When they finally reached the top of the pit, Swivel brought them to a halt.

‘Any idea of where we are? Which way do we go?’ asked Wren. She glanced back towards the grille in the pit far below them, and the scavenger birds picking over the junk. ‘Where are you, Mel?’ she said under her breath.

‘I believe it would be constructive to consult the omniscope,’ answered Swivel. Ludo took it from the satchel. ‘If you were to try this knob here, for instance, we might learn something to our advantage.’

Ludo put the omniscope to his eye and twiddled the control the butler indicated. ‘I can’t see a thing. Everything’s gone black.’ He removed the contraption and looked at the lens, but it was unobstructed. ‘Maybe it got broken in the mine.’

‘Perhaps if the young sir were to pan around in the other direction.’

As Ludo swung around the light in the device increased and he could see clearly. He continued panning and the image darkened again before he swung back to where it appeared brightest. He fumbled with the other knobs until he found the magnifier.

‘There it is! There’s not just a single track of footprints but a great churned-up mass of them leading away. We’ve found the trail.’

‘That particular function of the omniscope is somewhat like that of a compass, young sir; a rather intelligent compass. It is always brightest in the direction of what one is searching for. In this case, the master.’

‘Then why can’t we use it to search for Mel?’ asked Wren.

‘We can, miss, but not yet. It can only point in one direction at a time. You may have noticed that our master is rather ….’

‘Absent-minded?’ suggested Ludo.

‘… Liable to go off at a tangent, shall we say. Therefore, I took it upon myself some time ago to set the omniscope to always point the way to the master. Once that’s been achieved it can be reset to look in another direction,’ explained Swivel.

‘So let’s hurry up and find him,’ said Wren.

They set off across the Mirrorscape, leaving the comparatively delicate footprints of the excavator alongside the broad furrow ploughed up by Billet and his pursuers. They made good time on the flat terrain and soon Swivel called back to Wren and Ludo. ‘There’s a cloud of dust up ahead. Why don’t you two see what you can make out?’

The friends clambered up and on top of the rapidly moving excavator. When they were seated side by side on the dinosaur head, Ludo used the omniscope to study the cloud.

He raised his voice so that Swivel could hear him above the musical tune of the pipes. ‘I can see the house – I mean Billet. He’s surrounded by a whole herd.’

‘A whole herd of what?’ asked Wren.

‘Here, see for yourself.’

Wren took the omniscope and trained it on the distant cloud. She recognised Billet from the master’s canvas, and milling around him were huge shapes made indistinct by the dust. Occasionally, a burst of light erupted within the cloud, followed seconds later by the low rumble of distant thunder. As they got closer, she could make out progressively more detail. ‘There must be a dozen strange contraptions circling Billet.’

‘Yeah, and every one is crammed with men-at-arms,’ said Ludo.

Each contraption seemed to have been cobbled together from items plundered from the Mine of Inspiration. Some spat bolts of lightning, and had succeeded in setting fire to the thatch that crowned Billet’s head. Other machines sported huge iron fists or a variety of wickedly sharp blades of various shapes and sizes. Still more war engines were like long-legged steamships that fired nets and miles of sticky string that tangled Billet’s feet and prevented his escape. One rhinoceros-shaped machine, which seemed to be in command, hovered in the air above the battleground. It was suspended from many wires attached to a great flock of birds of all shapes and sizes. The omniscope now clearly showed the High-Bailiff and his dwarf peering out from between the exposed ribs, organising the assault and telegraphing instructions to the ragtag squadron with a small semaphore machine hanging beneath them.

‘It looks like we got here too late,’ said Ludo.

‘There must be something we can do.’ Wren anxiously scanned the scene with the omniscope. ‘Wait a minute. I can see ….’

‘What? What?’

‘Ludo … it’s the master! He’s alive! He’s on the roof trying to beat out the flames. We’re not too late.’

‘We’ve found him. Swivel, we’ve found the master and he’s alive,’ said Ludo.

‘Ahem!’

‘What now, Swivel?’ said Ludo. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve thought of some urgent tidying up to do.’

‘In a way, young sir, I have. It occurs to me there’s an awful mess down there surrounding the master that simply must be attended to. I can’t abide mess.’

‘What did you have in mind?’ asked Wren.

‘Might I suggest that it is not beyond your decidedly superior creative abilities and my more humble, workaday skills to engineer, as it were, a way out of this predicament.’

Swivel set the excavator on automatic pilot. The smoke from the steam engine now worked to their advantage. The butler rearranged some pipes that blew thick clouds from the mouth of the excavator to mask their approach. The moth-eaten wings fanned this towards the enemy.

Through the smoke and din of battle they could make out Billet’s booming voice. ‘Call that a slap, yer limp-wristed twerp? I’ve been hit harder by snowflakes.’

Before the attackers knew it, the excavator was in among them and using its powerful jaws to hamper and maim the assailants. Blinded by the smoke, the monsters were unable to receive instructions from the High-Bailiff hovering above. In the confusion they began to set about each other.

‘Our smokescreen seems most effective,’ said Swivel. ‘Now, if we remove the enemy’s head we might be able to make inroads into his body.’ Swivel launched a carefully aimed circular saw blade at the flying contraption from an improvised catapult strung between the handlebars. The spinning projectile found its mark and severed many of the lines that attached it to the flock of birds.

‘Good shot!’ Wren and Ludo cheered as the machine crashed into the midst of its brothers, sowing yet more panic.

While the enemy contraptions were busy laying into each other, Swivel manoeuvred the excavator right up to Billet and dismounted. ‘A spot of gardening is called for, I believe.’ With a sickle attachment on his hand he began to cut away the entanglements that bound the house.

Meanwhile, Ludo and Wren had noticed that the smoke was beginning to clear. Adolfus Spute had climbed from the wreckage of his aerial vehicle and mounted a tortoise contraption. It had a tall steel pylon on its domed back from which swung a spiked, iron ball on a chain like a rotor. The High-Bailiff used this to blow the smoke back towards the excavator.

‘There goes our smokescreen,’ said Wren. ‘Time for another of Mel’s machine guns, I think.’

‘Two are better than one,’ said Ludo as the pair grabbed pipes from the excavator to use like Mel’s improvised weapon.

‘But what are we going to use for ammunition?’ asked Wren. ‘There’s no scrapheap here.’

‘There’s one thing,’ said Ludo. ‘The excavator!’ He tried several of the handlebar controls until he found a combination that set the excavator to begin devouring itself. It started to gyrate like a puppy chasing its own tail. Beginning with the sousaphone and moving steadily along the length of its sinuous body, it chomped while the friends stood to one side and aimed the remains at Billet’s attackers like firemen dousing flames.

‘It’s working,’ said Ludo, ‘but not fast enough.’

‘We’re running out of ammunition,’ said Wren. They could see that the excavator would have totally consumed itself before the assailants could be put to flight.

‘We might not need much more. Look!’ Wren nodded towards Billet. Swivel had finally cut the house free from its entanglements.

‘Right, yer bogey-chewing sticks of rhubarb. Let’s be having yer!’ bellowed Billet as he weighed into the melee. ‘How d’yer like that!’ Those monsters he could not flatten with his enormous feet, he butted with his head. From one of his great windows, the master rained down pieces of furniture and other household items.

‘We’re winning!’ said Ludo, seeing the High-Bailiff in the tortoise-machine wheel around and flee the battlefield, followed by his men in the remains of their battered contraptions.

With a final and seemingly impossible contortion, the excavator munched its own head and the last of the debris was fired from Wren and Ludo’s truncated hoses as parting shots before they became limp and useless in their hands.

As the dust settled, the friends were able to get a clear view of Billet. He was much as they had first seen him in the picture, except that now he stood on two giant bare feet that seemed to be attached to his great head without the aid of very much in the way of legs in between. Strangely, he had no arms, and much of his exterior was battered and in need of redecoration.

‘That showed ’em! That showed ’em good,’ roared Billet. Then, noticing his smouldering thatch for the first time, ‘Cripes! Me hair!’

While the house was complaining loudly to anyone who would listen, Swivel led the two friends in through a postern door in Billet’s heel and guided them up innumerable stairs.

‘It’s much bigger in here than it looks from outside,’ observed Wren.

‘That’s because Billet is a figment. Each part can be any size his creator imagines,’ explained Swivel.

As they ascended, they passed many doors that opened on to all kinds of rooms. One or two were secured with formidable locks. Near the bottom they passed a dark, smelly chamber that seemed to be full of fat pipes and drains.

‘Poo! What’s in there?’ asked Ludo.

Swivel explained. ‘Just as Billet has a more or less human countenance – ’

‘Rather less than more, if you ask me,’ interrupted Ludo.

‘… so his interior has many functions that also equate to the human body. Here, near the bottom – ’

‘Thank you, Swivel. We get the picture,’ said Wren.

As they mounted higher they passed a kitchen and several well-stocked storerooms.

‘Stomach?’

‘Just so, miss.’

‘And this must be the studio,’ said Ludo as they climbed higher. They looked in on a lofty room lit by the two tall windows of Billet’s eyes, with a splendid view of the Mirrorscape beyond. The contents were in total disarray.

At the very top, and out of breath, they came to a panelled, book-lined library. Many of the books lay scattered on the polished floor and a tall library ladder had toppled over. Amidst this mess, sitting in a comfortable leather armchair, was the master. His skull cap was askew and he was consulting a large book open on a low lectern before him.

The butler gave his habitual polite cough and the master looked up. His pale face was smudged and his beard was singed. ‘Ah, Swivel, there you are. Where’ve you been? I could have used your help a while ago. I was just consulting my atlas of the Mirrorscape, trying to find exactly where we’ve got to. We’ve come far off the beaten track. There’s a long way to go before we can get back out into the mansion.’ He removed his reading spectacles and looked up. ‘And we have guests. Young Cleef, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, master.’

‘And …?

‘Wren, master. I work in your kitchen.’

‘Upon my word. Now, what are you two doing here? And where’s your friend Womper? But forgive me, I’m forgetting myself. You must be exhausted after the fracas. Swivel, tea for my guests.’

As they sat in the library sipping tea, Ludo and Wren recounted the arrest of Dirk Tot, the ransacking of the mansion and their journey through the Mirrorscape searching for the master. As they spoke, they watched Ambrosius Blenk’s face darken. He twirled his long beard round and round in his fingers and fixed them with his piercing blue eyes.

‘The impudence of Brool! This explains why Spute and his men have been preventing me from returning. With me out of the way there’s no one to stop the Fifth Mystery from doing as it pleases.’ Then his expression lightened. ‘That sounds like quite an adventure you’ve had. Dirk Tot and I suspected that young Womper might know a little. Now I see that he knows rather a lot.’

‘Excuse me, master, but Mel’s sure that Dirk Tot is working for the Fifth Mystery.’

The master began to laugh but stopped himself. ‘Young lady, nothing could be further from the truth. Believe me.’

‘But he saw him meeting with some Mystery men – when he was coming to Vlam.’

Ambrosius Blenk smiled. ‘Did he now? Or did he just see my steward with some men in red? The kind of red you get mining cinnabar?’

Wren and Ludo looked at each other, the light of realisation in their eyes.

‘Now, does anyone else know about the Mirrorscape – besides the High-Bailiff and his men?’

‘There are the coloured men, the fugitives,’ answered Wren. ‘They do.’

‘The coloured men, you say?’ The master grunted. ‘So you’ve met them, have you? They’ve more reason than most to hate the Mysteries. Anyone else?’

‘I don’t think so, master.’

Ludo looked down at his feet and shook his head.

‘Very well. That still doesn’t tell us how the Fifth Mystery managed to get into the Mirrorscape in the first place.’ He twiddled his beard and thought some more. The only sound was the rhythmic sighing of the ventilation that sent fresh air around the room from an ornate brass grille set low in the wall. Somewhere below, the sound of Swivel tidying up drifted towards them. Then the master clapped his hands and rubbed them together. ‘All right, there’s much to be done. We must get back home as quickly as possible and see about freeing Dirk Tot. The confounded nerve of the Mystery to ransack my mansion like that!’

‘But what about Mel? We can’t leave him here,’ said Wren.

‘Quite right, young lady. We really ought to find young Womper and take him with us. I can’t have my apprentices going astray now, can I? You say you lost him in the Mine of Inspiration?’

Wren nodded. ‘We don’t even know if he’s ….’ She couldn’t complete the sentence.

‘If only I’d thought to bring my omniscope with me.’

‘It’s here. We have it,’ said Wren.

Ludo produced it from the satchel and handed it to the master.

‘My word. Thank you. How very prescient of you.’ The master stroked the contraption fondly. ‘Let me explain a little about the omniscope. Do you know that each of these knobs and sliders along its length operates one of its many functions? This one, for instance, enlarges the subject and – ’

‘Please, sir, we know all about the omniscope. It helped us get here. But I – ’

‘I’ll thank you not to interrupt me, young lady!’

Wren blushed.

‘Now ….’ The master paused and stared hard at the youngsters. ‘Now, I’m sure you don’t know all about the omniscope. You may have fathomed that this wondrous instrument can enlarge things, can illuminate things, can see through things and can even indicate a desired direction, but there’s one function that I’m sure you have not discovered. As well as perform all of these undoubtedly useful services, it can also peer some distance into the future. Make it appear a little closer, as it were.’

‘You mean we can use it to see if Mel’s all right – or going to be all right?’ Wren’s face shone with renewed hope.

‘In a manner of speaking, yes. But first we need to know where to look. Come over here.’ Wren and Ludo followed Ambrosius Blenk to a dormer window in the corner of the library. ‘Before anything else, this needs to be reset. There, that should do it.’ Attaching the omniscope to a heavy brass tripod, the master bent and put his eye to it and turned what the friends now knew to be the direction-finding knob. ‘Are you sure you wish to see this? It may tell us something we don’t want to know. Once something’s been seen it can’t be unseen.’

Wren and Ludo looked at each other. They looked back at the master and nodded.

‘Very well.’ He put his eye to the omniscope again. Suddenly the colour drained from his face. ‘Oh dear. This is much worse than I feared; much, much worse.’