TWENTY

BIRDLIP

Bill Kraken, sitting astride the limb of an oak some five feet above the heads of the crowd below, wondered much the same thing. In none of Kraken’s investigations into science was there anything as grand, as majestic, as the homeward-bound Birdlip and his astonishing craft. Something, Kraken was certain, was pending. He could feel it in the air - a static charge that shivered through the masses who stood mute with anticipation.

The descending blimp swung low overhead. People leaned out of the uppermost branches of trees, endeavoring to touch it. It seemed to Kraken as if the sky was nothing but blimp. He glanced back over his shoulder, looking proudly at Langdon St. Ives who stood before his own incredible ship. The night, indeed, was full of marvels. And he, Bill Kraken, squid merchant, pea pod man, had a hand in them. The man beside him in the branches, an unshaven pinch-faced man in a stocking cap, hadn’t. Kraken smiled at him good-naturedly. It wasn’t his fault, after all, that he didn’t hobnob with geniuses. The man gave him a dark look, disliking the familiarity. Someone above trod on the top of Kraken’s head in an effort to boost himself even higher. Below him on the green, stumbling from shadow to shadow as if working his way surreptitiously toward where the blimp seemed destined to land, lurched a man who appeared to be sick or drunk. Kraken squinted at him, disbelieving. It was Willis Pule.

Kraken dangled one leg down along the trunk, feeling for the crotch of two great limbs that forked up some six feet from the ground. Things, apparently, were hotting up. Pule disappeared into the shadows, then reappeared again beyond a heaped bonfire, the dancing orange light of which seemed to intensify the darkness behind it.

Not twenty paces behind Pule, possessed by a determination that belied his age, Shiloh the New Messiah limped along, accompanied by a straggling covey of converts strung along like quail, half intent on catching up to the disappeared Pule, half intent on Birdlip’s craft. The blimp hung now over the green, suspended by the magic, perhaps, of its Keeble engine. The evangelist was lit for a moment by the same firelight which had illuminated Pule and which now betrayed on the old man a face twisted slantwise in a rictus of loathing, the messiah pursuing the worm, the devil who had made away with the head of his mother, and who now carried one of the fabulous boxes, quite conceivably the same box stolen hours ago by the imposter in the wagon.

And there, sliding along down the edge of the crowd, came Theophilus Godall, carrying with him, Kraken was horrified to see, a round, metallic object that could be nothing other than the Marseilles Pinkle, glinting in the firelight. He was clearly unseen either by Pule or the old man. But Bill Kraken saw him, and so did St. Ives. The tune had begun to be called, and it was time for Kraken to dance to it. He slid to the ground and set out, running straight on into Kelso Drake, an inch and a half of cigar protruding from Drake’s mouth like a blackened tongue.

If he’d had time to think, Kraken would have sailed back into his tree, scaled the slippery trunk like an ape. But he had no such time. He launched himself at the millionaire. “Here’s for Ashbless!” he cried, an obtuse reference to the bullet Billy Deener had drilled into his treasured volume. And he struck Drake squarely on the chin, snatching the Keeble box from his hands as Drake fell sputtering, stupefied with surprise, his hat sailing off to reveal a bandaged head.

Kraken turned and ran, holding the box before him as if it were a pitcher of water he daren’t spill. Drake pounded along behind, filling the suddenly tumultuous night with curses, drowned out when a hundred thousand voices arose in a sudden monumental cheer. The blimp, its time come round at last, shot forward and settled in onto the green, not twenty-five feet from St. Ives’ space vehicle. The bulk of the crowd surged up the hill behind it. The ghoul in the stuffed chair sat placid as a man at tea in front of it. The Royal Academy, directed by the indomitable Parsons, clustered around it, eager to have a look at the skeletal sailor, home at last from the sea.

Kraken angled away into the rushing crowd. There was the Captain, stumping along, and William Keeble at the heels of his stalwart wife, all of them charging toward the blimp, toward the fourth and final box that rode within. “Cap’n!” shouted Kraken, capering along behind them, carried in a rush by the swarming masses, A sea of heads cut off his view. Someone trod on his toe. He stumbled. A dozen people smashed past him. He was pushed from his knees onto his face, nearly trampled, lying atop the Keeble box.

“Filthy piece of dirt!” hissed a voice in his ear, and as he hunched forward in an effort to stand, he was borne down again by the weight of Kelso Drake, his cigar gone, his jaws working as if he were full of speeches too vile to utter.

Kraken plowed his elbow into Drake’s nose. A hand closed over his face, tugging his head back. He clamped his scattered teeth onto a finger and chewed away until the teeth closed against bone. A shriek erupted in his ear, and the hand was jerked away, nearly tearing the precious tooth away with it.

Kraken stumbled forward, half rose, and was elbowed sideways into a host of people, slowing now in the press. He was on his feet, though. Indeed, it would be difficult to fall, closed in as he was by the throng. Over his shoulder he could see Kelso Drake, cursing at the people around him - people who were in no mood to be cursed. A fist shot out and clipped Drake in the ear. He lurched aside. Kraken grinned. Drake was obviously possessed by the thought that millionaires ought not to be treated so. He railed at the man who he supposed had hit him - the wrong man, as it turned out, a man who had the general shape of a hogshead and the facial consistency of a bag of stones.

“Here now!” shouted the man, not wasting words, and he slammed Drake on the nose to the general encouragement of the crowd. Kraken pushed toward the erupting mêlée, shouting happily to see the color of Drake’s blood. The industrialist flailed like a windmill, utterly ineffectively, so far gone was he in his anger and loathing.

Kraken hoped to get in a blow or two of his own, but his hopes were dashed when, with sudden inspiration, he shouted: “That’s the man who murdered the child!” at the top of his lungs, pointing past the circle of Drake’s tormenters into the millionaire’s face. A cry of disgust and abandonment arose, and before Kraken could have a go at him, Drake disappeared beneath a monsoon of whirling fists. “Get him!” cried Kraken, but the suggestion, he quickly saw, was unnecessary. He pushed along toward the blimp, hugging his box.

Ahead of him, two dozen or so men scrambled to string ropes around the craft, cordoning it off against the possible rush of the masses. But the London populace, apparently, harbored suspicions, fears, and perhaps reverence, for they hovered round the perimeter of an oblong patch of ground on which sat the blimp, the corpse in the chair, and the starship. Parsons directed the roping efforts, arguing all the while with both the Captain and St. Ives. Captain Powers grew more heated by the moment, shouting that Parsons had no “jurisdiction.” Parsons attempted to ignore him, but cast meaningful glances at St. Ives, as if to encourage the scientist to calm his bellowing friend.

St. Ives, however, was distracted by a scuffling and shouting off to his right, beyond the bonfire, which blazed now with increased ferocity, fed by a hail of limbs and forest debris tossed by the enthusiastic mob. St. Ives stepped along toward the scuffle when he saw amid it the head and shoulders of Theophilus Godall. Bill Kraken sprang into view just then, hurrying toward St. Ives, carrying his Keeble box like a trophy.

Willis Pule writhed and grunted, heaving in a tangle of grasping fanatics that included Shiloh the New Messiah. Godall circled round, intent on the box that Pule clutched. Jack Owlesby circled gamely beside him, looking for an opportunity. Pule shrieked; the box jumped out of his hands and was snatched by a beefy young man in a soiled robe. Shiloh hauled the box away from the man and lurched toward clear ground, jabbering excitedly, having no earthly idea which of the many strange boxes he possessed, but certain that the lot of them were somehow holy and somehow rightfully his.

Jack Owlesby strode along after him. The several parishioners who made as if to stop Jack found themselves peering at the business end of Godall’s pistol. Jack reached past the old man and snatched the box, leaping away toward the blimp. Shiloh turned, an unuttered shriek stretching his mouth. Godall, smiling calmly, thrust the Pinkle into the old man’s outstretched hands.

“What!” cried the evangelist, setting in to pitch the thing away. He saw it clearly for the first time even as he threw it. His eyes, yellow in the light of the fire, seemed to expand like balloons. He checked his throw, warbling out a little deflating cry. But it was too late. The Pinkle threw out a spoonful of sparks that whirled around the thrusting rubber head and flew in a wheeling arc into a stand of shadowy bracken and broom that muffled the strange noises and lights emitted by the orb.

The evangelist stiffened, his mouth going suddenly slack. Jack was beyond his reach. The bird he’d had momentarily in hand had flown. But here was another in the bush. He turned, ignoring Godall, who made no move to stop him. In a second he was gone, creeping through the dark shrubs on his hands and knees, as unheeding of the apocalyptic gyrations on the Heath roundabout him as if he’d been one of Narbondo’s ghouls.

The evening, in the space of five minutes, had begun to look very satisfactory to St. Ives. Here was Jack Owlesby, toting a recovered Keeble box. Here was Bill Kraken, toting another. There was Theophilus Godall with yet another. St. Ives smiled at Jack and reached out to shake the lad’s hand. Evil, it was clear, was fairly literally being pummeled. Jack grinned, the flames roared, the Captain shouted, and Bill Kraken, with an alarming suddenness, pitched forward toward the edge of the fire.

Behind him, his face bleeding, his right eye shut, his left arm dangling uselessly, crouched a lunatic Kelso Drake. Kraken shouted and threw out his hands. The Keeble box set sail as if shot from a catapult. St. Ives leaped for it, knocking it askew in its flight, saving it from the fire but sending it cartwheeling toward where the enigmatic ghoul reclined in his chair. The box struck him on the chin, snapped his head down onto his chest, and landed in his lap.

With an oath, Drake limped forward, grimacing murderously. But there was Godall, smiling in the circle of firelight, his pistol drawn and mimed at Drake’s chest. The millionaire lurched to a stop, raising his bands.

A cry arose from the crowd. St. Ives turned toward the blimp, expecting a revelation. But the blimp sat silent and dark on the Heath, surrounded by scientists scribbling in notepads, casting looks at the insistent Captain who held the sputtering Parsons by the collar.

Another cry. Hands pointed. It was the corpse in the chair, stirring. His back straightened; his fists clenched; air gasped through his closed teeth. The Captain released Parsons, who goggled at the corpse as it stood upright, dragging the ropes loose from where they were entangled among the springs of the chair. It held the box aloft, almost with reverence.

“Lord have mercy,” muttered Kraken. Jack stood mute. The ghoul shuffled forward, bearing the Keeble box.

“Homunculus!” whispered St. Ives. Godall nodded beside him, his pistol disappeared. In his right hand now was St. Ives’ aerator, in his left was a handful of Pule’s jacket, the murderous student of alchemy slouching beside him like a man stuffed with rags, his mouth agape. Thousands of pairs of eyes watched the dumb show on the Heath.

The ghoul hunched toward Parsons, who stepped back, regretting suddenly that he’d got rid of the severed head he’d been given earlier. Would this ghoul demand it? Or would it hand Parsons yet another inexplicable item? What, for God’s sake, was in the damned box?

But the ghoul strode past him unhindered, toward the gondola where stood the strident Birdlip. Only Captain Powers had the temerity to follow him. Parsons said nothing. The Captain fell in behind, hearing as he did the incessant demanding voice that jabbered from the Keeble box in the ghoul’s hand.

Dr. Birdlip, suddenly, seemed to shake himself. Those on the edge of the crowd gasped. Was it the wind? A trick of moonlight? Birdlip released his hold on the wheel - a grip he’d maintained without pause for a decade. Finger bones picked at the rotted cords that lashed him to the gondola. The cords fell. Birdlip turned, jerking forward toward the little swinging stile door fallen back on its hinge. Firelight danced and leaped. Parsons gaped. St. Ives barely breathed. Godall stood bemused. The Captain nodded politely to the skeleton of Dr. Birdlip, then bent suddenly and picked something up from the floor of the gondola. St. Ives knew what it was. Birdlip seemed to heed nothing - nothing but the proferred box, which the ghoul relinquished, seeming to deflate almost and stagger just a bit, backward, stepping toward the stuffed chair as if suddenly fatigued to the point of collapse. Parsons began to step along after him, wondering at the nature of the animate corpse that gaped at him, opening and shutting its mouth like a conger eel.

“Speak, man!” cried the biologist.

The corpse dropped dead into the chair.

Birdlip jerked down onto the green in quick little lurching, stiff-jointed steps, holding the Keeble box, his skull canted sideways as if in perplexity. The dead silence was broken by the utterance of an immense sob, as Willis Pule, taking the startled Godall by surprise, twisted out of his coat in a rush. Pule sailed down on Birdlip, ducking under a murderous blow aimed at him by the stalwart Captain. But Pule, apparently, hadn’t theft in mind as a motive. All such practical pursuits had been abandoned; it was mayhem and ruin he coveted, gibbering destruction, the mindless, drooling desire to tear the weary world to bits.

In an instant he snatched the box from Birdlip, who tottered there on the green, suddenly enervated. Pule raised the box overhead and smashed it to the green. The clever joinery of the Keeble box flew asunder as the thing cracked against a stone. The lid wheeled away into the astonished crowd. Ten thousand mouths gaped in wide wonder to see a tiny man tumble forth - the fabled homunculus - and leap to his feet on the green free of his prison at long last. Even though he wore a hat he couldn’t have been eight inches tall.

What, wondered the treetop crowds and the staring masses on the Heath, what thing was this that ran dead away toward the skeletal Birdlip, past the goggling Parsons, through spring grasses that waved round his ears, step by tiny step? It clearly had a destination in mind. What, conceivably, could it desire?

Willis Pule clutched at his head, his wild loathing played out. He was reduced to a thing as empty as the airy gondola sitting like the bleached bones of a dinosaur on the green behind the teetering Birdlip. Theophilus Godall watched Pule creep away into shadow. He’d allow the spent thing to wander away unpursued, to take up a life, perhaps, of begging or of geeking in some low sideshow. A great wind blew up out of the south, buffeting the dark dirigible, which swayed on its makeshift moorings, threatening to tumble over onto its side like a wounded beast. The crowd gasped and surged away, fearful of being crushed. The homunculus confronted Dr. Birdlip, spoke to him, pointed, it seemed, toward the heavens. It doffed its clever little hat and gestured animatedly with it. Then, with a startling alacrity, it leaped onto the swaying skeleton, grappling its way into the doctor’s ribcage, peering out as if through the bars of Newgate Prison. Birdlip took a tentative step forward, animate once again, and, to the degree that a skull can reflect emotion, he seemed smitten with sudden elation, perhaps a flowering of the sense of wanderlust that had motivated his journey through the heavens.

A cheer arose from those close enough to perceive this sudden illumination. Jack Owlesby, perhaps, cheered most loudly of all, but his cheer was cut short when, with a sudden whump, he was struck in the small of the back, and the box that he carried flew from his hands. Kelso Drake, having gone down the same twisted road as Willis Pule, shrieked past Godall into the firelight and endeavored to dance on the box, to smash it up. He was stopped cold, however, by the simultaneous effort of Godall and St. Ives, and by the curious behavior of the fallen box.

It shuddered there in front of the teetering Birdlip, in front of the astonished Parsons, clearly illuminated in the fireglow. Dr. Birdlip jerked round and stood still. Kelso Drake stepped a pace back toward the fire. The top of the box sprang away with a suddenness that brought a cry from any of a number of treetops. And very slowly and majestically there arose from the depths of the box the bird-eating cayman, snatching up one then another and another and another of the little fowl before sinking again into his tomb.

“Hooray!” shouted a hundred voices, a thousand. The cheer was taken up by the multitude, who could have no earthly idea what it was they cheered. And with the salutory cries fueling his departure, Dr. Randal Birdlip, himself piloted now by the little man within him, clacked jerkily over the grass, Parsons at his heels. He stopped at the side of the starship, turned and gazed one last long moment at the jeweled lights of London, bent over and unknotted the rope from round one of the little feet of the starship and clambered woodenly into the open hatch. The hatch slammed shut. Emerald lights burned suddenly within the ship. The ground seemed to shudder momentarily, and in the wink of an eye the ship was nothing but a speck of fire in the vast heavens, the intrepid Dr. Birdlip piloting the craft of the homunculus among the countless stars that hung suspended above the streetcorners of space like gaslamps.