by Phyllis Huldarsdottir
Cast of Characters (Partial):
Captain Lydia Cheése (pronounced “Chase”), Airship Commander for Aerosud, a luxury liner airship company based out of São Paulo in the Empire of Brazil, who is searching for her father, Commodore Jack Cheése, an outlaw and antigovernmental rabble rouser.
Professor Doctor Jean-Pierre Serre-Pain, proprietor of Madame Ophelia’s Ophidiarium, a traveling snake show, who has abducted Lydia to get her to pilot an illegal unregistered airship to HOAR (the Horn Of Africa Republic) on a mission of mercy in exchange for helping her find her father.
Serpina, a young girl who serves as Serre-Pain’s assistant and snake handler and who is also a psychic Vessel.
Vlady, an older bearlike man also in the employ of Madame Ophelia’s Ophidiarium and a traveling circus strongman Lydia recognizes from her past.
Pyare, a young man with dreams of being an airship pilot, and member of LBFDS (the League Bousculier Francaise Du Sud) helping Lydia and Serpina rendezvous with Serre-Pain and Vlady at an illegal airship.
Emile Etugouda, poet, philosopher, world traveler, raconteur, and general all around know-it-all whose memory of an ancient epic poem helped Lydia, Serpina, and Pyare cross the Massif and on to their rendezvous in Autre Lyons.
Chief Inspector Karla Kola, head of the IOTA squad charged with capturing Commodore Jack Cheése and Lydia’s nemesis and pursuer.
Pax Victoriana, a period of peace imposed by the Clockwork Commonwealth and its enforcement arm, The Admiralty, dating from the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign to the present for a total of 180 years which includes the TSR (Temporal Shift Realignment) of 56 PV (1893 AD) after which Commonwealth calendars where recalibrated to reflect Her Royal Majesty’s peaceful rule (following the devastation of the first Pandem and its resurgence 30 years later as Pandem II).
Chapter XX
Lydia stood in the wheelhouse of the airship like she was visiting an old friend, a very old friend. It was a text book reconstruction of the control panel, down to the mahogany framing, analog instruments, chrome highlights and gleaming brass, the outsized rudder wheel, elevator wheel and panel, altimeter, gas board, and engine telegraph dating back almost a hundred years. Pyare could barely constrain himself, a child in a museum, wanting to touch everything and make equivalences to what he knew of current airship dashboards with their plasma displays and their analogous functions. She was relieved by his apparent familiarity with procedures and that it wasn’t all braggadocio. She was going to require a second if they were to accomplish their mission. Pyare, who had accompanied them across the Massif, had decided to continue with them to North Africa. He had no reason to return to Old Orleans now that the gendarmes were after him. Apparently Leon had confessed to everything and exposed the organization’s network, naming names, his among them.
She shouldn’t have been surprised that Serre-Pain and Etugouda were acquainted. They were of a second Pandem generation and wore similar world weary expressions around their eyes. It was during their exchanges of when they had last crossed paths that her real identity was revealed. Not Odette Oday as her identity papers claimed, but Lydia Cheése, airship commander, who was to pilot their mission to Djibouti.
Etigouda had cocked an appraising eye at her and asked, “You’re not related to Nye Cheese, are you? The Queen’s Chancellor for a brief period during the period following 1906 current era, Pax Victoriana Year 69 or some such, and just ahead of the first BMI Pandemic. An obtuse character if there ever was one. He considered himself quite the philosopher but was actually completely mad. The Admiralty Board put an end to his conciliatory concessions with the powerful Romanovs over the administration of Eurasia and its contiguous states, especially in its rivalry with the Empire of China for the Independent Republic of North Pacific Archipelagos, or Manchatka, as it is commonly known.”
Of course she wasn’t. Her family name was pronounced “chase.” And she wasn’t going to get a word in edgewise. The old poet’s idea of a conversation was a monologue, preferably his.
Once they’d gained the sanctuary of the remote farmhouse with its massive stone barn carved into the hillside where the dirigible was penned, Lydia had set about the inspection of the airship, a medium sized transport. She had trained on similar rigs but none quite as old. The principles were the same.
Serre-Pain outlined the plan over the large chart table before their departure. They would be flying unauthorized through the commercial airspace and subject to interception by the customs authorities. It all depended on timing. A Russair cargo dirigible of similar vintage was making its way down on the opposite side of the Massif. He pointed to the map and where the monitoring stations were along their flight path. The one to the south of Autre Lyons was the one they would have to deceive. All cargo transports were required to keep to a strictly enforced schedule as well as elevation. If the Russair transport could be delayed at their last cargo stop, they would have a narrow window to impersonate its flight signature and fool the monitors. That would take some calculation.
Lydia had quickly worked it out, estimating the airspeed of that class of dirigible, especially laden, taking into consideration the time of day, and what upswells of wind current could be expected descending into the littoral plain. It had been a while since she had actually had to work out a flight plan—her staff on the Orinoco II had usually taken care of the navigation requirements, but it was something she felt perfectly confident doing.
“Once we get underway, we’ll have to average 50 knots to meet the point where the airship can intercept the flight path undetected,” she pointed to the spot on the map. “Our cruising altitude will be 200 meters unless we encounter cloud cover. Once we make it past the last monitoring station we will be into the autonomous zone of the Ligurian League, and by then, out of IOTA’s effective jurisdiction.”
The grizzled old snake doctor nodded his head with approval. “But their agents are everywhere and we must remain discrete. Once we determine that the delay has been effected, we can untether.” At Lydia’s questioning look, he added, “We will depend on Serpina for that confirmation.”
Orphaned, a refugee, Serpina had joined them when she was very young, and she had immediately bonded with the mute bear.
And it was true, the young woman had been unusually pensive in the preparation for boarding and getting underway. She had never been on an airship she had confessed to Lydia once the reality of the prospect had been confirmed. And Lydia, too, had sensed the rivalry for Vlady’s attention. The old strongman had once been her hero, and now it was obvious from their affection for each other, that he was Serpina’s as well.
Her reunion with Vlady had been a little awkward because he had been Samson Trismegistus when she knew him as a child, the strongman in the circus in which her ballerina mother had performed as a tightrope walker. Now he was pleased that she had finally realized his identity. He was still a bear of a man, mute as he had not been before. She had remembered his voice as a rough growl. But he had acknowledge with a sage expression that he knew who she was. And he admitted with a nod when she recalled that he had saved her mother and her from the fire in the arena tent set by vindictive clowns and carnies. Serpina had finally spoken up. “He is very happy to be reunited with you.” To which the large man assented.
Lydia understood then the bond between the two of them. Those thousand unasked questions, the ones she wanted to pose, were answered in the conversations during the ride up to the estate of a local landlord and the location of the clandestine dirigible. The six legged steam beetle was a farm tractor used for hauling hay wagons. Serre-Pain had switched carts when he suspected that Leon might be induced to reveal their plan.
From what she could gather from her inquiries of Serre-Pain, and somewhat reluctantly, Serpina, Vlady had been tortured by the Tsar’s secret police, the Oprichniki, for being an enemy of the Russian Empire. After the fire in the big top, he had returned to his hometown in the trans-Caucasus where his mother lay dying. Because he had lived outside the Empire during his travels with the circus, he was accused of being a spy and had had his tongue cauterized with a hot iron. He escaped from the prison camp where he had been left for dead, and made his way across the Carpathians with a group of refugees from Kazakhstan. He chanced upon Dr. Serre-Pain and the Original Madame Ophelia’s Ophidiarium with the original Madame Ophelia, on the outskirts of Sarajevo. They were being set upon by a gang of Ottoman thugs, and he had intervened. Serre-Pain had been on a mission to provide antivenom to save the life of a young man who had been bitten by a horned viper, the deadliest in the region. From then on, he had accompanied the snake doctor across vast stretches of the post pandemic continent, skirting the BMI devastations and avoiding the authorities. Orphaned, a refugee, Serpina had joined them when she was very young, and she had immediately bonded with the mute bear. It was only later that they had discovered her receptivity as what is commonly called a “vessel.” And that she was implicitly sensitive to Vlady’s frequencies and could read him like a mood ring. In many ways, he was a beacon onto which she could home.
Lydia understood also that she would not be the one to get between Serpina and Vlady, and that Pyare didn’t realize that he might. And considering their latest trek, she was beginning to wonder who was leading whom.
Chapter XXI
Lydia gladly shed the rough cloth of the burnoose when she was given the uniform of a Russair airship captain with the gold and red piping, the square billed cap and its glossy green visor. At least she no longer looked like a refugee, although the uniform was decidedly out of date, like much of the Russair operation. Out of his country togs and in his own Russair uniform, Pyare presented an impressive figure and looked the part of an airship pilot. She had given Vlady a quick lesson on the engine telegraph in the engine room. With Pyare at the helm, she would be free to respond as navigator, rigger, comm operator, and engineer if the need arose. Her crew on her Aerosud luxair, Oricono II, consisted of a minimum of fifty specialists, not counting the passenger attendants, and kitchen staff, but a small transport such as this usually operated with a dozen airshipmen. Serpin, the Doctor, and the poet would stay out of sight in the comm room in the keel until they had made it past the final monitoring station.
Until then they would have to wait for the acknowledgement from Serpina that the Russair ship had been delayed. And Etugouda had not stopped talking, jumping from topic to topic, like a flat stone skipping across a still pond. How he had landed in the Massif, escaping from the displeasure of the Spanish King’s family for a poem he had delivered to the Court. He had found himself penniless and at the mercy of the clans. They were descendants of Fourierists and fugitive Communards who mingled with the locals who were themselves much later descendants of persecuted Huguenots. It was a world outside the law of the Clockwork Commonwealth. They were missing a fool in their midst, he explained, someone who could utter the forbidden of what they all thought. As a poet, he was perfectly suited for the job. He had survived for the last five years on scraps and the generosity of the frequenters of the Lion & Bear, taking up residence in an abandoned shepherd’s stone shelter. His life at the Spanish court was another story. And he thought that he might never return to the normal world of hubris and ambition that his profession required.
“And when you three showed up, I understood that you were an omen, more than met the eye, and the passport out of my exile. But if you must know, it was fated that my friend Jean-Pierre and I should be reunited. It seems like a thousand seasons have passed since we were face to face, and the world has changed since then, drastically. Before I landed in the Spanish Court, I was travelling in the Americas with a group of aristo vagabonds from Greater London when we just barely missed the resumption of the Pan-Am war. The United Slave State Republics led by the Republic of Texas were making claims on Ultra Mezzistotec territory south of the Rio Grande, again, and of course the Bush Whacker Rebellion within their own member states. It wasn’t the only upheaval in the former United States and Territories. And now there is more trouble brewing, this time from the tribes of the Dakota Prairie Republic, if what Jean-Pierre is telling me is true, and I have no reason to doubt him. They’re claiming that since the central government in the District of Columbia is no longer a government entity, that the treaties they signed with the then United States almost two hundred years ago were no longer binding. It is understandable that they might want to leave territory devastated by black mold and the attendant anomalous weather for what they claim as their homeland. They are seeking the return of their lands from the southern Appalachians to the Mississippi. Needless to say the Republic of Tennessee Georgia, known to everyone as ROTNG, and its citizens have rejected the idea. I remember when this claim was first broached in their pleas for support from the Admiralty right after Pandem II and during a meeting of the newly formed Conglomeration Of Affiliated Nations of which the USSR was not a part”
The snake doctor looked directly at her and nodded gravely. It was time to spark up.
Lydia had had it with the self-inflated gasbag. She was in no mood to listen to prattle about current affairs or world history, especially when it was beginning to veer into speculation and conspiracy theories. She stared at the ceiling of the observation room at the rear of the gondola. Above her in their rigid shell were the gas bags she was concerned about. Unlike the older models that used hydrogen, this airship had been retrofitted with the less volatile biogen gas cells, standard for at least the last half century, if she remembered her history correctly. Biogen pellets were mixed with water at the base of the cells which caused the release of the biogas that inflated the biosilk envelopes. They had taken on enough ballast to mimic a laden transport, and the bug drives were primed to bring the H2O solution to a boil, and off-gassing the steam to spin the two outboard turbines that would propel the airship. The bug drives, as the engines were called, operated on Euler’s theoretical equation of a relation between the velocity, pressure and density of a moving fluid using a system based on the Rayleigh-Benard convection dynamic. Or so she remembered from Basic Aeronautics, a class that was guaranteed to put her to sleep, the drone of the lecturer’s voice that stupefying.
Etugouda’s voice was having a similar effect and she snapped her eyes open and shook her head. Now he was going on about the reason behind the first Black Mold Infestation, often referred to as BMI One or Pandem I, that had killed millions of people and devastated vast tract of the Northern Hemisphere.
“Many would like to place the blame on the Admiralty for the epidemic, the first one. I don’t directly believe that they were behind it, but they did capitalize on it to consolidate their power into the Clockwork Commonwealth. What was the cause of this poison that was sown into our soil, killing the plant life and its attendant biosystem? Historically we know that in the current era 1906 or Pax Victoriana Year 69, if you wish, the earth’s orbit passed through the tail of a gigantic comet, a flaming planetoid. The resultant diffusion of the meteoric matter through the aether sheathed the northern part of the globe with its alien presence, effacing the existing flora and fauna. Many believe that it was an invasion from another world that sought to extinguish us. Scientists, in what was then known as the Prussian Alliance, before it became a part of Greater London, developed a biocide that neutralized the black mold and stopped it’s advance. Unfortunately the solution had the unexpected side effect of being a petrophage, and before. . . .”
Now Lydia was in her history class at the Air Academy, another lecture course that had bored her to tears. She was about to counter what, to her, sounded like ICER propaganda when she noticed that Serpina had crossed the room to say something to Serre-Pain. The snake doctor looked directly at her and nodded gravely. It was time to spark up.
Dime Pulp 
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