4. Sitnalta Without Verne
“I don’t know why it is so beneficial to us, but Jules and I will continued to work together. From this day forward, we instruct the Council to issue all of our patents jointly, under both names Verne and Frankenstein. We trust this will be satisfactory.”
—Professor Frankenstein, message to the Sitnaltan Council of Patent Givers
Professor Frankenstein squinted down at the city of Sitnalta. Cool morning mist from the ocean clung to the cobblestoned streets, giving the buildings a muzzy appearance. Off in one hexagon, he could see the lamplighters still at work, clambering up ladders to extinguish the gas mantles for the morning.
Frankenstein stood atop the central ziggurat, the highest point in Sitnalta. They had once placed their powerful defense here—the Sitnaltan dragon siren, which the city used to fight against Tryos the dragon as he went to and from his island domain across the hexagons of water.
Vailret and blind Paenar had stolen the dragon siren, though, and used the Nautilus designed by Frankenstein and Verne to battle the dragon directly. Luckily they had won, otherwise Sitnalta would have been left defenseless.
Frankenstein curved his lips upward in the closest thing to a smile he ever made. No, Sitnalta was never defenseless—not with powerful inventors like himself and Verne among its inhabitants.
Where the hexagons of ocean met the black line that delineated the shore, Frankenstein watched three pile-driving cranes, operated with weights, counterweights, and electric generators. In the still air he heard the sharp cracks as they worked. He also watched tiny figures of characters in suits with giant cast-metal helmets. The experimental underwater breathing apparatus would have accompanied the Nautilus sub-marine boat … but the Nautilus was wrecked now, and he would not want to build another one, not without Verne.
On the streets below he heard a puttering and chugging sound. Leaning over the edge of the ziggurat, he saw someone driving a steam-engine car along a main thoroughfare. Other hissing sounds pointed to where Dirac’s street-cleaning engines swirled along, scrubbing the gutters and polishing clean the cracks in the flagstones. Otherwise, Sitnalta seemed quiet and at peace.
A few weeks before, Frankenstein would have been astonished at his own lassitude. He had too many ideas, too many things to invent, too many principles to investigate. Both he and Verne had notebooks filled with sketchy ideas for inventions. He would never have enough time to patent all of them. Working in collaboration, the two professors had become legends in Sitnalta. They had used up an entire series of patent numbers, and begun another set just for themselves.
But now, by himself, it didn’t seem the same. With Verne gone and sending no word back, Frankenstein no longer had sufficient eagerness for the work. Looking at their stacks of ideas, he felt overwhelmed with the impossibility of it all. After completing the great and terrible weapon, he had no such drive anymore.
The Sitnaltans had led a research expedition to the crashed Outsiders’ ship, to the technological fringe where science grew uncertain. They had dissected the ship, looking at its controls, its molding, the contours, the engines. They had learned enough for a lifetime of analysis.
But at the excavation site, he and Verne had shared the same dream one night, a vision inspired by the Outsider Scott himself. They learned how to remove the ship’s power source, part real from the Outside, and part imaginary from within Gamearth—Frankenstein could not even hypothesize the consequences of such a thing. Their weapon could be used to destroy the evil force of Scartaris. Verne and Frankenstein kept their weapon a secret and rolled dice to determine who would go on the mission to deliver and detonate it. Verne had been the one chosen.
Back in Sitnalta, Frankenstein checked his detectors and found that the force of Scartaris had vanished. But the detectors failed to record any form of detonation, and Frankenstein was sure he would have seen that. They had been afraid the weapon might destroy all of Gamearth.
Then why hadn’t Verne returned?
Frankenstein squatted on top of the ziggurat, looked out over the city, and sulked. Another few days, and he would propose mounting an expedition to search for his partner.
Steam rose from the stacks of the manufactories and metal-processing centers. The city began to come alive for another day of activity.
The characters below moved about in random patterns, going about their individual business and their predetermined tasks. Frankenstein thought of making a random-motion study, sitting up here all day and plotting the paths of characters. It might give him some insights into the societal structures of insect colonies, since from this height the Sitnaltans appeared similar to a nest of ants.
But as he stared, clicking his fingernails together, the randomness changed. Characters shifted in their courses and moved toward one of the large manufactory buildings by the ocean hexagons, as if drawn by a magnet.
He squinted into the bright sunlight and saw other characters coming from different parts of the city. Many Sitnaltans looked confused and watched them, but others moved with a jerky walk. Frankenstein shaded his eyes, frowning.
Below him, one man moved in an exaggerated lock-step. He flailed his arms wildly. Finally, one foot crossed in front of the other—apparently intentionally—and he sprawled to the flagstoned street. “Help me!” he cried out loud.
“What the devil is going on?” Frankenstein said to himself.
But before the man below could shout again, his hand reached out and clapped across his own mouth with a sound loud enough for Frankenstein to hear from the top of the ziggurat. With awkward movements, still holding his own mouth shut, the man rolled onto his knees and jerkily made his way to his feet again; he followed the other Sitnaltans moving toward the big buildings.
“This is insane,” Frankenstein said, scrambling down the ziggurat steps. His hard leather shoes slapped on the stones as he ran down. “This is beyond reason!”
Before he reached the hex-cobbled street, one of the secondary manufactories exploded in an orange fireball. The concussion made Frankenstein’s ears ring. He lost his balance, falling backward to the ziggurat steps. The tall Sitnaltan buildings obscured his view, but he watched flames and black greasy smoke tumble into the air. From his vantage point he could see the explosion had been in the building where metals were stamped and cast into forms designed by the great inventors.
Several streets away, a loud alarm bell began to ring. He heard shouts as he stumbled to his feet and ran down the street, turning sideways into an alley, a shortcut to the shore. The alarm bell abruptly fell silent, as did the other shouts.
A group of Sitnaltans moved down the street in a strange arthritic shuffle. He called out to them. “What is happening? What’s going on?”
The Sitnaltans continued their march. One woman in the back—he saw it was Mayer, daughter of Dirac—swiveled around and stared at him; her expression filled with relief and hope upon recognizing him. But when she saw only confusion on Frankenstein’s face, she showed despair again.
“What is—” Suddenly, Frankenstein’s right foot lurched out from under him, as if yanked from below the knee by an invisible hand. “What?”
He squirmed, but his leg hung at half-step in the air. His foot wavered left and right, as if testing muscles, and then the leg reached forward to step down on the pavement. His left leg yanked up, moved forward, and stepped down.
“Stop!” Frankenstein shouted to the air. He waved his arms.
An invisible grip slammed his posture straight, jerked his hips forward, and made him take four more stumbling steps. He felt absolutely helpless. “This cannot be happening! I refuse to believe—there is no explanation for this.” But his words felt absurd in the situation.
His own right hand reached out in front of his face. He watched his thumb and forefinger close together several times, like snapping pincers. Then he bent forward and gave his own nose a vicious tweak.
His legs made him run to catch up with the other puppet Sitnaltans.
They strode through the streets toward the central manufactory building. Some of the characters had surrendered and moved along willingly, but others continued to make choking, gurgling sounds as they fought to resist, like good Sitnaltans. Frankenstein felt sweat breaking out all over his body, but he could do nothing.
Beside him, Mayer made her face into a stony expression of outrage, but when she tried to ask him a question, her lips clamped themselves together. He could see from her moving jaws that she was still trying to speak.
Beside the manufactory he could see the smoking rubble from the exploded building. He heard the roar of flames, saw the bodies of several Sitnaltans among the wreckage, burned and moaning, but he could not move to help them. His head twisted around, making him stare ahead.
At the great brick arches of the building, the doors stood wide open, knocked loose from their brass hinges. On the cornerstone of the building, engraved words seemed totally ineffectual:
BY ESTABLISHING THIS MANUFACTORY,
THE CITY OF SITNALTA DECLARES
ITS SUPERIORITY AND FREEDOM
FROM MAGIC AND THE WAYS OF THE GAME
As his body lurched, pulling him inside the manufactory, harsh chemical smells made Frankenstein’s nose and eyes burn. A cacophony of banging and hissing sounds beat upon his ears.
Skylights let bright morning light into the open bay. Steam and multi-colored smoke swirled in the air, making it difficult to see. Giant copper and brass vats stood in rows, studded with polished rivets; these were the processing tanks where Sitnaltans pumped and treated seawater, extracting metals and other elements. Other chambers processed or reduced raw ore they took from outlying hexagons. Pipes and valves led into a circulation system, monitored by gauges and pressure-release vents.
The puppet Sitnaltans swarmed to the tanks and scrambled on the piping, using whatever tools they found to damage everything. Some characters opened valves to spew chemical solutions onto the floor; others banged on pipes with the handles of stir-sticks.
One man struck the side of a copper vat with a heavy sledge hammer, wrestling with his arm all the way. He managed to succeed in dropping the hammer, but then his body bent down, his hand picked it up, and he pounded again at the tank. He dropped the hammer a second time, but then his hand came up and struck him across the face. He picked up the sledge one more time, heaving it back and smashing into the dented side of the vat. The polished rivets popped out, and a section of metal gave way, exposing a seam. Hot seawater gushed out, spraying him in the face and knocking him backward.
Frankenstein found himself at one of the compressors, yanking out connections, twisting a gauge. He stared at his hands as they worked of their own accord, and he snarled at them. “Stop this! You are my hands—listen to me!”
But his hand only turned, waggled fingers at his face as if sarcastically waving, and then went back to unscrew the gauge. It popped off, shooting into the air and clanging against a ventilation duct. Shunted high-pressure gas hissed out with a shriek.
Mayer dumped one container of chemicals into another vat, which set off a sputtering, burning reaction that knocked her stumbling away. The reaction continued to build.
Frankenstein strained until he felt his muscles ready to snap, resisting the invisible tugs on his own body. Deep in his throat he let out a disjointed animal cry. At any other time, he would have scoffed at himself for such a futile, barbaric gesture.
Then the invisible force vanished, like strings suddenly severed.
Frankenstein fell forward as his straining body plunged back into control again. Several characters collapsed; others screamed and fled the manufactory. As he got to his knees on the concrete floor, blinking, Frankenstein knew the controlling force had not been defeated—it had left willingly, as if it was just playing a game with them, testing its limits, taunting them.
The chemical reactions continued to bubble in the damaged tanks. Smoke poured from broken equipment. One of the skylights overhead shattered from the rising heat, sending sharp glass shards raining down on the floor.
Frankenstein realized that the fleeing Sitnaltans had the right idea. “Get out of here! Now!” He clapped his hands and shouted to the others standing in a daze. “No telling if this will explode!”
He hurried toward the door. The other characters needed no encouragement and ran for the exits, jostling each other and sloshing through spilled chemicals on the floor, stumbling, some blinded or with burned hands.
A block away from the big building, Frankenstein stopped and watched the manufactory. Colored smoke continued to pour through the broken skylights and out the windows and doors.
Mayer stood beside him with her calloused hands balled into fists. Smoke and grease smeared her face, and her short dark hair had been singed, curled away from one ear. Her voice carried a vicious tone; she seemed to be continuing an argument with herself and spoke out loud only because Frankenstein was listening.
“That was magic, Professor! How dare they!”
She turned and stared at the burning wreckage, squinting her eyes. “How dare they use magic.” She spat out the word. “Magic has no place in Sitnalta. It’s not even supposed to work here. What’s happening?”
Frankenstein felt weak. His muscles trembled, and his thoughts spun with the turmoil. He only half-listened to what Mayer was saying. “What are we going to do, Professor?” she demanded.
He did not look at her, but continued to stare at the smoke. Other Sitnaltans scurried over the rubble of the adjacent manufactory, removing bodies and helping injured characters.
“Our technology is more powerful than magic,” he said. “We have our minds. We have our imaginations. We have all the resources of the Rules of Science.”
He took a deep breath. Verne wasn’t here, and Frankenstein would have to work solo for the first time in many turns. “I vow to use all my talent, all my resources to defeat this abomination.”
He worked his mouth, as if to swallow away a bad taste. “Magic in Sitnalta! The very thought of it!” Frankenstein shook his head. “This is a matter of personal pride now.”
***