Chapter 3—At liberty
Location: The Airship Angola, over Southern Angland, approaching the Isle of Éire
Time: August 25, 1878
Tom knocked diffidently on the airship purser's door.
"Come."
Tom opened the door to see a middle-aged, chubby man in a fancier version of the same uniform worn by the steward. It was the same pale blue but instead of the chevrons, it had shoulder epaulets that would have made one of Napoleon's generals green with envy. But the jacket was open and the purser had a five o'clock shadow. "Ah, the stowaway." Then he smiled. "Not your fault, man. Something like this happens every third trip or so. What do you need?"
"The gentleman, Mr. van Helsing, said he would hire a bird to take news back to Londinium. I need to write out messages to my boss and my ma. I was wondering if . . . Can I get a sheet of paper and a pen?"
"A whole bird all your own while we're still in the air? That's going to cost a bit. Usually, people just wait until we get to Casablanca. We'll be there by morning." Then, apparently seeing Tom's expression, he added. "If it's a rush for some reason, they mostly share a bird."
"How's that work, sir?"
"We have an amulet wizard on the airship. A good one. Mr. Allenby is a graduate of the School of Applied Magic at Cambridge. He loads his own amulets and he has some spells that will shrink a six-inch wide, foot long, sheet until it will fit in the capsule that attaches to the leg of the pigeon. The sheet has room for five hundred letters and we charge for every letter, laddybuck. A shilling a letter, and that includes spaces. If your patron buys a bird, that's twenty-five pounds."
Tom swallowed hard. That was six months' wages and tips, near enough, just for the use of one little pigeon.
"They can afford it, lad. The toffs who ride on airships can afford a lot. It's still less than your ticket to Casablanca is going to be."
The purser gave him the sheet, and Tom went back to the bunk room, climbed up on the bunk, and used the top of his hat as a writing table while he worked out what to say.
He still hadn't worked it out when he got called back to the toff's cabin.
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"I've talked to the purser and the prices they are charging for messenger birds are ridiculous," van Helsing said. "I will not be gouged like that by the airship company. You can hire a pigeon from Casablanca to Londinium for three shillings, and Sir William here can load an amulet of shrinking. It's not going to take that much longer to get there, and I fail to see an emergency in this."
"I have an amulet in my luggage. Not the carryon you brought, Tom, the stuff I sent ahead. I'll be able to get it once we get to Casablanca and I think it's already loaded."
Tom knew that much about amulet wizards. They loaded a spell into an amulet which stored it until they needed it, but they had to have the right amulet for a given spell. An amulet of shrinking wouldn't work for a spin spell and an amulet of igniting wouldn't work for a spell of attaching. But it didn't matter. "Mr. van Helsing, if I leave the cab out of service for a whole day, they are going to charge me for the money the cab was supposed to bring in. There's a minimum you're supposed to bring in each and every day."
"That was a possibility, anyway," van Helsing insisted, puffing out his mustache and marching around the room. "I will not be held hostage to these ridiculous fees just because they have me here. If they are going to overcharge like this, I am not going to buy, and that's flat, my man."
Tom bit back a hot response. The law was on van Helsing's side.
Location: Grand Hotel, Casablanca
Time: August 26, 1878
Sir William Deforest looked out of the window of the gondola at the Grand Hotel. The hotel was eight stories tall, made of stone, but it managed an airy feel because the stone work was a complex of intersecting arches. On the roof was an airship dock, but just a dock, not a full port.
The Angola would dock here for only an hour to disembark passengers and their luggage, then proceed to an airship station seven miles southeast of Casablanca, where most of the cargo carried by the airship would be offloaded. Then the Angola would be made ready for the next leg of its journey, which would be to Nigeria where it would stop for a day. It would then proceed to Teixeira de Sousa, in the Portuguese province of Angola, for which the airship was named. William wondered if they would be continuing with the airship.
Things had changed since he and Alan had planned this trip. Sir William had changed most of all. Bill Goldman was a middle school history teacher, not an expert on the architecture of North Africa. But with the addition of Bill's memories, this place had what he could only describe as a "Casablanca feel." Not the real Casablanca, but the movie Casablanca. He expected Humphrey Bogart to be waiting at the checkin desk with directions to Rick's American Cafe. It was a comparison that Sir William would not have seen. This world didn't have movies or movie stars. With Bill Goldman's memories and abilities added to the mix, William was seeing a lot of things differently.
William was concerned about Jane Alexander, Tom Blackwell and most of all Alan van Helsing. Taken in order, then.
If William remembered The Vampire Compendium IV correctly, Jane wasn't dead. Not quite. Bill had skimmed the booklet, but not read it in detail. It seemed that vampires were stuck in a moment just before death until the spell that kept them suspended was broken by the death of their body. Hence the stake through the heart. Sunlight probably weakened or even broke the spell. There was something in there about litches, but William couldn't remember what. So Jane was alive or undead or whatever, probably needed his help.
There was Tom Blackwell, who might be in need of a new job. No, face it, William, he told himself, probably needs a new job. Which shouldn't be much of a problem because from what he and Alan wormed out of Tom last night, the man might well prove deucedly useful to them. But Tom was also the sole support of his mother and his sister, and William and Alan had a tendency to find themselves in some hairy situations from time to time. Plus the fact that with all his projects, Sir William was perennially short of funds. Which meant he would have to apply to Alan for the support of Tom, his mother, and sister.
And that brought William, with his new perspective, to Alan. Alan, who had been Sir William's mentor and friend for the past four years and who was, William now realized, the next best thing to a fanatic on the subject of vampires. They had put off discussion of William's new set of memories by mutual consent, but that delay couldn't last. Evan Von was an atheist with a pronounced distrust of anything approaching faith, but he had played Alan van Helsing as a committed Protestant and utterly certain of his beliefs. Evan's harping on the religious certainty that had inspired Jim Jones, David Koresh and Alan van Helsing, not to mention the 9/11 hijackers and Pat Robertson, got on Bill Goldman's nerves. Remembering it and trying to figure out how to explain to Alan that Jane wasn't necessarily evil, Sir William Deforest wanted to strangle Evan Von.
The Angola bumped up against the stays, almost causing William to fall. Immediately the horn hooted.
"Disembarking passengers, please proceed to the ramp as quickly as possible," came over the ship's megaphone.
William rushed. Alan was at the ramp along with Tom Blackwell and a crowd of passengers being rushed across the ramp onto the roof of the Grand Hotel. "What's the bleeding rush?" William asked as he joined them in the queue.
"Ship's weather diviner is saying we have fifteen minutes before the wind changes." Alan was looking at his pocket watch and didn't look up as he answered. "Thirteen now, and they have forty-three passengers and servants to get off loaded."
"Cap'n wants to be in the air when the wind shifts, not tied to a spike at the top of the Grand Hotel," Tom added. "Can't say as I blame him for that."
The line was moving and Alan continued. "It means that they won't be unloading our luggage here but at the dirigible station. They will have it delivered but it will be a few hours."
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The Grand Hotel had two reception desks, one on the ground floor, and one on the top floor for airship passengers. The one on the top floor was old wood, polished continually over the course of decades. It was manned by two clerks overseen by an older gentleman. The clerks wore hotel uniforms, the older man wore a conservative dress, a frock coat in dark blue, with a black bowtie over a white shirt. He had a goatee and a hairline that was receding like the tide. He was immediately called over as soon as Alan said there were three of them rather than the two for whom they had reservations.
After hearing the particulars, he said, "It is but a minor matter, sir, but the hotel is fully booked at the moment. We can put him up in the servant's quarters or we can have a trundle bed put in the dressing room of your suite?"
Alan nodded. "Have the trundle bed put into the dressing room and please be prepared to extend our stay for another few days. It looks increasingly like we will have to send more than one bird back to Londinium and receive responses here."
"Very good, sir. The next airship to Angola will be Thursday, so I will reserve the room until then." He tapped a bell, and a young man ran up. "The Gold Suite." He turned back to Alan. "The trundle bed for your man will be up by noon."
While Alan was talking to the head clerk, William looked around the registration desk. There was a booklet attached to the desk with a brass chain. William opened it and it contained drawings and adverts for the amusements available in Casablanca, and there on the third page was Rick's American Tavern, with a picture that looked quite a bit like the first scene of the movie. William could almost see Peter Lorre running into the place just ahead of the cops. He had to visit Rick's while they were in Casablanca. Had to.
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As it happened, the trundle bed got to their dressing room considerably before the luggage, so there was plenty of time for William to explain the new memories.
"You're saying that our world is all just some sort of pretend game that this other fellow is playing?" Alan asked in a tone that made it clear he was close to calling for restraints.
"You were willing enough to take my word that I had the memories of Bill Goldman, Alan. Why is this part so much less believable?"
Tom Blackwell tapped his knuckles on a side table. "With all respect, sir, this feels real enough for me." Then he grinned, showing a crooked front tooth. " 'Course, it would, wouldn't it? Me being make believe too."
"I'm not saying this world is make believe," William insisted. "I can tap the table too and it's real. But from my memories, there is more than one reality. And in that other reality, this was just a game."
"So you're saying it's a higher order of reality?" Alan asked.
"I don't know. Maybe. Maybe it's just a different reality. But at the very least there seems to be some connection. In that reality, this was a game. I was being played by Bill Goldman and you were being played by Evan Von."
"Then why don't I have this Evan Von's memories?"
"I haven't got a clue."
They talked for a while, then got to The Vampire Compendium IV. "My memories say that Jane isn't inherently evil. Leroy said he was using the version four rules, and by those rules vampirism is a disease."
"That's impossible," Alan said. "Julia was dead. She had to be."
William had not known Alan when his sister was turned and went on a killing spree in Amsterdam, but he had heard the story. With his new perspective, he had no way of knowing if she was evil or not, but it seemed unlikely that she had been dead when Alan had staked her. He couldn't say that, though. Not if he expected any sort of cooperation from Alan ever again. "Perhaps there are more than one form. I have to assume, based on my memories, that Jane Alexander was not evil once she was freed of Roderick's influence. She ran because she didn't see any way of convincing us. And she chose to run, not to kill. Remember, Alan, Jane didn't attack us, even though she could have."
"We were both wearing crosses and garlic. I had holy water," Alan said. "We were not easy prey."
"True enough, my friend, but she was clear-headed enough to figure that out. Not a mindless monster."
"Vampires are not mindless, William." Alan stood and grabbed up his deerstalker cap. "That's what makes them so much more dangerous than zombies or were creatures. And it's what makes them so much more evil as well. They know what they are doing and glory in it." He walked out, clearly unwilling to hear more, at least for now.
Tom Blackwell looked at the door, then back at William. "You think I should go after him? To see he's all right?"
"No." William sighed. "Alan can take care of himself. In most ways he can take care of himself better than you or I."
There was a knock and the baggage finally arrived.
✽✽✽
The amulet for the shrink spell was actually two amulets. Two matched boxes, one twelve times the size of the other. The amulets had to be loaded together putting part of the spell in one box and part in the other and tying the two boxes together with lines of magical force. But invoking the spell wasn't difficult. William opened the larger box and took the letter that Tom and Alan had written and placed it in the larger opening. He then closed it, and touched his left hand to the jewel on the top of the first box and his right to the jewel on the top of the second box. He said, "Compreso."
Then he opened the second box and removed the now much smaller sheet. "Let's get this sent."
They went to the desk. It was the top floor desk again, because the pigeon roosts were on the roof next to the airship dock.
"Yes, bill the room," William said to the desk clerk. The clerk gave him a note for the birder and they got the pigeon off.
William looked at his watch. "Yes, there's still time. Let's go to the bank, Tom. I need to get some cash. That pulse gun really did leave me penniless."
By the time they got back from the bank, Alan was back.