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Post By The Hooded Hood chronicles the fates of Miss C and Rodney Thu Jun 17, 2004 at 08:18:56 am EDT |
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Sir Mumphrey Wilton and the Lost City of Mystery - Part the Eighteenth: Ravenser Odd and the Doorway to the Fantastic | |
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| Part the Eighteenth: Ravenser Odd and the Doorway to the Fantastic Now it was little more than a tide-washed salt flat called Spurn Point, a haven for wildlife and seabirds that enjoyed the solitary beaches and wild long grasses at the Humber estuary head. But once, before the sea had claimed them, settlements had clung to this ancient English coastline: Frismarsh and Redmare, Pennyswerll, Upsal, Old Ravenser and Ravenser Odd. There had been thriving fisheries and a famous free fair under royal charter. Three would-be kings had landed or sailed at this little spit of land intent on the conquest of England or Scotland. But that was before the sea worked its will, and all had crumbled and washed away and been abandoned to the gulls and the seals. There was no road now along the perilous sandbank that connected the site of the medieval village to the mainland, so Rodney Farharquar-Phelps had to abandon his car and pull his ex-fiancée from it’s boot. He pushed her at gunpoint along the rugged causeway, ignoring her complaints and threats. Miss Canterbury struggled to maintain her balance over the rough ground in the growing sea-wind with her hands tied behind her back. She’d worked out some of what was happening. At first she’d thought Rodney mad, crazed because she had rejected him after his display of cowardice before Herr Wertham. But now she realised that his mind had been deliberately twisted, and that he was working to specific orders branded into his brain. The only person who could do something like that was the Expediter. Miss Canterbury had tried to explain that to Rodney, but he had only threatened her more with his gun. “Why are we here?” the vicar’s daughter demanded, looking over the turbulent North Sea with its distant string of warning buoys marking the outer limits of safe fishing before the protective sea-mines. The barbwire-strewn shingle beach was probably mined too, and it occurred to Miss Canterbury that she was probably treading between lethal defences with every step further along the desolate headland. “Where are you taking me.” “No more questions, darling,” Farharquar-Phelps told her, with no more malice than if he’d been taking her shopping in the Strand. “We have an appointment, and then everything will be alright between us.” “So that’s the lever the Expediter used to turn your mind,” Miss Cantebury realised. “Did the Expediter promise he could hypnotise me into being a good little wife for you?” “Just move along, dearest. We have to hurry.” Miss Canterbury frowned at Rodney and moved onwards before he pushed her off her feet. She was not looking forward to another meeting with the Expediter. “Got it,” Brigadier “Bagger” Gallowglass told Sir Mumphrey Wilton triumphantly. “Policeman in Yorkshire saw a Austin 10 Tourer registration PEX 37 heading north through Doncaster. That’s the same make and model this Expediter fellow was in at Blatherville.” Same numberplate too, Mumphrey knew, since he had used his Chronometer of Infinity to view past events at the devastated manor. “Need to get up there fast then, Bagger. Can you get them to have a plane ready at Molesworth?” “Certainly, and I’ll contact the local forces and have then look for but not intercept the Expediter’s vehicle, and then…” Just then the office door opened and General Sir Ponsonby Ffitch stalked into the room. Gallowglass and Wilton jumped to their feet. “There you are, Wilton,” Ffitch frowned. “been leadin’ me a merry dance.” Mumphrey remained at attention and didn’t reply. “Just had a communiqué from our American cousins regardin’ your activities with this Expediter fellow,” the General went on. “They’re not happy. Seems this Expediter has been quite useful to their covert operations before now. I got a message from Edward Cromlyn himself. They want us to back off, let him just leave.” “Sir, he breeched national security and murdered over a dozen of our soldiers!” argued Gallowglass. “And pursuing him is risking our whole war treaty with the United States of America, Brigadier thundered General Ffitch. “So I am ordering you - not requesting but specifically ordering - that you do nothing else on this matter, and let the whole affair drop.” He glared at them to emphasise his point. “Is that very, very clear, gentlemen?” But Sir Mumphrey Wilton was red in the face and on the telephone. “Whitehall 1111? Yes, codeword Ascot. It’s Mumph. Get me Winston.” It was nightfall before the Expediter trekked along the sea-washed causeway and found Miss Canterbury and Rodney Farharquar-Phelps at the rendezvous point. Farharquar-Phelps was lying unconscious tied by his own braces and Miss Canterbury was holding the revolver he’d brought levelled at the American mercenary. “If you move or speak, I will shoot you dead,” the young woman told the Expediter with a deadly certainty. The gun twisted into a snake in Miss Canterbury’s hand and bit her. She dropped it with a yelp before she realised it was another of the Expediter’s mind tricks. “Very good, Miss Canterbury,” admitted the Expediter, retrieving the fallen weapon and dropping it in his pocket. “I should have known this milksop would have been no match for you in the end. I can’t imagine what you saw in him.” “And I can’t imagine why an American citizen would betray his own nation and ally himself with a madman and his evil empire,” the vicar’s daughter spat back. “Better a milksop than a traitor.” The Expediter snorted with laughter. “Firstly, I am not an American. That’s just my latest cover. Second, although I’m often accused of being a traitor, I am extremely loyal to my nation. And thirdly, I am hardly allied with the Nazis, but for the moment we have meshing goals and so I work beside them.” “For money,” scorned Miss Canterbury. “For myself,” answered the Expediter. “And now I have the Bertram notes in plain form, so I need only return to the Germans and have them provide my escort to Tibet, and then I can achieve my goals.” Miss Canterbury looked out over the dark coastline. “A submarine?” she speculated. “A spy boat?” “Oh, nothing so prosaic, honey,” the Expediter promised her. He gestured to the ruined stones that were all that remained of Ravenser Odd. “The church here was built from stone reclaimed from a much older building,” he explained, “and I discovered long since that given a little coaxing the silicon circuitry within the carvings could still be used at need. I imagine there’s enough charge in the technology to open a Doorway one last time.” “A doorway?” Miss Canterbury puzzled. But the Expediter was touching a strange metallic tuning fork to the fallen keystone, and the moss-covered block was beginning to hum. “There used to be hundreds of these once, back in the Deviate War,” the Expediter said enigmatically. “Now hardly any of them are still functioning, and I use them sparingly. But on this occasion I think I can expend the resource.” Miss Canterbury watched in horror as an unmistakable rectangle of light began to firm up atop the pitted stone. “What is that?” “As I said, a doorway. A way out of this miserable country to where your Mumphrey Wilton cannot follow. A short step over a long distance, and then another to take us to Berlin.” “Why me?” demanded Miss Canterbury, realising that there was nowhere to run. “You already have the diaries. You don’t need me any more.” “Perhaps I need a hostage to keep Sir Mumphrey Wilton at bay?” he suggested. “Wouldn’t work,” the girl assured him. “He’d do his duty whatever you did to me or threatened to do.” “Because he cares about his country and his mission more than he cares for you?” “Because he knows that is what I would expect of him and desire of him,” answered Miss Canterbury coldly. “Very well,” the Expediter shrugged. “Then I’m taking you because I’m a vindictive bastard,” he answered. “I’m just taking you as a present for Herr Wertham. No other reason.” He raised his gun. “Through the doorway.” “And if I don’t?” “Then I’ll shoot Rodney.” Miss Canterbury shot him a lethal glare, braced herself, and stepped into the shining portal. The Expediter fired once into the fallen Rodney’s skull and followed behind. The portal flickered once and then was gone. In our next exciting episode:What is at the other side of the portal? What are these mysterious gateways for anyway? How can Sir Mumphrey ever catch up in time to save the day? And who is the mysterious watcher that is so interested in what happens next? Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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