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Post By The Hooded Hood concludes Thu Jul 01, 2004 at 07:31:02 am EDT |
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Sir Mumphrey Wilton and the Lost City of Mystery - Part the Thirtieth: Sir Mumphrey Wilton and the Return of the Abhumans | |
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| Part the Thirtieth: Sir Mumphrey Wilton and the Return of the Abhumans “NO!” thundered Sir Mumphrey Wilton. Miss Canterbury lay sprawled dead, and Anihillatus, the death-bringer, the personification of the Negativity Zone, the Abhuman weapon of last resort, was lunging towards him. The monster’s creator, Maximess the Slightly Mad, looked on with eager glee. The eccentric Englishman’s temporal chronometer lay shattered on the floor; but as Mumphrey roared his anger, the pieces began to vibrate and move. Until Maximess had gouged an entrance into the Black Dome over the Abhuman city there had been no link to the outer cosmos, no way for the Chronometer of Infinity to draw upon the fundaments of the universe to power itself. That channel now lay open. The clock exploded in reverse, each piece fitting together with precision placement. The Chronometer of Infinity is a fundamental tool for the maintenance of the Parodyverse. It can take many shapes, but it cannot be destroyed. Its Keeper is but one of the minor cosmic office holders, but every office holder is supreme in his own area of authority. There were time disturbances here, and that was Mumphrey’s concern. The eccentric Englishman commanded his pocketwatch to absorb the temporal energies infused by the Celestians to hold back time; all of them. The dials of the Chronometer glowed with a blinding radiance. Teeth set, will focused, Mumphrey peeled back history, forcing the dark malice-filled shadow Anihillatus to reverse its actions. It struggled all the way backwards, but it could not resist the energies arrayed against it. Its murder of Miss Canterbury reversed and she rose awkwardly, toppling upwards. “I will thank you,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton snarled at the creature, “to step away from the woman I love.” The vicar’s daughter looked up and saw Mumphrey standing over her, pitting his will against the universe She wouldn’t have bet on the universe. Sir Mumphrey dialled in another combination now. More normally the higher functions of his office were performed with other tools to assist, but in the end the accoutrements were only the outer trappings of the duty and the authority. It all came down at the last to the application of will. He grasped the time/space signature that was the death-bringer and thrust it screaming and spitting into the Negativity Zone itself, hurling it shattered and impotent down into the swirling abysm. The Celestian wardings were activated again, drawing on the first reserves of their masters’ power to address the situation. “Go away!” Mumphrey told them, wielding his pocketwatch again. “Just bugger off , the pair of you. And tell your makers from me to stop fiddlin’ in things they don’t understand!” The Black Dome shattered like glass as the stasis failed but the shards winked out before they fell. The darkness was swept aside by the brilliant glare of dawn over the Himalayan snows. The remaining stormtroopers levelled their weapons at Sir Mumphrey Wilton. Behind them the bloodied Herr Wertham was screaming incoherent orders despite a broken jaw, and pointing a wrathful finger at the Englishman. Mumphrey aged the soldiers to death. The corpses that tumbled to the floor were a millennium rotted by the time they fell. The bones burst to powder as they smashed down. “Wertham, you’re a nasty, cowardly, sadistic mass-murderer, and I’d like to drag you back to the old Bailey for the trial and hangin’ you deserve,” Mumphrey told the torturer. “But this is war, so the enemy just gets put down like a rabid dog.” He aged Herr Wertham’s heart slowly, so the torturer could feel himself dying. The froglike eyes bulged behind shattered spectacles and Wertham tried to scrabble for mercy. Then his shrivelled heart burst and he too toppled dead. The meat of him shrivelled and peeled until he was nothing but a pitted skeleton. Maximess punched Sir Mumphrey from behind, and again hooked the pocketwatch from his grasp. “I’m protected,” the Expediter warned. “Called in a favour from a demon called Mefrothto. None of your time-tricks can hurt me now.” “How about this then?” asked Miss Canterbury, shooting the mad Abhuman with one of the downed soldier’s semi-automatic. The bullets ripped into Maximess but he rose again. With a snarl he tore the weapon from the vicar’s daughter and reached out for her. “No you don’t, you sleazy wreched pestilence!” Mumphrey shouted, spinning the Expediter round into a roundhouse right. He followed it up with some scientific body blows over the bleeding holes miss Canterbury had made, then a hack to the throat to shut the mind-controlling madman up. The Expediter fought back with Abhuman strength and the skill of thousands of years of combat practise. Miss Canterbury grabbed Mumphrey’s pocketwatch then swung it at the full length of its chain to crash into the side of Maximess’ head. The evil prince of the Abhumans went down in a welter of blood and did not rise again. Mumphrey went forward for the kill but was restrained by a sudden cloud of prehensile crimson tresses. “He is our problem,” Princess Sylverkrin of the Abhumans declared, gently pulling the eccentric Englishman away from her fallen cousin. “Leave his punishment to us.” The Abhuman royal family feasted their human guests as they celebrated the end of the millennia-long Deviant War and their escape from the wrath of the Celestians. For them it had all been yesterday. The skies above Atticland, the Great Relief, were filled with streamers and bizarre creatures flying. The streets were thronged with men and women with scales, feathers, fur, and in one case bakelite. “We owe you a great debt, Sir Mumphrey, Miss Canterbury,” Brown Blot, the solemn leader of the Abhumans told his guests, “but we cannot join your conflict. We have learned now that we are best apart from your world. A great many things have changed outside while no time passed for us. We must set our nation in order, learn what we have missed, and decide what we must do then.” “We have been too unwise,” Sylverkrin admitted. “Caught up in generations of war we allowed Blot’s brother to manipulate us into misusing our Plot-Altering Mists. We must never commit such a heresy again.” “Maximess suffers in the Vault of Penance,” Garglon the Quakehoof assured them. “There he will remain for half a century, regretting his many treacheries and sins. Be sure he will pay many times over for every ill he has inflicted in your world.” “We must ask you to keep the secret of our existence,” Krakus the Philosopher added. “We shall conceal the Great Relief once more, and none shall know of us until the day the world is ready to welcome even Abhumans into its fellowship.” Little Princess Aphasia said nothing, but watched the visitors with wide, wondering eyes. The moon shone down on the hidden home of those who had once walked its Turquoise Zone. It painted the fantastic spires and domes of Atticland in blues and greys. Sir Mumphrey Wilton finished a quiet smoke on the balcony of his chambers. As he turned he found Miss Canterbury watching him. “Unable to sleep again?” he asked her. “Lot to think about today. Bertram’s city of mystery is discovered at last, your father’s death’s avenged, another Nazi plot has bitten the dust…” “And tomorrow we go home,” concluded the vicar’s daughter. “Me to Auntie in Southampton, you on whatever mission the government sends you on next.” She tightened her lips a little and looked down. “Our adventures are at an end.” “Miss Canterbury, I don’t think…” “I wanted to say thank you. Not for saving my life again and again – we both keep doing that for each other. Not even for what you did when I asked you to rescue those villagers. Just to thank you for being a good companion. A true friend.” “Likewise, I’m sure,” Mumphrey told her. “Never had better company on the road, and I’ve travelled a lot of roads with a fair few companions.” “And a few fair ones, Sir Mumphrey?” the lady challenged. “A few, and I treasure every one,” Mumph admitted, “but you have been the best of all.” Miss Canterbury held out her arm and shook hands. “Well, thank you, Sir Mumphrey. Thank you for believing in me and trusting me and letting me share your adventure.” “On the contrary, m’dear, thanks for letting me come along on yours, what?” The vicar’s daughter raised one sceptical eyebrow. “And when the tale gets told who do you think will get headline billing, hmm?” she sighed. She reluctantly took her hand back from Mumphrey’s. “Well, it’s rather late and we’ve had a very busy day. Goodnight, Mumphrey.” “Goodnight Miss Canterbury. Sleep well.” But suddenly the lady was close, in his arms, hugging his neck. “Oh, Mumph, you did everything I asked of you. Even the impossible things. You brought me back from the dead!” “Hmm, technically no,” answered the surprised hero. “Just reversed time, y’see, so that…” “Without the Chronometer.” “Again, technically I just…” “Mumphrey, do you love me?” “Yes. I love you. But about the pocketwatch…” “Shut up, Mumph, you silly old fool. I love you too, more than I can tell you, more than sense can explain. Can’t you see I want to be kissed?” Mumphrey kissed her. There’s something to be said for seventy years of experience of women. When a beautiful girl you love asks you to kiss her, you don’t hesitate much. “Now, Sir Mumphrey Wilton, just for once in your life… could you stop being such a gentleman?” All she could think of, as he kissed her, as his strong loving hands undressed her, as he carried her to bed, as he laid her down and made love to her, was that whatever happened after, if she hadn’t seized this moment she would have regretted it for the rest of her life. “Well,” grinned Sir Mumphrey, as the sun came up again over the Great Relief and his room was splashed with the colours of dawn, “I trust this wasn’t really our last adventure together, Miss Canterbury. The tousled brunette blushed but didn’t let go of him. “I didn’t sleep with you to trap you. I just… well I love you, and there’s nothing I can do about it.” “There is,” Mumph told her. He cleared his throat. “Miss Canterbury, I love you too, more than I ever believed I could love anyone; against all hope and all reason, madly, passionately, devotedly, eternally; and it would make me the happiest man in the world if you would honour me with your hand and heart in the holy bonds of matrimony.” “Marry you?” “Marry me and be my heart’s lady, my life’s love, mother of my children and partner of my soul,” begged the eccentric Englishman “Will you?” There was a long, athletic delay as the lady gave him her answer. And afterwards, as they lay together in that strange place at the start of their great adventure, Miss Canterbury said, “You know Mumphrey, under the circumstances, it would probably be alright for you to call me by my Christian name now.” “Jolly good. And that would be…?” Miss C sighed. “I’m Marjorie Violet Canterbury,” she told him. “You can call me Madge.” There… satisfied now, folks? 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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