Posted by The Hooded Hood continues this account of the wartime exploits of Sir Mumphrey Wilton on June 21, 2001 at 08:52:38:
Part the Sixth: The Talking Apes and the Secret Writings
Behind the waterfall
there was an ancient tunnel carved with pre-human bas reliefs. Led by the
unspeaking giant known only as Muto, the Nazi conquerors marched along to the
far end where the bright African sun shone on the most amazing city Miss
Canterbury had ever seen. Versalia was a city of rainbow marble, gleaming white
but flecked with all the hues of the spectrum. It rose out of the clear lake
that reflected its splendours like a mirror and it shimmered in the heat like a
mirage. In our next exciting episode:Mumph and Miss Canterbury go dancing in
Paradopolis, and walking dead make their move in Gothametropolis.
And for those who want to see more of the lost city of the talking
apes: check out Untold Tales #80, in which the Lair Legion visit modern-day
Vesalia and learn some secret history of the Parodyverse; due this weekend
(probably Sunday).
“Attack,” Herr Wertham told his troopers.
“Wait!” protested the
talking ape that the Nazis had captured earlier. “We are a peaceful people. We
have no wish for violence!”
“That should certainly make the slaughter
easier,” the American Expediter working with the Axis noted as the first chatter
of machine-gun fire echoed down the tunnel.
“Stop!” Miss Canterbury begged as
she heard the all-too-human screams of the simian inhabitants of the hidden
city. She bit back tears of guilt at the knowledge that she had led these
destroyers to this legendary place, even if it had been against her will under
the hypnotic control of the Expediter. “They haven’t done any harm!”
“Always
it is humans with thundersticks,” the captured gorilla mourned. He too had been
compelled by the uncanny American’s mental abilities, in his case to reveal the
secret entrance to the hidden Valley of the Apes. “Once before we were besieged
by you monsters who sought our secrets and our gold, and we only survived with
the help of one of your kind.”
“One of our kind?” Miss Canterbury asked. “A
human?”
“Gold?” Herr Wertham asked. “You have treasure here?”
“Don’t get
distracted now,” the Expediter drawled. “We’re here to translate the Bertram
diary, which the old explorer coded by writing it in Versalian, the language of
the lower primates, a tongue he learned during his time with these
monkeys.”
“If we are the lower primates then why are you the barbarians who
are destroying our city?” the ape challenged.
“It is because we can destroy
you city that we are the higher primates,” Herr Wertham answered. He didn’t
notice the Expediter snort.
Less than an hour after the first shots were
fired the city fell silent again. Muto returned and gestured for his master and
the others to follow them into the captured Versalia.
“Oh no,” Miss
Canterbury sobbed as she saw the elegant marble flecked with blood, the
countless tangled corpses of the city’s former inhabitants.
“Post guards,”
Herr Wertham instructed Muto. “A few of these creatures are sure to have got
away into the jungle, and others will have been out hunting like this fine
specimen who brought us here.”
“You murderers!” Miss Canterbury accused
them.
Herr Wertham took the opportunity to slap his prisoner across the
cheek. “They are only apes,” he snorted. “Usually I kill men.”
“Perhaps
because you wish you were one?” the Englishwoman snapped, earning herself a
second buffet.
“We are a civilised and complex people,” the captive ape
argued. “We have dwelt here, perfecting our art and our science for hundreds of
years.”
“Start talking about your race in the past tense,” the Expediter
recommended. “And lead us to the library.”
The unwilling ape was forced to
obey his captors. Miss Canterbury took the opportunity to learn more about the
mysterious hidden land as they made their way through the elegant marble
architecture to a hall of scrolls. “Versalia is amazing. Please don’t take this
the wrong way, Mr Ape, but how did you and your people come to develop such a
complex culture as this?”
“I am Galor,” the gorilla answered. “As for our
origins, our earliest stories tell of mighty beings who dwelled on the moon, who
used the discarded machines of yet mightier beings that had created them to gift
us with the spark of intelligence. And because we have that gift we knew we
would never survive in the outside world so we retreated here to the hidden
valley to write our books and play our music – at least until your species
discovered us.”
“It was Blanchford Bertram, wasn’t it?” Miss Canterbury
checked. “He was the explorer who first found you and befriended you?”
“Not
all the humans who searched for Versalia were as noble as he,” Galor answered.
“We had no weapons to protect ourselves from such greed and aggression, but
Blanchford showed us how to defeat the looters and mercenaries who would have
destroyed us, and in return we let him stay with us for a while and taught him
what we knew.”
The Expediter and Herr Wertham were in the library now. The
Expediter produced the Bertram diary and locked his stare on the ape prisoner.
“You will translate and decode these passages now,” he demanded, boring into
Galor’s mind.
“They… they speak of a secret,” the gorilla admitted. “They
give directions to an ancient temple in Tibet, and of certain rituals which will
open a gateway to another place. Blanchford discovered the way to this place and
he considered it the greatest of his discoveries, but too dangerous for the
world to know.”
“Yes,” Herr Wertham breathed. “And there is power there, yes?
Power my Reich can use to conquer the world?”
“There is great power there,”
Galor admitted, “and great evil that must not be unleashed.”
“I rather think
that ve will be the ones to decide that,” the Nazi interrogator smirked.
“You
do not have Blanchford Bertram’s secret yet,” the ape told them. “Although I can
tell you what the words he wrote in vesalian tell, the actual directions for
opening this gateway remain encoded. Even though I can render the phrases into
English for you I have no way of telling what the cypher actually means
thereafter.”
“We have the finest code-breakers in the world,” Wertham
boasted. “The strange language was the stumbling block. It vill be child’s play
for our people to defeat the cypher from there.”
The questioning went on for
some time as the Expediter forced Galor to translate again and again until every
nuance of the instructions to find the lost temple and of the coded message to
activate the rituals was recorded. Only then did the American mercenary seem
satisfied. “I think we have everything we need from this place. If your men have
finished their looting we can detonate the explosive charges to annihilate the
city and get out of here.”
“Please,” Galor begged. “You have what you wanted.
Why do you have to destroy us?”
Herr Wertham grinned a twisted smile.
“Because I can,” he answered.
“If only we had some hero this time to save
us,” the ape groaned.
“Miss Canterbury was kind enough to provide one,” the
Expediter pointed out, “but unfortunately I shot him dead.”
“Hmph,” Sir
Mumphrey Wilton snorted. “As if I’d let a little thing like that stop me from
giving you bounders the sortin’ out of a lifetime!”
Everybody in the library
swung round in amazement as the eccentric Englishman swung himself in through
the window.
“Vilton!” gasped Herr Wertham.
“The meddler?” scowled the
Expediter.
“About time you got here,” complained Miss Canterbury.
“But…
how did you survive?” the Expediter demanded.
“As if I’m going to tell a
nasty little tick like you,” Mumph scorned. What was the point in telling the
enemy that Miss Canterbury herself had used the temporal pocketwatch she had
been ordered to take from its owner to shift the bullets forward in time? The
vicar’s daughter had been under the Expediter’s control at the time, but since
he hadn’t ordered her not to do it… “Anyway, just now you should be more
concerned about this.” He held up the detonator to the charges that the Nazis
had been setting around the city.
“Vhat?” snarled Herr Wertham. “You haff the
detonator!”
“Absolutely. Borrowed it off a couple of your sapper johnnies.
Funny how I seem to keep on threatenin’ to blow us all to kingdom come if you
don’t co-operate, isn’t it?”
“But no longer amusing,” the Expediter replied.
“Put down the detonator now.” It wasn’t a request, it was an order, backed by
all the psionic power the strange mercenary could place behind it.
“No, I
don’t think so,” Mumphrey replied jovially. “Been ignorin’ you mind-bendin’
chappies for quite a while now. One picks up a knack, don’tcha know.”
“Very
well,” considered the Expediter. “I shall kill you some other way. Miss
Canterbury, use that time-bending pocketwatch of Wilton’s to freeze him in
time.”
Miss Canterbury helplessly pressed the stud which had formerly saved
her champion’s life, but this time instead of it performing the effect she had
in mind the young Englishwoman was stopped in time herself.
“Didn’t allow
that one,” Mumph explained, putting his finger on the trigger of the detonator.
“Now take your murdering brutes of stormtroopers and get out of here in the next
five minutes. Leave your guns behind.”
Herr Wertham did not agree. “You think
you can…”
“Do as he says,” the Expediter interrupted. “We have a standoff
here. We have found out what we came to discover. Wilton can’t stop us seizing
the temple and finding the gateway. In fact he has no way out of Versalia since
we will destroy the only exit after we have left. I hope he enjoys the rest of
his life in this monkey town.”
Sir Mumphrey watched his enemies depart
through the water-tunnel they had arrived by. Only when he heard the malicious
sound of the tunnel being destroyed at the other end did he relax.
“We’re
trapped here,” Miss Canterbury reminded him.
“We’re safe,” Mumph replied.
“And so are the surviving Versalians.”
“Many of my people found safety in the
trees,” Galor explained. “Now we can mourn our dead, repair our city, and return
to our arts and sciences in peace.”
“But the villains are getting away!” Miss
Canterbury objected.
“Not in that Nazi saucer of theirs, they’re not,”
Mumphrey promised. “I think they’ll find it’s a long walk back home, without
weapons, and there are some mighty angry gorillas out there. We, on the other
hand, only need to wait for Lucas to return with another plane. The chase is
still on, m’dear, and we will pip those blaggards at the post yet, by George!”