Read Online A Company of Heroes Book Four: The Scientist by Ron Miller - Free Book Online
Authors: Ron Miller
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By the time authorities from Toth and the Academy arrived seepage had already filled the crater with water and a small shrine had been erected at the pond’s edge. Prayers and token sacrifices were being made to the saint who had singled out Clarence-up-the-Grady for his wrathful attention. Since no one was certain which saint it might have been, prayers and offerings were being made to all the testier occupants of the pantheon. Contained within the rustic shrine, carefully sealed in a canning jar, which had its original label changed thus:
, was the sole and mysterious relic that had been discovered after the rubble had been cleared away and all of the known débris accounted for: a small disk of red metal bearing the cabalistic and inexplicable monogram ABFDFW (which Bronwyn of course recognized as the well-known trademark of the Aackly Button Foundry and Drop Forge Works). Most of the villagers, however, including the vicar, were of a mind that this represented the personal talisman of Saint Aughrim Boop-Fite ti of the Fine Weasels. That left a D unaccounted for, but, as the elderly vicar pointed out, some of Musrum’s ways were no doubt meant to remain mysterious to mortals. It was a kind of test, he was certain, though when asked he was not sure what the test was supposed to prove. There was still a great deal of discussion about why Clarence-up-the-Grady had deserved to have a hole punched in its graveyard and the theological debates continued, in fact, for decades and were, ultimately, never resolved and, at last, forgotten.
The mellow moonlight flooded Bronwyn’s apartment like spilled buttermilk, covering every surface with a faint opalescence, as though the room had been transformed into the secret, nacreous chamber of the pensive nautilus. Within it, Bronwyn’s body was a pale nimbus, like the noctilucent clouds that hover like ghosts in the midnight sky, like the ashen, meandering stream of the galaxy, like the ignis fatuus that insinuates itself within the bottomless tangles of the haunted forest, a languid, lonely phantom.
The professor informed the princess at breakfast the following morning that the date for the launch was finally set.
“And when would that be?” she asked.
“Scarcely soon enough,” he replied. “All of the engine’s results predict that the final disintegration is imminent.”
“How imminent?”
“A week, two weeks, perhaps.”
“So soon?” she asked, not a little surprised. “When are you proposing to leave, then? I had supposed that ‘soon’ meant, well, I don’t know . . . but you must be talking about . . . ”
“The day after tomorrow, at 3:15:42.5 in the morning, exactly.”
She found herself unable to complete her breakfast, which now looked as cold, congealed and lifeless as, well, the surface of the moon.
At his insistence, Bronwyn followed Wittenoom to the park to inspect the just-completed life compartment.
A scaffolding had been erected around the silvery tower, which now resembled more than ever a farmer’s silo. A steam winch operating a precarious lift carried them nearly to the summit, where Bronwyn found one of the small round manholes open. With its heavy, plug-like cover swung aside it looked a good deal like an open bank vault. She crawled inside and stood upright in the garishly lit interior. She turned to see the professor’s gangly body emerging through the port, like toothpaste extruding from a tube.
“It’s a little cozy in here,” she observed, correctly if not a little overkindly.
She was standing on a steel-mesh floor in a cramped, circular chamber. It reminded Brownyn of the pictures she had seen of the interiors of the ice houses that inhabitants of the far north built. A complicated-looking central column rose from the deck to the domed roof. Radiating from this were three reclined couches, filling much of the space between the column and the doubly-curving wall. Flanking the couches were complex controls,
By the time authorities from Toth and the Academy arrived seepage had already filled the crater with water and a small shrine had been erected at the pond’s edge. Prayers and token sacrifices were being made to the saint who had singled out Clarence-up-the-Grady for his wrathful attention. Since no one was certain which saint it might have been, prayers and offerings were being made to all the testier occupants of the pantheon. Contained within the rustic shrine, carefully sealed in a canning jar, which had its original label changed thus:
, was the sole and mysterious relic that had been discovered after the rubble had been cleared away and all of the known débris accounted for: a small disk of red metal bearing the cabalistic and inexplicable monogram ABFDFW (which Bronwyn of course recognized as the well-known trademark of the Aackly Button Foundry and Drop Forge Works). Most of the villagers, however, including the vicar, were of a mind that this represented the personal talisman of Saint Aughrim Boop-Fite ti of the Fine Weasels. That left a D unaccounted for, but, as the elderly vicar pointed out, some of Musrum’s ways were no doubt meant to remain mysterious to mortals. It was a kind of test, he was certain, though when asked he was not sure what the test was supposed to prove. There was still a great deal of discussion about why Clarence-up-the-Grady had deserved to have a hole punched in its graveyard and the theological debates continued, in fact, for decades and were, ultimately, never resolved and, at last, forgotten.
The mellow moonlight flooded Bronwyn’s apartment like spilled buttermilk, covering every surface with a faint opalescence, as though the room had been transformed into the secret, nacreous chamber of the pensive nautilus. Within it, Bronwyn’s body was a pale nimbus, like the noctilucent clouds that hover like ghosts in the midnight sky, like the ashen, meandering stream of the galaxy, like the ignis fatuus that insinuates itself within the bottomless tangles of the haunted forest, a languid, lonely phantom.
The professor informed the princess at breakfast the following morning that the date for the launch was finally set.
“And when would that be?” she asked.
“Scarcely soon enough,” he replied. “All of the engine’s results predict that the final disintegration is imminent.”
“How imminent?”
“A week, two weeks, perhaps.”
“So soon?” she asked, not a little surprised. “When are you proposing to leave, then? I had supposed that ‘soon’ meant, well, I don’t know . . . but you must be talking about . . . ”
“The day after tomorrow, at 3:15:42.5 in the morning, exactly.”
She found herself unable to complete her breakfast, which now looked as cold, congealed and lifeless as, well, the surface of the moon.
At his insistence, Bronwyn followed Wittenoom to the park to inspect the just-completed life compartment.
A scaffolding had been erected around the silvery tower, which now resembled more than ever a farmer’s silo. A steam winch operating a precarious lift carried them nearly to the summit, where Bronwyn found one of the small round manholes open. With its heavy, plug-like cover swung aside it looked a good deal like an open bank vault. She crawled inside and stood upright in the garishly lit interior. She turned to see the professor’s gangly body emerging through the port, like toothpaste extruding from a tube.
“It’s a little cozy in here,” she observed, correctly if not a little overkindly.
She was standing on a steel-mesh floor in a cramped, circular chamber. It reminded Brownyn of the pictures she had seen of the interiors of the ice houses that inhabitants of the far north built. A complicated-looking central column rose from the deck to the domed roof. Radiating from this were three reclined couches, filling much of the space between the column and the doubly-curving wall. Flanking the couches were complex controls,
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