Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle

“Sure! Lots! Don’t worry,” Agatha told him. “But we need to move quickly…and you were right! There’s tons of great stuff here, if you’re willing to try non-traditional methods!”

“I helped! I made some suggestions, too!” chimed the Castle.

“Oh. Good.” Gil wondered what kind of suggestions the Castle would think up. Best not to dwell on it…he stopped to check the instruments attached to Tarvek.

“I see, yes, he’s getting worse,” Gil told Agatha. “We’ll have to start the Si Vales right away and work on the rest as we go.”

“Well, you didn’t want it to be boring,” she reminded him.

Gil turned to the empty table. “Strap me in, then.”

Agatha began the process of connecting him with the rest of the array, and Gil couldn’t help himself. He began to fuss. “Um…did you connect all the feedback switches?” he asked her.

“All except the cardiac sequence.”

“Ah. Yes. Good. Er…did you key the pump sequence to stutter?”

Agatha swung a control panel around to show him. “Two-two on the cranium. Three-seven on the extremities. Four-five on the torso.”

Gil nodded reluctantly. “Right. Perfect.” A set of arms equipped with large steel needles swung down and positioned themselves above his arms. Large glass bottles rotated into position.

“Ah! The whole brass infusion thing! How did you solve—” Agatha placed a gloved finger across his lips.

“Gil. You’re going to have to trust me.”

Gil nodded. “Well, of course. But I am letting you strap me into a refurbished pile of torture machine parts and then mix me up with a guy who’s full of virulent pathogens and no brains. So, of course I’ll want to be extra careful about the variables that I know could kill me.”

Agatha smiled sweetly and bent toward him. She touched her nose to his.

“Very wise. But I am not going to let you die,” she said. She then reconsidered this statement. “…Or at least…If I do, not for very long. Now—good luck.”

“What?”

And then she kissed him. It was a light, unsatisfying brush of her lips against his.

“Don’t worry, that wasn’t for good-bye,” Agatha said matter-of-factly. She lowered the apparatus over Gil’s face. A thought surfaced in his brain.

“Hey!” he called to Agatha. “Did you kiss him too?”

“Don’t you worry about that,” she said, ensuring that Gil would worry about it quite a bit.

When von Zinzer and Violetta had scrambled to their stations, Agatha took a deep breath and threw the first switch. “Gil,” she called, “Give me a count back from…from eighty-three!”

Gil began: “Eighty-three. Eighty-two…”

“Violetta,” Agatha called. “Start the bellows!”

With a grunt, Violetta threw her weight onto a leather strap and began pulling on an accordion-like mechanism that towered over her. She released it and it pulled back up. She pulled it down again, and then, with a cough, it began moving on its own, sending great waves of air through several large pipes.

“Seventy-nine…”

“Von Zinzer! Get the resonance accelerators up to speed!”

With a grimace, von Zinzer stooped and began to turn the great crank. “I hate this stuff. Hate it, hate it, hate it…” He chanted through gritted teeth, in perfect time with his movements.

“Seventy-seven…”

Agatha raised her hand to a massive knife-switch and addressed Gil. “Okay. This’ll probably hurt a little,” she said.

“It’ll hurt a lot!” Gil corrected her, still counting. “Seventy-five…”

Agatha threw the switch. Gil screamed as he was wreathed in a glittering web of electricity.

“Gil! Keep counting!” Agatha shouted.

He kept going: “S…seventy-three…”

The electricity now enveloped Tarvek, who simply spasmed once and then went limp.

“Seventy…”

A high-pitched ululation filled the air as a pressure-relief valve burst open, jetting steam into the air. The generators began shuddering as the pitch of their whine continued to cycle upwards.

“Tarvek’s reading are going crazy,” Violetta called out nervously. “They’re jumping all over the place!”

“Good,” Agatha called back. She wrenched open a shunt, and a container of boiling red liquid drained away into a set of glass pipes that sent it flowing through the system.

“Sixty-seven…”

“Wulfenbach’s readings are crashing,” von Zinzer yelled. “Everything is in the red! We should hit the cutoff!”

“NO!” Agatha shouted back. She was hunched over the control board, her thick gloves smoking whenever they touched one of the crackling controls. “This must work! Increase power!”

Von Zinzer stared at her. “Increase—No! Are you crazy?” He thought a moment and began throwing switches one by one. “Oh wait, of course you are,” he grumbled.

“Sixty-three…”

Violetta paused.

“Sixty-two…”

The voice… it wasn’t coming from Wulfenbach…

“Sixty-one…”

Or rather, it wasn’t coming from just Wulfenbach.

“Sixty…”

With a shudder, Violetta realized that the countdown was coming from both Gil and Tarvek simultaneously.

“Fifty…nine…”

Violetta now saw Gil’s skin shift to a royal blue. “Lady Heterodyne!”

The lightning crackled around the two prone men as they changed from blue to purple. “Yes!” Agatha pounded her fist upon the board in triumph. “Yes! They’re in synch!”