Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle

A tug at an overhead chain, and a pair of enormous glass globes encrusted with tubes and cables dropped down, their apertures pointed directly at the hearts of the two men on the tables below them. A light began to glow within them.

“Fifty-seven…”

“Cover your eyes!” Agatha pulled down her goggles and grabbed a large red switch. “I’m releasing the lightning!” With a shriek of exultation she slammed the switch home. Everywhere the lights dimmed and—

A small spark cracked briefly at the end of the tube nearest Gil and Tarvek’s chests.

“Fifty-Five…”

Von Zinzer looked surprised. “Huh. I expected a bit more… kaboom.”

“Oh dear,” the Castle said.

“No!” Agatha screamed. “NO!” She stared upwards. “What’s happened? Where is my lightning?”

“Ah…This is very embarrassing,” the Castle answered. “I do not know.”

“You don’t know?” All around them, the machinery was beginning to wind down. Some smoothly, some to the accompaniment of small internal explosions and the smell of burnt insulation.

“I will attempt to execute a quick Dio-Gnostic routine,” the Castle said. Its voice sounded detached—as though they were hearing some mechanically prerecorded message. “In the meantime, please enjoy this musical selection: Divertimento for String and Garrucha.” There followed what Agatha guessed to be the melodic sounds of cats being swung from the Castle walls by violin strings.

“What? No!” she howled, tearing off her goggles. “I’m talking to you!” Von Zinzer put a hand on her shoulder. “Forget it,” he advised her. “It’s locked up until it finishes whatever it is that it’s doing.”

“It does this a lot?” Agatha roared. “How long does it take?”

Von Zinzer shrugged. “Dunno. You should ask Professor Tiktoffen. I do know that it’s been happening more and more lately.” He listened to the music with a critical ear. “This one probably won’t take too long. Now, if you’d gotten an opera…”

“NO!” Agatha stalked away and stared at the gently smoking slabs. “We haven’t got time! Gil and Tarvek are fully integrated!” She threw a switch and the machinery covering the young men’s faces retracted. Gil was unconscious. “It wasn’t supposed to last this long! The strain on Gil’s system will be enormous!”

“Don’t panic,” Tarvek said. Agatha gasped and turned. From his slab, he looked back at her with the clear, intelligent expression she remembered from Sturmhalten. “We’re actually doing fairly well.” He glanced about at the clamps holding him down. “After all, I’d expect Gil to mess things up. On the other hand, much to my surprise, my brain doesn’t appear to be inside an otter, so I suppose I can’t really complain.”

Agatha set his glasses on his nose and mussed his hair affectionately. “Listen to you. You sound like Gil.” She smiled. He frowned.

Agatha continued. “Well, good. That means there’s still a chance this can work.”

“Agatha—” Tarvek began, but she cut him off.

“Shh. You sit tight. I’ve got to have a look at the lightning generators.” She tapped the tip of his nose with one finger and moved off.

After a minute, von Zinzer and Violetta wandered over to stand by him.

“So…sounds risky. What do you think? Should I disconnect you?” Violetta asked.

“No!” Tarvek said. “At this stage it would kill me!”

“Weren’t you listening?” Von Zinzer asked. “It’d kill both of them.”

“Yeah?” Violetta didn’t seem too worried. “Well, I guess it would be kind of a shame about Mister Gil, there.”

Tarvek tried to sit up and only slammed his head against the restraints. “Good Lord. She hooked me up with him? What did she do? Knock him on the head?”

Von Zinzer frowned. “It was his idea.”

Tarvek blinked.

Violetta nodded. “Yeah. He insisted. That’s when we knew he was crazy.”

Tarvek looked appalled. “But…but that makes no sense. He hates me! He’s always hated me!”

Violetta shrugged. “Hey, I didn’t say he was smart.”

“And…and what’s he even doing here, anyway? The Baron’s son was the one who entered…” Tarvek’s eyes went wide with shock. He stared at the ceiling for a moment; then his head sagged back against the slab. He shut his eyes and winced as if he were in pain.

“Oh. Of course. He’s really Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, isn’t he?”

Violetta clapped her hands to her cheeks and squealed. “Oh, wow! She’s right! This thing really is working! You already sound smarter!”

Tarvek glared at her. “You knew?”

The real venom in his eyes caused Violetta to step back. “Well… yeah.” She glanced at von Zinzer uncertainly. “Who was I supposed to think he was?”

“Gilgamesh Holzfäller! A conniving, backstabbing, amoral weasel, that’s who! I can’t believe he tricked me again!”

“Oh, yeah. I remember. You knew him in Paris.”

“Paris? He’s the one who got me sent home from Castle Wulfenbach!”

Violetta rolled her eyes. “Tarvek, they found you in one of the Baron’s top-secret security vaults. You were caught red-handed.”