The Japanese Devil Fish Girl And Other Unnatural Attractions by Robert Rankin

Author:Robert Rankin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789085241522
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 2010-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Five

The ill-starred airship’s maiden voyage was coming to an end. A bitter and sorry end was this. The great doomed pleasure-craft wallowed and sank, down through the hideous maelstrom, gas bag ruptured, turbine mountings broken and ablaze.

Thrashing and clawing at one another like lost souls in one of Dante’s less-than-cheerful lower circles of Hell, the screaming multitude in the great dining hall sought the salvation of the lifeboats. The credo of ‘women and children first’ found few followers here.

George looked down in horror as the living and the dead were hurled together in some ghastly danse macabre.

Where was Ada? Was she dead? And where was the professor?

George struggled vainly and sought release from the magical force that held him, but it was as if he were enclosed within an invisible shell, protecting him from harm, whilst rendering him helpless to offer what assistance he could in this monstrous calamity.

The Empress of Mars suddenly all but upended. Passengers and crew, Earthfolk and others from elsewhere, tables, chairs and all the fine paraphernalia of first-class dining, now joined by the stage, the grand piano, statues, pillars and whatnots, took one final terrible trip, over the dining hall floor, out through the windows and onto the storm-lashed promenade deck.

And after them all travelled George, in surprising comfort considering the apocalyptic circumstances. He wafted gently, light as a bubble from a child’s soap-sud meerschaum. Out and away into the sky.

Untouched by the storm, undampened by the rain, but reaching a point close to madness, George drummed his fists upon the interior of his invisible prison and called the name of Ada Lovelace again and again and again. And as he floated away from the airship, he viewed its terrible end. Lit by spreading fires now and the lightning’s awful blaze, the Empress of Mars, billowing and broken-backed, plunged into the storm-whipped ocean. Folk were fighting for the lifeboats now and overloaded vessels were tearing free of their moorings. The destruction was titanic, decks imploding, cabins tearing open. George looked on as the concert hall turned inside out, spewing seating and balconies into the foaming waves.

And George Fox turned his face away, for he could bear no more.

♦

Shortly before the coming of dawn the storm lost its fury and ceased with its howlings and wrath. The gales dropped away, the lightning departed, the thunder no more to be feared. The ocean calmed to a palette of blues as sunlight fell upon it.

George awoke from troubled sleep to find himself alone.

Alone upon a beautiful beach and freed from his eerie cocoon. His fingers touched on silver sand, warm sunlight kissed at his striking chin. George rose upon his elbows, for he was flat on his back. Took in the idyllic surroundings, smiled to himself and then recalled all that had happened.

George’s face did cloudings-over, George’s stomach knotted. He climbed to his feet and he shouted Ada’s name, but George was all alone. Before him, a sea of infinite blue; behind, a rising jungle.

George shielded his eyes from the early sun and scanned the distant horizon.

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