Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion (7 page)

Was it
all
Moggy’s fault?

Dashed if I know. It didn’t seem likely even he could have wreaked that much havoc in so short a time. Regardless, the Cyril Moglington who shuffled into my flat one evening and flopped onto my sofa, heaving the most dispirited sigh I’d ever heard, certainly seemed to think it was. He didn’t even notice the drastic changes about the place, or spare a single complimentary word.

“My life is over, Reggie,” he said. He looked it, too … unshaven, hair a fright, clothes so rumpled he must have slept in them.

“There now, old bean! It can’t be as bad as all that, can it?”

“Gertrude gave me the boot.”

“No!”

“Yes! The only girl I’ve ever loved, my light, my angel, my sweet sugar dumpling, and she pulled the beating heart from my chest and stomped upon it!”

I rang for Brassworth to bring us a drink. Not that I needed to ring; he must have been lurking just the other side of the door, awaiting the summons. He slid in with that unobtrusive manner of his, tray in hand, decanter at the ready.

Moggy carried on for a while in the heart-stomping sweet sugar dumpling vein — women, don’t you know — while making a fairly serious attempt at drowning the sorrows.

The real pinch came when he informed me, in an oh-just-by-the-way sort of footnote, that, what with these unfortunate circs being what they were, the whole arrangement with Brassworth was probably off.

“Off? What do you mean, off?” I asked, more than a trifle alarmed.

“Well, and they won’t be making any more, will they? Whole line’s been shut down.” He poured himself a generous knock. “There were only half a dozen other finished prototypes to start with, and the rest have already been deactivated.”

“I say!” I said. I glanced at Brassworth. His metal features remained impassive as ever, but there was something in his manner I’d stake the house and lot hadn’t been there before. “Deactivated?”

“Liquidated.” Moggy regarded the tumbler of whiskey, snorted, and commenced to further liquidate himself.

“I say!” I said again, appalled.

“Scrapped.” Moggy downed another gulp. “Melted to slag.”

“Show some respect for the dead, man!”

“The dead?” He reeled, blinking at me. “Reggie, they’re machines. Lish … lishsten … listen to yourself.”

“Machines!” I looked back at Brassworth. “What’s your take on this?”

“While it is a technically accurate description, sir,” he said, “I do find it a rather mournful, even dismaying turn of events.”

“Dismaying? Downright ghoulish, if you ask me.”

“To be sure,” Moggy said, or slurred, listing to starboard as he was by then, “since yours was a gift, there’s no contract to be revoked … but the guarantee, and the continooa… continuee…”

“Continuance, sir?” supplied Brassworth.

“Continuance, yes, that’s it,” Moggy said. “The continuance of terms. Scrubbed. No terms, no contract, no guarantee.”

“And he’ll be deactivated? Not to mention … liquidated?”

“Weren’t you the one going on about how you didn’t need a valet?”

“Well, pff, bah, yes, I might have said, but … dash it all, Moggy!”

“Don’t blame me!”

“Was I?”

“You might as well,” he said, slouching with a sulky cross of the arms. “Everyone else is. My uncle … Gertrude …” He did another of the heaving dispirited sighs and stared into the depths of his glass as if hoping to read the future in there instead of in tea leaves. “I’m only the messenger, after all, just a message-boy, probably get my allowance cut into the bargain…”

I found myself with a marked lack of commiseration for my old school chum, and turned to Brassworth with a doleful but brave buck-up-laddy kind of stiff-upper-lip, the best I could muster. Words utterly failed me. Dashed if I didn’t find myself choking up, even going a bit misty around the corners.

The very notion left me staggered. To say I’d become accustomed to him was an understatement that put all other understatements to the pale.

“I do trust my service has been satisfactory, sir?” Brassworth inquired.

“Ra-
ther
!” I said. We shook hands, his brass-fingered grip firm and cool. “But this can’t just be it, can it? Got to be something that can be done!”

I wasn’t sure what, if anything, I had in mind by that remark, however fervently heartfelt. That he go on the lam, or whatever it was that people were always doing in adventure novels, was laughable. A life-size brass automaton would be anything but inconspic, don’t you know.

“As my initial placement was in the form of a complimentary gift, it
could
perhaps be argued that I am no longer, technically, Plimsby property. However —”

Moggy scoffed, loudly. “Like to see you tell old Plimsby that!”

“Very well, Mr. Moglington. Shall I see to the travel arrangements?”

“How’s that again?” I asked. “Travel arrangements? Where to?”

“To Bristol, of course, sir.”

I was glad to see that Moggy also had a baffled look, though in his case being well on the way to pickled also had something to do with it.

“What, you mean, go back? Turn yourself in, as they say? Firing squad and all that?”

“I would hardly expect a firing squad,” said Brassworth with a mildness that I could barely wrap the bean around.

“No, dismantled and melted, more likely,” Moggy said.

I shot him a look, finding this remark far less than helpful, not to mention considerably lacking in tact. He ignored me, going for another drink. I directed the look to rest once more on Brassworth’s tint-glass eyes.

“You’ve got something percolating, haven’t you?” I asked.

“Sir?”

“I can hear the wheels turning in that head of yours!”

“Do pardon me, sir.” He began to raise a hand to that head of his with what seemed like contrite consternation.

“Not literally,” I said, giving a roll of the orbs in their sockets. “You’ve thought of something. You’ve got a plan.”

“I may indeed, sir.”

Moggy scoffed again. Even more loudly.

“One which,” Brassworth continued, “may possibly stand a chance of restoring the company’s good fortune. Not to mention perhaps even affecting a reunion between Mr. Moglington and Miss Plimsby, if all goes well.”

At that, sozzled or not, Moggy was off the couch like it was spring-loaded. “Gertrude?” he cried. “My little sugar-dumpling?”

Then, as might be imagined, there was nothing for it but to go with all due speed. I hadn’t seen Moggy so motivated since our school field days when there were prizes in the offing.

We caught a steam-trolley from my flat to the station. Brassworth proved a smash sen-sashe on the GWR to Bristol; the news had been all over the papers, wired, and wireless for weeks now, and to see the sole surviving Fine Plimsby Product up close was an uncommon treat for our fellow passengers.

The trip went by for me in something of a blur, not only the blur of the countryside as the train sped along but a blur of anxious conversational babblings from Moggy such that I could barely get a thought in edgewise, let alone a word. The one prospect that did snag in my mental net long enough to worry me was in regards to old George Plimsby and whether or not he remained under the impression that I was Lord Bramford. But, in the greater scheme of things, it seemed far down the list.

Brassworth maintained his impassive silence as the chug-a-tug carried us out into the harbour. We rode the liftavator up the spire to the platform, and although I’d reconciled in my brain the fact of another gondola ride, my innards remained far from sanguine, if that’s the word I want.

Plimsby’s behemoth continued its airborne circuits above Bristol, though once we’d disembarked the gondola, it seemed more a flying metal ghost town than the busy factory I’d seen before. The workers had been laid off, the great machines shut down except for the airscrews and propellers, and the clashing industrial din I remembered no longer drowned out the howl and whistle of the wind.

The man himself was in residence, and his daughter, but other flesh-and-blood beings were few. Gertrude Plimsby’s welcome was almost warm enough to flash-freeze Moggy where he stood; the liquid N would have been a sauna by comparison.

I confess that, as the preliminaries got under way, the role of one R. Wilmott was to loiter off to a side with an ingratiating smile. Brassworth did the talking.

And was he smooth? I should say! Purest refined oil and honey! He opened with the stuff about having technically been gifted and therefore no longer Plimsby property.

“One might therefore extrapolate that this would render me something of a free agent. An autonomous automaton, if you will.”

To which the old man blustered something about costs of materials and manufacturing, losses to be recouped, being sued by the domestic services unions for a threat to their livelihood, scandalous public doo-dah about human rights, and so on. The company was, he maintained, in more than enough trouble without having ‘free agent’ automatons on the loose.

Brassworth countered with a suggestion that made Plimsby’s ears prick up, or would have if he’d possessed the kind of ears that could prick up. His were, as it happened, the ears typical of an elder party of his sort, complete with tufts of the grey and bristly. But I believe they would have pricked if they could.

It was the habits-and-preferences questionnaire that Brassworth mentioned, the one I recalled filling out with a punch card and stylus. Moggy had, with a big show of pomp and circumstance, fed it into the device with flashing bulbs and chattering ticker-tapes, which had ultimately spat out the specifs they’d used to calibrate Brassworth to my individual settings.

“It seems to me, Mr. Plimsby, sir,” said Brassworth, “that such a technology would have valuable uses and applications in today’s world. The domestic service agencies, for instance, would benefit greatly from the ability to match prospective employers and employees based on skills and needs. The same could be said for many businesses and industries.”

Plimsby’s jaw worked, but not much in the way of words came out. Moggy and I no doubt looked similar. Gertrude, meanwhile, had a gleam in her eyes like her clockey-jockey horse was three lengths ahead and gaining.

“Imagine the commercial uses,” Brassworth said. “Advertisements, perhaps, tailored to the tastes of a particular market. One might even consider the social prospects of such a system. Being able to seek out new acquaintances based on established factors of personality and compatibility would reduce or even eliminate the difficulties inherent in forming relationships.”

He continued, still smooth as oil and honey, by saying that he would be quite willing to assist with setting it all up, by way of renumerance for the aforementioned costs of his materials and manufacturing, in exchange for his emancipation.

“Mr. Moglington advised that I bring the matter directly to you, sir,” he finished.

Gertrude Plimsby gazed at Moggy with the love-stars rekindling, or something along those lines. “Oh Cyril! Was this
your
idea?” she cried.

“I … ah …” Moggy managed an uncertain grin, and that was the last I saw of him for a while as the girl flung herself into his arms.

With this, it was
fait accompli
but for the nuts and bolts of it all. I soon found myself face to face with Brassworth.

“I jolly well knew you were hatching a scheme!” I said. “But, what happens now? You sign back up with old Plimsby?”

“Perhaps not, sir. I am only obliged to assist with seeing the new program become operational. I am otherwise on my own recognizance, as it were.”

“Indeed,” I said, trying not to let on I hadn’t the foggiest what he meant.

“For independent hire or employ,” Brassworth added. “Should anyone be so inclined as to make the offer.”

The penny finally dropped and I caught on.

Must admit, I did feel a touch foolish, asking such a question. Not like a Wilmott to be in the supplicant’s role, don’t you know. To anyone, let alone a valet, let alone a mechanical valet. But, blast it all, there it was.

“So … Brassworth, ahem … don’t, ah, suppose,” I said, rubbing at the back of my neck, “you’d consider staying on? For a bit? On a trial basis? Probationary and all, right-oh?”

Brassworth’s face, as I’ve mentioned, did not lend itself to much in the way of movement or expression. But, I swear, something in the tilt of his head almost seemed to suggest a smile.

“I would find it most amicable, sir.”

I nearly could have whooped. Forget shaking his hand; I wanted to embrace him like a brother. I did neither, of course; certain proprieties must be maintained in these matters.

“Bra-
vo
!” I settled for clapping him on the shoulder, hard enough to sting my palm. “It’s a deal!”