Whisperings

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Amerikan Dreams: 0

Whisperings Being the Diary extracts of a father and his son

in the world known to all as, the Looking-Glass Earth.

By Rob Sharp

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Whisperings © Rob Sharp 2011

All rights reserved

The right for Robert Sharp to be identified as the author

of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Further information can be obtained by contacting

[email protected]

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Dedicated to my beautiful wife Carole

who keeps me anchored in the waking world.

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It’s the scratching behind the wainscot that leaves scars on a house. The fluttering of

invisible wings when something is trapped in the chimney. The unseen events as vermin

come and go from a dwelling; leaving the edges nibbled and trails of dried faeces

marking where they have been.

History is very similar, made from the whisperings between the epic events, the

calm before, during and after the storm. It’s structure riddled with the unknown and in

some cases, the unwanted conversations of individuals who make a difference. Who play

the Game.

Listen to the passing of days. Concentrate on what Time says. Just occasionally, it

may talk some sense.

5

18th

November 1960

The Queen was drunk again.

Leaning back in her ornate royal seat, a Cuban cigar dangling precariously from

her delicate fingers, she squinted at the three kings she held in her hand, nestled next to a

nine of spades and a three of hearts.

“I’ll match you Kent for your Colorado… and raise you Cardiff,” HRH finally

decided, pushing the bone markers into the middle of the pot.

“I’m not accepting Cardiff. What the hell use is a Welsh town to me? Stick to

southern Albion or fold,” grunted the wizened old guy in the wheelchair.

“Bugger. Make it Portsmouth then…”

“Are you sure about this, Liz?” her partner in cards queried.

Elizabeth was a practised bluffer when she had the best part of a bottle of 1814

Napoleon Brandy warming her insides. The trouble was, her royal genes never allowed

her to quit, even when she had been dealt a duff hand.

Rule Britannia and all that malarkey.

“You are such a woman, Commander Future!” the Queen hiccoughed slightly.

“This is the Imperial Consort of Humanity you are addressing… One knows how to play

fucking Poker!”

She dropped a pile of ash from her cigar on the green baize of the tablecloth and

brushed it impatiently away.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!” snapped the British Monarch. “Game too rich for you,

Ares?”

The Hereditary Ruler of the World coughed as one of his beautiful, fetish clad

assistants held the oxygen mask to his face for a few seconds, then wiped the perspiration

from his brow with a soft cloth. For one of the last Anunnaki alive in the secret world,

those dread immortals that had ruled mankind from the shadows since Krom only knew

when, the old feller wasn’t faring very well.

That was what seventeen separate assassination attempts in the 20th

century alone

did for one.

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“I’ll match Portsmouth with Boston… and see you,” he eventually wheezed.

“Ho-ho!” chortled HRH, cigar clenched between her teeth and that tight familiar

1940’s hairstyle just a little disarrayed. “Get the papers drawn up, baby! Mother England

is taking back what has always been hers!” She slapped her cards down on the table,

totally overconfident of her victory. “Read them and weep, you old douche bag!”

Ares, or as he preferred to be called in the company of lesser mortals, Viktor

Helmuth Bast, took some time fumbling with his cards, but the old goat was relishing his

double bluff. Neatly, he finally laid out his three Aces over Queen Elizabeth’s hand.

“Mine, I believe!” he cackled, clawing in the ancient bone tokens to add to his

previous winnings. “We can draw a line slightly south of Birmingham and declare all

lands below this border as now belonging to the United States of Amerika. Ladies and

Gentlemen, welcome if you please, Albion – the 51st State!”

The assembled stooges gave Ares a polite round of applause, as the designated

referee stepped forward into the light and examined the markers.

“Hells bells! One was robbed!” cried the Queen and nearly fell backwards off her

chair. As blonde quiffed Commander Future, looking quite dapper in his latest Carnaby

Street fashions, caught her before she hit the deck, he gave the referee a worried grin.

“This can’t be legal… can it?”

Dressed in sombre black, as was his signature style, Anthony Leibowitz

scrutinised a dog-eared document that covered these ridiculous gambles. A little

something Henry XIII had drafted for such an occasion.

“Allowing the loosing party six months grace to win said territories back… I’m

afraid it’s perfectly legal,” he said, pulling a sour face.

“I think one is going to be sick…” quavered HRH, and several flustered members

of the Order of Humanity helped her away to find the ladies powder room.

So this was how Amerika allegedly gained control of the south of England.

Except for two things that slightly marred the occasion.

The first being, that the Queen signed her portion of the land transference deeds

with the flourish of, ‘Mickey Mouse’.

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The second being, on completion of said deeds, in the ensuing scuffle between

Ares’s Amazon concubines and HRH’s bodyguards, someone nicked off with the

document and it was never seen again.

In most of these cases when Johnny Future, self-confessed temporal meddler and

all round dodgy geezer had been present at such an historical occasion, all fingers pointed

at him. But this time it was the referee that walked out of the Tower of London with the

papers concealed up one jacket sleeve.

To this day it is presumed by the various covert agencies that secretly rule the

Looking-Glass Earth, that this bit of ill-advised nonsense was spirited away to join

Leibowitz’s private collection of the strange. Whatever the fate of that document, from

that day forward the south of England was considered in some circles to be the 51st State.

But in his acquisition of the only factual proof, Anthony Leibowitz’s long-lost

father would have been proud of him. As the self-proclaimed curator of the strange, the

business of collecting weird stuff was never just black and white. Both father and son in

their day had trodden a very shaky line between the two.

Sometimes it was the best course of action to be the pick-pocket on the scene,

rather than the action-hero. Besides… The 51st State declaration looked cool on

Anthony’s House wall, along with all the other purloined documents, pimped,

permanently borrowed or purchased on Ebay. Leibowitz was the collector’s collector

after all!

Hopefully, that last disaster would curb HRH’s gambling habit mused Anthony –

but he wouldn’t have put money on it. As he straightened the framed document in the hall

of that secret building grifters knew universally as, the House, Anthony Leibowitz smiled

to himself and went inside to make a nice cup of strong tea. 51st State indeed. What ever

next; a quick visit to the Tower of Babel?

The smile slipped a tad as he realised he shouldn’t tempt the laws of probability,

because if his late father’s writings on that subject were to be believed, the Dark Tower

and he had a date with destiny. Exactly when and where were open to conjecture. That

was one appointment that Anthony Leibowitz was in no particular hurry to keep.

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June 17th

1868

The stocky older gentlemen in the country tweed suit, sporting a full beard and obviously

of Jewish origin and the tall almost painfully thin scholarly type in an Edwardian frock

coat and large, thin-framed spectacles made an odd couple. But the venue they had

picked to meet at contained such a collection of wonders from around the Empire, that

this mismatched pair went mainly unnoticed – which had been the whole idea.

Both had spent some time in the Colonies during the past century or so. For those

possessing an extended life, it would have been just plain rude not to visit. But today their

whispered exchange was as much about the disunited States of Amerika as it was Mother

England.

That vast construction of steel and glass, The Crystal Palace, set elegantly in

London’s Penge Common Park, where it had been moved to after the Great Exhibition of

1851. Near the well-heeled folks of Sydenham Hill, it was still the place to be in the

summer of 1868. The taller of the two gentlemen, the moon-faced Mr Justin Cheeks

affiliated with the British Museum, delicately nibbled at his cheese sandwiches wrapped

in greaseproof paper. Next to him, having little appetite at the moment, Rabbi Mordecai

Leibowitz sat, nervously reaching inside his jacket to occasionally touch the stock of his

Smith and Wesson Model 3 revolver.

“The Royal Society have confirmed that our mutual enemy has begun to rewrite

the warp and weft of Time... can you imagine that outrage, Justin?” said Leibowitz

quietly.

“Yes, as a matter of fact I can. That is why these invisible scoundrels think they

are gods. It’s all a matter of perspective. But I thought you’d be more concerned with this

blackguard who is systematically hunting down your peers? Killing off the adventurers of

the secret world... pruning its tomb raiders back to the wood!”

“The Baron and I have several theories that they are one in the same. The smaller

crimes engineered to camouflage the larger outrage.”

Cheeks laughed shrilly. “Baron Klein? My... have we had a making up? I thought

you two were the greatest of rivals!”

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“We were... we still are!” flustered the Rabbi, his weathered face reddening

slightly. “But as this murdering devil Mr Black moves like a shadow amongst our ranks

snuffing us out one at a time, it seemed prudent to join forces. Which is why I’ve decided

to move our master-plan forward.”

Mr Cheeks choked on his sandwich for a second or two, before the robust Rabbi

thumped him on the back to sort the problem.

“One would have liked a little more warning before you launched one of your bad

taste jokes, Mordecai.” The moon-faced man blinked back the tears, just a hint of silver

showing in each eye. “You weren’t joking… were you? To attempt what you are

contemplating rivals what these invisibles are supposedly doing!”

“I know. That is the point. All the serious studies done concerning this Looking-

Glass Earth that we call home postulate it could be the original planet – the very first

Earth within the Lattice of Worlds. At the mercy of some cosmic force we do not yet

comprehend, it split from a proto-Earth early in the Multiverse’s history, and became the

template for a myriad of parallel worlds. Which is why it reflects so strangely an infinite

amount of possibilities, mirrored from all these other Earths.”

“Didn’t our greatest minds once think the sun revolved around this planet too?”

smiled Cheeks, wiping a final tear from his eye and wisely abandoning his lunch. “Or

that the world was flat?”

“Precisely. Which is why I hold the theory that the real proto-Earth has to be a

more chaotic place. A world trapped in flux, neither one thing nor t’other.”

“And you have heard of such an Earth on your many voyages between Realities?”

“Aye – that I have. A devastated wasteland where the only living thing is a black

tower that reaches so high into dark storm clouds it eventually pierces the outer reaches

of the air we breath! And I mean to visit this world, one day, God willing. Find a weapon

hidden within its soulless walls that will send these daemons who meddle with the

structure of Time cowering back into their own sorry pasts!”

“Are we talking the Dark Tower here, Mordecai? Have you started looking for

children’s faerie tales now?” said the scholar with some incredulity.

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“I have spoken to travellers across the Betwixt and the Between who claim to

have seen it… or at least they have spoken to others who in their turn have heard rumours

to the Tower of Babel’s existence.”

Justin Cheeks nodded without further comment. Even in this most public of

places, the glass walls often had ears. He just hoped his much travelled friend survived

long enough to accomplish this task, for Cheeks’ own people had a legend of such a

dismal world and the people who lived there. Where a black tower, a sentient super-

structure reached out with an inhuman mind to bind the Realities around it into one

immense empire.

The shape-shifters called these unfortunates, the Forces of Babel.

“The Book still going well?” Cheeks tried to lighten the conversation by changing

the subject.

“Of course,” replied the Rabbi, cheering up a jot. “It could be my best collection

yet, as long as those anal retentive followers of Osiris allow me to do the job they are

paying me for!”

“It is their Atlas, Mordecai… the 1862 version. You’re only six years late.”

“Delayed! A few years delayed, that’s all,” growled Mordecai, tugging at his bush

of a beard.

The librarian shook his head slightly. The task of assembling the Atlas of the

Secret World for those eminent scholars of the Osiran College was becoming another

sore point in his friend’s veil of tears. Banishing daemons by day and researching a work

of such intricacy by night was proving to be a little beyond his old friend.

“I could chip in with the few odd folk lore references.”

“Then the beast would be authored by Leibowitz and Cheeks! I have done this

before, Justin. It’s nearly finished, believe me.”

***

The 1862 Osiran Atlas of the Secret World finally came out in 1871. There were only 10

copies ever printed, of which Mordecai kept one for himself, which he kept adding notes

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to, year upon year, seemingly unable to write the last word. He bequeathed this mighty

tome to his son, Anthony.

***

Mordecai Leibowitz and the enigmatic Justin Cheeks met irregularly, hiding in plain

sight at The Crystal Palace, right up to the time of the Rabbi’s strange disappearance in

1893. Within the librarian’s own circles, investigations were made about Leibowitz’s

abduction, questions asked and daemons soundly thrashed, but no trace of the Rabbi was

ever found.

Mr. Cheeks settled back into the anonymous world of a scholar, until the time

seemed right to contact Mordecai’s only child, Anthony. So the threads of that original,

outrageous plan to assault the Tower of Babel were lost… for a generation at least.

Justin Cheeks would be heard down the following years remarking to certain key

players in the Game, that mounting an expedition to the Original Earth was as likely to

happen as the Queen loosing half of England in a game of cards.

Look how that one turned out.

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December 10th

1876

Mordecai Leibowitz staggered forward out of the dark, through the scarred stone pillars

beneath that familiar wrought iron arch. The fog was clinging to the rock of a man like

burrs on a donkey’s back. His beard had a wild unkempt nature to it and there was an

insane look in those tired, red eyes. Only the Lord knew how many days it had been since

he had eaten or slept.

Over one shoulder he carried a type of Native American papoose, made of

reindeer hide and strips of tree bark. Nestled inside its warm fur lined interior was a snot-

nosed tot with a shock of dark hair, who appeared to be fast asleep.

Around this father and son the grime of that lost manor wafted, as a single

gaslight illuminated the scene in an odd orange glow. Nailed to one wall, the road sign

was just visible. It read, Brisingamen Street.

Leibowitz had made it. He was there.

Set within the confines of New York, the legend chaser had finally returned to the

scattering of leaning buildings titled, Little Transylvania – that self-contained,

independent state known colloquially as, the Seven Streets. It had not been an easy

decision to make to come to this place. He was running out of holes in which to hide.

“Such a face I never expected to zee...” came a familiar, heavily accented voice

from out of the gloom that surrounded the crumbling buildings of Brisingamen Street.

The Rabbi clutched at the old gnarled briar club in both bloody hands, looking

this way and that into the fog. All his other weapons had been stolen or discarded just

getting to the Seven Streets, leaving him with naught but the ancient faerie cudgel. There

were figures stood there, just out of sight in the gloom. Skinny figures, tall and vulpine.

The Night People.

Yet it was the shortest, most stout of fellows that stepped forward under the gas

lamp. Clothed in black, his hair slicked back, as was the style with his people, Karnstein

had the look of one fully fed. But the thin, some might say cruel lips were a little too red

and the teeth a little too sharp as he smiled up at the wall of a man and his baby son.

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“You finally came here... dezpite all our bad blood. After all the history ve have

carved together. You limp back here like zome beaten mongrel...” the short, rotund

Vampyre suddenly stopped his monologue as he caught sight of a tiny arm waving from

inside the papoose. His savage face lit up with delight, all the terror and the dreadful

things that had occurred between the Night People and the master of the strange fading

away like the fog would at dawn.

“You have a Zon!” Ygor Karnstein cried in glee. “A little boy! Kome... kome

inzide thiz inztant. There are devilz abroad tonight! A roaring fire and varm food awaitz

the both of you!”

With no word from the exhausted traveller, the Rabbi allowed himself to be

bustled away by the Night People. Away from the dogs on his heels.

But they were there, watching from the dark. Three of them.

Their little group of legend killers went by various names, ruled by what ever was

in vogue at the time. This year they were whispered in passing as, The Strangers. No

more true a description could be found in the whole of Amerika.

The wizened god stood front and centre, leaning heavily on his walking staff.

Flamboyant and fair. Withered and wane. Bloody and bad tempered.

“That’s that then,” sighed Mr Lavender, his frock coat scraping the ground. “He

crossed the unseen line into the Seven Streets and we cannot follow.”

“I could burn the gates down. Pop a few ripe Carrion bodies in the process. Are

you in the mood for a bonfire, Mr Black?” chattered the pugnacious Mr Peach.

Mr Black, all cadaverous and smouldering, said nothing.

“Leave it,” sighed Lavender again. “Leave him and his bastard son. There will be

other days... other ways...” and with that the three villains of the piece allowed the fog to

take them, melting away in the stench and the gloom.

“I would have so liked to have had a nibble of the boy...” a ghost of a whisper

drifted back out of the night from the ancient Celt.

***

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Later that eventful night, a quartet of figures took the long walk down an endless spiral of

stone steps, their hesitant path traditionally illuminated by blazing torches held high. In

the lead was the familiar rotund figure of Ygor Karnstein. During the long hour that it

took to descend into the bowels of the earth, no one spoke a word, other than the odd oath

as they slipped on a worn stair or were singed by a companion’s light.

Finally, the stairs opened out into a roughly hewn round chamber cut from the

bedrock. Braziers already illuminated this holy of holies, as placed around the Crypt of

Vlad in lit niches were a vast display of Vampyre paraphernalia. Mordecai Leibowitz was

not the only collector in these dark days.

In the centre of the Crypt, a bound beast sat on a worn stone casket. Chains of all

manner of metals and magical strengths held this great naked blob of a man at his post,

linked through endless body-piercings. Broken tusks protruded from his bottom jaw. His

eyes, just black pits in a massive head, had been burned out long ago and his bald skull

reflected the flickering lights around him.

The Orc, with skin the same greyish brown of the rock that surrounded him,

sniffed at the air.

“Be still, Graven,” said Karnstien, as one might address a child. “Be at peace.”

The guardian sniffed and shuffled away from the casket like a beaten dog, his

head bowed. Whilst Karnstein’s companions fed the beast, gave him fresh water, and also

removing the fresh dung he had scattered around his prison, the Vampyre elder crossed to

the stone casket. Riveted with great iron bolts to the ancient stone was a box of deepest

red, which the Vampyre unlocked with a key he always wore on a chain about his neck.

From its cool interior, he gently lifted a crude, disintegrating book.

It bore no cover, having lost such a luxury centuries before. In fact the first few

pages of the codex were missing too, their fragments now in a glass case as part of the

Nielsen collection scattered around the chamber. The remaining twenty pages being made

from thin shavings of wood bound to the left margin with copper hoops.

Licking his thin red lips in anticipation, Karnstein reverently turned the wooden

pages one by one until he came to the revered passage and roughly translated it from the

runes of Elder Futhark, originally scribed in the early 4th

Century Denmark.

“Time will tumble. Thingz will occur. So sayeth I.

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Take into thine home an enemy. Man vithout vealth. Man vithout shelter.

Yet he shalt carry on hiz back a boy-child, who shall be precious to thee, thy kith

and thy kin. A zaviour to the People of the Night.

This babe shalt be Golden.

A light made for use in darkness. Nurture him.”

Karnstein slowly closed the codex.

“And that meant?” asked the sarcastic voice of one of Ygor’s greatest rivals,

Manfred Belusci. Where as Ygor was short and stout, Manfred was tall and built like a

bear. The Belusci’s and the Karnstien’s had been in a constant state of feuding since the

Seven Streets were first founded – something both men had been present for.

“Bors Nielsen’z vords are zometimes a touch convoluted. But thiz prophesy iz

clear to me! An enemy vill arrive at our gate vith hiz infant child… The boy vill grow

and become important to uz. Be ‘Golden’, vhatever that meanz.”

“Precisely! Vhen Nielsen wrote theze runez sixteen hundred yearz ago, they were

prophesiez meant to occur within hiz own lifetime! Bumblers zuch az you have tried to

read thingz into them zince the book vas found. The Prophet Nielsen vas still human vhen

he wrote half thiz codex! Beink turned vas one–”

“I haf no time to argue semantics vith you, Belusci! The comink of Leibowitz and

hiz child iz in the codex! Vhy else haz such a self-zentered thief and murderer of our kind

appeared at our gate?”

For once, Belusci couldn’t answer that one. As Karnstein carefully locked the

book away and headed back for the long climb up into the Seven Streets, his mind was

racing at the possibilities. Mordecai Leibowitz had a son… and he had come to Little

Transylvania for sanctuary.

What was this little human child destined to do, and how did it weave in with the

future of the Vampyres of New York?

“So ve give the father and the zon sanctuary, az the codex sayz,” exclaimed

Karnstein.

“Agreed,” replied Belusci.

But neither Undead felt comfortable with the deal. It was as if the future suddenly

hung over their heads like a rusted sword on a fraying, rotted rope.

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4th

July 1776

In a year of independence for the fledgling Thirteen States of the New World, a rather

disparate band of entrepreneurs and bandits gathered under the shadows of the larger

celebrations to pool their collective knowledge. Going against the current fashion, the

group never gave itself a name, and even in the invisible footnotes of the world’s secret

history there is some argument of what they discussed.

Upon asking those there present who still live to this present day, again the

minutes of the meeting vary. If one didn’t know better, one would say that the survivors

attended several entirely different meetings. Reading between the false memories and the

obvious lies, this is an approximate account of what happened on July 4th

1776, in the

city of Philadelphia.

***

For a Jew, one of God’s chosen people; it must be said that Mordecai Leibowitz was a

most pugnacious devil in his youth. Paying for passage to the Colonies on a French

trading vessel, when Leibowitz finally made it to the river city of Philadelphia, he looked

as if he had been in several scraps. Only on continuously being badgered by the poet and

professional swordsman, Acer Via, did the group find out Mordecai had indeed earned

his fare in several well-paid bouts of fisticuffs.

“Much as I admire a man with a little muscle about his frame,” Acer said in that

somewhat affected tone of his, “Does one have to barrel into the place late, smelling like

a prize bull?”

The backroom of a humble Printer had been acquired for the Meet. Acer Via,

already local due to the skirmishes with the damned British around the town was first to

arrive. Baron Klein came next – driving one of his cursed steam-driven things, which

frightened horses and men alike. Then the magikal fraternity sneaked in, under clouds of

brimstone and not without a few thunder-flashes.

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“Show-offs,” Acer remarked as first the dandy Absolom Stark followed by the

diminutive gentleman, Mr Daark made their theatrical entrances.

As was traditional in such occasions, the Meet was presided over by a hostess of

some renown. A lady in waiting who was there to feed the group, make what notes that

were deemed necessary, pass on relevant information to named individuals and if the

mood took them, be bedded by one or more of the gentlemen. On this occasion, it was the

bounteous Lady Una who served them. She who had been a fabled 16th

Century courtesan

in the Court of the Faerie Queene; Elizabeth I. Una still looked delectable even in her

third century of extended life, but was a woman of some comfortable size these days,

rather than the skinny wench she used to be.

By the time Leibowitz ‘barrelled in’, she had already served pots of tea and a late

breakfast of devilled kidneys, gridled eggs with rashers of rather salty streaked bacon. So

she was not best pleased to have to put more eggs on for the latecomer. He passed on the

meat, as one would expect.

“Always one for making an entrance!” Baron Klein grinned, shaking the burly

man’s rough hand firmly.

“That infernal machine parked down the side of the building is yours, I presume,

Leopold? And you poke fun at me for making an entrance!”

Acer Via kissed the heavily bearded gentleman lightly on both cheeks, as was his

continental way. “Time keeping never was your forte, was it Mordecai?”

“I make do. If the sun is approximately in its right place in the heavens I know the

hour. The exact day can take care of itself. Ah, Absalom… it’s been a goodly while.”

“Indeed it has, Rabbi. Indeed it has.” The Mage and the Adventurer exchanged

stiff handshakes.

“Please, let us abandon titles for the length of this Meet. I would no sooner call

thee, Sorcerer, or Wizard to your face. I leave my religion on the peg with my hat and

coat until it is time to leave.”

Sat in a dimly lit corner, Daark was true to his name. Bundled in an overcoat he

wore one of his leather respiratory masks under his top hat, his eyes concealed behind

dark goggles. Although not truly one of the Night People, he often exhibited some of

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their afflictions when out in daylight. Something to do with the power he coveted from

the darker denizens of the world.

“Forgive me for not greeting you appropriately, Mordecai. I am a touch under the

weather at the moment,” said the man, nasally.

“Those that deal in death and pestilence, carry it around them like a cloak,”

muttered Acer Via, just in earshot. Daark’s head twisted at an odd angle and the twin

round lenses in his mask stared at the opinionated gentleman for an uncomfortable length

of time. Finally, he looked away again, but a chill had swept through the room at that

moment which took a while to clear.

“Gentlemen, gentleman!” the Lady Una made a timely interruption, which was

why she was mistress of ceremonies. “Shall we settle down and begin whilst Mr

Leibowitz finishes his eggs?”

There was a murmur of consensus and the men pulled up chairs around the

smouldering fire even though it was a bright July day. In the road outside, they could hear

the muffled cries of street vendors and the clatter of hooves and metal-trimmed wheels on

the cobbled stones. Also, from inside the Print Shop came the regular rumble of the

heavy rollers moving backwards and forwards over the flatbed presses.

“We are suitably guarded, I take?” Acer addressed the magikal gentlemen. Both

nodded solemnly. “Good. As you know, war between these colonies we find ourselves in

and the might of the British Empire still labours on even after a goodly year. And what do

our daemonic cousins love more than a little bestiality? A good bloody war!”

“Troopers of a suspicious nature have been reported in both armies,” said Stark.

“Aye. But it’s not so much those renegades that fight in plain sight that are our

problem, but the vibrations that reflect in the Underneath!” Klein interjected with a

passion.

“We are talking reflections of Otherplace here, gentlemen? Just to clear the

conversation?” Lady Una butted in.

It was agreed upon with mutterings and secret signs to ward off the devil. Those

pockets of reality that existed just outside our five senses, clinging like carbuncles to the

fabric of the world were still a mystery even to those professionals gathered there. Whole

kingdoms lost in fog, mysterious islands no longer vibrating with the same resonance as

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other land masses shown of modern maps, and dark territories accessed by hidden doors

hewn from rock, or carved from living trees. When Magik had been banished over eight

thousand years before from the Looking-Glass world, all those that crawled, swam and

flew via its essence faded away and took refuge, for the most, in these pocket universes.

But now and again, these creatures came a-hunting for the taste of mortal flesh.

Usually drawn by the smell of the carnage on some distant battlefield. This was problem

number one that the gathering of special folk hoped to solve. Problem number two

probably had far more gravitas with the Meet, as he had been a thorn in their backsides

for the longest of times.

“What does the old monster call his little gathering this time?” asked Klein,

glancing at his pocket watch. The collector and archaeologist had a great reverence for

the new technology, and was more a servant to Time than his rival, Leibowitz.

“Children of the Empire,” replied Stark, scratching at his beard. “I think he is

being topical, amusing fuckster that he is!”

“And what freaks ride with him?” Leibowitz joined in, his mouth still full of his

breakfast.

“The dog-boy, Jonas Griffin… her imperial joyousness, Shi Chin Chow… that

immortal hag, Glinder from the Wicca ranks and an enigma using one of the Keys of the

Old Gods, Captain Zechariah Faust,” hissed Daark from his dismal corner.

“A mixed bunch. There will be more prancing like trained ponies behind the

scenes – there always are. The old general picks his soldiers from the lost and the

forgotten. This Captain Faust warrants a closer look though… I’ll put good money on the

fact that he is not from this Earth!” said Stark. “But we need to come to a decision about

what to do with Lavender. Death or glory, gentlemen? Do we strike against the child-

eater now, or allow him to pervert the tract of history yet again?”

“That is a course of action best mulled over,” Acer Via said with a sigh. “As I

may be so bold to say – immortals such as Lavender are deuced hard to kill!”

As this seemed like a natural break, and minor discussions began about certain

individual daemons that would need putting back in the ground before the week was out,

Lady Una stood up and rustled her voluminous skirts into some form of order.

20

“Gentlemen… I’ll take my leave of you now whilst you muse over your first

problem. I for one would not like to bare arms against the old general without an

excellent Scryer saying my chances for victory were bloody good!” She smiled around

the bunch, and rubbed her chubby hands together. “Now, I’ve pheasant’s to be plucking

for your lunch, and there’s a mountain of potatoes and veg to clean and chop if someone

would like to give me a hand, but first, if any one of you fancies a good tupping, I’m fair

in the mood!”

There was a great deal of shuffling of boots and looking anywhere but at each

other, until the Rabbi finally rose to his feet, wiping his hands and whiskers on a scrap of

paper he’d found piled on a wooden bench behind him. With a nod of agreement, the

couple linked arms and proceeded up the stairs.

Baron Klein made his excuses and went out to tinker with his steam-machine.

Acer Via did likewise, probably to scour the riverside taverns for a bit of rough trade.

Liked a strapping sailor did the effeminate immortal. Stark laid out an old parchment he

had been trying to translate; something from the High Elfin tribes that used to populate

the Amerikas before the Magik went away, and Daark just sat in his corner, twiddling his

thumbs.

Sometime before lunch was eventually served, the unholy masked Mage spirited

himself away and didn’t return until later the following day.

One amusing interlude caught Lady Una’s bright eye as she ripped the feathers

from her plump young game birds, with the appearance of the Printer, one John Dunlap.

Rough brown paper in hand, as the meeting had dispersed, he began to pack the piles of

printed Broadsides that Mordecai Leibowitz had been eating his breakfast all over.

“Lord’s sake! Paper is in short enough supply with the British at our doors… who

made all this mess?”

Striking a long match down the rough chimney brick to light his clay pipe, the

Rabbi kept stum.

“They look mighty important, Printer Dunlap. Who’s the customer?” he had the

cheek to ask.

21

“Bunch of toffs and military types meeting down the street. Call themselves, the

Continental Congress, if you please! I promised them 500 sheets to announce their doings

and I can barely muster up 450… What is this all over them? Egg, is it?”

Leibowitz just shrugged and squinted sideways at one of the damaged papers. The

Broadsides announced that on this day, the 4th

July 1776, the thirteen United States of

America declare independence from the British Government of King George III.

Mordecai Leibowitz had just wiped his greasy hands on one of the most important

documents in human history, would that he knew it.

“That will lead to trouble!” he muttered, nodding towards the declaration, puffing

away at his pipe, noticing that the Printer had spelled ‘Amerika’ wrong, without the

Germanic rendition of the word. A mistake the secret world would constantly kick

against in its referencing of the future United States.

“Tell me about it! What legality this has I have no idea, but the war is only going

to get worse, you mark my words!”

Which it did.

As did the secret war with the hoards of Otherplace and that jackanapes, Mr

Lavender, only that battle never did come to any conclusion in Leibowitz the Elder’s

lifetime, as no one would step forward to murder the old general. Not this time, or the

numerous other haphazard Meets that were gathered together to discuss the Pre-Celtic

deity.

The old general was going to be a burr in their backsides for some time yet to

come.

22

May 26th 1911

It was the day before the great fire on Coney Island that Anthony Leibowitz first met

the unique Justin Cheeks – a freak walking amongst the freak-shows of Dreamland. He

liked to think that his presence there on that date was just a coincidence. That the

electrical surge that blew out all the lamps in the water boat ride, Hell Gate, which

consequently caused a workman to kick over a bucket full of hot pitch, starting the

infamous fire, had nothing to do with a man who could generate electricity within his

own body.

But then that was the secret world for you – strange and freakishly coincidental.

Barely bloodied in the world of the strange, Leibowitz had left his higher

education in Ireland to head for the hidden citadel of one of the most charismatic

mystery-men of the world – Mr Why. Taken in on a twelve-month apprenticeship with

the man who could pose more questions than he answered, he left the Himalayan retreat

after slightly over three years. Still wet behind the ears, he at least knew about the seven

deadly sins that could kill him on a daily basis, even if he was never too sure how to

tackle them.

Between then and now, he had messed about a bit in Bolivia and Argentina with

his immortal friend, Acer Via, then spent a lost year looking for ancient Old God

artefacts in the jungles and deserts of Africa. Worked under the Ancient and Perilous

Alchemists of Berlin, stealing some of their best party tricks and flirted with death and

befriended numerous strange people. So long lost in the wilderness, civilization had

finally beckoned Anthony once again.

New York was like a magnet to the young man. It was rich and flavoursome, full

of folk from the four-corners of the world. Then there were the pretty girls… Poor

Anthony still had a weakness for them, his bold confidence in the face of daemonic

warriors melting away at the sight of a seductive smile. Would he ever get over this acute

shyness with the opposite sex?

Back in the day, the Lenape Indians called Coney Island, Narrioch, the land

without shadows. Even in his black, slightly Edwardian suit, Anthony had enjoyed the

23

beautiful May sunshine, kicking off his socks and shoes and walking along the shoreline

as the sea nibbled at his toes, until a rather large shadow had joined him. There were no

two people on this Earth of those proportions that he knew of. His father’s old sparing

partners had often described Cheeks, so he wasn’t caught out too flat-footed.

“Great day, isn’t it?” intoned the scholar in a clipped English accent, towering

over Leibowitz.

“Mr Cheeks… I understood the dusty halls of the British Museum was more your

taste. What brings you out to these climes?”

“I get out now and again. Sometimes the books and the artefacts bore even me.

Not often, I might add. Just on the odd occasion.”

He was dressed in a lightweight suit, which even though it must have been tailor-

made for him, hung off him like a rag might from a scarecrow. Over seven feet in height,

Justin Cheeks wore a small pork-pie hat, and sported a red bow tie, which made him

appear even more like a cartoon figure, with his lanky stick arms and legs.

“Through my own unique sources, I’ve learned that an old enemy of your father’s

has sent someone to ‘sort you out’,” said the giant.

“What?” complained the apprentice curator of the strange, “I haven’t done

anything!”

“That, I believe, is the point. A certain old general has sent his new boy, Sam

‘Dynamo’ Dexter to rub you out before you get around to doing anything important.”

“Hey! I do important jobs! I found that Key in Africa, after great personal

sacrifice and danger…”

“Then promptly lost it again.”

“There was the Black Mirror shard in Chile… A window to other worlds!”

“You broke that. 77 years bad luck!”

“The London daemon?”

“A fake.”

“Indoctrinated by the ancient and secret Alchemists of Berlin?”

“Unfortunately not fakes, but criminally insane. You stole from them – not the

best of career moves. They might yet brew up a World War.”

“You don’t think much of me, do you Mr Cheeks.”

24

“Let’s get you passed the end of today first, eh? Then I might try to point you

back on the path that your late father so industriously paved.”

So it was all about papa once again. How many times did Anthony have to cringe

when one of these secret types called him, Leibowitz the Younger? Times had changed

since his father had played the Game. The rules were different and the board populated

by players with mean, murderous streaks in them. For gosh-darn sakes, who was this

Dynamo character for example?

As the two companions headed back across the boardwalk, aiming to see

Dreamland and Colonel Joseph G. Ferari’s Trained Wild Animal Area, a typical

Brooklyn thug wandered clumsily behind them. Dressed down in battered boots, faded

brown pants, a raggedy khaki jumper and an old flat cap pulled low over his eyes, he had

the walk and the physique of a tame gorilla and just screamed the title; enforcer.

Now and again, sparks went off between his fingers as he thought of all the lovely

ways he could croak this skinny runt dressed in black, as ordered by the duplicitous Mr

Lavender.

“So, what was the wildest idea my papa ever had?” Leibowitz tried to steer the

conversation away from him, and how bad his record in marshalling the strange had been

since he had left the guiding light of Mr Why.

“He and some of the wilder fringe elements of the mystery-men were plotting to

break the inter-dimensional barrier and storm the mythical Tower of Babel.”

“Wow,” was all Anthony could get out for a moment, not even certain the Tower

actually existed. Then, “Did you know my mother?”

“My friendship with your father skipped the few years he was with her. Before

you ask, I don’t even know what her name was, only she died bringing you into this

world.”

“Same story with who ever I talk to. It’s as though my mother never existed.” On

this world at least, thought Anthony, having formed a few wild guesses of where his poor

mother really came from. “Name me one of my papa’s ex-partners that I should avoid at

all cost!”

25

Besides Mr Lavender, thought the tall man. “Don’t trust Daark. I feel he has

tarried in the blacker corners of the universe far too long. He has absorbed too much of

the night and it eats at his sanity.”

Anthony nodded his head, impressed. He’d met Mr Daark on a couple of

occasions and thought he was as mad as cheese. So they wandered around the rides and

freak shows of Dreamland, seemingly oblivious of their brutish tail, engrossed in

fascinating conversation about the apprentice’s late father. Until the day wore on, and as

they turned a corner there was the would-be murderer.

“That him?” Anthony whispered to Cheeks as the thug blocked their way.

“Matches my description. You should be carrying at least three magikal things

about your person to combat this idiot’s powers.”

Leibowitz went a touch red as he delved into his almost empty pockets. Finally he

fished out a couple of used tram tickets, a raven feather and three ball barings.

“Is that it?”

“Pretty much,” Anthony confirmed, ignoring the rather saucy picture of a popular

Burlesque star that he’d picked up from a boardwalk hut before meeting Cheeks. So that

was when the unlikely pair started to run.

Cheeks, built like a giraffe, had the co-ordination of a drunken stick insect.

Leibowitz, although a little on the short side, had garnered much practice on running

away from danger. Although Mr Why had attempted to teach him various fighting arts

from around the world, he was a klutz at the best of times, more prone to harming himself

than any opponent. So it was the apprentice who had to constantly slow down and tow

along the librarian. Always a few short yards behind them, Dynamo stomped on, never

loosing his pace, always with that totally blank look on his kisser. The look of murder.

“This isn’t going to end well, is it?” Anthony gasped as they skidded around yet

another corner near the lion quarters in Dreamland. But the giant was too exhausted to

even answer.

Leibowitz’s hand closed around the contents of his pocket again. A feather, three

steel balls, and the tram tickets. Then something from his Tibetan mind-training pushed

its way through his naturally stubborn resistance. Shoving Cheeks further on, Anthony

crouched behind a low wall and waited for his killer to catch up. Mouth dry, heart beating

26

fit to burst, he rolled the ball barings in one hand as the thug stomped around the corner.

With one flick of the wrist, he launched the first projectile. It rolled between Dynamo’s

feet without him even noticing.

Marching ever closer, so did the second. Eyes tight shut, Anthony had a little

word with his maker. He and the Lord weren’t on the best of terms since God had seen fit

to spirit away his father, but there were times like this that pride was best swallowed and

apologies made. Teeth gritted, Leibowitz flicked the third steel ball.

Slipping on the sphere, Dynamo’s feet went from under him like in the best

Vaudeville shows. With a bellow like a wounded horse, he crashed to the ground on his

back. Like a whippet, Anthony Leibowitz was on him. Stamping down heavily on the

thug’s right arm, he managed to wedge it through a metal fence. Then with an insane

glint in his eye brought on by abject fear, he pulled the raven’s feather from his jacket.

Dropping on to his knees on the man’s chest, he rammed the feather quill-first up

Sam’s left nostril. The thug cried out in pain and surprise, his eyes streaming tears.

“Wot you fink you’re playin’ at, you mad bugger!” screamed the man.

“Retribution from the College of Osiris!” babbled Leibowitz, making it up as he

went along. “You dare face an agent of the secret and most holy tabernacle alone?”

“Load a rubbish! You shouldn’t have touched me, you little weasel… now you’re

going to fry!” A rather nasty look crept over Dynamo’s countenance, and he screwed up

his face as if he were about to break wind.

Leaping off the idiot, Leibowitz hugged himself with glee as the man’s electrical

power surged straight into the metal fence and was earthed away into the ground.

Dynamo spluttered and popped for a good two minutes, the thug’s evil look morphing to

one of complete panic, as once started, his power could not be turned off. Finally, drained

of all juice, he lay there totally spent.

“Now,” roared Leibowitz, brandishing a used tram ticket in each hand. “I invoke

the sacred scriptures of Osiris and the gods of the Lower Nile! Bring forth your monsters

to rend this man limb from limb!”

Dynamo scrambled to his feet, scooping up his cap and backing away.

“You’re balmy, you are! Ruddy nutty as a fruitcake! My boss’ll have your balls

for cufflinks, you just see!” With that, the thug ran for his life.

27

Looming back out of the afternoon shadows, Cheeks patted Leibowitz the

Younger on one shoulder.

“Insane, inventive, but a ruse your father would have been proud of, I’m sure.

Now, as Mordecai accumulated one of the largest private collections of arcane

paraphernalia in the world, why haven’t you armed yourself against such attacks rather

than using pure theatre?”

Leibwitz let out a sigh of released tension and pocketed the tickets again. “He

kept all his prized totems in the House… You know, the House. I’ve bad memories of

staying there when I was small, so I’ve never been back since papa disappeared.”

“But you must… you have to! The next enforcer Lavender sends after you might

not be so stupid! Although I imagine that feather up his nose must have really hurt! I see

you father’s eternal anger resting inside you… a little better disguised beneath the

tomfoolery, but it’s there.”

“Anger? I never remembered that side of him,” Leibowitz sighed again, his legs

suddenly turning to jelly as he sat on a wooden bench with a thump. “Then I sense I knew

so little about the real man. So we have to go back to the House… Trouble is, for a thing

made of bricks and mortar, it has a rather free spirit.”

“Sorry?”

“Didn’t you realise?” Anthony grinned, pleased that Mr Cheeks didn’t know

absolutely everything. “The cursed place moves. Papa’s House is a transient building… it

could be anywhere in the world!”

As stray sparks still fired off in the bushes, dangerously close to the new

electricity cables that criss-crossed Dreamland, the two made plans on how to snare a

building that didn’t want to be found.

***

The enigmatic scholar Justin Cheeks became a great aid to Leibowitz the Younger, as he

had to Anthony’s father for decades before. Under the tall man’s advice, the apprentice

eventually returned to the citadel of Mr Why, and this time he listened to the mystery-

28

man’s advice. The day after the events on Coney Island, Anthony began to load his

pockets with mystical items; oddest amongst them being his Kensington white mice.

So he became widely known as the lunatic who kept livestock about his person.

29

Sometime 1997

The vast, grey nothingness of the Betwixt and the Between reached in all directions, for

ever and ever. This was what the Mariners of this waste called the spaces between

worlds. The gaps that existed between Parallel and Alternate universes, creating the pan-

dimensional lattice structure that was the Multiverse.

It was a lonely place to die.

So the odds of finding a small lifeboat in this endless neutral space were next to

impossible, so the Snark thought at any rate.

He stood on the Bridge of the Dreadnaught class ship, Heracles, resplendent in

his neo-Nazi uniform; peaked cap pulled just low to hide those lying eyes, at least for the

women. For the Snark, handsome devil that he was, was a gigolo through and through. A

lover not a fighter, but with that omni-present bangle he wore on his right wrist, all silver

and golden cogs and wires set in a transparent crystal band, in the best Steampunk

tradition, he was bound to be overconfident. For this was the device that allowed him to

travel between worlds in his rank within the Forces of Babel, as an executive agent called

a Blitzer.

It was the bracelet that picked up the weak distress signal, of course. On a vast

ironclad Dreadnaught crewed by two and a half thousand souls, crammed with all the

purloined and reverse-engineered marvels gathered from a dimension-spanning empire of

over one hundred and eighty versions of Earth, his bangle was the most sophisticated

thing arcane-science had ever achieved. Some said it was a gift from the Old Gods,

showing their faith in the ever-expanding legions of Babel. Others whispered that each

bracelet was crafted beneath the roots of the World Tree, Yggdrasil by a long-bearded

dwarf who was imprisoned there.

There was possibly a grain of truth in both fantastic tale.

“Commander Rorschach… Train your sensors forward to 10 degrees starboard,

53 degrees heavenwise. Then tell me what you see,” the Snark spoke into the ships

intercom, using the minimum amount of energy as usual.

30

“Distress beacon, sir. Very low on power… you were lucky to hear it!” eventually

came the reply.

“Luck had nothing to do with it,” smiled the super-confident soldier. On his home

world where the 3rd Reich still continued its thousand-year rule, the Snark’s over-inflated

ego was legend.

With a slowness that irked the Blitzer, the vast ironclad reduced its pace, steam

venting from its six funnels, emergency sirens wailed out and Jack Tars in their red and

white striped jumpers ran hither and thither. Meanwhile, the Snark filed a snag on one of

his fingernails.

After what seemed like an eternity, a faint flashing light could be seen off the

starboard bow. This slowly expanded to reveal a small white escape pod with all the

usual bells and whistles on it. Standard fare for 90% of the craft that scoured the Betwixt

and the Between. The Snark watched with some mild interest as the pod was hauled

onboard via tractorbeam and placed gently on one of the Wasp attack-drone launch bay

hatches. Only then did he slowly descend the iron spiral staircases to walk out onto deck

seventeen, one arm poised behind his back, uniform crisp and starched, shiny boots

clicking on the metal deck.

The bracelet clicked and hummed as it evaluated the escape pod.

“Two occupants, not in such a bad shape. I hope they have an interesting tale to

tell!”

Mentally attuned to his bangle since fascist bastard science-academy, he cajoled it

into unsealing the pod. With a hiss and a clank of unlocking bolts, the thing split in half

like a white Faberge Egg. Two grimy, slightly frightened white faces stared back at the

Snark.

“Welcome aboard the Forces of Babel Dreadnaught, Heracles,” smiled the Snark,

extending one gloved hand to help the curvaceous young blonde female out first. “You

are perfectly safe now, I have saved you. And you are…?”

The woman looked back at the skinny man, who was all big ears and tight curly

black hair. “Bonny Tyler, late of the Skimmer, Oz For Ever. This here’s my crewmate,

Rod Stewart,” chirped the brassy blonde with a definite Australian accent. “Any grog

going, Adolf? I’m as dry as a witches tit!”

31

Anthony Leibowitz, wondering where the hell the name Rod Stewart had

presented itself to his partner’s chaotic mind, reached up as several Jack Tars helped him

out of the pod. The capsule that both him and Miss Opal had thought was going to be

their coffin – adrift for an eternity in the grey nothingness. It was important that these

Forces of Babel lackeys didn’t know who they were… who he was. Over a century

before, his illustrious father, Mordecai Leibowitz had been declared an enemy of the

Dark Tower. Anthony had been criminalized in 1931 after a particularly messy

expedition to Earth 53.

He smiled grimly at the Blitzer who was fawning over Opal, hoping she could

distract the man long enough for them to steal a Wasp and get the hell off this boat. But

of cause, being who he was, the Snark wished to host a banquet in their honour.

“Bugger,” the curator of the strange muttered underneath his breath.

***

The chain of events that had left them stranded in the middle of nowhere was a complex

beast full of greed, hilarity, betrayal and a golden fish. Suffice it to say, what began as a

twenty-four hour dip into the fabric of stuff outside their own Looking-Glass Earth had

ended up in them being dumped overboard from the Parisian Air-Trawler, Golden Bullet

to die in the loneliness of the nothing.

Well he had been warned not to trust a member of the British aristocracy. Lord

Cain Mephisto may have been the Member of Parliament for Methuselah Square and

London West, but he was still a daemon wearing a human disguise underneath it all.

Deceit was in the man’s blood.

Many months ago, so long now that Anthony had forgotten what life had been

like living in solitude, a rather vindictive Mage had left Miss Opal in Leibowitz’s charge.

Although still regarded as an apprentice in training, she was already a reputable sorceress

in her own right. Her master and husband just happened to be the one-eyed sorcerer-

supreme, Absalom Stark.

Husband. That was right. Wife to Absalom Stark.

32

Leibowitz had to remind himself of that little fact at least a hundred times a day.

That curvy, youthful figure, smooth creamy skin, the blonde bunches like some naughty

schoolgirl and the rude eyes and even ruder mouth that made her Australia’s best export,

ever. That was his punishment in the eye of the Mage, to look after temptation. And he

had been doing so damn well too… until they were marooned, probably left to die two

weeks before. After the first day of assessing the grim situation, they had hardly kept

their clothes on for more than five minutes.

Such amazing antics! Opal had taught Anthony things about sex that he hardly

thought possible, or at least legal. And now they had been rescued, her husband was

going to track him down like the dog he was and slaughter him. No, not just kill him;

spread his entrails out across seven dimensions whilst he was still alive.

“Bugger,” he repeated to himself as he and Opal showered together before the

meal being held in their honour.

“You’re worried about Absalom, aren’t you?” she asked softly as she soaped his

back.

“Too right I bloody well am! If I can just make it to the House – wherever the

damn place had wandered off to now – I might be able to access a Door out of this

dimension. Set up shop on the Moon or something. I am so dead!”

“Just stop your winging and concentrate on the immediate problem,” she muttered

in his ear. “That’s the Snark out there; big high-up tosser in Babel’s box of toy soldiers. I

may have to bed the bugger to keep him occupied, but you’ve got to plan us a way off

this ruddy Dreadnaught. We’ll sort out some lies to tell my hubby later – if we get out of

this frying pan!”

“Frying pan… Fire. I see what you did there. Clever.”

So, squeaky-clean and dressed in borrowed best clothes, the two castaways

nervously made their way to the officers’ stateroom where a meal was being laid out in

their honour. The Snark and his fellow Babel officers greeted them like old friends,

ushered them to their seats and poured them some wine. It was as the alcohol warmed his

belly and he began to relax (which was what the Snark obviously hoped for), that

Leibowitz began to take note of his surroundings.

33

In the vast oak panelled stateroom, recalling ancient sea-faring vessels of old, was

a shelf running right around the room just above head height. Inside numerous glass cases

were handcrafted models of various classes of Warp Ships that had trawled between

Realities via the great grey nothing. From fantastical Victorian designs, sporting great

triangular light-sails through the nuclear steam-powered war ships, and even further back

to odd shaped rocket ships propelled from vast iron cannons. But there was just one

vessel that immediately caught Anthony’s eye.

In his long and chequered past, Leibowitz’s papa had owned three Inter-Reality

ships. First had been the cylindrical cannon-launched Perilous, which had been lost in the

Everglades outside an alternative New York on Earth 12 in 1802. Mordecai had then

commissioned an elegant Skiff with three tri-sails from future technology stolen from

Babel. She was called the Black Widow, and took the master of the strange on many a

fine adventure. The Forces of Babel eventually scuttled her in 1840 around the Caul of

Dead Earth 7. Not all versions of the little blue planet supported life. Some were just

sterile lumps of rock, but could be often found to contain artefacts stored there by the Old

Gods – a great attraction for a tomb raider such as Mordecai Leibowitz.

Finally came the third ship his papa owned. A beautiful vessel created with

artistic flair by a genius of his time – the great, the cantankerous, Lorenzo Marvelo,

inventor and madman in equal parts. The ship sat back on a great wooden keel, ion

paddles extended like some great barge of a distant age, and light-sails full set and true. A

great prow reached out into the void like a finger pointing to adventure, carved with a

figurehead of a voluptuous mermaid like all sea-faring vessels had once had. She made

craft such as the Dreadnaught they were currently travelling in appear as ugly, clumsy tin

cans.

Launched in 1871, her name was the Rachael Grey and Anthony had been trying

to find out the Warp Ship’s final fate for the longest of times. Somehow it was an integral

part of the mystery that still surrounded his father’s disappearance.

For Anthony Leibowitz, it would have been a natural thing to lift the model down

from the shelf and ask questions about it. But here he was, pretending to be a sportsman

lost between realities from a beached Skimmer, named Rod Stewart. To attract attention

to the Rachael Grey would attract unwanted curiosity about him and Miss Opal.

34

The whole thing was a bit of a pickle.

Food came and went and the wine flowed. The Snark was a charming host,

explaining the current humanitarian policies of Herr Hitler’s daughter, Eva, who was still

Chancellor of the whole world back in his Teutonic home of Earth. The sins of the fathers

had been forgiven as Nazi Germany liberated the entire planet. Or rather history was

rewritten and the genocide camps and the racial cleansing quietly swept under the carpet.

Dumping most of his wine in a large aspidistra plant behind him, as the party

grew a little raucous and Opal did her job of distracting the Blitzer, Anthony eventually

slipped away in search of a method of escape. It didn’t take him long. Dreadnaught’s

were the void’s equivalent of aircraft carriers. In neat black and yellow rows beneath

deck 6 were row upon row of natty Wasps, fighter ships that could be launched in

swarms, much as their namesake. Tachyon nets like gossamer wings folder back across

each garish metal body.

Just as he was about to mount the steps embedded in one of the Wasp’s hulls, a

familiar laconic voice stopped him in his tracks.

“I’d leave that one, Herr Leibowitz, if I were you. It has little time-charge left and

no armaments.”

The Snark stood with one arm firmly around Miss Opal’s waist. The Wicca of Oz

looked a little out of it, either due to too much wine or a little touch of the mind-washing,

as from the bangle on the Blitzer’s right wrist, wisps of golden energy like smoke made

pretty patterns in the air.

“Game over, I think,” the neo-Nazi smiled. “I mean, even my world has its

version of Rod Stewart!”

“At least you didn’t ask me to sing my greatest hits,” Leibowitz sighed, raising his

hands in the air.

“What do you think you are doing? We’ve no time for party tricks, Anthony!”

Leibowitz looked totally thrown. “Say what?”

“Third Wasp on your right. She’s primed and ready to go. There will be a twenty-

five second window as the Heracles’s defence grid has to be mysteriously rebooted in

which you can launch the fighter, then after that you will be, what is the correct phrase?

35

Ah, yes – chopped liver.” With a tender kiss to a surprised Miss Opal, the Blitzer

propelled her back into Leibowitz’s arms.

“You’re letting us escape, even though you know our true identities. Why?”

“You’ve helped agents from Babel in the past… Saved people who should have

been taken as prisoners of a cold war that has been waged on your version of Earth for

longer than you realise. Our present ambassador there is called Jack Wilder, a Blitzer too

by his rank. He’s a troubled man, that’s all I will say on the subject. We don’t get on.”

“He’s an arse!” Opal interrupted.

“That too. Most of us blessed with these semi-sentient bands are. It comes with

the territory. But take this warning with you, Herr Leibowitz. Your Earth is being

assessed for colonisation in the next decade. The Forces of Babel are looking to expand

into your zone of the Lattice of worlds. Warn your friends. Sound the alarm. When the

clone armies begin to drop through cracks in the sky, the devastation could be

catastrophic.”

“I thought you put that super-weapon on your wrist in the service of Babel?”

“I did. But I don’t have to approve of Babel’s methods. I’ve seen what a

dictatorship does to people on my own Earth. When angered, Babel’s methods can be

even more ruthless and cruel. Your father described our clone-legions as, a Plague from

Hell. He wasn’t far from the truth.”

Leibowitz turned and helped Miss Opal clamber up into the Wasp’s cockpit, then

hesitated for a second. “Is it true about the Dark Tower? A living structure so enormous

that it pierces its Earth’s atmosphere?”

“All legend’s have a grain of truth in them, Anthony,” the Snark gave that

sarcastic smile again and Leibowitz knew that that was all he was going to get out of the

man on that subject. As Anthony clambered up after his friend, he noticed the Blitzer

hand Opal something from the other side of the cockpit. A rather large something, but he

let his curiosity keep – for now.

The castaways sat in silence in the gloom of the Wasp factory, waiting for the

word, the last few weeks a tangle inside both of their heads.

<Now,> came the telepathic okay.

36

Leibowitz pressed the red launch button, and they were away into the grey, as

simple as that.

“So, what’s in the parcel?” Leibowitz asked a hectic half an hour later as they

locked on to their home Earth and let the autopilot take them home. “A talking bomb? A

Babel intelligent virus? Don’t tell me the Snark just screwed us over after all we’ve been

through!”

“Oh.” Opal suddenly remembered the parting gift the Blitzer had given them,

wrapped in a cloth. Pulling the material free, she revealed it was the model of the Rachael

Grey that Anthony had been admiring. “He said he thought you might like this. Strange

guy.”

“Very. You didn’t… with him to get us free, did you?”

“No! Not quite, anyhow. He’d already sussed who we really were. Digital wanted

posters or something between every Blitzer.”

Up ahead, the dull orange corona glow of an approaching Caul broke the grey

nothingness. They were nearly home, so now all they had to do was work out how to land

this damn Babel ship after penetrating the skin between nothing and Reality again. Then

there was one other thing…

“So, are we coming clean to Stark about what we were doing with each other in

that survival pod?”

Miss Opal, tying her hair back into her trademarked bunches once again, shrugged

her shoulders. “Get real, Ant! The last few weeks never happened. I’ve already spun a

fake memory charm over us both that not even my suspicious bloody husband can crack.

We go back to how we were before we took that fool trip outside our own Reality!”

“But it did happen, Opal. You told me… I told you… and I thought all that was

for real!”

“Shows what a gullible bugger you are then. We were going to die. People say all

kinds of shite when the Grim Reaper is sat there sharpening his scythe. I don’t love you. I

never loved you. As you have been supposedly rounding off my education into the

worlds of the strange, consider that a repayment via the art of fornication. It was fun –

leave it at that. Strewth, but didn’t I use all that rampant unused sexual energy you had to

fuel my tantric spells and up the Luck Factor of us being found!”

37

Leibowitz stared at her, open-mouthed. “So, the more we… The more you tapped

our energies to boost the distress call?”

“That’s about the truth of it,” she said, giving him a raised eyebrow and that

lopsided smile of hers.

“Bugger,” replied Leibowitz, third time definitely not being the charm. “Well. I

can’t work with you the same after what we’ve been through. You’ll have to pack up and

head back to your husband.”

“Kay,” was all he got out of her as they headed into Reality re-entry.

***

They landed the Wasp on the dark side of the world, on the wild wind-driven wastes of

Dartmoor in England. Against the star-studded sky, Leibowitz’s House leaned against the

wind in silhouette, waiting like a faithful dog, so he realised they were home. That this

was their version of the millions of Earths drifting through the Lattice of the Multiverse.

The building must have sensed his return and had shifted its location to meet him.

“There you go,” Opal handed Leibowitz the model of the Rachael Grey in its

glass case. Almost as an after thought, she gave him a sisterly peck on the cheek.

“So this really is it between us?” he said, trying to stop his voice from quavering.

“Come on, mate. You and me? There was never any future for that combination. I

know my bloody husband is a complete horn-dog and he’s probably either shacked-up

with a Voodoo-Child in Bon Temp, or an exotic Aborigine priestess in Sydney – that’s

who he is. Two thousand years old and still trying to father a supernatural kid.”

“But why put up with that? We’ve done things… We’ve done great things…”

She placed one finger on his lips to shut him up.

“Absalom would stick your head up your arse and use you as a bowling ball. It’s

fine for him to fool around, but I am his wife. His property. I took a lot of vows when he

agreed to teach me the ways of Wild Magik. Being his was just part of the small print.

Sorry, Ant. You really are a bonza guy, but not with me.”

38

Before he could embarrass himself even further, Miss Opal rose into the night air

and was gone on the wind. Witches of her calibre had abandoned broomsticks long ago

and just got on with the sport of flying freestyle.

Clutching the glass case, Leibowitz stared at the legless, blunt-nosed Wasp fighter

suspended three feet off the heather, wondering what he was going to do with it. The

Warp Ship solved the problem for him by suddenly zipping vertically into the sky until it

was gone in a flash of exotic energies; probably returning on the Snark’s instructions.

The House kind of sighed, reflecting Anthony’s melancholia. For a moment he

thought of cheese on toast, a nice cup of tea and a warm coal fire in familiar

surroundings – a little telepathic suggestion from the mobile building. Well, he’d had

worse endings to a busy day. So he hardened his bruised and battered heart, clutched the

model of his late father’s last Warp Ship all the closer and tramped across the moor

towards home.

But when he thought back, that little trick Opal had taught him with the ice cubes,

the rope and the blindfold… the trip hadn’t been a complete bust after all. Maybe next

time he’d fall in love with someone who wasn’t a witch or who had a psychopathic

immortal warlock for a lover. And those pigs were still taking flying lessons around

Tesco’s, despite the astronomical odds.

39

May 3rd

1915

Along the Florida shore walked the two unlikely companions, both sporting long coats

and dark hats, as it was a winter sun that shone weakly down on the stretch of manmade

beach near Biscayne Bay, with the wind from the ocean turning chilly as November drew

to a close.

“We shouldn’t be here,” the taller of the two intoned.

He had a thick Yorkshire accent and was getting more than a little fed up of

having to beguile himself in the company of these damn Yanks. Yory Arbuthnot

Keighley had the look of a man in his early twenties, yet he had been born on the 1st

January 1871. Tall, with a thickset face, his skin was slightly pockmarked as a result of a

severe childhood case of chickenpox.

Yory’s gran (‘mad as a box o’ wasps’, as her grandson often described her), who

had brought up the eleven-strong Keighley clan herself, what with her daughter being

sickly most of her short life, had nearly tanned the skin off his backside when he

wouldn’t stop scratching those ruddy spots.

Keighley’s dirty blonde hair was short, in current military style and greased back

to appear almost translucent. But it was how the ex-Lion had always worn it, since the

old Queen’s days. He moved slower than the passing years, a man stuck in his ways.

“Yorkshire born, Yorkshire bred. Strong in t’arm and thick in t’head!” He had

first quoted the ancient insult when the two firm friends had first met just before the turn

of the century. No one could say that little ditty, only Keighley himself. Anyone else tried

to poke fun at his birthright and they’d end up flat on their backs nursing a bloodied nose.

Anthony Leibowitz, on the other hand, was a different kettle of fish. The

paranormal detective (as he was selling himself in popular society these days) had in his

youth followed the teachings of an orthodox Jew. When your father’s a Rabbi, you have

little choice. But even the venerable Mordecai Leibowitz (or Leibowitz the Elder as the

secret history of the world now annoyingly knew him), had slipped from the faith in his

40

later years, vanishing from this Earth under strange circumstances around his only child’s

17th birthday.

Unlike his friend’s rugged handsome face, Leibowitz had a cluster of uneven

features, seemingly at war with each other.

“What have you got that I haven’t?” he had once asked Keighley, after another

unsuccessful liaison with an eligible young lady.

“Well, I ain’t got two ears like open handsome cab doors, a nose like an eagle’s

beak and a boxy high forehead! That do for starters?” the rather cruel reply had come.

The paranormal detective never asked that question again.

“We shouldn’t be here,” Keighley repeated.

“I heard you the first time. You see all this,” Leibowitz gestured to the artificial

coastline the two of them were tramping down. “A few years ago it was part of the

Everglades. They are reclaiming land at the rate of ten square miles every year! Just think

what this place will look like by the 1950s!”

“That, my friend, is t’stuff of fiction. Like I just said, we shouldn’t be here. There

is a bloody war on in Europe and these Yanks don’t seem to give a stuff!”

“Ah they will...” the curator of the strange shielded his eyes and looked at the

building going on a few miles in land. “The New World is changing fast. Don’t despair,

Yory, the Great War isn’t going to end without you!”

He turned and began to scuff his shoes along the wet shoreline. Keighley lingered

a while, thinking over old pals lost in the trenches and the regiment he’d left behind to

come gallivanting across the Atlantic with his friend. Then the cause had been a rather

exciting one.

“Those harpies... Were they real?” the soldier finally asked.

“You’re getting a taste for the exotic, aren’t you my friend? They were as real as

the phantom platoon we met in Ypres and that bat-man creature who was plaguing

Gotham last year.”

Leibowitz suddenly bent down and plucked something from the sand. Between

thumb and forefinger, he held a perfectly crafted sphere of some greyish metal.

“Still got that diamond the Princess of Denmark gave you for saving her life?’

41

Keighley fished inside his waistcoat pocket and produced a beautifully cut gem.

“Me lucky stone. Got us through the Somme that did!” He passed it curiously over to

Leibowitz.

Running the diamond across the surface of the metal ball barring, a small cloud of

dust scattered in the sea breeze. Holding both diamond and sphere up to the light, the

metal was untouched, but the gemstone had a slightly flat side to it.

“Oy!” declared the soldier. “That’s me pension, that is!”

“Well you’ve just lost a few shillings, sorry. I’ll pay you when you cash that

bauble in. The workers on this project have been turning up handfuls of these spheres as

they sink their foundations into the swamplands. No two the same size – and they’re

harder than diamonds! Think of it – a prehistoric metal that cannot be analysed and is

super-strong. The Imperial Alchemists of Berlin found a metal that fits this description

referred to in the 9th century. They called it, Impervium. Those ancient scientists also

worked out how to shape and forge it using extreme cold combined with certain musical

notes!”

Keighley scowled at the damaged gemstone. “I should kick you up t’arse for this!’

“You haven’t listened to a word I was saying, you Neanderthal! What wonders lie

buried beneath our very feet? People consider Amerika to have little if any history, but I

say, there’s a mystery around every corner! A wonder under every stone!” grinned

Leibowitz.

“That’s cause thee talk a load of shite most of the time and I’m the only one thick-

skinned enough to listen!”

So the endless bantering went on as the two mismatched figures walked along the

artificial shoreline, holding their hats in place against the ocean breeze. It would be still

going on well into the next century, when Anthony Leibowitz decided to live in Amerika

full time and the mysteries beneath his feet had long since ceased to just whisper and had

risen out of their shallow graves to shout at him full in the face.

But being the curator of the strange, he somehow found the courage to holler right

back at them. Then the instincts of fight or flight would usually kick in.

If Keighley were by his side, it would always be the former. If Anthony was

alone, it was usually time to toss a coin. His father’s son in the understanding of how the

42

world of the strange worked, Anthony Leibowitz had what he referred to as, ‘subjective

courage’. He either talked his way out of a nasty situation or he ran like hell in the

opposite direction.

***

He was still running until that fateful day in January 1998, when Kismet and the

indomitable Mr Black both caught up with him at the same time. When the natural doors

of the Multiverse that link all versions of Earth had been flung wide open – all the way

down to the mythical Dark Tower of Babel.

Such is the future for the Amerikan Dreams and those forgotten souls brave

enough to walk bare-footed through them. Tangled tales and stolen wishes. Children’s

laughter and witch’s tears.

Not forgetting the Butterflies. Delicate wings in motion, made from tissue and lies

from the moment they emerge from the pupae like a scrap of space-time given life.

Confounding and confusing all in their brief, spectacular four-coloured existence. Never

ignore the Butterflies. Just what are they up to?

Paranoia and ecstasy. This in the price we all pay to sit and watch the freak show

in the warm, moist darkness, as the Dreams unfold, one at a time.

Enjoy.

43

Notes from the author.

The various inhabitants of the Looking-Glass Earth and indeed that eclectic planet where

anything is possible, first came into being over a decade ago. Abortive early novels about

this world caused even my poor brain to hurt and were shelved. Finally, one massive

tome was completed – far too large to interest any mainstream publishers written by an

unknown author. So that too went back in the drawer.

But the stories kept on coming.

Sorter, sharper (no pun intended) and better crafted, the tales began to mount up.

At the heart of most of them was a character named, Anthony Leibowitz, a self-styled

curator of the strange, the ultimate collector and guardian of the Looking-Glass Earth’s

arcane and future-science totems. He was cunning, an expert liar, painfully shy with the

ladies and talked his way out of a potentially lethal situation rather than resorting to

violence. Plus he kept wildlife in his pockets.

Anthony’s back-story was simple. His father, when tomb raiding had been the

sport of gentlemen in the 18th

and 19th

Centuries, had accumulated a vast collection of the

strange and the wonderful. Days before his son’s seventeenth birthday, the Rabbi

Mordecai Leibowitz mysteriously vanished. The tales that followed constantly held up

Anthony in comparison with his infamous papa. The son living forever in the shadow of

the father.

But as these stories unfurled and the ever-expanding cast began to tell their own

adventures, I became as intrigued by Mordecai as I was with his son.

For a religious man, the Rabbi was constantly in trouble, which often resolved in

fisticuffs. Unlike his son, he was a ladies man, and had many turbulent relationships with

feisty divas. Plus, in some of the legends about Mordecai, he was not averse to playing

the villain of the piece.

I was hooked. American Dreams grew to over 20 tales, and its sequel, Amerikan

Nightmares is now at a further 10 stories. I felt they needed one publisher to release these

44

self-contained, but interwoven sagas in some cohesive form, along with a reworking of

that massive novel still sat in my draw – as that too is a vital part of the Liebowitz story.

Then Amazon produced Kindle and the means to sell short stories and, bingo! I

suddenly had that sympathetic publisher with design and print skills to put the on-going

legend out there in a format I was satisfied with – Me.

So here is Part #0: Whisperings. A low-priced primer to introduce father and son

and the world they inhabit, that used to be just like ours until it fell through the Looking-

Glass. Hopefully you’ll be tempted to buy the next few tales from Amerikan Dreams.

1. The Red Museum of Christopher Vespucci.

2. Bleeding Out or Escape From Island X!

3. The Guns of Avalon.

If these garner interest, there will be more to follow. Let me know what you think

of the show so far. You can contact me at – [email protected].

Sweet Dreams!

Rob Sharp.