wheeling and plunging and sending down bombs from heaven?”
“A ghastly idea,” I said. “Unfair, to boot. Thank God no one’s close to doing it. I tried Cayley’s contraption, and I can assure you, Sir Sidney, if you can get Napoleon into something like that , your war is all but won. He’ll plunge like a shotgunned sparrow.” And yet Mexico’s Aztecs had apparently made a golden replica of just such a device, putting me in this predicament. There’s something to be said for conservatism, where nothing ever changes.
“George Cayley is just at the beginning of his experiments,” Smith said mildly. “There is, however, an earlier civilization rumored to have mastered the art of flight, or at least to have produced models that look like flying machines. The speculation is that they not only enjoyed a controlled descent, but an ascent as well.”
“You mean the Aztecs. But how? What could make that web of sticks go upward?”
“We’ve no idea. A steam engine, perhaps? You yourself, Gage, are reputed to be somewhat of an electrician, a master of lightning. Perhaps that mysterious force can somehow drive an aerial craft. Mechanicians like Fulton and Watt are coming up with all kinds of peculiar ideas. In any event, the ancients were clever and might have had far better understanding of flight than we do. If the French could learn from an earlier civilization, they might swoop ahead of us and descend on our fleet like vultures.”
“Earlier civilization?”
“So the stories go. The recent notion that those in the future might know more than those in the past, or that the present age is the equal or better than our origins, is very new. For most of history, people believed the ancients knew more than us. The Aztec empire, Mr. Gage, believed it learned the arts of civilization from its gods, and is rumored to have immortalized the designs of their god’s flying machines in the gold and jewels of lost treasures. If the treasure of Montezuma could be found, and provides a model for flight, such a discovery might turn the tide of the war. The Channel could be leaped. That is what Leon Martel has heard, and that is what he’s after in the hoard.”
“But from Indians?”
“You understand better than anyone that the world has lost secrets in deep places. The pyramids? Mythic Norse artifacts on the American frontier? Greek superweapons?”
I had to give him the point. Our planet is a lot stranger than most people are willing to admit. I’d found a number of clever oddities in my time and had nearly died trying to harness them. Clever races or supermen seemed to be mucking about long before our own culture got started, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they flew, as well.
“We know the Caribbean is littered with the wrecks of Spanish treasure ships,” Smith continued, breaking into my thoughts. “In the century after 1550, as many as six hundred such vessels sank, each bearing an average of four to eight million pesos. It says something of the wealth of Mexico and Peru that even with such losses, enough survived that Spain became the richest kingdom in Christendom. Does Montezuma’s treasure exist? Was it lost, recovered, and finally rehidden? Who knows? But even if Martel’s theory is improbable, the barest possibility makes it imperative he is stopped. Empires are at stake. A true flying machine could tip the balance of power in an instant. Imagine a regiment of French cavalry mounted on the equivalent of flying carpets, swooping down the Thames like Valkyries.”
As I’ve said, Smith was barking mad, not to mention having the habit of mixing metaphors. “You enlisted me because you seriously fear Valkyries?”
“We enlisted you, Ethan, in hopes you could get L’Ouverture to tell us where the treasure is, so we can lay claim to them.”
“The French, alas, filled him full of holes.” The death of the Black Spartacus had been reported in the newspapers, but the French blamed L’Ouverture’s
“A ghastly idea,” I said. “Unfair, to boot. Thank God no one’s close to doing it. I tried Cayley’s contraption, and I can assure you, Sir Sidney, if you can get Napoleon into something like that , your war is all but won. He’ll plunge like a shotgunned sparrow.” And yet Mexico’s Aztecs had apparently made a golden replica of just such a device, putting me in this predicament. There’s something to be said for conservatism, where nothing ever changes.
“George Cayley is just at the beginning of his experiments,” Smith said mildly. “There is, however, an earlier civilization rumored to have mastered the art of flight, or at least to have produced models that look like flying machines. The speculation is that they not only enjoyed a controlled descent, but an ascent as well.”
“You mean the Aztecs. But how? What could make that web of sticks go upward?”
“We’ve no idea. A steam engine, perhaps? You yourself, Gage, are reputed to be somewhat of an electrician, a master of lightning. Perhaps that mysterious force can somehow drive an aerial craft. Mechanicians like Fulton and Watt are coming up with all kinds of peculiar ideas. In any event, the ancients were clever and might have had far better understanding of flight than we do. If the French could learn from an earlier civilization, they might swoop ahead of us and descend on our fleet like vultures.”
“Earlier civilization?”
“So the stories go. The recent notion that those in the future might know more than those in the past, or that the present age is the equal or better than our origins, is very new. For most of history, people believed the ancients knew more than us. The Aztec empire, Mr. Gage, believed it learned the arts of civilization from its gods, and is rumored to have immortalized the designs of their god’s flying machines in the gold and jewels of lost treasures. If the treasure of Montezuma could be found, and provides a model for flight, such a discovery might turn the tide of the war. The Channel could be leaped. That is what Leon Martel has heard, and that is what he’s after in the hoard.”
“But from Indians?”
“You understand better than anyone that the world has lost secrets in deep places. The pyramids? Mythic Norse artifacts on the American frontier? Greek superweapons?”
I had to give him the point. Our planet is a lot stranger than most people are willing to admit. I’d found a number of clever oddities in my time and had nearly died trying to harness them. Clever races or supermen seemed to be mucking about long before our own culture got started, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they flew, as well.
“We know the Caribbean is littered with the wrecks of Spanish treasure ships,” Smith continued, breaking into my thoughts. “In the century after 1550, as many as six hundred such vessels sank, each bearing an average of four to eight million pesos. It says something of the wealth of Mexico and Peru that even with such losses, enough survived that Spain became the richest kingdom in Christendom. Does Montezuma’s treasure exist? Was it lost, recovered, and finally rehidden? Who knows? But even if Martel’s theory is improbable, the barest possibility makes it imperative he is stopped. Empires are at stake. A true flying machine could tip the balance of power in an instant. Imagine a regiment of French cavalry mounted on the equivalent of flying carpets, swooping down the Thames like Valkyries.”
As I’ve said, Smith was barking mad, not to mention having the habit of mixing metaphors. “You enlisted me because you seriously fear Valkyries?”
“We enlisted you, Ethan, in hopes you could get L’Ouverture to tell us where the treasure is, so we can lay claim to them.”
“The French, alas, filled him full of holes.” The death of the Black Spartacus had been reported in the newspapers, but the French blamed L’Ouverture’s
Similar Books
![Bind Me [Pact of Seduction 1]](/res/aob/book1.jpg)
