Thorne’s Emporium
Nathanial looked down the long, narrow street—really, not much bigger than an alley in London—stretching before him.
“Annabelle?” he called.
Drat the girl! She would always insist on racing ahead of him. One day it would land them both in trouble, he was sure. Still, he thought as he paced down the alleyway, she carried a knife in one boot, a tiny derringer in the other, and she was well versed in the use of both. She was probably far better able to take care of herself here on Venus than he was.
Such dismal thoughts occupied his mind as he trudged down the rough walkway, covered over with warped boards, which, in turn, covered half the street. He glanced up from time to time to read the signs above each storefront; several of the wooden buildings towered quite three stories into the air, and here or there a brick one looked smugly at its neighbours, conscious of its superiority.
Wo Fat’s Laundry had clouds of fragrant steam billowing out into the already far too steamy air.
Morridan’s Best Gentlemen’s Boots promised “the finest lizard leather.”
Paneeri Teas and Cakes really smelled most inviting.
The end of the passageway opened to a much wider thoroughfare. Nathanial stepped up onto a raised wooden walkway.
“There you are at last, Nathanial!” Annabelle was waiting for him, tapping her booted foot in her usual impatient fashion. “You keep getting lost!”
“Well, if you did not dash ahead, you would not continue to lose me,” he pointed out, with some reason, he believed.
Annabelle snorted. “Hmph. Never mind that now. Here’s Thorne’s Emporium. I’ve just been waiting for you to catch up.
Thorne’s Emporium proved to be a long low building that stretched down the street to their right. Nathanial followed Annabelle to an interior redolent of the smells of odd spices and old clothes and leather. Several customers were being waited on.
A red-haired gentleman, his whip-lean form wrapped about with a dirty apron from below which peeked sturdy boots, bustled forward.
“Miss! Sir! Hezekiah Thorne, at your service. Do come in and tell me how I can help you.”
Annabelle gave him a friendly nod. “We are new arrivals in your lovely town, sir, and would like to see a bit more of the countryside. I was told by Captain Josiah Perkins that you were the man to see.”
Mr Thorne gave an odd ingratiating wiggle of his long thin body and a broad smile illuminated his plain features—or would have, if a few more teeth had been present. “How kind of Captain Perkins, how kind indeed. And so true! Here in my emporium,” he mouthed the word as if he himself had invented it, and waved his arm around in a regal fashion, “you will find any and everything you might need for a journey, whether it be for a few days to visit the highlands just south of here, or a full kit for a lowland safari.”
“Oh, just a short journey, sir, to be sure.” Nathanial thought it best to make that clear from the beginning. If he left it to Annabelle, she’d have them circumnavigating the planet.
“Of course, sir, of course.” Thorne gave another wiggle, his body seeming to bend in the oddest places. “The mountains—well, we call them mountains, but they’re really more like gentle hills—just south, as I said, are quite delightful to visit. The air, sir,” he paused and cast his eyes upward as if in rapture, “the air! So invigorating.”
“You have been many times, I perceive?” Annabelle asked.
“Well, no,” Thorne admitted. “The exigencies of business, don’t you know.”
A small lizard-man wandered from behind a high counter. Nathanial had not even suspected he was there, since he was barely five feet high.
“Shindo, there you are, you rascal!” Thorne said. “Did you get those packets all put away as I told you?”
The lizard Shindo’s mouth fell open and a long green tongue fell out. What he lacked in height, his tongue made up for in length. “All done, sssir.”
“Good, good.” Thorne waved the lizard away. “Now, Sir and Miss, exactly where would you like to go? Do you wish a guide or have you brought your own?”
“Oh, a guide, if you please,” said Annabelle. “One with a great deal of local knowledge, who can inform as well as lead. Do you have anyone of that calibre available?”
Thorne stroked his long chin. “Hmm. Let me see now.”
“Sure, and I’d be happy to take the lovely lady on a bit of an outing,” said a deep voice, seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere as it echoed through the cavernous building.
A tall, heavily muscled man stepped from behind a series of shelves. He sauntered forward, his grin—Nathanial thought it looked rather impudent—showing white teeth. He took Annabelle’s hand and bowed over it.
“Are…are you a guide?” Annabelle asked, and Nathanial was amazed to detect a faint blush on her cheeks.
“The best in the colony. Isn’t that right, Thorney?” The man transferred his grin to Nathanial, though he did not drop Annabelle’s hand.
The shopkeeper looked somewhat concerned, Nathanial thought, but he nodded his head in agreement. “None better, to be sure. O…O’Ryan here knows the plateau like the back of his hand, and he’s spent a deal of time below on the escarpment. You cannot go far wrong if you take him on as a guide.”
Thorne seemed to have lost his pleasure at seeing them. His words sounded jerky and forced.
“I am all that, if you will spare my blushes,” O’Ryan said. “And I’ll be pleased to show you both about. Is it just the two of you? How many days would you like to be gone?”
“Oh, we arrived on the airship Aeronaut III just a few days ago,” Annabelle said. “We have to wait for some necessary parts before we can leave; they’re being sent from Fort Collingwood. So we’re not quite sure how long we’ll have. Do you have any idea, Mister Thorne, as to how long it might take for supplies to be shipped in?”
Thorne still looked uneasy, Nathanial thought, but replied readily enough. “Oh, depending on what’s needed, and whether or not it was marked urgent, I think you might well have to wait for the twice-monthly transport.” He turned to Nathanial. “The transport is not truly an airship, sir, but more along the lines of a great, wide wagon, flat as my hand, and all held up by balloons. They don’t break out the airships except for emergencies.”
“See, Nathanial, I told you so.” Annabelle sounded as if he’d been arguing with her. She didn’t even glance at him as she spoke; she hadn’t taken her eyes off the guide. “We’ve got lots of time and you know how bored you are. Oh, my manners! I’m Annabelle Somerset, and my friend is Professor Nathanial Stone, the famous co-inventor of the aether propeller governor.”
Nathanial felt himself turn red as the two men turned to stare at him.
“And I am Simon…Simon O’Ryan,” the guide said. “And may I say what a privilege, what an honour it will be for a humble son of Eire to show such a distinguished gentleman,” he bowed, “and such a lovely lady about. Now then; that’s all settled.” He grinned, displaying those overlarge white teeth again. “Let me take care of everything, everything at all. We can take the balloon shuttle down to the lower escarpment.”
“Is that not dangerous?” Nathanial asked, though he had a sinking feeling that it would not matter if they had to fight their way through ravening reptiles: Annabelle had made up her mind.
“No, no,” said Hezekiah Thorne, waving his flipper-like hands about as if to wipe the suggestion from the air. “Quite safe, quite safe indeed. Why, I’ve been down myself ever so many times. It’s simply a lower part of the plateau, sort of rings us about, don’t you see? Still high enough to protect from the larger lizards, but you can see a bit more of the, shall we say, unspoiled planet.”
“Yes, you can,” said O’Ryan, his dazzling teeth on display. “And comfortable? Why, we’ll take inflatable beds and all the comforts of home, that we will, for such a lovely lady should not have to live rough like we gentlemen, hey, Professor Stone? Now then, that’s settled…and we’ll be leaving…when?”
Annabelle turned to Nathanial, though she didn’t appear to see him; her eyes seemed somewhat glazed and he wondered if she were sickening for something. “Tomorrow, don’t you think? And if we’re gone for a week, that should give us plenty of time.”
Plenty of time for what, exactly, Nathanial wondered as Annabelle gave O’Ryan another wide and dazzling smile.
Really, he was liking the bounder less and less.