Gilbert Guttlebocker,

Defender of Dragons

4. Meningiomas and Stuff

Gilbert realized that all of the passengers around him were staring at the passenger seat to his right.

He turned his head.

Bernice was snoring.

“Glad your stupid girlfriend passed out, huh?” the large boy to Gilbert's left asked, a sneer on his chubby, red face. “You were trying to make me sit next to her weren't you, you little twerp?”

“I…” Gilbert started uncomfortably.

“Nah, it's okay man. I forgive you. I don't hold grudges. Ain't 'chivalrous,' is it, twerp?”

Gilbert, slightly confused, as he usually was, decided it might be best to simply start over.

“My name's Gilbert Guttlebocker,” he said, wishing he could reach far enough to offer the other boy his hand, but the seat belts constrained him too tightly.

“Barkley,” the boy to his left replied. “I'm Barkley Bumperwaggle. You two losers are going to the academy, aren't you?”

“Um… yeah. Well, I am. I guess she said she was too. So... yeah.”

“Well don't get in my way. Understood?”

Gilbert had no desire to get in Barkley's way. In fact, all the boy really wanted was to end this particularly awkward conversation.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “No problem.”

Barkley nodded at Gilbert, then turned back to look at Bernice, whose lips were open, a line of drool strung from the corner of her mouth, down her chin, connecting to her white lace collar. Barkley shook his head, snorting in disgust.

Looking around the room again, Gilbert wondered which part of the ship would break first. As his fear of impending doom began to return, he tried to focus instead on the group of passengers around him, hoping to put his worries at bay until they landed safely in Siberia.

To Gilbert's immediate left, as already mentioned, sat young Barkley Bumperwaggle. Gilbert had no desire to be caught observing him, so he let his eyes flit from Barkley to the next passenger, a rugged-looking man with stubble covering the lower half of his face, a scar over his right eye, a dark Stetson shading his vision, spurs attached to his leather boots, and two Colt .44s strapped to his belt. In one hand he held a leather reign, which rose over the man's shoulder and ended its path on a leather harness, which was attached to the most majestic black stallion Gilbert had ever seen. The horse, standing tall behind the cowboy and gazing uninterestedly over the man's shoulder, neighed softly, shaking its head gently as a fly buzzed around its field of vision. The cowboy's calm, steel-blue eyes, undistracted by the movements of his steed, stared right through the boy, immobile and unflinching, straight into the very depths of his soul.

Shivering from the cold stare, Gilbert glanced at the passenger next to the cowboy. She was a young woman with a leather aviator hat covering the top of her head, straps dangling by her chin, and a pair of goggles resting above her eyes. A leather jacket rounded out this pilot's wardrobe. She had a very nervous look on her face, Gilbert thought. He wondered if she shared his thoughts about the rocket's safety.

He quickly shifted his gaze to the next passenger, a rotund black man with white face paint and a large, fake smile drawn over his mouth. A red plastic ball was fastened to his nose, and a fool's hat with three points, each point with a jingling bell at the end, covered his mop-top. And his mop-top may have actually been a mop, though Gilbert was not exactly sure. His clothes did not fit very well and appeared to be pieced together, a multi-colored patchwork that seemed as random and gaudy as humanly possible. Oversized, shiny-red shoes, large enough to fit two gallons of water into, donned his feet. A stethoscope hung around his neck.

Next to the clown sat a muscular man with no shirt, a thick, blonde beard, and a mustache which covered his mouth. He wore a fur-lined metal helmet with large white horns protruding from either side, and long fur boots covering his lower legs. His plush fur kilt was punctuated by a human skull, which also served as a crude belt-buckle. The Viking played with a double-edged battle-ax, moving it this way and that with his muscular forearms, a sneer on his face as though disemboweling one of his fellow passengers would simply make his day.

On the other side of the viking sat a grouchy-looking, chubby, caucasian man in a scratchy, coarse burlap robe, a ring of brown hair circumnavigating his bald apex. An old rope was tied around the man's waist. He appeared to be praying.

To the monk's left was the cabin's only empty seat, and beyond that sat another ascetic, this one Asian in ethnicity. He was elderly, with a thin, long, pointy, white beard and mustache to match. A silver and jade coronet held a graying bun to the top of this man's head, and translucent, incorporeal, flowing robes surrounded him.

The next passenger, a young caucasian woman, had a spiked mohawk dyed green, pink, and purple. The sides of her head were shaved, one side sporting a peace sign, and the other side an anarchy symbol. Thin, flowing tattooed lines covered the left half of her face, and a stainless steel chain connected her right helix to the earlobe on that same side of her face, and then continued on its journey through a ring on her right eyebrow, down through another ring in her right nostril, and finished its path at a ring in her lower lip. Her black leather jacket had small spikes protruding from it, and her black, skin-tight jeans were ripped in sixty or seventy places. Black eyeshadow covered the entirety of the areas under her eyebrows, providing the disconcerting illusion of perfectly black voids when her eyes were shut, as they were at the moment, while she pounded her spiked head to a beat that only she could hear through the buds in her ears.

To her left sat a wolf in a tweed jacket and red bow tie, smoking a pipe and reading a copy of Animal Farm. He seemed very relaxed and comfortable, but his teeth were rather large and very sharp. Gilbert moved on.

Next to the wolf was a large man in a dark zoot suit with black and white wingtips covering his feet and a white fedora on his head. In one hand he held a tommy gun that rested on his lap, and at his feet stood a black briefcase. Though he gave the appearance of nonchalance, Gilbert had the peculiar and unexplainable suspicion that this man was aware of absolutely every last thing going on in the small cabin.

Beside the mobster, Bernice sat, fast asleep.

Of all his fellow passengers, timid Gilbert decided the clown seemed the least imposing.

“Excuse me, sir,” he began, looking directly toward the large black man in full clown costume. “Is there a circus in Siberia that you'll be performing at? If so, maybe I can find time to go see it.”

The female pilot next to the clown turned toward the large man, and several of the other passengers glanced in his direction as well. The girl with the mohawk turned off her music and took her buds out of her ears, curious to hear the conversation.

“I'm sorry — what?” the clown asked in reply.

“I see that you're a clown,” Gilbert explained, “so I was just wondering if you're going to Siberia to perform in a circus…?”

The man in the makeup frowned, a puzzled look saturating his features.

“I'm not a clown, son,” he explained. “I'm a doctor.”

Now it was Gilbert's turn to be puzzled. “Oh — I'm sorry… I just thought that, well, because you had on a clown nose and clown makeup and, well, clown clothes and shoes and everything, that you must be a clown. I — I didn't realize you were a doctor.”

“You didn't see the stethoscope?” the man who was not a clown asked disgustedly.

“I… well, I did, yes.”

“That's why I wear the stethoscope,” he patronizingly explained. “Some people don't seem to realize I'm a doctor.”

Barkley shook his head, rolling his eyes in Gilbert's direction. “You moron,” he muttered toward our hero.

Gilbert, trying to ignore the harassment from his left, returned to his conversation with the doctor.

“So, then… are you going to Siberia to work at a hospital?”

“A hospital? Why would I do that?” the doctor asked, offended.

Gilbert looked down at the stethoscope draped over the man's shoulders, trying to discern what had gone wrong in this conversation.

“Idiot,” he heard mumbled from the antagonist beside him.

“I thought... you said... you were a doctor,” Gilbert explained. “And doctors... usually work in hospitals... at least, I thought they did.”

“None of the doctors I know work in hospitals,” the painted man replied.

“Huh,” Gilbert paused. “Well... what will you be doing in Siberia?” the boy asked.

“Making maps,” the man explained. “I'm a cartographer.”

“A cartographer?” Gilbert was puzzled. “I thought you said you were a doctor?”

“Yes, I am. I have a doctorate in cartography. That's why I carry this stethoscope with me,” he explained, holding up the device.

Gilbert stared at the stethoscope, then looked back to the man's eyes, which were still focused on him.

“George Washington was a cartographer,” the cowboy interjected, still staring straight through Gilbert, unblinking. The man's slow, gravelly southern drawl was both rich and deep, strangely soothing given his piercing gaze.

The pilot looked over at the cowboy now, as did several other passengers. The girl with the mohawk looked up and smiled in the cowboy's direction, though he didn't glance toward her.

The horse neighed.

“He mapped the Ohio river, along with a number of other frontier locations.”

“A man cannot step into the same river twice,” the old Asian man with the long beard offered.

The monk in the burlap looked up from his prayers and stared at the mustached wise man. The female pilot also looked in his direction, a puzzled look on her face. Indeed, everyone in the room, the horse included, was now looking at the strange little man with the other-worldly robes. Everyone in the room, that is, except for the cowboy, whose laser stare never departed from Gilbert.

“He also mapped the Carolinas,” the cowboy growled.

Gilbert turned back to the colorful patchwork of a man who was not a clown. “You're going to be making a map of Siberia then?” he asked.

“Yes, yes I will. There is a dearth of good maps of that region, and my work is award-winning, spectacular, even if I do say so myself.”

Gilbert nodded and thought for a moment. Then something curious occurred to him. “Aren't there… computers, and satellites... and things like that that already have thorough and detailed maps of every place on earth? Like… GPS systems or whatever they're called?”

“Ah, yes, certainly,” the cartographer answered, nodding approval. “But those systems are merely photo-realistic, only accurate down to the centimeter or so. My maps, on the other hand,” and at this the clown leaned forward conspiratorially as far as his harness would allow, lowering his voice slightly, “are hand-drawn, accurate down to approximately a quarter-mile.” The clown-doctor sat back in his chair again, smiling and slowly nodding. “As you see, there is no comparison whatsoever.”

Gilbert squinted at the clown, attempting to reason through the man's response. But alas, Gilbert, not being the brightest of boys, could not make head nor tail of the information he had just been given.

“That's, um… very interesting,” he managed.

Failing to follow the conversation, the boy turned to the female pilot, who sat next to the clown-cartographer in the small circle of passengers.

“What's your name, ma'am? I'm Gilbert — Gilbert Guttlebocker.”

“Amelia,” she replied. “Amelia Earhart. Pleased to make your acquaintance,” she said. “Say,” she asked nervously, “this rocket doesn't go over the Pacific, does it?”

“Nope,” replied the woman with the mohawk. “Atlantic.”

“Oh, good. I've got a good history with the Atlantic.” Amelia was visibly relieved. “Forgot to ask before taking off, can you believe that?”

“What's wrong with the Pacific?” Gilbert asked.

“Trust me,” she told him. “It isn't as peaceful as you'd think.”

Gilbert nodded, having no idea what she could possibly have been referring to.

“Why are you going to Siberia?” he asked her.

“Picking up a plane. Flying it back to Kansas. It's one of those new ones, an Avro Avian they call it. Biplane wings. 85 horses.”

The stallion glanced over at her.

“Light. Fast. She's a beauty. Going to revolutionize air travel, she is.”

“The object sought is the seeking itself,” the old wise man commented.

Both the pilot and the Viking nodded, deep in thought.

The monk shook his head and rolled his eyes.

Gilbert didn't see how a biplane would revolutionize air travel when they were speeding through the air in a rocket ship. He thought that perhaps he should try a conversation with someone else.

“What's your name?” he asked the man with the tommy gun.

“Mugsy Marchesioni,” he answered. “And you seem like a curious kid. A little too curious, you know what I mean?”

Gilbert felt a chill go down his spine as Mugsy's finger caressed the trigger of his gun. The boy glanced hopefully at the six-shooters belonging to the cowboy, whose steel gaze continued to bore through him.

“I'm sorry, sir,” he apologized to the mobster. “I didn't mean anything by it.”

“Next thing you'll be asking what's in my briefcase, won't ya?” Mugsy accused.

“No, no sir,” Gilbert replied, in nervous denial. “I don't need to know what's in your briefcase. Really, I don't.”

“Sure you do,” the mobster spat. “Alls you kids always wants to knows what's in the briefcase.”

Grabbing the briefcase and lifting it violently into the air, his voice rose. “That's alls you kids care about is what's in the briefcase!”

“No, I…”

“You're never happy till you sees the insides of my briefcase!” he shouted, terrifying the poor boy.

“Please, sir, I really — I don't…”

“Well, fine!” the mobster screamed. “I'll show yous the briefcase!”

The man flipped the locks on the edges of his case and threw it open into his lap, on top of the tommy gun.

Gilbert shielded his eyes, huddling as deep into his seat as he possibly could to get away from the terror that was hidden inside the mobster's briefcase.

“Please, no!” the boy shouted.

“What?” Mugsy asked. “Yous don't want any stickers?”

“Oooh, stickers!” Mohawk-girl's face lit up.

Indeed, as Gilbert peered through the cracks between his fingers, he saw that the mobster's briefcase contained several stacks of sheets of stickers.

“I sell stickers, see? Scratch-and-sniff stickers. They's gonna let me sell them to the academy students. That'd be you guys, right?” he asked, looking at both Gilbert and Barkley, the latter of the two ignoring him. “Here, check this out.”

Removing the small stack of sticker-sheets from the briefcase, he passed one out to each of the passengers on the flight.

“What each one of yous is got in your hands right now is a specially crafted, beautifully designed, aromatic display of sticky artwork, see?” The man held one up for display purposes.

“And alls you do is just scratch the sticker you likes the most, then hold it up to your nose, and breathe in deeply. Aromatic, right?”

Gilbert cautiously scratched one of the stickers on his page, a comical drawing of Santa Claus, and then held it up to his nose and sniffed. It smelled strongly of paper, though he may have detected a slight scent of glue as well, but he couldn't be sure.

“Ohhh!” Amelia marveled. “That smells fantastic! Like fresh-cut wood, milled and ground, spread out in sheets, and held together with a bonding agent of some kind!”

“Isn't it great?” Mugsy asked enthusiastically.

“Mine smells like a high-quality map of Kazakhstan!” the cartographer shouted enthusiastically.

“Mine smells like a library,” the monk commented, drearily.

“This candy-cane one I've got smells like a trashy romance novel,” the girl with the mohawk added, glancing at the cowboy.

“This picture of purple unicorn,” the viking intoned, “smells like stack of napkins.”

“The scented sticker salesman should be honored because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very scented stickers we need most, and neglect most,” the elderly Asian man announced, clasping his hands, and bowing his head.

The monk squinted at the wise man.

“So, you're traveling to Siberia to sell stickers to students at the academy?” Gilbert asked the mobster.

“Yep,” Mugsy answered. Then, shading one half of his face with his left hand and speaking surreptitiously he added, “There's a lot of money in stickers.”

“Is there really?” Gilbert asked, intrigued.

“Well sure. Just think — I can get fifty cents for each one of these sheets. And I'll probably unload half a dozen of them at the academy!”

“That's… three dollars,” Gilbert concluded.

“That's right! That's three more bucks than I had before I left! See how that works?” The man smiled, proud of Gilbert for figuring things out so quickly. “Say,” he added, “you're pretty good at math, aren't you?”

Gilbert shrugged. “I guess,” he said. “You know, riding in this rocket ship costs about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And that's just for a one-way trip. Are you going to Siberia and back for… three dollars?”

“Yep! Like I always say, the money won't come to yous… yous gotta go out and get it! The early bird can eat his cake and get it too, that's what I say!”

Gilbert nodded slowly, wondering if the math really made sense to Mugsy.

Turning to the elderly wise man, the monk frowned. “I enjoy a good sticker as much as the next reformer, but no one needs scented stickers. It is not possible to neglect a sticker. I suspect, my aged friend, that you may have inhaled a little too deeply!”

“Hey, chill out, man,” the girl with the mohawk suggested.

The monk glanced angrily in her direction, then turned his gaze to the floor.

“What was your name, ma'am?” Gilbert asked.

“Mucus,” the tattooed girl answered, a smile appearing. “And you're Gilbert, right?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he answered.

“You're going to be a knight, aren't you?” she asked.

“Yes ma'am,” he answered, blushing. Then, to take the focus off of himself, he asked, “What do you do for a living?”

“Oh, this and that,” the girl answered as she absent-mindedly traced the metal links from her ear to her eyebrow, nose, and lip. “I design liquid propulsion combustion chambers for class IV titanium vehicular systems — I mean, you know, except when I'm flying in one, like now and everything.”

Gilbert looked at the girl with the black eye makeup, tattoos, and colorful spiked mohawk. “You're a rocket scientist?” he asked.

“Yeah, you know, it's just something to do.” She glanced at the cowboy, who kept his focus creepily on Gilbert, unflinching. “I also spent some time recently analyzing sulfur cycles in early Triassic marine microbial communities and retinal biosignatures of cyanobacteria on the red planet, you know, just for kicks and stuff.”

Gilbert blinked at the girl in black leather and spikes. “You're a… a…”

“Astrobiologist, yeah.” She took a stick of gum out of her jacket pocket, unwrapped it, her pierced tongue welcoming it into her mouth as her fingers carefully avoided smudging her black lipstick.

“And then, you know, sometimes I like to, you know,” she began, chewing on her peppermint product, “I like to help out with folks who need an extended bifrontal craniotomy to remove esthesioneuroblastomas or meningiomas and stuff.”

Gilbert squinted at the young lady with piercings all over her face and black, steel-toed combat boots on her feet. “You're a… a…”

“Brain surgeon, yeah,” she finished for him. “You know, just this and that kind of stuff. I mean, you know, I just like to be helpful.” She shifted the gum from one side of her mouth to the other and continued chewing.

Gilbert stared at the woman, surprised, and thoroughly unsure how to continue.

“So, um, it seems like a lot of these rockets… um… blow up.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said dismissively.

“Um… do you think… this one will?”

“Could be,” she answered. “But I kinda doubt it, you know?”

“Why… um… why do you doubt it?” Gilbert asked hopefully.

“Well, this one has a pretty good track record. It's never blown up before.”

Amelia Earhart nodded in agreement. The Viking seemed to find the answer fully satisfactory as well.

“Science, my boy,” the clown-cartographer interrupted. “Science is all about repeated experimentation and observation. One hundred percent of the time, this particular projectile has successfully taken off and landed when and where it was supposed to. With evidence like that, the only conclusion that can possibly be reached is that it will always do so. Any other conclusion would be positively unscientific.”

“Anti-science,” Mucus added in between gum-chews, nodding.

The wolf turned a page in his novel. The cowboy continued to stare at Gilbert.

The boy decided to give the westerner a try. “Why are you headed to Siberia, sir?” he asked the cowboy.

“Cattle,” he answered. “Plenty of cattle. Gonna' drive them west, out to Montana. Know a man there who'll pay top dollar for as many head of cattle as I can drive his way.”

“You're going to Siberia to drive cattle west to Montana?” Gilbert asked.

“Yep.”

“What will you do when you come to the ocean?” the boy asked.

“In all the times I've herded cattle, the ocean never stopped me before.”

“Science,” said the clown.

“Science,” agreed the girl with the mohawk.

“Have you ever… tried to herd cattle... through the ocean?” Gilbert asked.

“Course not,” the cowboy responded. “Only a durned fool would try to herd cattle through the ocean.”

“Imbecile.” Barkley threw the insult at Gilbert.

At long last, without a single change in expression, the cowboy took his gaze from Gilbert and transferred it to the young woman with the mohawk, who lowered her head slightly and smiled coyly.

“Ma'am,” he said, tipping his hat to the girl as she batted her eyelashes.

“I say old chap,” the wolf suddenly began, taking the pipe from his mouth and looking directly at Gilbert, “you do seem very interested in conversation.”

“I… uh… yes. I was… trying to take my mind off of other things.”

“Might I suggest a good book?” he offered, pulling a few paperbacks from within his tweed jacket. “I've got Mercy Watson, which I haven't read yet, though the subject matter seems to be very promising, Charlotte's Web... oh, and one of my favorites, Babe.”

“Those are all books about pigs,” Gilbert noticed.

“Are they?” the wolf asked. “Why yes... yes — I do believe you are right! Well, isn't that interesting. I suppose you have caught me in a sort of Freudian slip then, haven't you? Good show old fellow, good show.” He placed the books back into the inner pocket they had come from.

“So, you spend a lot of time thinking about pigs, then?” Gilbert asked.

“Well yes, of course. I am a wolf, after all. Pigs are my bread and butter, so to speak. You know old chap, many people try to villainize me because of that debacle with the huffing and puffing a few years ago, calling me 'big,' and 'bad' in a sort of mocking sense, suggesting that me wanting to eat those three little pigs was somehow evil, and rejoicing that my wicked plans were foiled through the third pig's masonry skills.”

“Didn't his masonry skills foil your plans?” Gilbert asked.

“Well, yes… yes, of course! And credit to whom credit is due, certainly. He was very wise indeed to construct his abode from something more solid than mere sticks or hay, unlike his unfortunate brothers.”

“Unfortunate?” objected Amelia. “You ate them!”

“Well yes, yes of course!” the wolf chuckled. “But I am a wolf. I eat pigs. It's what I do. But no one forced those poor fellows to construct their homes from substandard materials, now did they? They chose to build their homes, not up to code, by their own free wills, so surely they bear some of the blame for their own demises…”

“Free will — pah!” The monk scorned. “God's foreknowledge and omnipotence are diametrically opposed to any possibility of our free will. Seeing that He foreknew that we should be what we are, and now makes us such, and moves and governs us as such, how, pray, can it be pretended that it is open to us to become something other than that which He foreknew and is now bringing about?”

“Nornir,” agreed the viking, nodding. “Odin owns ye all!” he shouted, lifting his battle ax toward the ceiling.

Without warning, the trajectory of the rocket began to change. Gilbert felt it in the pit of his stomach. They were approaching their destination.

“Hey, cowboy, when you get your cattle to Montana, give me a call, 'kay?” the girl with the mohawk suggested with a wink.

“Nothing is more accepted than things rejected; nothing more visible than the invisible,” offered the old wise man.

The monk sighed and shook his head as the entire rocket trembled.