As we looked down through the mirrored contraption the Captain had adjusted for groupuscular viewing, we noticed we had pulled alongside an incredible natural formation mostly analogous to the very tip top of some brobdingnagian mountain peak upon which was written in some barbarian fussa a word of some sort:
As we curled around this odd and mammoth marquee we began to descend hugging close to the mountain as if we were in a kind of shaft and at the same time began to rotate in a corkscrewing manner such that our edges would not be accosted by the rocky ledges that came rolling by until finally we reached a sort of large egg-shaped cavern whose floor seem to bear an enormous golden nipple - and as we approached closer we noticed the nipple was composed of thousands of solid gold venuses which were in fact slowly mounding up in the center as they exited the ground and falling over naturally to perform the subsequent aureola. The Captain then spoke. "Each unit has an iron core to aid in extraction and a radioactive brain pellet which we disarm and reuse.." At that we noticed the venuses begin to act for all the world like simple iron filings, and then all at once schlupp up into some unseen recess at the base of the massive brain zeppelin. Later, the Captain brought two up to show us. "Not entirely exquisite craftmanship but each is unique for all the world, made from a unified cluster of golden letters.." "Gor, It's a lovely thing," said Roald Bunn. "But Captain, why on earth would they need to be in the likeness of Botticelli's Venus?," said Ned of the SS Hamstead. "I'm not the only mad genius on Earth, and some of them are quite a bit more mad than genius.. These are her specifications! And her machine beneath the Earth.. I have no idea what she does with them ~ only that she pays us well and forms part of the network of our global dis-organization.. We know her only as Pheretima.. Perhaps she burns them, and melts them down in a bonfire of the vanities? At any rate, enjoy the city, the night is young, Chez Mereldor is a green pearl atop a rogue brain, as mind is a soft song atop a mad slithering.. Good night, Miss Licuala. Good night, Mr. Kroon.." "Captain," said Miss Licuala, "What did it mean?" "And what is that young lady," said the Captain. "That enormous word!" "It says Metaphire, I believe.." "Metaphire?" The Captain turned, then disappeared down a striped green and yellow hallway pausing to admire a large mahogany wall carving of an octopus helping a mermaid to give birth, the octopus gingerly attaching its suckers to the sleeping infant's head and shoulders and chest...
