City Of Fire Trilogy 1 - Dreamland by Kevin Baker

ramble of trellises and hanging gardens, lagoons and turrets, flowered colonnades glowing orange and white and gold. Minarets and onion domes, roller coasters and loop-the-loops, fairy-tale castles and flying buttresses and miniature railways and huge mocking clown heads. All the world, rolled into a ball. Arab bazaars and Alpine peaks, and all the great floods and volcanic explosions and the latest wars.
    And in the evening, in the electric glowing evening, it came into its own. It humbled Nebuchadnezzar and his hanging gardens, and made Kublai Khan a piker. When the lights went on it was all spinning wheels and rivers and pearls of frozen fire. Burning, burning along the sands of Long Island, burning but was not consumed.
    “I had to throw all my books and plans into the ash heap, I stuck to no school, I departed from all known rules of architecture. It is no one style at all, really, but all the license in the world.”
    “Yes.”
    He turned to me for the first time then, but his eyes didn’t see me. His thick, dark, receding hair was frazzled by the heat, long moustaches drooping past the sides of his mouth. He dressed like a dandy but in the tropical, early-morning heat even his vanilla-ice-cream suit and green silk bowtie drooped, matching green carnation wilting in the lapel.
    He pointed out toward his masterpiece.
    “Everything here must be different from our ordinary experience—everything. We must manufacture the carnival spirit, in this manufacturing age, with all the will and ingenuity we are capable of. Whatever we see must have: life, action, motion, sensation, surprise, shock, speed—or at least, comedy.
    “We must create a different world—a dream world. A nightmare world, if that’s what it takes!”
    He paused, recovering himself, swaying a little from the effect of the gin. He ran a hand back through his ruffled hair, and drew himself up straight.
    “And of course, we build for the ninety-five percent of the American public that is pure and good.”
    He stopped then, his face twisting distastefully. For that was not what Dreamland had become, and we both knew it. He had realized his dream in Luna Park, all right, it was indeed like nothing else, ever—but not in Dreamland. How could he? How could it possibly have matched what he had already created—and anyway, Big Tim Sullivan’s syndicate, the money men, had insisted on something more conventional. Something solid, recognizable, relying on sheer electrical power to outshine Luna Park, and Tilyou’s Steeplechase down the street. The central tower we were standing in was immense and straightforward, a standard ball and eagle perched on top, gilded eagles running all up and down the sides—yet only one more wonder in an age that was rotten with them. Dreamland was bigger, its million bulbs glowed even brighter—but it was not fantastic.
    Brinckerhoff had never gotten over it.
    “I was betrayed, you know.”
    “Yes,” I interrupted, before he could get started again. “Yes, I know. But I have an idea.”
    He cocked his head, indicating his brief desire to listen. Matty Brinckerhoff scooped up ideas the way other men grabbed loose change off the street.
    “For something that’s never been done before—”
    I had his attention.
    “An Empire of the Small,” I continued. “A Midget Metropolis. Just for us.”
    The disappointment was visible in his face.
    “Another dwarf circus?”
    “No—something more. Not just some cardboard facades to knock down. A real town. A whole, permanent, year-round city. Everything built for us. Scaled for us.”
    The droopy moustache and big, sad, hound-dog eyes showed signs of life.
    “The real deal. No more Little Big Man Revue. A bunch of dwarves parading around—it’s been done. You can see that at any carny show in the sticks.”
    He nodded slowly, and I poured it on.
    “I’m talking about something more. A whole fairy city.”
    “You would need everything.”
    He was already pulling paper,