Steemjammer: Through the Verltgaat

by John Eubank

  “Will,” the pleasant voice spoke. “You did say that was your name, right?”

  The words surged out of him before he could even think. “Yes. I’m Will.”

  Like before, a force bore down on him, hard and terrifying. He needed to say more, but his fear was so great that his mind momentarily seized up, instead.

  “I’m curious,” the voice droned musically. “You were poisoned. I wonder how it happened.”

  “Shadovecht!” he blurted like the word had been jerked from his chest, unable to stop himself.

  The pressure mounted, and faster than before a pair of horrendous jaws bit down, crushing and tearing. He had to tell more or perish.

  “I was cut,” he said. “On my side. I had to get remedy or die. They gave it to me, in a spoon.”

  Only then did the force back off. He panted and felt his heart throbbing. Somehow he knew he had to stop talking, but the mere thought of resisting brought agony.

  “Where did you encounter this Shadovecht?” the voice asked, and the illusion of niceness peeled away in Will’s mind, replaced by a dark face hidden in shadow.

  “Basement,” Will muttered, knowing he had to say more as crushing power threatened from all sides. “I found a secret room, down in a deep basement.”

  He wanted to say more but was too exhausted and confused to put words together. That, however, was enough for the moment. The pressure backed off.

  “What else was in this room?” came the voice, and this time the face became clear in Will’s mind: a hideous skull with patches of dry, mummified skin. Somehow he felt he should know who this was, but he couldn’t push through for an answer. The more he fought, the greater the pressure, until he could bear no more.

  “Secret things,” he gasped. “Machines. I was never supposed to find them.”

  He knew the voice wanted more truth than that, and the force continued pressing. He felt his heart trying to pound its way out of his chest, like it was about to explode.

  Silence!

  His eyes darted around, looking for the source, but he saw only blackness and the horrible skull. Who was there? Was it a trick? Or was it something that could save him?

  “Help me!” he pleaded with his mind to the other entity, and the skull faded somewhat. Somehow he knew it couldn’t hear him or the other voice in his head.

  You know what to do.

  He caught a wispy, ghost-like image of a boy of fifteen with gray eyes and triple-cowlicked hair speaking to him. He felt a quiver of hope as he realized he knew this person. Will Steemjammer. Slowly it dawned on his confused mind that somehow he talked with himself.

  It’s a trap.

  “I know,” he silently communicated. “If they find out who I am, they’ll kill me. But if I don’t talk, I’ll be crushed.”

  His vigor drained away, and he felt a black curtain of despair coming down to smother him. He felt trapped. Either way led to destruction.

  Know the truth.

  He’d heard that somewhere before. An image of his mother flickered in his memory. Had she told him that?

  Seek the deeper truth.

  This time a man’s face with sky blue eyes flashed before him. Father, he recognized.

  “What is it?” his mind begged desperately. “Please, you have to tell me!”

  ***

  Doubt crept into Clyve’s mind like an unwelcome rat gnawing its way through the wall of a house. He’d almost killed the boy, almost forced his heart into beating so fast that it would have become a blur of useless twitching, no longer pumping blood. Thankful that he’d stopped his assistant from giving the last of the dose, he backed off and let his victim recover.

  “Have you noticed his shoes?” Dahlia whispered.

  Caught off guard, he glanced at the boy’s feet. She was right. There was something odd about them.

  “Have you ever seen such bad stitching?” she whispered. “If he’s a Steemjammer, couldn’t he afford better?”

  Clyve was genuinely puzzled. “They lost everything. I suppose it reduced them to poverty.”

  “I heard they escaped to the old world, where they have a stronghold. They’re really this poor?”

  He had no good answer, and she pointed at his clothes.

  “Mended rips,” she whispered, “ill-fitting, and such a plain fabric. This is working class attire, and well worn. Not for the elite and powerful.”

  Clyve frowned. He’d been dreaming about a fabulous reward for the capture of a major enemy, and now he saw it vanishing before his eyes. Thinking back to the time before the fall of Beverkenfort, he tried remembering what Steemjammers looked like. Their clothing, from what he recalled, wasn’t like this.

  “They had no style,” he admitted, “but their clothes were very high quality.” He realized something. “Of course. A disguise.”

  “Ah,” she whispered. “That would explain it. If he’s Will Steemjammer, he thought he’d sneak past us in his shabby clothing and shoes.”

  Clyve wanted to believe that, but doubt still clouded his mind. Could this really be, he wondered, some ordinary, impoverished kid?

  He studied the boy and, to his annoyance, found his uncertainty growing. Straight nose and fairly normal eyes, he was too attractive for a Steemjammer. Did he favor his mother? Clyve had seen Hendrelmus and Muriel years ago, but he couldn’t remember her face.

  He’d been so sure this was Will Steemjammer that he’d already worked out what to say to Zander Rasmussen, how he’d give all credit to the man’s “brilliant son.” He’d hint that he’d guided Bram from afar, and when it’d become clear an adult needed to step in, he’d taken over to finish Bram’s “amazing start.” Zander would be so pleased that the rewards and promotions might never end, except, Clyve realized to his vexation, this might not be the right boy.

  But they’d found a drawing of verltgaat machine control panel in his pocket. Also, Clyve knew that two Shadovecht had gone through a world hole. How else could this boy have been cut, unless he was a Steemjammer? He’d obviously come to New Amsterdam for a remedy.

  But to Clyve’s horror, another possibility arose. Hadn’t that fool Staas told him that a verltgaat had been opened in New Amsterdam after the attack? What if that was to bring pieces of a broken Shadovecht to the Museum? This boy, he realized, could be a common thief.

  Hadn’t he just described his parents abandoning him? This was typical of the lower classes, Clyve grudgingly admitted. Shabby clothes and the fact that he had something to hide – it all started to come together.

  Perhaps the boy was only a desperate, retched criminal who’d used the volunteer program as an excuse to prowl the Museum and steal hidden treasures. What if he’d located a secret room where the Steemjammers had hidden a ruined Shadovecht, only to cut himself on it?

  “I have to risk pushing him,” he whispered to Dahlia. “Keep a stethoscope over his heart. If he goes over four beats per second, signal with your hand.” He made a chopping motion. “At five per second, he’ll die.”

  ***

  Will felt time passing like a rushing river, and then it slowed to a snail’s pace. Part of him feared he was already dead, but another part struggled desperately to find a way out.

  “What is the deeper truth?” he asked silently.

  It will set you free.

  Panic burned like a flame in his head. This made no sense. At least, he thought, the fog that had been hampering his thinking had lifted somewhat. But he needed to know what this truth was, not what it would do.

  “He wants to know who I am,” Will thought.

  Never.

  “But I have to say something.”

  No response came.

  “If I don’t, I’ll die.”

  If you do, you’ll die.

  “What do I do?”

  Seek deeper truth.

  A ghostlike memory of his Tante Stefana’s face flashed before him. He remembered things she’d told him, how it was almost impossible for him to lie and that she could say he needed
to bend the truth without being able to do so, herself. Finally, he recalled her warning, that knowing truth and hating lies was quite possibly the source of Steemjammer power, the reason for goot steem. If he lied, she’d said, he could lose it forever.

  “I can’t tell him I’m Will Stevens,” he thought. “It’s a lie.”

  No answer came, and he wanted to scream.

  “Is that the deeper truth? That I have to lie?”

  Even barely misleading people or letting them believe half-truths had caused him great anguish. Would telling a brazen, direct lie, he wondered, destroy him?

  As he fought for answers, he began to remember. He could open verltgaats. That more than anything was what his enemy wanted. If they knew who he was, they could force him to operate their machine. He could resist, he thought, but he was haunted by a horrifying image of them capturing his sister, cousins, and great aunt.

  If they threatened his family, could he refuse? What if they drugged him? Wasn’t he drugged now?

  With a dreadful, sinking feeling he realized he wouldn’t be able to resist, that they really could force him to open verltgaats. The calamity of pain, chaos and destruction that would follow was too great to imagine.

  “If it kills me,” he thought, “that would be good. Then I couldn’t help them. Is that deeper truth?”

  No answer came back. He thought about giving his tormentor partial answers, as long as they were technically true. He could say he was a Müller. That was his original name, but would it work?

  If he told a lie for a good reason, he thought, wouldn’t that make the lie a good thing? Couldn’t lies become truth?

  His feet almost slipped out from under him. It wasn’t real, he knew, because he wasn’t standing, but he had a vision of trying to walk on a sheet of slick ice in winter. It tilted downhill, and the more he tried to balance himself, the more he sensed his feet slipping and sliding. Soon he was flat on his back, sliding down steep ice towards a cliff edge.

  “I can’t lie,” he thought, and the image vanished. “I just can’t.”

  Don’t lie to yourself.

  A sense of clarity came to him. He had no idea if it was deeper truth or if it made any sense at all, but at last he felt he could see the situation as it really was. He’d been forced into a choice between two evils. Nothing would make it otherwise.

  He thought of his family and knew what he had to do. He had to knowingly tell a direct falsehood, even though it was wrong, whatever the consequences.

  If it made him lose his goot steem or killed him, he thought, then he couldn’t be used by his enemies, and many people would be saved.

  “I know who you are,” his tormentor’s voice startled him.

  This time, instead of seeing a skull with parched skin, he knew and imagined the exact identity of the man: Clyve Harrow.

  “Do you?” Will thought but didn’t say, feeling his heart race with fear.

  “You’re the son of Hendrelmus,” Clyve’s hideous, disembodied face accused with scorn. “Aren’t you?”

  The sensation of pressure came down but, to Will’s surprise, suddenly evaporated. He saw through the trap. It was all just Rasmussen trickery, hallucinations.

  Still, he couldn’t answer.

  “You are Will Steemjammer,” the twisted face charged. “Admit it!”

  Will found the fear of denying his name was even greater than the jaws. Somehow he had to force himself to do it, but the harder he tried, the more his voice clamped shut. At last he gave up. To his surprise, in relaxing he felt his voice free itself.

  “No.”

  The word came out of him like some foreign presence that had a physical identity. He waited for death to take him, but instead felt a great stillness.

  “It’s over,” he thought. “I did it.”

  A curtain seemed to lift inside him, and even if he was losing his goot steem, he finally felt there was a chance, however slim, that he might escape this horror. He might have to keep lying, but now he knew he could. He just had to keep off the slippery ice and somehow trust that the right words would come out of him.

  Chapter 27

  obvious signs

  Taken aback by the boy’s denial, Clyve glanced at his assistant. Listening to the stethoscope, she signaled with her fingers “one,” “two,” and “zero,” which meant 120 beats per minute. Elevated but not showing severe stress, he thought. Was it true, then?

  “No,” he accused, bending over Will and putting a nasty edge to his voice. “You’re Will Steemjammer.”

  “Will Stevens,” the boy answered calmly, his unseeing eyes staring into space. “That was a dumb joke.”

  Clyve recoiled in shock. Hadn’t Bram told him that maybe the kid had just been joking?

  “You had a drawing in your pocket,” he charged, “proving you’ve seen a verltgaat machine!”

  “Just a broken panel,” Will murmured, “I saw in the Museum.”

  Clyve repressed the urge to hit something. How could he have been so stupid to get his hopes up? Why hadn’t he noticed the obvious signs: the clothes, the shoes, and the lack of an onion bulb nose?

  “Loygenaar,” Clyve hissed. Liar.

  Taken aback, he realized the young man hadn’t understood him.

  “You don’t speak Dutch?” Clyve asked.

  “Not very well,” Will said.

  With growing frustration, Clyve wondered how a Steemjammer could possibly not be fluent in Dutch.

  “You’re really Will Stevens?” he asked.

  “Yes,” the boy said.

  “Your mother and father abandoned you, so you became a thief? You volunteered so you could sneak around the Steem Museum and find valuables to take?”

  “Yes.”

  The boy answered with such firmness that Clyve believed him. Glancing at Dahlia, she signaled “seven” and “five” with her fingers. That meant a completely normal pulse of 75 beats per minute. He was too calm to be deceitful, Clyve knew, and further, it was impossible for the boy to lie with a near double-dose of Glass Dragon in his bloodstream.

  “Where is this hidden room you found?” he growled.

  “Underground,” the boy replied weakly, eyes seeming to stare blanking into space.

  “But where?”

  There was a pause while the boy seemed to put up a last show of resistance, which quickly broke.

  “Hidden stairs,” he sighed.

  Clyve’s eyes opened wide with surprise. That had to be the thing that the young man was hiding. Hadn’t Bram told him he thought the Steemjammers had secret stashes of valuables in the Museum?

  “Did you see a broken Shadovecht?” he pressed. “You stumbled against it and got cut?”

  “Yes,” Will mumbled weakly.

  “Where? How do we find it?”

  The boy’s eyes lost focus. Concerned, Clyve turned to his assistant, who signaled that the pulse was 65 beats per minute and dropping.

  “Dark.” Eyes dilating, Will’s voice dropped to a faint whisper. “Lost. Not sure ….”

  Will’s whole body went slack.

  Snatching the stethoscope, Clyve pressed it to his chest and anxiously counted heartbeats.

  “He’s gone,” he sighed. “This often happens. It wears them out.”

  “He died?” Dahlia said with alarm.

  “No, the pulse is 50 and stable. He’s simply passed out.”

  “Thank the Provider,” she said, not using the word “Maker,” as Protectorate members had been instructed.

  Clyve turned his attention to the sleeping boy, whom he now believed was Will Stevens. His hope of becoming a hero of the Protectorate was still alive. He would find this Steemjammer cache, and if it helped advance the family’s goals, he’d be greatly rewarded.

  Dahlia had heard too much. He considered killing her on the spot. It would be safer that way and too easy to achieve. He’d tell her to get a certain unmarked bottle and syringe. She’d assume it was for the boy and would only feel a moment of shock as he stabbed the c
old needle into her soft, white neck.

  No, he decided, he’d need her for the next session, and then he could tie up loose ends. He’d keep her busy and isolated to prevent her from telling anyone.

  “We’ll try again,” he said, “in the morning.”

  “I’m not an expert like you,” she spoke tactfully, “so forgive me if I’m wrong. But if we don’t wait longer for a second session of Glass Dragon, won’t it kill him?”

  A look of pitiless scorn spread across Clyve’s skeletal face. “So?”

  Chapter 28

  De pekoerde

  “I’m not sleepy, Tante Klazee,” Angelica said late that Sunday night.

  In truth her body was exhausted, but her mind would not shut off. Her brother had been gone two days now with no word or sign if Tante Stefana had been right, that somehow he might be able to elude detection. The stress was horrible. Her imagination was often drawn to the Rasmussen fort on Texel Island, thinking of ways to break in.

  If only she were magic, she thought. If only she could reach out with her mind and crush the walls. What if she could shout with a giant, terrifying voice and make the Rasmussens all run away?

  She could find her brother and get him out of there. But she wasn’t magic, she knew. It was very late, and poor Tante Klazee, tired and rubbing her eyes, was not going to bed herself until Angelica was asleep. She’d told her that.

  “Tell me about your mother,” Klazee said gently.

  “Do you know her?” Angelica asked.

  “Yes. I met Muriel before she and your father married. I remember thinking how flink she was, very smart and clever, and so pretty. Like you. I thought how she’d make a good wife for one of our young men.”

  The little girl smiled. “She would teach me how to spin our wool into yarn, how to sew, and how to do basic math, like finding integrals and solving differential equations.”

  In the middle of a sip of chamomile tea, Klazee almost gagged from surprise. “Basic? You’re talking about advanced calculus, leef!”

  “I know,” Angelica said agreeably. “I couldn’t really get it until I turned six, when Mom got me to see patterns in the numbers and how they repeat. Well, learning to solve an equation when the variables are other equations, that was a little tricky.”