by Jean Rabe
As the suddenly slightly less filthy figure on the floor sputtered, working to pull himself together, the captain said: “AppleJack Stevens, you look like a cheese what got left in the sun too long. Shameful.”
Blinking hard, shaking himself in much the manner of an ill-bred, and possibly drunken, hound, the sputtering fellow replied: “Captain? Captain Dollins?”
Ignoring Stevens, the older man turned to his companion. “There he is, Miss Edgars, the al’round best pilot and gunner the big wide world of lighter-than-air craft’as ever known. One in a million, ’e is.”
Turning her nose upward at the sight of Stevens as he burped, then used a finger to dig at some irritant caught between his teeth, the young woman responded: “Surely there is someone else we could use.”
“No,” answered Dollins in a somber voice. “There’s not. And there’s certainly no man I’d trust more . . . considering, that is, where we’ve got a mind to be goin’.”
Burping twice more, rubbing at his eyes as strenuously as if they had been covered over with tar and left to dry, the pilot worked at focusing his attention on Dollins as he asked: “Unnn-hunnnn . . . and speaking of that, captain, sir . . . what god-forbidden pesthole did you have in mind for me guide the Gibraltar to this time?”
“The only one that matters, Jack, me boy . . .”
The pilot’s head stopped moving, frozen in place by some inner property desperate to hear whatever Dollins was about to say clearly—correctly. Through eyes so bloodshot they appeared as an unbroken scarlet, he stared as the captain finished his sentence—
“Xibor.”
And felt his eyes go clear as all the blood drained from his head.
Two days passing found Dollins and Stevens walking across an airfield to the northeast of London toward a massive hangar. The pilot had been shaved and shorn, bathed and outfitted to the point where he scarcely had any details in common with the figure that had been stretched out on the floor of the Bristol Debt House forty-eight hours previously.
“So, what landed you in the scut this time, Jackie—another set of eyes peekin’ over a fan?”
“The last one, captain,” growled Stevens. “Ever.”
“Sounds a touch final, me boy.”
“Final as a hat on your bed. Rose Beckett . . . she gave me a story I was puddin’brained enough to believe, took everything I had, pegged me for a tally she’d run the size of the empire . . . then laughed as they pelted me with their clubs and dragged me away.”
“Feelin’ a bit wary of the fairer sex these days, are we?”
“Just keep that over-educated trollop of yours on a leash,” answered Stevens in a threatening tone, “or I’ll show you six kinds of wary . . . Captain. Sir.”
Dollins could not very well make much in the way of protest. The ancient taboo warning against the presence of women on ships was still strong, even in the enlightened days at the end of the nineteenth century, even regarding ships that plowed the ephemeral mists of cloud banks instead of the briny seas. Moreover, if he were truthful, the captain would be forced to admit he himself was a touch uncomfortable with taking a woman along on their upcoming voyage. His reasons, however, had less to do with superstition and more to do with the fact the trip upon which they were about to embark was no ordinary excursion.
But then, Filimena Edgars was no ordinary woman, either.
Miss Edgars was the head librarian at the Royal Academy, the youngest woman ever to have held the position. Coming from a family known for prizing education, she was a person of quite notable talents, even among her own relations.
Filimena was an accomplished linguist, musician, and mathematician. She spoke and could read some eighteen languages—ten of them flawlessly. She played five instruments quite well, nine more passably, and could hold her own with any accountant—Christian, Jew or Buddhist. And it was that exact combination of talents, along with several other lesser but notable aptitudes, which made her invaluable to the Gibraltar’s upcoming voyage.
“Well then, Mr. Stevens,” said the captain as the two closed on the massive hangar, “let’s leave off such debate for a more proper setting, and instead get you to shakin’ down this old girl of ours, shall we?”
“Whatever you say,” answered Stevens sourly, the stench of Bristol still strong within his mind. “You do own me.”
“Jackie,” Dollins said, stopping the two at the hangar’s entrance, “now let’s you and me get all the lines straight between us. You’re like a son to me, and I would’ave paid to get you sprung no matter what. Only reason I found out you was in the can was when I start lookin’ for a pilot for this voyage, everyone kept sayin’ you was the only git crazy enough to go—”
“The praise of my peers . . .”
“And, when I said I would take you in a ’eartbeat if I only knew where you was, one of ’em told me. And then, as you know, you wasn’t there no more.”
Both men stood quietly for a moment, and then Dollins, his head lowered, his face slightly red, began again, saying: “So now, anyways, if you’ve reached an age where you’ve suddenly started worryin’ about still breathin’ on the morrow, then we’ll just call it jake between us for all the times you pulled the Gibraltar through the fire and kept my own derrière from gettin’ scorched along with it.”
“It’s not that, sir,” answered the pilot honestly. “Hell and back, just to be standing here, adventure calling, a Robbins and Lawrence strapped to my side once more . . . you know I’m with you.”
“Well, then, if you’re in, you’re in, for full crew wage, and half my share. And before you say anything else, go on inside . . . there’s somebody there been waitin’ to see you.”
Stevens swallowed hard, looking for words he might be able to hand back to the captain. Dollins had been father, best friend, and confessor to the pilot for close to his entire life. The bond between them was as strong as steel and as welcome as Christmas. Which was, in the end, why Stevens did not want to see the captain risking his life in an attempt to reach Xibor. Not knowing how to say such, however, he instead walked into the hanger as directed, looking about for only a moment before crying out in excitement: “Spitz!”
His overwhelming joy was shared by the figure that came swinging and screaming down from the top of the Gibraltar on a length of chain. Hurling himself with a wild shriek, Spitz slammed into the pilot, knocking him roughly into the hangar wall behind. Hugging the forty-some pounds of uncontrollably excited chimpanzee to his bosom with a clear and honest joy, Stevens exclaimed: “Wherever did you find him?”
“Didn’t. ’e found us. Don’t know ’ow, but after that skirmish with the air pirates over Egypt, when ’e got lost after swingin’ over and torchin’ their balloon—again, nice work, Spitz, ol’ boy—anyway, ’e found ’is way back to Mother England all on ’is own.”
“He made it back here to Chelmsford on his own?” The pilot’s eyes went wide with admiration.
Dollins explained: “No, but when I ’eard tales of a drunken monkey what could cheat at cards better than any thimblerigger in Torquay, well don’t you know I was on the first rail car down the coast.”
Stevens blushed for joy to have his dearest friend, as well as the best mechanic in all the British Isles, at his side once more. No one knew who had trained Spitz—a fact made especially puzzling considering his knowledge of steam engines seemed greater than that of Savery, Newcomen, and Watt put together—but he was an acknowledged master tinker, one who had gained the title Steamsmith to the Crown, at least once Stevens had taught him to wear pants on formal occasions.
“Look, Jackie,” said Dollins, taking a quick glance at his pocket watch, “our time’s runnin’ like a poacher in the king’s forest. What say we get on board? You give the ol’ girl a quick white glove, and then the three of us will sit down with Miss Edgars and run our hash around our plates. I’ll leave it up to you whether or not we set sail. Agreed?”
Stevens took a deep breath, set Spitz down on the hangar floor,
and then stepped back to take a long look at the Gibraltar. Although the ship was registered as the sole property of one Albert J. Dollins, he considered the sleek and somewhat experimental, airship his—and Spitz’s—as well. Aboard her the trio had delivered cargo to far off lands, battled pirates on both the sea and air, smuggled the last of the square eggs of the Andes out of the Southern latitudes for the British Museum, and come through more outlandish shenanigans unscathed than any band of adventurers had a right to expect.
She was, he knew, his ship, and if the Gibraltar was going to be sailing off into the greatest danger she had ever known, he could not let her go without him. Turning to his simian companion, he barked: “Mr. Spitz, are the nose cone battens rigid and secure?”
“Ook!”
“Has the air scoop been cleaned?”
“Ook!”
“And have you finally gotten that infernal squeak out of the lower vertical fin’s rudder?”
“Ook, ook!”
As Spitz turned a gleeful somersault, Stevens turned to the captain and said: “If time’s a’wasting, let’s get her in the air. As soon as the course is set and we’re level at five thousand, then we’ll sit down with your librarian and have us a chat.”
Dollins smiled, and then growled at the other crewmen there in the hangar to get the last provisions on board. Spitz gave the captain a salute, beat his chest for a moment, then grabbed hold of one of the many chains hanging from the ceiling and disappeared into the upper rafters. And Stevens, staring at the great ship and frowning, wondered if the madmen of the Gibraltar had finally bitten off more than they could chew.
“So, Mr. Stevens, why don’t we make this meeting as brief as possible by having you make your objections so that I may put your mind at ease and we might set sail?”
The pilot raised his left eyebrow in response. Dollins and Spitz, both understanding his signal, sat back and allowed him to respond.
“Oh, Miss Edgars, you’re so obviously my better in every way, why don’t you simply explain away any objection I might have—in the interests of saving time, that is?”
Filimena knew when she was being baited, had suffered such nonsense at the hands of the men outside her own family all her life. Because she had been—to her mind, unfortunately—born fair of face and figure, even among those academics who were well aware of her vast accomplishments she had always been treated as just another female. Men like Mr. AppleJack Stevens, broad of shoulder and strong of chin, swaggering across the face of the land simply because they had been born with a few insignificant ounces of extra equipment, she was certain had judged and dismissed her to the point where she had simply had her complete and utter fill.
Still, she would not rise to his lure. She had learned long before how to keep such personalities, if not respectful, at least civil and at bay. Unrolling a large map across the table around which the four were seated, she asked for the edges to be secured.
When such had been accomplished, she took a pointer, and tapping a spot along the southeastern edge of England, she said: “We are here at present.” Dragging her indicator lightly toward the east, she continued. “Once we’ve finally found the . . . time to embark upon our journey, we should make as straight a line as possible for this spot—”
Filimena moved the pointer gracefully, bringing it to a halt some two feet from her starting position, announcing: “Here.”
“That’s the middle of the Dasht-i-Kavir, the largest desert in Persia. There’s nothing for hundreds of miles in any direction. Including the water and fuel we’ll be needing for a return trip.”
“In any other year of your life, Mr. Stevens,” said the young woman, “you would be correct. Even most of the days within this current year of our Lord 1883. But, in a few days’ time, and only for a few days, you will no longer be correct.”
The pilot turned, looking toward Dollins imploringly. The captain gave him a slight nod, his head tilted, indicating he wished his friend would extend their speaker a few more minutes. When Spitz only offered him an indifferent shrug, Stevens merely asked: “Because. . . ?”
“Because it will be then that Xibor will reappear upon the spot from where it disappeared over a century ago, the spot where it has appeared on a precise and predictable schedule for thousands of years.”
“Oh, Lord love a duck, Captain . . .”
“Miss Edgars,” said Dollins to the young woman, ignoring his pilot, “if you would be so kind as to explain how you put together your timetable?”
Giving the captain a pleasant nod, Filimena turned the full power of her iciest condescension toward Stevens as she detailed how she and Dollins had come together in common cause. It had been the captain himself who had begun the entire affair, when he had stated casually at a mercantile association dinner that he had always been fascinated with the legend of the lost city of Xibor. Present at the modest banquet because of her family’s involvement with certain banking interests as overseers and assurers of their accounting records, Filimena had struck up a conversation with the captain when the male members of her family had indicated their collective opinion was that he was nothing more than a nuisance in need of polite disposal.
Happy to assume Filimena was making herself useful by steering Dollins away from their far more important conversations, they quite forgot about her entirely as she spent the remainder of the evening in rapt conversation with the captain. What they did not realize was that she herself was even more fascinated with the idea of pinpointing the date, time, and location of Xibor’s arrival back within the boundaries of the accepted temporal plane, and that she had been spending the better part of the preceding calendar year and all of the current one working toward that goal.
Discovering their common interest in the mythical city to be stunningly equal, the pair had formed a partnership. Dollins would supply the ship and crew needed to reach Xibor, and Filimena would provide the route and timetable.
Feeling some piece of the story had been left unmentioned, Stevens asked: “You’ll pardon my insufferable ignorance, but what I don’t understand is, to the best of my recollection, the greatest minds throughout history have been trying to crack the secret of how to reach Xibor. No offense to your skills as a human abacus, but what is it that gives you the reach over da Vinci and Copernicus?”
“A good question, actually, Mr. Stevens,” admitted Filimena, upset with herself that she failed to keep her left eyebrow from rising in surprise.
“And the answer . . .”
“Music.”
Composed once more, Filimena explained that the position to Xibor’s coordinates lie not on a grid that could be determined by studying clues based solely on longitudes and latitudes, but by reducing the melody of the heavens to a mathematical constant. For years she had studied the lyric to be found in the movement of the clouds, the play of wind against the forest. She had charted the beat set by the incoming surf, worked out the syncopation in the minute variations of falling rain drops, identified the harmonies in the baying of hounds and the drum beat underlying the tread to be found in a simple line of marching ants.
“The melodic patterns of the solar system became clear to me of a sudden,” the young woman said, the light in her eyes almost dreamlike, “and after I began to interweave the various threads of that concerto I began to understand the rhythm of the universe, or should I say, the universes.”
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“What she’s sayin’, my boy,” interrupted Dollins, “is that Xibor is where it is all the time, but it’s not. Like a ghost what exists in another place, but on occasion slips into view when conditions are right.”
Filimena made to explain further. Indeed, she seemed almost eager to do so, as if the pilot’s opinion might almost be important to her. Cutting off any further explanations, however, Stevens turned to Dollins, asking: “And you believe all this, Captain?”
“I’ve worked with Miss Edgars here for over a year on this, Jackie. She’s got me convinced eno
ugh to risk the Gibraltar. I’ve put everythin’ I’ve got into this. She has, too.”
The pilot considered for a moment, turned to stare at his chief mechanic, and then turned back to Dollins and Filimena, telling them as he rose from his seat: “Well, I’ll tell you now, I think you’re both stomping balmy. My opinion is, if you’re wrong, we’re dead, and if you’re right, we’re damned. But, my opinion apparently not being worth anymore than the monkey’s, I believe my mechanic and I will retire to the inner skin for bananas and bourbon.”
“Meaning what, precisely, Mr. Stevens?”
“Meaning Spitz and I have work to do, Miss Edgars, and neither one of us feels like doing it on an empty stomach or sober.”
“Does that mean you’re finally prepared to begin our voyage?”
Having started for the hatch, Stevens stopped and turned around one last time. Wearing a grin strained by frustration, the pilot answered:
“It means we’ve got to check our course. We’ve been in the air for hours, Miss Edgars. If I was half as incompetent as you seem to feel I am, you would have felt us lift off.”
With that Stevens ducked under the hatch’s low doorframe and stormed away in the direction of the bridge. Following his friend, Spitz loped toward the exit, turning just long enough to give the others a noncommittal shrug and grimace before disappearing into the hallway himself.
At the sound of a further hatch shutting behind the pair, a slightly embarrassed Filimena asked: “Have we really been in the air for hours?”
“Probably well over the Mediterranean by now. Yeah, Jackie really is that good.”
Filimena merely nodded in response. Staring at the open, empty door, she sighed over her discomfort at having been wrong about Stevens’ competence. As she sat quietly, a part of her mind wondered if that was the only one of her assumptions about the pilot that had been wrong.
Stevens and Spitz sat atop the Gibraltar, watching the night stars drift slowly by overhead. The pilot was there supposedly to verify their heading. In actuality he had a great deal on his mind, and needed both the crispness and silence of the late evening atmosphere to help himself focus. Spitz was present because he enjoyed being on the outside of the ship, and he sensed that his friend needed a companion at that moment. Sitting quietly in two of the large lounge chairs built into the Gibraltar’s outer skin, a number of empty LaRaja’s bitters bottles rolling around in concentric circles beneath their feet, the pair allowed the world to pass beneath them undisturbed. Neither said anything to the other. There was no need.