Ganymede (Clockwork Century)

by Cherie Priest

  They did, and this one hit beside the hole the first charge had made, effectively turning the boat into matchsticks that billowed underwater in a cloud—so fine, they looked like filthy smoke, or a blotch of dumped diesel murking through the water.

  Houjin returned with Troost, who was covered in gunpowder or soot, but smiling from ear to ear. “Hey, I got to shoot something!”

  “That you did,” said Cly. “You seal that thing shut?”

  “Locked it down, yes, sir. Early, you’d better keep my seat.”

  “I was planning on it.”

  The captain said, “Anyone been watching a clock?” When no one answered, he said, “By my best guess, it’s been something like half an hour—and I know Early’s men said we have more than that, but like Huey said, we have more people on board this time. It’s getting warm in here, and close. I can’t be the only one who feels it.”

  “You’re not,” Early assured him.

  “We’ll need to pull over and crank that hose up, and do it soon.”

  Houjin asked, “Why?”

  “What?” the captain asked. “What do you mean, why?”

  “Why do we have to pull over? Can’t we just stick the thing up above the surface and let it pull down air as we retreat?”

  Deaderick Early hemmed and hawed. “It’s possible, but it’s dangerous, too. You turn that generator on and the air starts sucking … that’s fine. But if we dip, or drop—or lose the ballasting loads, or anything like that … if the generator starts drawing in water, we’re in trouble.”

  Cly said, “I see why it worries you, but we’ve got two other things to worry about right now. For one, they’ve damn well seen us and they know we’re here. They don’t know what to make of it yet, but it won’t be long before someone starts dropping bombs out of an airship, trying to knock us to the bottom of the bay. So we have to get moving.”

  “What’s the second thing?” Houjin asked nervously.

  Cly lied. “I can’t remember the second thing. But I want you to shove that tube up over the waterline and start the generator. They’ve seen us—and that’s fine, so long as we hightail it out of here. I don’t much give a shit if they watch us leave. Even if they follow us, we’ll lose them in the Gulf, once we’ve drawn down enough air to keep us down low and safe for a while.”

  The second thing Cly had not wanted to say aloud was that he was fairly sure it’d been nearer to an hour—forty-five minutes at the bare minimum. They were running lower than he wanted to say. He could feel it in the press of the breathed and rebreathed air on his skin, and in the moist warmth of every breath he drew. A glance over at Deaderick Early told him that Early suspected the same but was determined to ignore it.

  As for the rest of them, Cly saw no reason to worry them. Not when they only needed motivating, not frightening. Frightened people breathe faster, harder, heavier. They burn up air even quicker, and that wouldn’t help the situation.

  The boy said, “Yes, sir, I’m on it.” And he fixed the scope in a downward position, running to the air tube and its generator, deploying the one and starting the other with a pull of a crank.

  “If it sucks down a little water, that won’t be the end of the world. You might get wet when you bring it back down, but for now, it’ll have to do us, all right?”

  No one responded, so Andan Cly urged the propulsion screws to full power. Then, with Deaderick’s assistance, he aimed Ganymede toward the bottleneck at the bay’s southern entrance, leaving the worst of the fighting behind them. They wouldn’t know if they’d made a difference in the battle there, not for days, but Cly was glad he’d taken a chance on it.

  Maybe he was on the verge of settling down and becoming a family man, or something like it; maybe he’d go retire in the Washington Territories, leisurely swatting rotters away from Fort Decatur and the business he meant to run there.

  But today he was a pirate still, and for whatever good or ill, right or wrong, holy or evil thing that word had ever meant, it felt good to wear it this one last time. Even if he wore it at the bottom of the bay, fighting the Texians by stealth and hidden in watery shadows. Even if no one would ever know he was the one who’d dropped the antiaircraft guns from the patrol ships. Even if he went down in nobody’s history for this last hurrah, that was fine by him.

  Pirates didn’t have their own lands, or books, or histories, after all. Not much of it. Just one small island in one dark bay, off to the west of the Mississippi River.

  But it was enough, and it was worth keeping.

  “Early, how far off is this bottleneck—and Huey, how’s the air holding?”

  “Getting a little sputter, sir. Keep us higher if you can do it.”

  “Higher it is, kid. Watch that tube, and if you can, watch from the scope. Can you go back and forth?”

  “Not really, sir.”

  But Troost said, “I’ll watch the scope. I want to take another look up topside, anyway.” He redeployed it, figuring out the levers, knobs, and cranks as he went along—and aiming it up above the water, and backwards. This meant he was off the stool and standing with his backside to the captain, Fang, and Deaderick.

  Deaderick was the one who asked, “What are you doing, Troost?”

  “I don’t care where we’re going, but I want to know where we’ve been. It’s looking like a real mess out there, if I do say so myself.”

  “Good. I like making messes,” Cly beamed.

  “I ought to warn you, they’re coming up behind us. Not fast, but steady. And—” He tipped the scope so it aimed up nearly as far as it’d go. “—I think one of the big Texian warships is turning around to track us.”

  “We’ll lose it in the Gulf,” Deaderick promised. “Sun won’t be up for a while yet, and they’ll never see us under the waves.”

  “I expect you’re right.” Troost nodded with satisfaction. He swiveled the scope and got up into the seat that had formerly held Houjin. “Hey, good news in this direction.”

  The captain asked, “How so?”

  “I see both of our guys—Little and Mumler—one on each bank. Jesus Christ, they’re close together. They don’t mean for us to squeak between ’em, do they?”

  “They don’t call it a bottleneck for nothing,” Deaderick said. “We’ll slow down and squeak between ’em, that’s right. They’ll pole us on through. Then we ought to see if we can grab them and pull them on board. I don’t want to leave them out there, not with Texas coming up behind us.”

  Cly agreed. “Good idea. Huey—how’s the air coming?”

  A big burp of water sloshed inside, soaking the boy from the waist down, but he laughed. “Gotta stop for now, but that should be plenty. It was more than a couple of minutes, wasn’t it?”

  “Hey, Early,” Troost said. “I’ve got another idea for an improvement on your next model.”

  “Clocks?”

  “Damn right. You need some clocks in here.”

  Before long, the first tap of a pole clanked down into Ganymede’s interior, and before much longer than that, they were through the bottleneck between Grande Terre and Grand Isle. With two new passengers, they struck out for the prearranged position in the Gulf of Mexico, where the Union airship carrier Valiant awaited—surrounded at a distance by curious Texians who were too smart to come any closer, but too wily to let it alone altogether.

  * * *

  When Ganymede reached the Valiant, Captain Cly and First Mate Fang held the ship steady as an enormous winch—designed to retrieve airships, should they fall into the ocean during landing or takeoff—craned out over the water and affixed itself to Ganymede’s hull. A series of hydraulic cinches compressed, squeezed, and, after a few false starts … established a secure grip on the huge steel watercraft.

  A crank turned, and more hydraulics stabilized the affair, counteracting the tremendous weight of something being heaved from the water. A giant arm swung, and dropped the craft onto a platform that was ordinarily used to land and park airships.

 
But Ganymede had the same shape as an airship. And it had similar controls, so a pilot like Andan Cly could get her from Pontchartrain to the Gulf. And in the end, everything went just as Josephine had planned.

  Or perhaps not just as she’d planned, but so close to her original scheme that she was prepared to take credit for it. This had worked out, hadn’t it? It’d gone as well as anyone could have hoped—better, even. She had not merely delivered the ship, but, thanks to the captain and her brother, they could provide a detailed report of the weapons system: what parts were satisfactory, which aspects could stand improvement. How the ammunition could be better designed, and how it ought to be stored. How the controls might be calibrated for surer accuracy with every shot.

  Josephine did not mind admitting that none of those things would have occurred if they hadn’t made it to the bay and assisted the pirates against the Texians. So she refused to regret the delay or the spent ammunition.

  With conscious, sincere effort, she declined to fret over the change in plans.

  Instead, she waited until Ganymede had settled and been released from the winch’s grasping claw, and there was no more motion except for the distant, almost undetectable flutter of the Gulf moving beneath the Valiant. Then she went to the ladder and climbed it, with Ruthie right behind her, and unscrewed the portal door, opening the hatch and letting the clear night air spill down into Ganymede’s gut.

  The sky outside smelled of salt and birds, and it was littered with the peaceful twinkle of stars, shrouded in part by a faint mist that might have been cloud cover, or might have been smoke drifting out to sea.

  No longer could she hear the interminable din of artillery and the crashing and burning of airships or boats. Only the murmurs of curious men reached her ears, accompanied by an official-sounding bark of, “Hail Ganymede, and its occupants. This is Admiral Herman Partridge of the United States Airship Carrier Valiant. Declare yourself, and your intent. How do you reply?”

  Casting a brilliant smile at Ruthie, Josephine flipped the hatch door back and emerged. She said, “I am Josephine Parella Rawling Early. And I am proud to deliver this Rebel device into your hands.”

  Sixteen

  The Naamah Darling was four days late returning to Seattle, but Cly had sent a telegram from Denver explaining the situation. A freak late-season blizzard had come swooping down across the mountains, stranding the crew in the Colorado Territory, but they hunkered down in a boarding house on the west side of the city and made the best of it. There wasn’t much else to be done, and Andan Cly figured that if Yaozu wanted to make a huge fuss about the delay, then that was his business. But until the other man could control the weather, he’d have to get used to disappointment.

  Cly didn’t expect it to be a problem. The business of cross-continental travel was one of luck and coincidence, fortune and ill wind. When more than a thousand miles stand between you and your destination, it’s important to stay flexible. Even the railways knew that much, and the variables in the sky were considerably more troublesome. A train could bully through a thunderstorm, and push past ice and snow, if it had the right equipment. An airship must land and wait for better skies, or else risk being dashed to pieces against the nearest mountain, or into the handiest plain.

  If it’d been only Yaozu awaiting them, Cly probably wouldn’t have bothered with the telegram. Yaozu could wait. But he didn’t want Briar to worry, so he’d sent it—and directed it courtesy of the Western Union station at the railway terminus in Tacoma, Washington Territory, to the attention of Angeline Sealth or her nearest reliable kin.

  One way or another, it’d find its way to the city named loosely for Angeline’s father. The captain could count on that, if not on the weather.

  The flash storm that held them in Colorado was half-frozen, driving and wet, with ice building up and layering across everything immobile, like very cold frosting on an unwilling cake. Troost made some passing complaint about wishing for the Gulf Coast again, but Cly shook his head and declined to agree.

  This was better. The damp and chill suited him, with the accompanying dark and low skies, and the night that fell early. The cover of darkness felt like a friend.

  Colorado was colder than he wished, yes. But it was more like what he wanted, and more of what he missed, than the sunken, soaking bayous with their verdant canopies and cold-blooded creatures that never got cold. The frigid rain reassured him that he’d made the right decision when he left New Orleans all those years ago. But ultimately, it was a fine place to visit, and he was glad to have seen it again.

  Furthermore, he was glad to have seen Josephine again.

  It was good to know that she had survived and prospered, and that she’d become even more of the woman he’d once so desperately loved. He was happy to know that he’d never been wrong about her, and that his affection had not been undeserved or misplaced. He was pleased to learn that she was her own boss, with her own property. A pirate in her own way, still—working beyond the law, against the government, against the Republic, and anyone else who stood between her and what she wanted.

  He felt strangely proud of her, and the feeling was bittersweet. She’d been easy to admire, but hard to get to know. Easy to love, but sometimes hard to like.

  The nostalgia was warm in his chest, but it did not build a lump in his throat or bring dampness to his eyes when he stared off into the darkness, at the same stars that hovered above Louisiana. He remained content to know that she was there, and all was all right—or, if it wasn’t, that she was fighting to make it that way.

  Andan Cly wished Josephine Early well.

  And he looked forward to finding his way home.

  When the storm finally lifted and the last of the frozen spring rains had melted into puddles, the captain and his crew unfastened the Naamah Darling from its dock and set out northwest, back toward a city that had once been called the Port of Seattle, and now was called “abandoned” by almost everyone.

  The Rockies were crisp and sharp, cut into the earth in razor-blade shades of white and blue, engraved with gray. All the usual drifts and currents, the tugs and shoves of the air, were rough above the mountain range—just like always. These unseen ghosts of rising and falling pressure were familiar, unthreatening even when they were a challenge.

  Sometimes, without thinking, his right foot reached for an illusory lever that would lower or raise the Naamah Darling. Each time, he corrected himself in time to keep from doing any damage.

  “This is more like it,” he said under his breath, so softly that no one but Fang heard him.

  Fang signed, Back where we belong.

  And Cly nodded.

  * * *

  Seattle was as they’d left it, and as it would be for months yet—until summer landed, sometime toward the end of July.

  For now it was chilly and dank, shielded with a gray sky so low that it touched the city wall in places … draping across it like moss, or an ancient and ragged tablecloth. These wispy, dangling clouds met and commingled with the dense yellow blight gas that filled the wall and sank there, settling on the streets, on the buildings, on the leftover pieces of civilization that had remained outside and exposed.

  The Naamah Darling hovered above it while the crew members applied their gas masks, better too early than too late; then the ship descended slowly, carefully down through the clouds, through the fog, through the noxious gas, and puttered toward Fort Decatur.

  They did not see the lights from the Chinese lanterns until they were nearly upon them.

  The lanterns burned warm and yellow, shaded by red and orange paper, lifted on strings like floaters on a fisherman’s net. These lights invited them—gave them a space to aim toward, and land upon—and the ship followed their suggested path and set down softly, expertly, into the fort’s main square. Surrounded by the tall, pointed trunks of felled trees, the courtyard-type space was impenetrable to Seattle’s walking dead. It was likewise safe from most of the more mindful human invaders, or curiosity se
ekers, or anyone else who wished to come inside uninvited.

  Down the Naamah Darling dropped, and before there was time to affix the craft to the two fallen totem poles that temporarily served as a dock … up from below came the expectant residents of Seattle, to greet the ship and its crew.

  Briar Wilkes and Lucy O’Gunning were there, Briar with a smile on her face that could be seen in her eyes behind the visor, and Lucy with a pair of wheeled carts that had been rigged for use in the underground’s rail systems. Lucy was smiling, too, but at the prospect of rum and absinthe. The barwoman reached up and slapped the side of the Naamah Darling, daring the steps beneath it to open, and to hurry up about it, would they?

  In response, or more likely as a coincidence of timing, the stairs did indeed come down and Cly descended them first. He ducked his head beneath the overhang and climbed even more quickly upon seeing Briar—who did not run to meet him, but stayed where she was.

  Her mask hid most of her face except for those lovely eyes. It was wrapped around her head, pushing down her dark, curly hair with streaks of blight-bleached orange running through it like fine seams of gold in a boulder. Atop that mass of never-quite-contained hair sat her father’s old hat, the one he’d worn as sheriff; she also wore his belt, with the zigzag MW for his initials, and an oversized coat that kept the blight off her skin. It, too, had been taken from his closet, before she’d gone over the wall to make herself at home inside it.

  “Captain,” she said.

  If he’d been wearing a hat, he would’ve removed it. “Wilkes,” he replied.

  “I’m glad you’re home.”

  Later, while Troost, Fang, and Houjin helped Lucy O’Gunning load the spoils of her wish list into the carts, Cly and Briar went downstairs—into the train station, to pass beneath its unfinished ceilings, and to walk the prettily marbled floors with their natural patterns swirling underfoot. All was alight with lamps both gas and electric; the hissing burn of one complementing the crackling fizz of the others, creating an underground chamber that was every bit as bright as a cathedral, and at least half so lovely.