The Fog Diver

by Joel Ross

  “But Captain Nisha?” Bea said, slipping beside Hazel. “What’re we going to do? We can’t beat the Predator to Port Oro.”

  “Of course we can,” Nisha said.

  Bea blinked her big green eyes at Nisha.

  “Okay, the Predator’s faster,” Nisha admitted. “But if we get close enough to the Port, other mutineers will help us fight Kodoc.”

  “Can we get close enough?” Hazel asked.

  “If I push the Rose faster than she’s ever flown?” Nisha said. “Maybe.”

  40

  THE MUTINEER WARSHIP WAS divided into four levels, with engine rooms, cargo holds, an armory, a surgery, and workshops for the mechanics and carpenters. Narrow barracks lined both sides of the hull, and a steamy kitchen huddled in the stern, where massive engines rattled the pots and pans.

  A grizzled sailor brought us to a cramped hallway in the bowels of the ship. The whir-tick of the props sounded through the floor as he opened a wooden chest and rasped, “After nightfall, you can string these hammocks across the corridor for beds.”

  “Are there any regular bunks?” Loretta asked, biting her lower lip. “I mean, that don’t swing around?”

  “You’re on an airship now, girl,” he cackled.

  “Don’t worry,” I told her. “You’ll get the hang of it pretty soon.”

  Bea giggled and told Loretta, “It’s kind of fun, actually.”

  “Come along,” the sailor said. “The quartermaster will assign you jobs.”

  “How come we’ve got to work?” Swedish grumbled as we followed the sailor across the ship.

  “They let us keep the rock,” Hazel told him.

  “But they were looking for us anyway. We saved them a trip to the Rooftop.”

  Loretta scratched her cheek. “I guess that Cog Turning guy really called in some favors.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess.”

  “Except . . . how much of this is about you?”

  I hunched a shoulder. That part made me nervous. “Not sure.”

  “Can I see your eye again?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll show you the scar on my butt.”

  “Ew,” I said.

  “They should at least let me fly this heap,” Swedish muttered.

  “Just do your job,” Hazel told him, and headed into the quartermaster’s office.

  Inside, a bald guy with brown teeth sat behind a cluttered desk, reading a ledger. He flipped a page. Then another. Finally, he looked up and inspected us. He didn’t seem impressed.

  “You. Big fella.” He glowered at Swedish. “What’s your name?”

  “Swedish.”

  “Are you as strong as you look? Find the master carpenter. They’re fixing some damage—you’ll fetch and carry.” He eyed Loretta. “Are you good for anything?”

  “I’m awesome at harpooning,” she told him.

  He quirked an eyebrow. “Have you ever touched one?”

  “Sure.”

  “Before today?”

  “Well, no.” She sighed. “I’m good with a knife, though.”

  “Fine. Then you’re on kitchen duty.”

  Loretta grumbled.

  “How about you, little one?” he asked Bea. “I hear you’re quite the geargirl.”

  “She’s staying with Mrs. E,” Hazel said brusquely. Then she softened her tone. “If you please, sir.”

  The quartermaster frowned at Bea. “We could use you in the engine shaft—some of the valves are hard to reach for anyone bigger’n a chipmunk. And you’ve never seen a sweeter clockwork than the one driving the Anvil Rose.”

  Bea shot a pleading look at Hazel. “Can I, please? Pretty please?”

  “Mrs. E needs you,” Hazel told her.

  Bea sighed and said, “No, thank you, sir.”

  The quartermaster scowled at Hazel. “Fancy yourself in charge, do you? You like giving orders? I bet you’re expecting I’ll put you to work as a first lieutenant.”

  “I’m fairly good with a needle,” Hazel told him. “And a glue gun.”

  “Oh, you’re a clever girl,” he grumbled. “Not getting above yourself. Fine, to the sailmakers with you.” He turned to me. “You’re a tetherboy?”

  “Yup,” I said. “I mean, yes, sir.”

  “A little old for it, ain’t you?”

  “Only because I haven’t died yet.”

  I hadn’t meant it as a joke, but the quartermaster laughed. “You’ll work for the riggers, then.”

  So Swedish wandered off to haul planks while Hazel disappeared into the sailmakers’ workshop. A toothless sailor helped Bea bring Mrs. E to the surgeon, while Loretta headed for the kitchen and I returned to the deck.

  Shading my eyes against the sudden brightness, I scanned the distance behind us. A few clouds smudged the blue horizon . . . and a black dot hung in the air like a splinter in the sky. The Predator. She was so far back, I couldn’t see her propellers or guns. But she was still there, still changing. Getting ready for the chase.

  With a shaky breath, I turned away. I found the rigging crew easily enough, because they all looked like me, compact and wiry. The rigging master was a swarthy woman of about my height, even though she must’ve been twenty or something.

  “You’re Chess?” she asked, eying me dubiously. “What’re you, a bottom-feeder?”

  “I prefer ‘salvage engineer.’”

  She didn’t smile. “You scavenge in the Fog?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “Well, if you find yourself in the Fog in this job, it means you slipped off your rig and you ain’t never coming back.”

  “I’ll try not to—”

  “It would serve you right,” she said. “It’s your fault we’ve got Kodoc after us, you and that crew of yours.”

  I wanted to stick up for my crew, but I just ducked my head. Afraid to act, afraid to call attention to myself. Worrying that maybe Kodoc hadn’t just given me nanites, he’d also given me cowardice.

  The rigging master glared toward the distant speck. “I know riggings, boy, and that ship’s rigged to catch us. Just a matter of time.”

  Then she sent me overboard in a harness to clean exhaust vents, andI spent the rest of the day scrubbing.

  After a dinner of tortilla and kimchi with the rigging crew, I checked the sky. The little black dot was twice as big, and as I watched, the setting sun glinted off the Predator’s armor plating.

  Coming closer.

  When I returned to the hallway, I found Hazel mending clothes, and everyone else gently swinging in their hammocks. Bea was fiddling with wire, making a twisty, while Loretta and Swedish held hands as they rocked. Part of me wanted to talk about Kodoc and the Predator, but more of me wanted a break, wanted to pretend that my life wasn’t a total mess.

  So I flopped down beside Hazel and loosened my bootstraps. “You want a hand? You know I sew better than you.”

  “You’re good with a glue gun, too,” she said.

  Swedish snorted a laugh.

  “What?” Loretta asked.

  “A couple years ago,” Swedish told her, “Chess glued his thumb to his face.”

  “I was a little kid! I fell asleep holding a glue gun.” I threw my boot at Swedish, then asked Bea, “How’s Mrs. E?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “The same.”

  “Was she rambling again?” Hazel asked.

  “No,” Bea said. “She slept all afternoon.”

  I rubbed my face. “Can we see her?”

  “The doctor says she needs peace and quiet. No visitors.”

  “Maybe tomorrow,” Hazel told me.

  “There’s no reason for me to sit there!” Bea blurted. “She’s always sleeping, and I want to see the engine. I want to do something.”

  “I’m sorry,” Hazel said. “But no.”

  “It’s not fair! Just because I’m the littlest, you don’t let me do anything! I won’t hurt myself, I promise.”

  “I’m not afraid you’ll hurt yourself,”
Hazel said, looking up from her sewing. “I’m afraid they’ll see how good you are and never let you leave.”

  “Captain Nisha would never do that.”

  She was probably right, but I knew the real reason Hazel wouldn’t let her work on the engine. We’d almost died 287 times in the past few days, and Kodoc was still behind us, madder than ever. The last thing we needed was to put Bea in any more danger.

  “And anyway,” Bea continued, “I’m not that good.”

  “You’re worth more than the diamond,” Hazel told her.

  “Worth almost as much as berry pie,” Swedish said. “With berries on top.”

  “Plus,” I added, “you’re completely whackadoo. Talking to engines all the time. They’d probably lock you up.”

  “Fine!” Bea scowled. “I’ll stay at the surgery.”

  After a short pause, Hazel said, “How about you, Loretta? How was the kitchen?”

  Loretta sighed. “I spent all afternoon grinding fish bones into powder, then mixing the powder into paste.” She scratched her scarred arm morosely. “Do you know what they’ve got in the kitchen?”

  “Fish paste?” Swedish guessed.

  “Food.” Loretta flashed her gap-toothed smile. “Oh, it’s like a beautiful dream, Swede! You’ve never seen so much food.”

  Hazel and I climbed into our hammocks as Loretta described mounds of pickled eel, stacks of roti, and simmering pots of Chungking pigeon. When she finished, we listened to the distant shanties of the airsailors celebrating their victory over Kodoc.

  Then, after a lull, a voice carried to us: “. . . until that Predator swoops down and kills every last sailor on board. Don’t kid yourself, she’ll catch us easy, long before we reach the Port. . . .”

  The voice faded, but the air in the hallway suddenly felt thick and itchy. The sailor was right: the mutie warships were fast, and fighting for every bit of speed, but the Predator looked even faster.

  “Tell us a story, Chess,” Bea said in a small voice. “From the scrapbook.”

  “What’s a scrapbook?” Loretta asked.

  “My dad collected notes from the time before the Fog,” I told her. “Any information he could find. I guess . . . I guess it’s gone now.”

  For a second, I wanted to cry. Not only was Kodoc closing in, but the scrapbook—my only real link to my father—had been ditched along with the shack. It was in the Fog now, lost forever.

  “You memorized the whole thing anyway,” Swedish said.

  I took a breath. “Mostly.”

  “Tell us the one about the sailor,” Hazel said in the darkness.

  I swayed in my hammock as I tried to remember. It was better than thinking about Kodoc. “Okay. This is from a diary.”

  “A what?” Loretta asked.

  “Like a logbook. The guy who wrote it said, ‘In the town where I was born, there lived a man who sailed the seas. He lived beneath the waves in a yellow submarine.’ Then there’s a bit about tangerine trees and marmalade skies and a girl with colliding scope eyes.”

  “What’s marmalade?” Loretta asked.

  “Some kind of poison?” I guessed. “Like the Fog? Maybe that’s why they lived beneath the sea.”

  She eyed me in disgust. “You don’t believe that, do you?”

  “Well, it’s possible.”

  “There’s no such thing as a ‘sea.’ There’s never been that much water.”

  “Yeah,” Bea agreed. “That part’s silly.”

  “There were seas,” Hazel told them. “Full of whales and squids and squarepants.”

  We’d had this argument a hundred times, so I changed the subject. I told them how in the old days, people searched “the googol” for answers to their questions.

  “So the googol was a fortune-teller?” Loretta asked. “Like palm reading?”

  “The googol is a number,” I told her. “A one with a hundred zeros after it.”

  “One zero zero zero zero . . . a hundred times?”

  I nodded. “They wrote down the googol and stared at it until they found the answer they needed.”

  “Didn’t work for you,” Swedish said.

  “You tried it?” Loretta asked me.

  “Once,” I said. “But the only thing I found was a headache.”

  Hazel turned down the lantern a few minutes later, and I closed my eyes and listened to the unfamiliar whir of the mutie propellers. Every time I started to drift off, I imagined the Predator sweeping through the night like a driftshark through Fog.

  Finally Bea said, “I can’t sleep. Tell me the story.”

  “Not again!” Swedish grumbled from the darkness.

  “Please?” Bea pleaded. “Pretty please with pickled eels?”

  “What story?” Loretta asked.

  “The secret history of the world,” Bea told her. “Mrs. E told us.”

  “Before the Fog rose,” I started, “there was something called the Smog, which covered the whole earth and made everything sick. Not just people. . . .”

  When I finished, Bea made Hazel tell the story of the red-caped hero named Superbowl, who leaped mountains in a single bound and threw pigskins.

  Then a new mutie song started above us, softer and slower than the others, and we listened in silence. We were in the depths of a warship, heading to an unknown city, fleeing from Kodoc and trying to save Mrs. E. We didn’t have the raft or the shack—or even the slum. But we still had each other. And, as we swayed in the dark hallway, that thought lulled me to sleep.

  41

  THE NEXT MORNING I woke before dawn. I swayed in my hammock and heard a faint metallic whine. The gears were straining for speed, the pistons firing hot and fast. Captain Nisha was pushing the Anvil Rose hard, trying to stay ahead of Kodoc.

  Maybe too hard. If the engine failed, we were dead in the air.

  I rolled from my hammock and crept away barefoot so I wouldn’t wake the others. Around the corner, I tugged my boots onto my feet, then crossed the ship and slipped into the surgery.

  The doctor snored in her hammock, bottles of medicine rattled in racks, and Mrs. E slept in a cot with high railings to keep her from falling out. Her skin was an unhealthy white, with red smudges on her cheeks. I stood there for a long time, watching her sleep. She’d given me everything I’d ever loved, everything good in my life since my dad died, and I still needed her. We all needed her.

  When I returned to the hammocks, Hazel and Bea were lying on their stomachs in the middle of the hallway. Heads together, chatting softly, with dozens of scraps of paper scattered on the floor between them.

  “What’re those?” I asked.

  “They’re bits of the message that Turning sent to the Port,” Hazel told me.

  “Ripped into a hundred pieces,” Loretta said from her hammock. “Looks like a hawk caught the carrier pigeon.”

  “Sounds tasty.” Swedish yawned. “Lucky hawk.”

  “Look at this, Chess.” Hazel pointed to an uneven rectangle of paper scraps. “This is the part they already deciphered.”

  The paper was crumpled and dirty, with a few splotches of what must’ve been pigeon blood. Still, some of the words were clear:

  . . . found the child with . . . eye. Kodoc in pursuit . . . girl, on the highest slopes. . . . Send a ship to bring . . . to the Port . . . igh alert.

  “Turning said I was a girl?” I rubbed the back of my neck. “I thought he knew all about me.”

  “Yeah,” Hazel said. “I don’t know how he got that wrong.”

  Swedish squatted beside Bea. “Maybe he didn’t.”

  “You mean Chess really is a girl?” Loretta asked.

  I ignored her as a spark of hope ignited in my chest. “He means there might be two of us! Another kid with a freak-eye!”

  That’d be awesome. If some upper slopes girl had a Fog-eye, I wouldn’t be such a freak.

  “We’ll find out tonight,” Hazel said, “when we put the rest of the pieces together.”

  “Wait a second.” Swedish messed
with the bits of paper. “I’m good at puzzles.”

  “Bea and I have been at this since we woke up, Swede,” Hazel said. “You’re not going to figure it out before breakfast.”

  “So, uh, you all know how to read, huh?” Loretta scratched the tattoo on her cheek. “Like, whole words and everything?”

  “They do,” Bea said. “I’m still learning.”

  Loretta glowered. “Reading is stupid.”

  “You can learn with me, if you want,” Bea told her. “Swedish will teach us together.”

  Loretta squinted at Swedish, who was shuffling scraps of paper on the floor. “He will?”

  “Course he will,” Bea said.

  “That way you can read his love notes,” I teased.

  Loretta scowled, but I could tell she liked the idea. “You really think I can learn?”

  “Sure you can,” I said.

  “It’s easier than piecing together a hundred scraps of paper,” Hazel told her. “C’mon, Swede, let’s go.”

  “I’m almost done,” he told her, moving one last piece of paper into place. “There!”

  He looked at the message on the floor and read aloud:

  . . . found the child with the eye. Kodoc in pursuit . . . he doesn’t even know if the child is a boy or girl, on the highest slopes or . . . lowest. Send a ship to bring . . . to the Port. Find me. I’ll lead you . . . nd take care. Kodoc on high alert. Noti . . .

  “Oh,” Bea said. “He was saying that Kodoc didn’t know if Chess was a girl.”

  Hazel gaped at Swedish. “How did you do that?”

  “Everything fits together,” Swedish loftily informed her, “if you know how to look.”

  “So I guess I’m the only freak,” I muttered unhappily.

  “You’re not the only freak.” Loretta elbowed me. “Did you see Swedish solve that puzzle? Now that was freaky.”

  As I unstrung my hammock, I thought about the message. Bits were still missing, but it looked like Cog Turning hadn’t even mentioned Mrs. E. He’d only told them about me. Why did the Port care so much? Did they just want to keep me out of Kodoc’s hands, so he couldn’t find the Compass? Or did they want the Compass for themselves?

  “C’mon!” Bea said. “We’ll miss breakfast.”

  We headed to the sweep deck, where the rising sun brushed the Fog with yellow fire and the breeze blew fresh and cold. I shivered, then opened my jacket so I could wrap Bea in half of it. We tore into the bread that Loretta had swiped the previous day and eyed the black smear hanging in the air. The Predator looked bigger than a thumbnail this morning. More like a fist.