Uncrashable Dakota

by Marino, Andy

  “We’re almost there, Mrs. Wellspring,” Hollis said, even though she hadn’t said anything at all.

  In front of the life-ship hatch on the port side of the first-class deck, they bumped into an angry mob. The old man Rob had dubbed Swallowtail Ovaltine was brandishing his cane like a sword, standing before the open hatch. A few men had formed a rough line, just out of his range. The air was tinged with menace—they were getting ready to rush him.

  “You men stand down!” Ovaltine said. “God almighty, is there not a gentleman among you?”

  “My wife and children are not boarding that ship without me,” said a man in a bowler with a boy at his side—the master magician.

  “Then you are a coward, sir!” the old man yelled. He swung his cane back and forth. “You’re all cowards!”

  “Why should we split up our families?” another man shouted back. “I don’t see anybody here giving orders.”

  “It’s not supposed to crash!” whined the magician. “You said it can’t, Daddy!”

  “For God’s sake, man, shut that boy up.”

  “Well, he’s right, isn’t he? Ten to one, this airship is the safest place to be right now.”

  “I’d rather be in here than out flying in one of these flimsy air boats.”

  Everybody was screaming at once. Irate fingers poked the air. In Hollis’s arms, Jessie began to cry. He looked at Rob. He sympathized with the crowd—why should families have to split up? Everybody knew the rule—women and children first—but how rigidly was it supposed to be enforced? And who was going to enforce it?

  While he was turning it over in his mind, Rob calmly handed Junie to her mother. He pulled out his pistol and fired a shot directly into the wall next to the hatch. The report was deafening. Instantly, the corridor was silent. Fearful eyes were trained on Hollis and Rob.

  “General Ovaltine’s got it right,” Rob said. There was a confused murmuring. “Women and children first. Can anybody here fly a life-ship? All you really have to do is keep it from hitting something.”

  “I was in the army,” volunteered a man wearing three jackets and holding two suitcases.

  Hollis wanted to speak up—people were beginning to recognize him—but the pistol shot was echoing in his brain. The edges of his vision were hazy. His forehead felt very warm.

  “If you men…,” he began. Rob, seeing him falter, took Jessie and lowered her gently to the floor, where she wrapped her arms around her mother’s leg. “If you want to make yourselves useful, you’re needed at the other hatches. Some of you head starboard—there are more ships over there. Help where you can,” he implored. “Please.”

  Most of the men, thoroughly shamed, dispersed. Hollis leaned against the wall as Rob helped the three Wellsprings through the hatch and into the canvas-topped ship. He noticed Rob was shaking with exertion. The eerie poise that had compelled him to fire his gun had deserted him. Hollis realized that there was nothing to stop those men from simply climbing aboard a different life-ship.

  “I know that,” Rob said as they moved to the next hatch, and Hollis realized he must have spoken aloud. Rob was running, Hollis was struggling to keep up. “I know that, but what else are we supposed to do?”

  * * *

  CLARISSA JUNIPER refused to leave Edmund’s side.

  The plush expanse of the Junipers’ stateroom carpet was soaked in alcohol. Evidently they had set up miniature drink-mixing stations throughout the vast Presidential Suite, most of which were now in ruins. The couple had also piled the cushions from half a dozen scattered sofas into a cozy nest, which is where Hollis and Rob discovered them.

  “I advise you to get to a life-ship,” Hollis said wearily. It was difficult to muster any urgency for people who were obviously not going anywhere.

  “I appreciate the suggestion, young Master Dakota.” Clarissa Juniper poured herself another martini from a shaker and offered one to Rob, who declined.

  “I only drink hot lemonade.”

  She shrugged and topped off her husband’s glass.

  “Let no one accuse Edmund Juniper of failing to play the man’s game to the very end,” Edmund said, winking at Hollis and adding olives to a toothpick.

  “Man’s game?” Hollis asked Rob, heading back to the stateroom door. The whole incident was making him feel feverish, and he was eager to be moving along.

  “Gentleman’s game, I think he means,” Rob said. “Honor, or courage, or something like that.”

  As they left the Junipers behind, Hollis could hear Edmund calling after them. “If you happen to pass this way again, we’ve just run out of olives!”

  * * *

  HOLLIS WAS STARTING to feel better. The ringing had receded to a distant ping. He showed Annabel and Arthur Reynolds how to fasten their belts and was about to discharge life-ship twenty-six when something underneath the seat caught his attention.

  It was a woman’s bonnet pulled low over a hairy face.

  “Get out of there, sir.”

  “I will not.”

  “Women and children first,” Hollis said. It came out like a sigh. The phrase didn’t even sound like English to him, he’d been repeating it so often.

  “I will be frank with you—I am very frightened.”

  “So is everyone else.”

  “But you see,” pleaded the face beneath the seat, “I’m convinced there won’t be enough life-ships left over for the men.”

  “There are seats for every passenger. What kind of airship company do you think this is? You just have to wait, that’s all.”

  “Then I’m afraid you’ll have to drag me out.”

  Hollis turned to Rob, who shrugged. “I don’t think we should argue with one of the greatest writers in the world.”

  “Thank you!” said the man, crawling up from his hiding place and removing the bonnet, shaking hands with the women and children who filled the boat. “Julius Germain. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  Hollis turned away. Were all novelists such frightful cowards?

  * * *

  THE SECOND-CLASS TAVERNS WERE FULL.

  “Sylvia,” a man was slurring, “uncrashable. Un. Crash. A. Bull. Have another drink and get hold of yourself.”

  Hollis and Rob were creeping toward the epicenter of the damage. The Automat had gone dark; the promenade was strewn with crusts, the floor painted in splatters of cherry filling and applesauce. They moved cautiously through a crispy sea of broken glass.

  The men came out of nowhere, dark shapes at the edge of a dust cloud, then Hollis and Rob were among them. Hollis recognized many of the bruised, battered faces as Dakota officers. Stripped of their uniforms during the hijacking, some had assembled ragtag outfits. Others remained in their underclothes.

  Hollis’s relief flooded his body. He was exhausted, but much stronger. He gave the nearest man, Officer Fitzroy, a hug.

  “We need your help,” Hollis said.

  “Up in first class—” Rob began, but Hollis cut him off. Maggie had asked him not to forget.

  “Get to the steerage hold,” he said. “Every passenger gets on a ship.”

  The men vanished so fast, Hollis wondered if they had really been there at all.

  * * *

  ROB WAS PULLING ON HIS ARM.

  “Get up.”

  “I just need to rest for another minute,” Hollis said. “I keep thinking about—I mean, she’s Delia, so she’s probably okay, but still. I wish we’d run into her.”

  “Me too. But right now we have to find my father.”

  Hollis couldn’t look at his stepbrother. He focused on a rag doll lying next to his foot. “That’s not what we’re doing.”

  The collision had turned this part of third class into a maze of twisted nails and knotted beams. Rob examined a clock without hands and tossed it aside. “Well, that’s what I’m doing, Hollis. I’m sure you can understand why it might be important to me.”

  Hollis felt something sharp and hot behind his eyes. He jumped to his feet. “
Why, because mine’s already gone?”

  Rob looked away. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “He’s gone because your dad had him killed.”

  Rob put both hands atop his head, like he was opening up his lungs after running a mile. “That’s a lie,” he said. He dropped his hands and made fists, then put them in his pockets. “You don’t have any proof of that. Your dad fell by accident. The medical examiner said so.” Hollis could see the outline of the gun in his jacket.

  “Marius pushed him. He was working for your dad.” Hollis felt strangely deflated, sharing this with his stepbrother. He ought to feel righteous, he thought. Triumphant.

  “Listen, Hollis,” Rob said. “Your grandfather Samuel killed my grandfather Hezekiah.”

  Hollis had never heard that name in his life. “Your father’s father?”

  “One and the same.”

  Was that supposed to compare with Jefferson Castor having his father killed? That felt like an open wound. Rob’s accusation felt like gossip about two strangers in a newspaper article from before he was born. “Are you sure?”

  Rob sniffed the air. “You smell that? It’s coming from down here.” He turned and dropped down behind a massacred sofa.

  “Hey, it’s not the same thing, you know,” Hollis said, following his stepbrother. “Don’t just change the subject. Who cares if—ow!” Hollis snagged his shirt on a splinter the size of a penknife and felt the quick heat of a scratch on his upper arm. He joined Rob in a nest of rubble. They both moved very slowly—the third-class furniture had been reduced to kindling.

  “That’s bad, right?” Rob pulled his shirt up over his nose.

  “Smells like … I don’t know,” Hollis said. “Beetles and something worse.” It was as if the pungent beetle gas had been laced with the ammonia the maids used to clean the crystal chandeliers. Then Rob let out a yelp and pointed at their feet.

  Hollis and Rob were standing on empty air. The floor felt solid and metallic, but it seemed to be made of nothing at all. Hollis knelt and pounded his fist against the void that somehow supported their weight. A hollow echo died away beneath him. When he lifted his hand and unclenched his fist, he found that his pinky was gone.

  “Gah!” Frantically, he rubbed at the missing digit, which was coated in a viscous liquid. When he smeared it against his thigh, his pinky reappeared, but the liquid painted an instant see-through path along his pant leg.

  Rob knelt, pressed his palm flat against the solid air, and began to wipe back and forth as if he were dusting a tabletop. The invisible coating rubbed off, and Rob’s hand began to fade like the mutant beetles. Hollis joined him, and soon they had uncovered a patch of rusted metal decorated with a painting of a huge beetle: the insignia of Dakota Aeronautics.

  Hollis leaned forward. Something was nagging at him. One of the old family myths his father used to share over an after-dinner brandy.

  “That’s impossible,” Hollis said.

  “You’re seeing this too, right? The thing we can’t see?”

  “No, Rob, listen. After Samuel disappeared, there were all these rumors. My dad knew every one of them. They were just stories he used to tell me for fun.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying I think we just found Samuel Dakota.”

  “Looks like he found us.”

  They worked their way across the surface, ducking beneath floorboards, pushing aside debris that had fallen all the way down from first class—unopened lavender soaps, broken martini glasses, fountain pens. Eventually they came to an opening into the interior. Next to it was a thin-fingered hand. Hollis’s heart skipped. There was a tiny corrupted beetle tattooed between the first and second knuckles of the ring finger. The body was mostly hidden beneath a fallen trunk plastered with faded stickers from European capitals. Hollis wondered if it was the strange woman from the bridge. He reached to check for a pulse.

  The unmistakable sound of a human voice drifted up out of the opening.

  “Dad!” Rob said. The voice stopped. Rob swung his legs over the side.

  27

  THE FIRST TIME Delia had ever set foot inside the lift chamber of an airship, Benny Owens had personally shown her around.

  “Watch your head. It can get a bit cramped down here.”

  The chamber was small and low-ceilinged—the airship Hyacinth was a swift cruiser—and he seemed to forget that Delia (not being a three-hundred-pound man) could move quite easily between the beams. He also seemed to be immune to the horrible smell. She tried not to gag in front of her new boss, but every time she opened her mouth, the stench invaded her throat. She could barely speak and was afraid she might be coming off as meek or dull-witted.

  “This is what we call the farm,” he explained, thick fingers wrapped around the handle of a door to a cylindrical tank in the center of the chamber. She was waiting for him to open it, eager to see what was inside, when she noticed him glaring off to the right. She followed his gaze—toward what? There were workers manning compartments, measuring out whiskey-sap with flasks and beakers. There was a path at the edge of the chamber, mostly used for extra storage space. Then she saw them: two boys, ducking down behind a massive crate. Hidden from the keepers directly in front of them, but exposed at an angle.

  Benny grumbled to himself and stalked off in their direction. Delia wasn’t sure what to do, so she followed him.

  “Get out from behind there!” he said. The boys jumped up. The taller one with the peaked cap put his hands in the air in mock-surrender. The shorter one kept shifting his weight like his bladder was about to burst.

  Benny chewed them out: the lift chamber was a sacred place (he actually said the word sacred), and they were profaning it with their tourism. A fleck of spittle landed on the shorter boy’s lapel, and Delia could tell he was trying not to look at it. The other boy started laughing. Benny ignored him and glared at the shorter boy.

  “Just because your last name’s Dakota doesn’t give you the right to trample my authority. I’ll talk to your mother again if I have to. Now, get out of my sight.”

  “Who are you?” the taller one asked her.

  Delia, flustered, opened her mouth and immediately began coughing.

  “What?” Benny said. “Oh. This is Delia, my new apprentice.”

  “Welcome aboard,” the boy said as Benny’s hand on her back ushered her away. “I’m Rob, and this is Hollis. I’m sure we’ll see you again.”

  “You won’t,” Owens said. Then, to Delia, “Don’t let them bother you. Damn kids think they run the place. We do real work down here.”

  “The whole ship doesn’t smell like this!” Rob called after her. When Owens turned, displaying his fist, beetle ring flashing, they were already gone.

  Delia let her mind crawl through this memory, probing its shadowy edges like a tongue scraping along teeth. There was nothing else but the theater of the past.

  She was trapped in a floating tomb.

  Thinking about rescue was a pointless indulgence. Even if the Dakotas won the ship from the hijackers, even if life-ships were launched, even if the airship didn’t simply fall from the sky, it would take days for anyone to sift through the wreckage to find her. She might as well be stuck in a collapsing building during the San Francisco earthquake.

  She had just been caught by the man with the ivory pistols when the ship began to tremble like a terrified kitten. The chanting of the Order had taken on a wanton, gleeful edge. She’d used the distraction to dart away.

  Everywhere, compartments were unmanned, left open for beetles to escape. Even Delia caught a hint of the odor. She began kicking them shut. Then there was a hand on her arm; a joyful, vacant expression on a familiar face.

  “Sister! Pray with me!”

  Ada pulled her down to her knees. Delia shrugged the woman off, spun away. The bucking of the ship made it difficult to stand. She reached out and clung to part of the spider. Gunshots echoed through the chamber. A pair of beetles alighted o
n a nozzle. They slurped whiskey-sap and floated toward her face. She began whispering to them, changing her voice to the timbre they responded to in her experiments. It didn’t matter what she said, so she took Ada’s suggestion.

  Holy Mary, Mother of God …

  If St. Albert could see her now. The pair of beetles floated away. What had she been thinking? She didn’t know how to ask them for help. They couldn’t empathize with her situation. They joined several dozen of their kind and disappeared into the spider’s limbs above her head.

  Then she’d hugged her piece of the spider and shut her eyes as a noise like an exploding bomb made her cry out. The structure of the chamber came undone around her. The variety of terrible sounds was infinite: screeching metal, cracking beams, breaking glass. Curiously, some came out of her past: the bells of St. Theresa’s tolling the hour, Maggie’s quick feet on the fire escape, the crackling of the transmitter. Perhaps this was dying: everything all at the same time.

  It was dark. She was curled up, knees pressed against her forehead, her body a compact little bundle. The air was putrid, close, and full of choking dust. There were screams, faraway pleas for help. She heard them through miles of broken spider limbs, twisted catwalks, and shattered decks.

  She didn’t know how badly she’d been hurt. The space was too confined to test her arms and legs. She wondered if the air down here was even breathable. Her body felt like one big bruise. There was no sharp, searing pain. She took that as a good sign.

  All she could do was think.

  Those fanatics from the Order of the First Beetle had somehow been right all along. What else but Samuel’s ship could the Wendell Dakota have struck so high in the sky? How wonderful it would be to set foot in that long-lost airship, to sift through the obsessions that had consumed the father of flight.

  She was dwelling on this when the voices nearby began to multiply. They seemed to be chirping. Another Order ritual? A gentle breeze stirred the air in her little pocket of rubble. She wasn’t alone in here—beetles were drifting through the air pockets of the wreckage as if it were a giant anthill.