Felix glanced back at Sabrina, taking full measure of her slender form with his eyes. “Aye. Lombard.”
“Who is Lombard?” Welly asked before Buckle did.
“Long ago the undersea complex of Atlantis was built by a renegade Founders scientist, a genius named Cassandra Lombard. The Founders were sore to lose her and they’ve always been suspicious of Atlantis.”
“I heard stories about Lombard as a child,” Sabrina said. “All of them bad. Sour grapes.”
Felix nodded. “Yes. But the Atlanteans have always dominated the ocean trade routes and held sway over the Spice Traders, the Oriental Compact and the fishermen. The Founders never dared cross them because of that.”
“It seems the situation has changed,” Buckle said. The Oriental Compact—he’d heard of the mysterious people of the west, hidden beyond the ocean, more fragments of legend than real. He peered into the fluctuating currents below where schools of fish flashed and vanished. The ocean floor dropped off in steeper and steeper angles, darkening as it plunged away from the surface where the sun glowed aqua blue through sheets of ice There was barely perceptible movement in the depths, large, indecipherable shadows whispering of behemoths down below.
Buckle felt an eerie, familiar twinge. He was well aware of the alien monsters cast down upon dry land by the Martians but he knew nothing of what they had released into the water. There were many stories of sea-beasties more mighty and terrifying than sabertooth or kraken but the descriptions varied so widely it was difficult to make head nor tail out of them in the end. They made wonderful tales for landlubbers, certainly, but now that he was here, under the ocean with them, he hoped that he might not make their acquaintance.
Icebergs soon appeared, their craggy hulks blocking out the light, massive underwater cathedrals of deep blue glass, inverted, ponderous titans drifting as the ocean willed.
“I know a chasm—Neptune’s Rift—well hidden, that we can use to bypass the patrols,” Felix said. “We should arrive at Atlantis in about an hour. If you take the main passageway, you’ll find a parlor on your right. It has a big window for you to watch the sea as you landlubbers love to do so much.”
“Thank you, Felix,” Buckle said. “We shall retire to the parlor, then.”
“You interesting in selling that robot?” Felix asked, jerking his head towards Penny Dreadful.
“Not at this time, no,” Buckle replied with an odd sense of indignity.
“Very well then,” Felix replied. “I’ll tell you one thing, I will, this robot shall be something of a problem in Atlantis.”
“Why is that?” Sabrina asked.
“The Atlanteans don’t like their old automatons,” Felix said. “They despise them, really. Don’t use them anymore.”
“And why do they despise them?” Buckle asked.
“Malfunctions,” Felix said. “It’s difficult to get a straight answer out of an Atlantean, especially when it concerns anything which they fear looks to be a failure. But I know that they were damned proud of their automatons long ago. Then all of the sudden they collected as many as they could, sending out scouts to recover the ones they’d sold or lost. In the end, the automatons were all melted down into scrap.”
“Such a thought gives me the shivers,” Penny said quietly, though it wasn’t shivering.
“We shall retire to the observation parlor,” Buckle said, gently herding Penny toward the hatchway. It annoyed him that Felix had told such a story in front of Penny, though he wasn’t sure why it might bother it—it was just a machine, after all. Perhaps he was angry with himself for bringing a potentially dangerous member into his company. But how dangerous was Penny Dreadful?
“Keep an eye open for boats,” Felix said over his shoulder.
“Aye, we’ll do that,” Buckle replied as he ducked through the rear hatchway, walking down the metal passageway that stank of oil and rust. Sabrina and Welly were close at his back with the sound of Penny’s metal shoes clanking behind. Odd, Buckle mused, that he took some measure of offense when the suggestion of selling the robot was tabled; despite its appearance it still felt more like a child than a machine to him.
The observation cabin was impressive in comparison to the other utilitarian chambers of the Dart: a tall, circular window secured with polished bolts provided a spectacular ocean view along the port beam; two aquariums inhabited by bizarre species of red, black, yellow and orange sea creatures intensified the cabin’s underwater feel; a round table made of dark, expensive wood was polished to such a sheen that the faint sea light undulated across its surface as if it were glazed with water; bookshelves lined the bulkheads, framing three old oil paintings drawn from the ruins of the old world depicting cavalry charges whose significance were lost to time.
The hefty transit payment might just buy Felix another one of those rare paintings.
Buckle knew why the Dart was designed with such a well-appointed parlor. Yes, she was an infamous mercenary submarine but she was also a business tool to wine and dine and impress clients. The captain’s quarters and the library aboard the Pneumatic Zeppelin offered similar sky-windows and displays of elegance, for the airship was a machine of both war and diplomacy.
Sabrina stepped to the window, looking out at the sea. “We must be twenty fathoms down. I don’t like it, being underwater in this cockleshell.”
“Why not?” Buckle asked, taking a seat at the table, running his hand across the smooth surface of the wood. “We’re floating, much as we do in the air.”
“You don’t like being submerged overmuch, either,” Sabrina said, removing her leather glove to press her finger at a water droplet on the window’s metal collar.
“Well, I’d wager submarining is less dangerous that zeppelineering,” Buckle said.
Sabrina peered at the droplet on her fingertip. “Aye, but a little hole in a gasbag won’t sink you in the sky.”
Sabrina showed the water droplet to Welly, who looked amused. Welly always responded well to Sabrina’s attentions, laughing at her dry humor because he was openly smitten with her.
Sabrina sat alongside Buckle, rubbing the droplet between her fingers. “I still doubt the Atlanteans shall be willing to admit us, considering the current antagonistic climate.”
“We are a diplomatic mission,” Buckle answered. “The current state of affairs will help us. The Atlanteans are looking for allies even if they are unwilling to admit it. They’re just as interested in self-preservation as we are.”
“It would have been good to have Elizabeth with us on this one,” Sabrina muttered.
Buckle nodded. “My sister does handle people well.”
“And if they have her in Atlantis, somewhere, sequestered away as your strange prophet suggests?” Sabrina asked.
“Then we shall recover her, one way or another,” Buckle responded.
“I still do not understand why you think she is in Atlantis if you are certain that the Founders kidnapped her,” Sabrina said. “Regardless of the jabberings of that moonchild you ran across, that old Shadrack.”
“Moonchildren don’t lie,” Buckle replied softly.
“It doesn’t mean they understand the truth,” Sabrina said.
“Lady Andromeda told me Elizabeth was the key to winning the war,” Buckle said, soft but pressing. “Lady Andromeda’s words, sober and cold as the dawn of day. And if there is the slightest possibility that Elizabeth is in Atlantis, within my grasp, then I have no choice but to seize the opportunity.”
“You do understand that Lady Andromeda is a politician and politicians—” Sabrina paused, looking behind Buckle.
Buckle turned to see a tall, thin woman bending in through the hatchway. Her skin was black and she wore the stained white smock of a cook. She only had one arm, the right sleeve of her blouse pinned up neatly against her shoulder. In her left hand she balanced a large metal tray with a teapot, cups, and neatly squared bits of food.
“Felix wants to see you served,” the one-armed cook said as s
he placed the tea service on the table. Her voice was accented in a way Buckle didn’t find familiar. He wondered if it bothered her to be constantly stooping through the low hatchways. Submariners tended to be small. “Do you want anything to eat?” she asked. “I have varieties of fish, fowl and sea vegetables.”
“What is a ‘sea vegetable?” Sabrina asked.
“Sea palm, kombu and agar pudding,” the cook said.
“No idea what those are,” Sabrina said with a toss of her head. “I’ll stick with tea.”
The tea tray was well supplied with cream and sugar cubes, and the liquid in the teapot smelled of a sweet spice that was new to Buckle. The tidbit plate was stacked with white crackers cradling greenish white gobs of something that looked like it might be fish eggs.
“For me, the tea shall most certainly suffice,” Buckle said.
“What fish have you got?” Welly asked.
“Fish,” the cook replied, prickly.
“What kind of fish?” Welly asked again.
“Cod,” the cook said.
“I’ll have some of that, then,” Welly said.
“Very well,” the cook sighed and took her leave, stooping low on her exit.
Buckle watched Welly pour tea for Sabrina and then himself.
Drumming her fingers on the table, Sabrina waited until the cook was long gone. “You still have not explained, dear Captain, “why you believe the words of a madman.”
“Not good enough?” Buckle asked, knowing it wasn’t.
“Good enough for me,” Sabrina replied, blowing on her tea. “But it feels like we are chasing a ghost.”
“I can’t tell you how, but I know she is there,” Buckle answered. “Lady Andromeda said that Elizabeth is the key to winning the war. That is why the Founders took her and that is why we must take her back.”
“Lady Andromeda is an Alchemist and I for one have never trusted the Alchemists,” Sabrina said, pouring one shot of cream into Buckle’s tea.
“And what clan outside of Crankshaft do you trust, dear sister?” Buckle asked.
“None,” Sabrina answered with a wry smile.
“I trust Lady Andromeda,” Buckle said.
“She does owe you her life, saving her from the Founders prison as you did,” Sabrina said, then turned to Welly with the sugar tongs ready. “And for you, Ensign?”
“Triple cream and triple sugar,” Welly said. “My mother trained me to like my tea far too sweet.” He smiled at his comment and then immediately bit his lip, as if perhaps he had offered too much for it to be appropriate. He wanted desperately to impress. “Many thanks, Lieutenant,” he added quickly. “I thank you with my utmost gratitude.”
“It wasn’t an offer of marriage, Ensign,” Sabrina replied. She shot Buckle an annoyed look. She hadn’t wanted Welly to accompany them on the trip, though she had never voiced her displeasure. “And if the Atlanteans refuse to admit us, Romulus—what is your plan?”
Buckle blew on his tea and shook his head.
V
LADY FORTUNE BETRAYS THE DART
The awkward unfamiliarity of underwater transit soon melted away into a pleasant interlude. Buckle enjoyed the sensation of the submarine, the hum and vibration of its underwater steam engines—he would have liked to inspect them. Max would have loved to look at the engines as well.
Buckle’s teacup rattled on its saucer. The Dart’s engines were running hot, the boilers bursting with steam in case a quick escape was required, but the propellers were spinning slowly. The submarine’s pressure hull quivered, its metal vibrating with the energy of the engines in a fashion similar to the way the Pneumatic Zeppelin’s structure responded to the same forces. The Dart’s movement even felt familiar, the sensation of the underwater machine passing through resistance was something akin to an airship up against a sharp headwind. But there was also the omnipresent grip of liquidity, a grip tighter than the air. One might plummet to the depths, Buckle supposed, but it would be a far slower, smoother drop than if one fell out of the sky.
Finishing his tea down to the brown detritus of leaves in the bottom—the new and distinct flavor faintly similar to caramel—Buckle stood and strolled to the observation window alongside Sabrina. The muted sun was out now, high and far away above the sparkling surface, and the ocean bottom, a sandy desert populated by clumps of streaming seaweed, was alit. Everything had a blue-green tint to it except for the spots where the sunlight penetrated the ice in bright beams of aquamarine. Schools of fish, big and small and all with names unknown to Buckle, appeared, whirled and vanished in rippling typhoons of silver, black or yellow.
The Dart skimmed over a deep, narrow trench. Visibility was good, perhaps a half mile, but everything vanished into the wavering murk beyond that.
Sabrina looked at Buckle and smiled. The crimson ringlets of her hair looked even redder in the mix of greenish ocean illumination and the glow of the observation deck lamp. “I do believe that we shall gain entry into Atlantis,” she said. “Though I don’t trust Captain Felix to be there when it’s time to leave.”
“You think he’ll skip out on us?” Buckle asked. “We paid for a two-way ticket.”
“Overpaid up front.”
“I wasn’t in the mood to bid and barter,” Buckle whispered. “We’d wasted enough time with that little robot making us chase our own tail.”
“Ah, our dear Penny Dreadful. She is so certain of herself, is she not?”
“I’m afraid its nuts and bolts have been rattled far too many times,” Buckle sighed. “I have no idea what I shall do with it.”
“She’s an orphan like you and I,” Sabrina said.
Buckle cleared his throat. The tea had a sweet aftertaste but it also gummed up the windpipe. “If it was human I would concur. But it’s not.”
“What do you plan to do? Jettison her into the ocean?”
“That would save everyone a great deal of trouble, I suspect.”
Sabrina laughed. “You are not so heartless, Romulus. Machine or not, she has the heart of a little girl.”
“Oh, I would most gladly fire that thing out of a cannon,” Buckle said, but he didn’t mean it.
Sabrina nodded with a grin. “Of course you would.”
“I would most certainly not like to be shot out of a cannon,” Penny Dreadful said mournfully in its all-too-childlike voice, its machine eyes glowing from the forward bulkhead where it stood in the shadows—the automaton seemed to like to hover in the darker corners of whatever room it was in. “I know that I was unable to locate the surface entrance to Atlantis, but I assure you I shall prove my worth to you as a traveling companion on this quest. I shall.”
“Alright, then,” Buckle said. He felt bad. He would never have thought the automaton would be able to hear his whispers to Sabrina. There was a lot about the Dreadful that Buckle didn’t know—its capacities, motivators, flaws—and he didn’t like it.
Sabrina’s green eyes narrowed at the ocean. “There it is, I think.”
Buckle followed Sabrina’s gaze and he saw, far off in the fluctuating murk of the depths, the pale suggestion of lights, many lights, curving, undulating, the soft yellow emanations of an underwater city. “Aye,” he whispered, in awe of such a thing.
Penny Dreadful stepped to the window and pressed its hands to the glass. “Home,” it said in a low, metal voice that was almost a purr. “Home.”
Sabrina took a deep breath and said, “Yes, well, I don’t relish the idea of being stuck down here at the mercy of the fish people.”
“It is a good place,” Penny Dreadful said quickly, its metal fingers clicking as it planted them on its hips. “It is a wonderful city, white and full of light, the new civilization built upon the old human civilization. You shall see. You shall see.”
“It does seem to exude a great deal of illumination,” Welly said, arriving at the window.
“That is the greatest invention of the Atlanteans: the liquid-bound light, the luminiferous aether,” Penny Dreadful s
aid.
“The luminiferous aether?” Sabrina asked.
“You shall see,” Penny Dreadful replied.
“There!” Sabrina said, in a near shout, thrusting a finger towards the fore. “A submarine. A submarine!”
Emerging from the currents, perhaps five hundred yards off the Dart’s port side, materialized the front of a large underwater machine. It was of bulbous construct with a large circular window framed by two small ones on each side, all flickering with the dull orange glow of seal-oil lanterns. The black hull loomed behind, oval in shape, with two horizontal fins sweeping out on each flank. Four torpedo tube hatches lurked under the nose; they were dark and Buckle figured that meant they were flooded and ready to fire. “Is it a Founders craft?” Buckle asked, but already he was certain that it was.
“We have to assume it is,” Sabrina said.
Penny Dreadful clanked alongside Buckle, peering out the window. “It is,” Penny Dreadful said, though Buckle did not trust its judgment anymore.
“Have they seen us?” Welly asked.
“The submarine is coming straight for us,” Sabrina said. “Intercept course.”
“I think Captain Felix described them as ‘submersibles’, Lieutenant.” Welly offered.
“Shut up, Welly,” Sabrina snapped.
“The question is, has Felix seen her yet?” Buckle said.
“Torpedo!” Sabrina shouted, pointing. “Coming straight down the beam!”
Buckle saw it, a small round green-brown dot spewing a long trail of rising bubbles behind, bearing down on them at considerable speed.
A warning klaxon rang through the ship. The approaching submarine rose out of view as the Dart, deck angling, engines throttling up to a pounding roar, dove into the blackness of the chasm below.
VI
NEPTUNE’S RIFT
A sheer wall of uneven blue rock blurred past the Dart’s observation window as the small submarine plunged at a steep angle.
“To hell with tea time,” Buckle shouted, gripping the window frame. “Let us see to circumstances on the bridge!” Angling his center of gravity back to compensate for the Dart’s forward pitch, he swung his way out of the observation cabin and into the main passageway. He arrived in the control room to see the black maw of the rift looming in the windows. Felix, Rachel and Kishi manned their stations, feet planted wide, spines stiff against the backs of their jackets. Another crew member, a fair-skinned woman wearing a black beret, hunched over a brass tubed sound-collecting device with a pair of mufflers clamped against her ears.
Romulus Buckle and the Luminiferous Aether (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin #3) Page 3