“Hey, Sketchy, did our price include food?” Wren asked, hungry too it seemed. “We haven’t eaten in a while, and I suppose we could use something to drink. Got any beer?”
“No beer. Tech is in that group for alcoholics. But yeah, food and water, but first I gotta get my money from Miss Srikrishna on account of it being her farm. I delivered her antibiotics for her sick cows, but they don’t eat ’em. Miss Srikrishna and her girls don’t eat the cows, I mean. Dairy farm, and Miss Srikrishna is a vegetarian. Tech’s a vegetarian. Me and Peeperz like pepperoni pizza, but we never get it, like we don’t get video unless we’re in the ZZK or the HYS or the OKC, or—”
“Okay, Sketchy.” Wren cut her off ’cause she prolly figured if she didn’t step in Sketchy would keep on talking until noon. “We’ll get onboard your blimp, and we’ll eat once we take off. Okay?”
The big woman hissed through the last of her teeth. “Don’t call my Jonesy a blimp. I was called a blimp growin’ up in the ABQ, and I won’t stand for it. Besides, the Moby Dick is a rigid dirigible, ’kay?”
I was so tired, and Sketchy talked so quickly and with such a peculiarity, I was having trouble understanding her. I closed my eyes to keep it all straight. Tech must be her partner, maybe her engineer, and there was someone else on the airship by the name of Peeperz. And instead of saying the names of the cities, Sketchy referred to them by their airport codes. ABQ for Albuquerque, ZZK for Buzzkill, BUE for Burlington, HYS for Hays, Kansas. And Moby Dick—that had to be the name of her zeppelin—was a Jonesy-class dirigible with a rigid skeleton covered with next-generation lightweight Kevlar. Inside the superstructure would be sixteen to twenty air-cells of low-pressure theta-helium, or what we called thelium, which was a synthetic gas since the real helium had run out decades ago. Thelium provided greater lift than the real stuff.
“Okay, Ms. Sketchy, I’m sorry,” Wren said, and she put out her hand again.
That surprised me. Why didn’t Wren get snotty with the captain?
Sketchy shuffled her feet side to side, like she was debating on whether she wanted to be friendly or not, then shook hands with Wren. “’Kay, Miss Weller. I accept your ’pology.” Then she pushed Wren aside and grabbed my hand. “Good to meetcha, Cavatica. You’re named after that spider in Charlotte’s Web. Tech read me the story, and I cried so much ’cause that spider loved that pig so.” She gave a big grunt of laughter. “Me crying over spiders and pigs. It’s girly ’strogen, it is, but I’m girly ’strogen, and proud of it. It’s pretty stupid, if you ask me, that girls get ashamed of acting like girls, but the world’s a crazy place nowadays.”
What she said surprised me, but I didn’t show it. Instead, I remained polite. “It’s good to meet you, but how did you know my name?”
Sketchy grinned with a tooth overlapping her lip. “I remember everything and every name, and I sure like yer sister Sharlotte. Now, we gotta go. Just yell to Tech to drop the ladder. Climb on up. And Peeperz is up there, but you won’t meet him ’cause he’s shy. You’re our only passengers, so once I get my money, we’ll go.”
And then she tore past us and started shouting, “Ms. Srikrishna! Come on out and pay me! I know you will, even though you ain’t a Christian.”
She kept on yelling. I was latched on to Wren. “We’re gonna die if we get on that zeppelin with that mad woman.”
Wren tsked. “Cavvy, I’m shocked at you, judging a book by its cover. Sketchy is a legend, whether you know it or not.”
“Please, Wren,” I begged but she turned away from me in my weakness. I followed her into the barn and up to the roof. The zeppelin above us filled the entire sky with silver instead of gray clouds. Under it, I felt like an ant.
Wren yelled and a rope ladder tumbled ten meters down from the mid-bay hatch in the hull of the dirigible. No gondola on her. Everything was tucked inside the Moby Dick’s skin.
With her army duffle on her back, Wren scurried up the ladder like a squirrel up a tree.
I didn’t move. I was high enough on that barn that I could hear the hiss of gas filling the zeppelin. At least the gas wasn’t hydrogen, so it wouldn’t explode like the Hindenburg—low pressure so any minor punctures in the air cells wouldn’t cause a problem. Didn’t make me feel any better though.
Especially when I contemplated why the outer skin was made of Kevlar—Outlaw Warlords were shooting down zeppelins for the plunder. The Moby Dick could lose up to five of her sixteen air-cells, but any more would send us crashing out of the sky.
Wren scuttled back down the ladder, shouldered my backpack, and then started up. She turned around, chin on her shoulder. “Come on, scaredy cat.”
Sure, she could make fun of me. She had been in the circus while I was learning the mathematics of micro-circuitry.
I shook my head.
Wren laughed. “Gonna have to grab a hold of your shakti to get up here. No other way.”
I took off my gloves and stuffed them in my coat. I put a hand on a plastic rung.
“Help me, Mama,” I said, and I got choked up. She couldn’t help me no more, not on this side of the grave. She wouldn’t hold me again. Not ever again.
A foot up, a hand up, and the rope ladder swayed with the zeppelin bobbing and tugging, as if the whole thing was trying to shake me off.
Wren looked down at me from between her boots where she sat in the hatch. “You can do it, Cavvy. Keep your eyes on me and do one rung at a time.”
My arms shook, my legs trembled, my heart quaked. One rung at a time, but I was exhausted in minutes. We did calisthenics at the Academy, but shame on me, I would generally ditch them to watch video with Anju. I figured growing up in the Juniper, working day and night, would’ve been calisthenics enough for a lifetime.
The Moby Dick listed to the side and I swung out past the barn until only dirt was below me. If I fell, I’d plummet all the way to the ground.
No help for it. I scrambled up the ladder until Wren could haul me into the zeppelin. I lay on the floor, wheezing but alive.
I was in another world. And if Sketchy was odd, I wondered what flavor of crazy I would find in her partner Tech.
(ii)
Still gasping on the floor, trying to get my strength, I looked around.
I had studied zeppelins in school in my free time ’cause they weren’t part of the normal curriculum. Besides, zeppelins and other Juniper-type technology felt like forbidden knowledge. Mama had made it clear, I was sent to the Academy to learn about electronics and all types of Yankee engineering. I was going to be a full-fledged electrical engineer once the Juniper got its buzz back. That had been Mama’s master plan, but it had failed miserably. The electricity stayed gone, and no amount of cable shielding or wireless broadcasting could withstand the flood basalt’s electromagnetic field. Maggie Jankowski herself had studied the problem. Loved that Maggie Jankowski. I wrote her letters. Of course, she never answered. She was Maggie Jankowski, and I was just some Juniper girl.
Wren put out a hand. “Can I help you up, Princess?”
“Don’t call me that,” I said and got to my feet. It took a bit to get used to the gentle sway of the floor, but of course, Wren moved around like she’d been born flying. Not me. I fell against her a lot, but she kept me upright, sighing and smirking as she did it.
Inside, the Moby Dick was one big open space, a huge cargo bay. The floor, the walls, the beams crisscrossing the ceiling, all were made of shiny gray Neofiber. Engineers synthesized Neofiber from recycled plastics, and it had become the material of choice for building pretty much everything. Lightweight, flexible, its chemical bonds rivaled titanium for their strength.
Between the ceiling beams, the air-cell compartments held big translucent bladders full of thelium, keeping the whole thing afloat.
Clearly, the Moby Dick was made for work, not comfort. All along the walls, nylon straps lashed down empty wooden pallets. Big, plastic two-hundred-liter barrels were also tied down, lining both sides of the bay. There must have been nearly
a hundred and fifty thousand liters of water all told. Not sure why they had so much water, unless they used it as ballast, but that would be a whole lot of weight. Thanks to the thelium, though, the Moby could handle it.
On our left lay the cockpit. The bulletproof glass windshield lit up the chairs and hammocks. Light also poured in from the portholes all along the cargo bay.
On our right, at the back of the zeppelin, a slender figure worked on an array of gray machinery and pipes next to the enormous rear cargo door, which dropped down to create a ramp for loading and unloading. They had extensions for the ramp, so if they couldn’t get to an airship port, they could load directly from the ground.
“Let’s go say hello,” I said.
Wren shrugged, but followed me. The open bay had the musty smell of both coal and Old Growth dust.
The woman at the engine turned. Her face was clean, though dust, grease, and engine puke blackened her overalls. Striking green eyes took us in, quite a contrast to her thick, dark eyelashes and inky dark hair. She was a looker. Unlike Sketchy, who was trying to be New Morality, the woman wore tight overalls, and that made me uncomfortable. As did the ink of tattoos on her neck, fingers, and hands. Only rough, rebel girls had tattoos.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Cavatica Weller. This is my sister Wren.”
The beautiful woman ignored Wren and addressed me. “I’m Tech. Where’s Sketchy?”
“Getting money from Miss Srikrishna,” I answered.
Tech turned and cranked a wheel. Thelium spit and hissed as it filled the air-cells above us. “Sorry, but I don’t talk to passengers. Go wait up front.”
Then I saw it. I stuttered and pointed at an Eterna battery bolted into a housing on the floor. Underneath the transparent plastic, I could see the coils, what Maggie Jankowski dubbed the noodles. “Hey … hey … that’s a Kung Pao. Dang, Wren, do you know what that means?”
Wren yawned. “Big deal. It don’t work here.”
Tech burst in. “You’re right, it doesn’t work in the Juniper, but Cavatica should be impressed. They are monstrously expensive and powerful. You know that train you rode in on? It’s powered by a Kung Pao—all that weight, hundreds of thousands of kilos, pulled by one battery. Outside of the Juniper, our battery only spins the propellers and keeps the lights on. But it can spin the propeller faster than any traditional engine.”
“How’d you get it?” I asked, totally forgetting that Tech didn’t talk to passengers.
Tech, though, talked to me. “Sketchy got it from someone, somehow. I don’t know. She gave it to me, and I fixed it into place. When the Kung Pao works, we can get up to 200 kilometers an hour. We have the fastest Jonesy in the world.”
“Dang.” I stood there nodding, loving all the tech talk. “And with the Kung Pao, since you don’t use it much, you wouldn’t have to recharge it for years and years. Which means it’s also more cost effective.”
Tech smiled at me as she brushed her hair behind her ear, careful not to get any muck on her face. “Yeah, you got it. Would you like to see the steam engine?”
“Sure,” I said, “but I like batteries a whole lot more.”
Wren had no interest in us, so she wandered off.
Meanwhile, Tech showed me the steam engine, made from a titanium alloy, making the engine far lighter and more efficient than what people traditionally used. Even twentieth century zeppelins didn’t have the lightweight tech the Moby Dick had. Everything was compact, from the firebox in the boiler to the piping that channeled the steam to the pistons. Her Old Growth closet was fully stocked, which must’ve cost a fortune.
Again, most likely, Mama had paid that particular bill.
Tech pointed at a small door next to the coal closet. “That’s access to the lookouts. We have two, one on top next to the top fin, the crow’s nest, and then one below, at the very bottom of the hull, the crow’s basement. They’re connected by a ladder. We have auxiliary lines from the steam engine to heat those places and to power the gun turrets. Both have MXP-X3 belt feed machineguns.”
“Triple-Xs,” I said, nodding. “That’s a whole lotta firepower.”
“You bet it is,” Tech said. “Peeperz, our lookout, is always bugging us to let him fire one, but we wouldn’t want him hurt in a firefight, and gunners are notoriously easy targets. We have a weapons locker, and it’s always been enough.” She pointed at a wide cabinet on the right side of the bay near the back cargo door.
Weapons locker. I didn’t have the nerve to ask about any of her previous battles.
Tech finished off the tour by letting me crank the wheel to shut off the flow of thelium.
“So, it all works,” she said, “but the switching is completely julie-rigged, so it can be tricky, and with just a crew of three, I keep busy. And interestingly enough, a lot of times we just ride the wind. Sketchy is good with the weather.”
“Aren’t you always telling her she’s wrong?” I asked.
Tech shrugged, almost smiling. “Sketchy is pretty much perfect. I have to tease her about something.”
That struck me as odd ’cause the woman I met looked crazy and talked even crazier. But Tech knew her stuff, and Wren had been nice to Sketchy, so maybe she was special.
I found Wren in the cockpit, sitting in the captain’s chair in front of four other empty seats. Nearby were hammocks swaying over footlockers secured to the floor next to a little refrigerator. A door led to the bathroom.
Wren’s fingers played idly across the steering yoke, the knobs, and the levers. All designed to work with or without electricity.
Wasn’t long before Sketchy climbed up the ladder and marched over to Wren and me. “Okay, Weller girls, let’s get on with it. Weather in the Juniper is a real puzzle, and it could snow on us, or rain on us, or both, or neither, or it could be real nice and sunshiny. Though today, we’re gonna have to fight the wind a bit, so it’ll slow us down. I’ll get you in by tomorrow, I promise. As long as that goddamn June Mai Angel doesn’t shoot us down.”
I furrowed my brow at Sketchy’s blasphemy, but I didn’t say anything.
Wren and I sat in the two backseats by the hammocks.
Sketchy and Tech talked through voice tubes, and it wasn’t long before the mooring cables were unhitched and cranked up. We drifted off on the wind while Tech stoked the firebox, until the steam engine started pumping the pistons. The rhythmic womp-womp of the engine wasn’t as loud as I thought it’d be. We floated away from the Srikrishna dairy farm as easy and quiet as you please, like we were just another puffy cloud.
Every so often, the Moby Dick would shudder a bit when a gust of wind hit us, and my stomach would lurch. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be inside the Moby Dick during a windstorm. Prolly like being inside a pillow during a pillow fight.
“You wanna tell me about Mama’s money problems?” I asked Wren, to make conversation, hoping it would take my mind off my uneasiness.
She shrugged. “No. Sharlotte didn’t think I could keep her secret, and so that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Besides, her letter was short and sweet. Well, the parts where she wasn’t threatening me. All you need to know is that the ranch is in trouble, and Sharlotte wants you home to help her save it.”
“Can I read the letter?” I asked.
“Nope. Burned it.”
That brought a sigh out of me. “Okay, you wanna tell me about your time in the circus?”
Another annoyed shrug. “No. You got your education, and I got mine. Despite what Mama wanted.”
I didn’t know what to say after that. I figured Wren had been hurt when Mama had chosen me to go away for school. But I was the logical choice. Mama knew she couldn’t run the ranch without Sharlotte, and, Wren being Wren, she couldn’t have sat still long enough to learn anything.
Wren left home right after I went away to school. And never went back. I heard all about that last, epic battle between Mama and Wren in a letter from Sharlotte. Happened on the day before Wren’s seventeenth birthday
, right before Thanksgiving. Mama and Wren had almost thrown punches, which didn’t make sense since Mama never beat Wren. Sharlotte did, had to, but not Mama.
I couldn’t stand the awkward silence, so I talked, trying to make it right somehow. “I sure cried when Mama told me I’d be going away for school. I loved the ranch.”
“Didn’t sound like it back at the Academy.” Wren said it like talking to me was compounding her boredom exponentially. “You said you never wanted to go back to the Juniper.”
“Well, I got used to the civilization,” I murmured.
“Wasn’t in Mama’s plan. You were to learn electricity and come back and make us all rich once the buzz came back. You were gonna be the big hero, you knew that, right? Or did she keep it secret?”
“No, I knew. But with the power still gone, maybe Mama would’ve understood if I had wanted to stay in Cleveland.”
Wren grunted a laugh. “For being so smart, you sure are stupid. Mama would’ve drug you home by the ear. Not that she would’ve needed to. Not you, not Miss Perfect. She’d only have to holler from the front porch, and even in Ohio, you’d have come running back.”
“And what about you?” I shot back. “Mama could’ve had a basement full of beer kegs and all the money in the world, and you still would’ve run off to do God knows what in Amarillo.”
“What’s that old song? God don’t live in Texas anymore.” Wren smiled. “And you get used to the Devil’s kisses. You want to hear about that particular part of my education? I learned a lot being a party girl. Sure I did.”
My stomach twisted, sick. I never should’ve tried to talk to Wren. It was a losing proposition, always.
She wanted to fight more. “You look up our relatives in Cleveland? No, of course not. ’Cause’ Mama never told you where to look, never even told us her maiden name. We were just Charles Weller’s daughters and that was it. Y’all think Mama and Sharlotte were the same, but no, Mama was like me when she was young. Maybe too much, since she’d rather fight Outlaw Warlords in the Juniper than deal with her family in the World. Ha, and what did Abigail do when she first started salvaging? God knows what, but I bet you Mama knew about kissing the Devil. Prolly as much as I do.”
Dandelion Iron Book One Page 7