Cuttlefish

by Dave Freer

  The quartermaster pulled a face. “It's really an outdated weapon. But I'll show you a few passes if you like. We should teach everyone. The Japanese still make a big thing of it.” He patted Tim on the back. “At least you have the common sense to admit that you know nothing. That takes guts in a youngster. You come back when you knock off. I'll give you a few lessons.”

  Tim—as the junior cabin boy—also got the job of cleaning out the now-empty brig. It was not exactly something that looked as if it took a lot of cleaning. There were metal shelves for sleeping on, with folded-over edges, and the floor, walls, bars, and a metal roof. But the prisoners had been muddy, and had obviously collapsed onto those shelf-bunks. Tim got a bucket and set to cleaning it. One of the men had plainly rubbed the mud off his boots on the edge of the lower shelf-bunk. It had dried hard—as hard as cement, it seemed. Tim tried to rub it off, and then to chip it off with his fingers, and then, grabbing the folded edge, he tried his thumb.

  Only there was something sharp under there. It cut his finger. He sucked it. It was a nasty cut, just on the thumb-tip. He bent down and felt—very cautiously—to see what on earth it could be that had cut him.

  It was a knife. A long, thin-bladed, double-edged dagger, with a horn hilt. The blade must have been fully eight inches long, but it was narrow enough to be hidden on the inside lip of the shelf-bunk's fold.

  “What are you doing with that, boy?” said the mate in his gruff Dutch accent, from behind him. Tim had trouble understanding him, sometimes. Even when he hadn't made him jump out of his skin.

  “I just found it, sir. Under this shelf,” he explained.

  “Ah!” said Mate Werner. “I'd better take that to the captain. Well found! Those Hussars must have had it hidden about them.”

  The mate took the knife, slipped it into a pouch he was carrying. “Well, get on with it, boy. And you do not mention this to anyone. We don't want to cause alarm.”

  Tim, without meaning to, did tell. His next job took him to the galley, to wash pots and dishes. Cookie liked his dishwater almost scalding hot. Tim stuck his hands into it. “Ouch!”

  “What's wrong, Tim-o?” asked the cook.

  “The water's just a bit hot on this cut,” he said, holding it up.

  Cookie inspected it. “Nasty! You was trying to shave your hands?” he asked, laughing.

  “No, I was cleaning the brig, and I found this big knife under the bunk…um. I wasn't supposed to tell anyone.”

  “No worries. I don't dob in me mates,” said the cook, giving him a cheerful slap on the back. “Wonder how long that's been in there for! Doing time for assault, maybe.”

  “Um. The mate reckoned it must have come off those Hussars.”

  Cookie shook his head. “Couldn't be. Mickey and me searched them. Stripped them right out of their boots. Must have been there a while.”

  “Oh,” said Tim. He'd worked with Cookie. If Cookie did anything it was well done. Tim was sure Cookie wouldn't have missed a razor blade, let alone that knife.

  Tim couldn't see any way of telling the mate without getting either himself or Cookie into trouble. So he didn't.

  It was good to be away from the dangers they'd encountered. The submarine, out of sight of land, ran mostly on her sails—even during the daylight hours. The crow's nest had two watchers on duty then. Tim drew his first watch up there. Banks and Elman were aloft, and Tim had pulled his first duty with Jonas.

  Still near the base of the rigging, barely thirty feet above the deck, Tim looked down. His hands clawed tight to the ratline. He froze. He wasn't used to being this high, and…and…and open.

  Unfortunately, Jonas chose to look down just then. “Get a move on, you lazy little scut!”

  “I…I'm scared.” The moment he'd said it, Tim knew he shouldn't have.

  “Oh poor likkle baby. Darkie, you should love going up here. You've nearly gone white.”

  Tim gritted his teeth and climbed another step. Standard, Jonas, and Banks had been at this for a while now. They caught it from each other.

  “Want me to come hold your hand, diddums?” said Jonas, waving one at him. “Not so brave up here where the men are, are you?”

  Tim climbed. Somehow he climbed. Not looking down. Sweating. Clinging to each ratline with all his strength. Eventually he got near the crow's nest. Banks came scrambling down past him. Gave him a shove—not hard enough to push him off. Tim screamed. Couldn't help it. He'd faithfully clipped and unclipped his safety all the way up, which most of the men didn't bother with, unless it was bad weather aloft.

  “Scaredy-cat!” said Banks, not even bothering to clip in, descending with casual ease.

  It was a four-hour stint of mockery. Tim barely noticed. He was just scared of the climb back down. He was not much of a watchman, but fortunately there was nothing to see.

  When their relief came up, Tim was barely able to talk. It was Nicholl and Sampson come up to relieve, and Jonas greeted them with, “Nothing to see except that Darkie's gone white with fear.”

  “First time aloft?” asked the grizzled Sampson with a smile. “Used to frighten me witless when I first come on the boat.”

  “Seem to recall you had a bit of funk yourself, Jonas,” said Nicholl. “Show you something, kid.” He was clipped onto the safety loop on the edge of the nest. And he stepped backward. Hung on his belt, and then pulled himself in again. “You're relieved, Jonas. Get down. Kid. You stay here a minute. Sammy and I want to sort you out.”

  Tim did, nervously. But it was less terrifying than going down. There wasn't much room up there, so both of the new lookouts hung onto the outside of the basket. “Tim—that's your name, right?”

  Tim nodded.

  “Reach up as high as you can; there is a high loop for clipping in. Clip it. Do it in two stages so you're never unclipped.”

  Tim decided that no matter what they did to him, he was not going any higher. The flagpole terminated some fifteen feet above his head. Not going to do it! But he clipped in, cautiously.

  “Right, young 'un,” said Sampson. “Now if I ever sees you unclipped up here again, I'll clip both your earholes so your head will ring like a bell for a week.”

  “Jonas said we didn't up here,” said Tim, gratefully.

  “He's an idjit,” said the older submariner. “Now, I wants you to lean your weight onto the belt. Then hold onto it, both hands. Then take your feet off the floor. You can't fall out of the nest, and me and Nicholl are blocking the gap.”

  Gritting his teeth, but reassured by the rough kindness, Tim did it. Hung by his waist, as the mast swayed.

  “It'll hold you, see. You see you allus have one clip on a shroud line, not on the ratlines, and you can't fall.”

  “Take it slow going down. Don't look down. Follow a shroud line with your foot until you hit the ratline,” said Nicholl. “You'll be fine.”

  It took him a long time to get down, but he got down, which for the last three hours he'd not been able to believe he could.

  With the submarine up on her hydrofoil outriggers, and under as many of the gossamer sails as the sailing master could find space for, the Cuttlefish moved at a goodly speed across the water. There was a fair amount of sail-work to be done on some days. On others…well, you had to be ready, but Tim found himself with—for the first time in his life—time when he wasn't out foraging for rats, or working at something. A lot of that time was spent on polishing the brass-work, and other make-work jobs that the officers invented to keep the crew busy and the ship looking polished.

  It was also the time that cabin boys and junior submariners were supposed to put in extra work toward their certificates. Tim had never really thought about “what he wanted to be” until she had put the idea there. Now he thought about it quite a lot.

  Clara went up on deck—many of the submariners were there, when they were off shift, and the ship was sailing on her outriggers, which fascinated her. They fitted flush against the submarine when she was diving or riding with her de
ck just on the surface, making the submarine more the shape of an ordinary ship. But for fast sailing the thin metal false hulls were pushed out and downward on curving arms, making hydrofoils filled with inflated rubber pontoons, and these allowed the sub to skim above the water. Submerged and on her electric motor the submarine was very slow, barely able to do five knots and only for a very short time. On the big coal-dust burning Stirling engines, she could, the chief engineer had proudly told her, do fourteen knots, on the snorkel. Running on the big gossamer sails, all the masts erected, “We don't rightly know, missy,” said the sail-master. “It'd depend on the wind. But faster than his smelly coal-fired engines anyway. A good bit faster.”

  “Ah, but my engines don't need the wind to be blowing,” said the engineer, cheerfully, leading two of his men out on a swinging plank-seat to check the thin metal of the false hull for damage.

  “And the wind replenishes itself, not like your coal dust,” said the sail-master, going forward to check on the stunsails. It was plainly a well-exercised argument between two old friends.

  Clara spotted Tim, nearby, leaning against the cowling, nose in a book, forehead wrinkled in concentration.

  “You've got books!” she exclaimed. She'd missed reading so badly that it hurt.

  He looked up. Blinked. “Borrowed it. It's navigation. There is quite a lot maths in it, and I never learned that much.”

  “I was quite good at maths at school,” said Clara, carefully not saying “top of the class.” She'd learned that being good at maths came a close second to having a divorced mother and a father in prison, for making you unpopular with people who weren't.

  “There's not that much formal schooling in the tunnels,” he admitted. “I mean…um. Anyway. Could you show me how to do this equation? I don't understand it at all. And I need to be able to do it if I'm to pass my junior submariner's ticket. And I want to.”

  “Surely,” said Clara. It was rather a novelty to be asked to explain maths. It was a novelty too to have someone who wanted to understand. “So: what's a submariner's ticket?” she asked, once she'd explained how to do the equation. He was quick enough to learn, even if he didn't know all the basics; but more importantly than being quick, he was trying hard. He desperately wanted to understand, and she could see it in the intense concentration on his face. “Like tram tickets, but only for underwater stations? Do you have conductors waiting to come and clip our tickets?”

  He grinned. “Well, we use underwater stations in London Town.” And that thought plainly stirred up worries. “Wish I knew about my mam.”

  “You haven't heard anything?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Not really easy to find out. Sparky says they're getting radio messages from the Underpeople again. But that's official stuff. I'd love to hear her voice.”

  She was silent for a bit, not knowing quite what to say. “Same with my dad,” she said, eventually. “I…I haven't spoken to him for nearly a year.” She felt as if she might burst into tears again.

  “Let's talk about the ticket instead,” he said, his voice a little gruff. “See, it's a certificate. You have to get them to stay on the boat, and to move up. I'm only a cabin boy now. And…and if I want to go on, um, you know, to be something more than just an ordinary ranker or submariner…I have to pass these.”

  “Oh. Really?”

  “It's not like the top-side, where you get born to your situation,” he said with an edge to his voice, and she realized that this too was dangerous ground for some reason. “Or that's what my mam told me. In the submarines, if you can learn, you can be anything. Mr. Amos says I have a chance to go for diver or bridge-hand. If I work hard.”

  Clara felt slightly guilty. “I didn't know. I thought you sort of learned it on the job,” she said. She'd always known that she'd go to university. Not that everyone did. Lots of girls just grew up and got married. But her mother and her grandmother had. She was expected to, too. “But of course you can. You could do anything,” she said, trying the smile that worked so well on Lieutenant Willis.

  It was wasted on him, though. He was obviously seeing something else in his mind's eye, not her. He didn't even seem to notice. Instead, he answered, “I couldn't be a soldier. I thought…I might join one of the rebel companies and well, pay the Imperials back for blowing up my home,” he said fiercely, as if his home hadn't been a pumped-out damp hole under London's canals. “But when I shot that man up that hill…” He shuddered.

  “You shot someone? I heard the bang. But the mate said he didn't think it was a shot,” said Clara.

  Tim managed a bit of a smile. “Let's rather say I tried to shoot him. I had to. And I missed. He couldn't have been ten feet away. And then I tried to hit him with the cutlass. Only I messed that up too. But it all came out all right. Only the one Hussar that Smitty hit with a rock really got hurt. I didn't like the blood much. So I've thought about it and decided that I'd…I'd try and get my ticket, as a bridge-hand. See, we all have to study, and I had thought that I'd try for something easier. Just get my basic submariner's ticket. But now I'm going to try for the bridge. If I can.”

  Clara blinked and realised that she hadn't really quite judged him right. She'd thought he was just not scared of anything. Brave. Now…she suddenly realised that he was scared. He really was alone too, far more so than she was. When she'd thought he was some kind of brave hero…he'd just been doing what he thought had to be done, even though he was terrified. And that was braver still than not being scared of anything. She'd have liked to hug him…but, well. No. Not right now. Encouragement and support though, yes. “Indeed, you're going to! Mr. Amos is quite right. Uh. Who is he?”

  He seemed to find that funny. “The quartermaster. He's also the armourer. He's a good 'un. He gives some lessons, and he also is part of the examining board. They say he's very strict, though. Doesn't play favourites.”

  She placed the man he was talking about now. Except for the two divers, whose work took a lot of very heavy lifting, most of the submariners were not large, and Mr. Amos was smaller than most. He had a shiny bald head and sharp little blue eyes. “He gave me my deck kit. So when does he teach you?”

  “There's a roster next to the mess door. He really was a teacher once, like my mam. But she taught little children, and he taught sixth form. Long ago. He got into trouble for teaching a part of history he wasn't supposed to…and well, he ended up underground, and he's been on the submarines for years. He's been everywhere. America. Japan. Australia.”

  Clara had not really realised just how far and wide the submarines travelled and traded. She said so.

  “Oh yes,” said Tim. “Mr. Amos says the British Empire would probably fall without them.”

  “What? I mean they're trying to sink and kill us,” said Clara.

  “Yes. I didn't understand it either. But he says all sorts of goods that come from countries the British Empire is at war with, but can't do without stuff from, arrive through us. He says we're keeping alive something we want to kill. But if we don't keep the Empire supplied we'll starve the Underpeople. He talks like that. I never really understand half of it. He says it's the real history we ought to learn. He likes history.”

  The quartermaster sounded just the person to ask about all the parts of her own life she couldn't really ask her mother about. Like just what her dad had been doing. And why.

  So: later she looked at the roster, and…went to talk to the captain. She overheard what the other two cabin boys said about her looking at it. And she'd overheard the first mate earlier. That was life on the submarine. It was a small and crowded place. You couldn't help overhearing things.…

  “Captain,” she said, seriously. “I may be being a disruptive influence on the discipline of the crew.”

  Captain Malkis looked at her from under lowered brows, with a small smile hiding itself under his moustache. “Now who are you quoting at me, Miss Calland?”

  “It'd be just something I heard,” she said airily. The captain was
rather like her dad had been. You could tease him. The mate was much more serious. “The younger men are not working towards their qualifying examinations. And I am missing my schooling.”

  “Ah.” The captain nodded. “I see where this is leading. Mr. Amos is complaining about the lack of attendance again. Don't worry.…”

  This was going in the opposite direction from which Clara had intended. “Oh no. It wasn't Mr. Amos. Never. I was thinking, though, would it be a good thing if you were to order that I attend the classes for the junior ratings? As an example.”

  Captain Malkis laughed and shook his head. “It would probably distract them even more. And make the mate even more sour about having women aboard. He'll get used to it. He's an old-style submariner. From Holland. They're very traditional over there.”

  Clara gave up on being tricky. The mate was always very polite to her. She'd thought at first he didn't like her, but he seemed to be going out of his way to be nice to her now. It showed you just never knew what people said behind your back. Or maybe it was the captain remembering an early part of the voyage. “Well, actually, Captain Malkis, I'd like to do it. I'm bored too. And we've at least a week before we get to America. That's a long time for me, but not long enough to disrupt anyone's studies. Please?”

  Honesty obviously helped. “True. I can't really order you to do it, though. Those sort of orders need to come from your mother,” said the captain.

  “She's so busy, she won't notice,” said Clara. “And I might learn something useful.”

  The captain shrugged. “It's barely another eight days. You may as well.”

  She gave him her best curtsey. It was a ladylike thing to do, and so her mother had insisted that she'd learn to do it gracefully. She'd been shocked to find that her mother, having made her learn, didn't actually approve of it. Parents were so hard to understand. “A woman can be anything she wants to be, but in this world you sometimes have to curtsey to get there. One day that'll change too.” What was that supposed to mean?