by Dave Freer
Clara packed. She didn't have very much, and she decided that the breeches, sou'wester, and oilskin she'd been issued for the deck should maybe go back to the quartermaster. Well, it was a good excuse to visit Mr. Amos, anyway. And she'd stop by at the engine room and say good-bye. And thank you. The engine room was noisy and smelled of coal…but it was friendly. Then she'd visit the mess, before a final stop at the bridge. The captain was on duty now, so that was fine. When the mate was on, it was a little more awkward. He was stricter.
And then…as she got to the bridge, the “all quiet” light came on again. She was about to tiptoe away when the captain saw her. “Just being careful,” he said, quietly. “One of the hydrophone men thought he picked up a ship's engine sound—a large vessel. The remains of the Islands make it possible to hide a ship's superstructure here. So we're going to send a tick-tock ahead. We've got one of the new long-range ones on board for testing.”
“A tick-tock?” she said, pretending she didn't know. It gave her an excuse to remain there.
“A clockwork device that produces submarine engine noises. It's in a sort of torpedo. We use them as decoys, to fool the drop-miners.”
Clara watched it being armed and then loaded into the escape hatch. She was still uncomfortable looking at the escape hatch. The mate came along, looking at his pocket watch. “Captain. We will be late for the rendezvous.”
“I've had Sparks send them a coded signal that we're on our way,” said the captain. “Better safe than sorry, Hans. We'll wait and watch for a little.”
So they did. The little tick-tock had a swim range of nearly four miles, which would see it very close to the place they were due to meet the Americans.
”I've just heard engine sounds again, Captain,” said the hydrophone operator, urgently. “Big steam turbines. Lots.”
Sparks said, “They say we can surface and transfer the passengers, Captain.”
“Prepare to dive, and complete silence,” said the captain. “It's a trap.”
“They must be blowing up half the ocean,” muttered Tim to himself, just very glad that he—and the submarine—were some miles distant, and moving further away, on the electric motors.
The captain was very good at dealing with Mother when she was on the edge of panic. He didn't, like Daddy had, tell her to stop being hysterical. Clara could still remember that row, even if she had never known quite what it was about. She could guess, now. Instead the captain nodded sympathetically and said, “Quite so, Dr. Calland. That is why we're being careful. There is a blue hole—a deep limestone sinkhole where we will be invisible to aerial observers too—which we are going to lie up in.”
“More waiting, while we don't know what is happening,” said Mother.
“We'll send a wire to the surface, ma'am, and once we've anchored down there, it's possible we can put someone on the surface with a field telephone, as an observer. There is a little atoll attached to it,” said the captain, calmly.
Soon the submarine settled, and even the electric motors were still. Clara went up to the bridge with her mother a little later. The captain didn't look pleased to see them. He pointed at the “all quiet” light. And wrote on his pad: “Ships searching. Find-and-destroy order. Return to cabin. Quiet.”
He didn't quite write “And stay there,” but he might as well have.
They'd been hunted before, but not by this number of warships. Tim knew that only the captain's wariness had saved them this time. And the agony of quiet waiting drew on and on. The boat could only stay down just so long. Sooner or later, they would have to breathe. It was hard to remain patient and remain calm, when waiting was all they could do. Each minute felt very long.
Eventually, the boat rose. Ballast and vanes only—a dangerous process, Tim knew. Forward movement helped stability a lot, but plainly the captain wasn't risking any engine noises at all. Still, he could soon feel the air quality improve as the ship hung at snuiver-depth. They must be confident enough about the distance of the nearest listener, because Tim could feel the faint thrub-thrub of the small compressors running off the batteries, filling the tanks. And Big Eddie came in to their cabin and changed into his diving gear. Not a word spoken, of course, but still, something was happening.
More hours passed. Eventually, Tim reported for duty again. He was assigned to the engine room, where the chief engineer and his mechanics were stripping out the liners and feed-pipes of one of the engines. It was not totally silent work, and Tim was slightly surprised to see it being done right now. Of course it was something of an ongoing process, with compressors or feeders being partially stripped, and having their ceramic liners replaced. Coal—even desulphured, washed, dried, and powdered—was still abrasive stuff, as the mechanics had told him.
And then Tim noticed that the “all quiet” light no longer burned. “What's happening?” he asked one of the mechs. The man was one of Big Eddie's friends, so Tim knew him slightly.
“The chief reckons we're going to need to run, and the engines are getting near rebuild. So the captain said we could use the waiting time to do what we can. This one's not running at more than seventy percent load right now.”
“Oh. Where is Big Eddie? Do you know? He hasn't come back,” asked Tim.
“Sitting under a palm tree up there with a field telephone. Swearing about the ants. And the scorpions. And the heat. And the flies,” said the mechanic with a grin. “He's counted eighteen ships up there searching for us. And three airships, and a bunch of the ships have towed blimps too. Says he's seen a couple of American vessels too, off in the distance.”
“Glad it's not me sitting out there.” Tim knew, all too well, from the Faroes, that if they had to cut and run, they might have to leave the diver behind. That was almost more worrying than the eighteen ships.
The mechanic grinned and handed him a set of rods. “Polish those. It's a good thing they sent Eddie. Imagine if it been a little 'un like you. The ants would have eaten you all up by now.”
“I taste horrible,” said Tim, taking a rag and polishing. “Really. Ask any of the eels back in the tunnels.”
They worked on. And the captain called the chief up to the bridge. A little later he was back. “All right. Get a move on there. The engines need to be back up and ready to run in an hour. We're picking up the diver and running just after dusk.”
At least they'd be picking up Big Eddie first. Tim hadn't liked the idea of leaving him to the ants.
They used the electric motors to start their flight with, but within a few minutes had switched over to the Stirlings, running on the surface as fast as possible. The roll of the sub told Tim exactly what the captain was doing and why: the weather must have deteriorated. It would make the chase a little harder.
Tim found himself mopping the gangways. Work went on, despite the chase. Standard came bouncing from side to side down the passage and nearly knocked Tim into his own bucket. “Oi! Mind what you're doing!” yelled Tim.
The other cabin boy took a wild swing at him. “Need the heads, Darkie,” he gasped, as Tim fended him off with a mop handle.
Tim let him go. There was something nastily satisfying in seeing that piece of work in such misery. He'd have kept him there for the “Darkie” if it hadn't been likely he'd have had to clean up the result. The rough sea would stop them being followed easily. “Got to be something good about it,” he said, trying to control the bucket of slops. He'd be cleaning both it and his own sick up at this rate. The ship smelled of vomit, and by now, none of them were green hands that got seasick easily. It was that nasty. But he'd outlasted Standard.
“Good about what?” asked Clara, coming up behind him.
Unlike his earlier encounter, Tim was delighted to see her, even if he did, in his heart of hearts, know that the Royal Navy was hunting the submarine because of her and her mother. He'd…got used to seeing her every day. Now the pursuit had cancelled all thought of classes, and he had been working down in the officers' cabins mostly, where she was not sup
posed to go. “The roll. The weather. We can make a faster speed on the surface, so the captain is staying there. But I can hardly stay upright.”
“I know about that, all right,” she said feelingly, bracing herself on the walls. “Mother is feeling sick. So will this get us away?”
“Well, no,” admitted Tim, armed with the answers to questions he himself had asked other submariners, not long before. “The trouble is, quite a lot of the ships chasing us are faster than us, underwater.”
“Not much use running then, is there?” said Clara, pulling a face.
“Except we have a shallower draught and newer charts. The submariners go on updating and surveying all the time, and the last Admiralty survey here was 1928, before the Melt. If they chase us into the shallows they'll sink. We can move in less than ten foot of water if we have to, see. Lots and lots of reefs here that we can cross, they have to go around, and they have to feel their way around, carefully, because they have no charts showing depths for the areas that were flooded. So it's sort of like cat and mouse, I suppose. We're the mouse.”
“I wish there was a dog to chase the cats,” said Clara. “Maybe the American Navy.”
“They'd probably eat mice like us too,” said Tim.
The Cuttlefish ran and dived and hid in holes. And shuddered with drop-mines dropped near her, for the next three days and nights. The brief stormy weather had got her across to the bays and swamps of Cuba—which was even closer to trouble, as far as Clara could work out. The island was under British Imperial occupation to protect the nickel mines there.
But now the air in the submarine stank. A different stink to its usual smell that she'd got so used to. Clara said so to Lieutenant Willis.
“It's a good stink,” the lieutenant told her with a grin through his moustache. “It's fresh air, even if it does smell a bit like rotten eggs and mud.”
“I suppose my nose has got used to coal smoke and people smells. Swamp mud isn't my idea of perfume,” said Clara, waving her hand in front of her nose.
The Cuttlefish had gone to ground in the Zapata swamps, and lay covered in camouflage—nets full of water lilies and reeds were draped over her, to hide her from the airships prowling the sky overhead. There were probably patrols of marines cursing and splashing around too, but the swamp was a vast network of thousands and thousands of channels, many of which had been scoured relatively deep by the floods that had come with the Great Melt and the hurricanes that had resulted from that. Now the swamps were the refuge of rebels…and mosquitoes and crocodiles.
The lieutenant chuckled. “We could bottle it and sell it back in Blighty. There is not so much coal smoke in it as back there. Just a lovely mud smell. And we should be well supplied with that by tonight.”
“Oh? Why?” asked Clara, quick to catch the hint of excitement.
“Some of the crew are going with the locals to Australia,” he said, trying to keep a straight face. “And it's quite muddy.”
Clara could play this game. “I thought Australia was quite dry, and quite far from here,” she said airily. “Did you find a shortcut through the middle of the earth?”
He grinned. “Well, actually we're going to raid the railway coaling depot at a little sugar mill called Australia, of all things. We're getting low on coal again. We've got a treadmill-crusher in the engine room, and we will just have to turn lumps of coal into fuel ourselves.”
“I volunteer,” said Clara.
He shook his head. “Not likely. Well, maybe for the treadmill!”
“I can speak Spanish,” said Clara.
“Really?” He was impressed.
“Um. No. Well, a few words,” admitted Clara, truthfully. She had—like her entire class—memorised the Spanish heroine's lines in the biorama they'd all seen, because their teacher wouldn't translate them. It had something to do with the romantic scene, and had made the teacher blush furiously.
“Like sangria, paella, and toreador?” the lieutenant said with a laugh. “Very useful I am sure those would be, but no.”
Tim found watch duties in the swamp warm, and just as full of the insects Big Eddie had complained of on the little island. At least he didn't suffer from sunburn the way some of the crew did. There weren't many advantages to a West Indian father, growing up in the tunnels, but here a darker skin was an advantage. Not that he could blame his father for leaving the Caribbean, even if it had been slightly cooler back before the Melt. But someone had to do the job, so Tim stared intently out of his watch place. The little hide was made of dead branches draped with netting filled with a mixture of reed tops and green twigs—which all had to be replaced every night, so they looked like all the rest from the air. Not that he could see a lot from the observation post: a channel of dark water, clattering reeds, a corner of one of the little lagoons.
They were just farther inland from where the swamp changed from mangroves to an endless sea of reeds and patches of trees, and the water became mostly fresh. It would seem that the Royal Navy were sure that they'd be in the mangroves, which made sense really, as there was more cover, so it was just as well they weren't. The only other thing Tim could see from his little floating hide was the sky—in which an airship was slowly crisscrossing the swamps. It had flown right over the Cuttlefish earlier, but had only drifted on past. No drop-mines, no flares…which didn't mean it hadn't spotted her, and that boats weren't closing in on them.
“You're a dozy beggar, Barnabas,” said Jonas, scornfully, coming up behind him. “If I'd been a Royal Navy marine I could have cut your throat.”
Tim was developing an increasing dislike for Junior Submariner Jonas. But he kept his temper. And it was partly true—he'd been staring at the water, not concentrating on sounds. Nothing could come through the reeds without making a huge racket anyway. “Good thing you weren't, then. What's up? I'm not due for relief yet.”
“All of the crew for tonight's coaling trip get to rest now. That means you. They're sending out the deadwood off with some local guides. If you're this dozy now, they'd better hope you sleep. Not that that's likely down in the tin can. It's noisy, hot, and airless down there,” said Jonas, grumpily.
The sub was, except when the silent light shone, not the quietest place on earth. But by now it was home. Tim got a slightly more complete briefing from Lieutenant Willis. They needed manpower to load as much coal as possible onto a raft. He was to report at 2100 and have collected his small arms from the arms master before that. And he was to have eaten and slept. “And I'll be with you,” said the lieutenant, “so no more heroics from you, Barnabas!” he said, smiling. “Mac told me about what a fine hand with a cutlass you are, taking on those Winged Hussars.”
Tim felt eight feet tall, and felt himself stand that way. Mac was still invalided out and, once they got to a safe port, would probably go ashore and stay there until he recovered. But Lieutenant Willis was also their medical officer, so he'd obviously got the story. Huh. Deadwood. The lieutenant was the best officer on the boat, except maybe the captain. If he was going, it could be no easy mission.
Tim soon found it was a muddy one, and that the lieutenant was a wary officer who planned things carefully. They'd met the local rebels at an islet nearly a mile off, where they left the inflatable boat, and went with the locals in two large flat-bottomed punts. The men spoke very little English, but seemed to know their way around the dark waterways. They led the Cuttlefish crew, poling through a complex network of channels, along to a stand of swamp trees with buttress roots.
There was almost no way that Tim could have found his way back—but he had noticed that the lieutenant reached out and nicked a reed with his cutlass every now and again.
“Won't they be able to follow that, sir?” asked Tim, working out what it was for.
“Not unless they can read my mind,” said the lieutenant. “Now shut up. I memorise the turnings. The cuts are a number pattern of turnings apart. We used to do it in the upper sewers of London, when I was with the Militia.”
They rowed on. Occasionally a searchlight from an airship shone down across on the vast swamp, fortunately nowhere near them.
When they landed, the lieutenant ignored the local rebels who were all for charging in straightaway, and stationed a guard, and then went to scout the path. And then came back, motioned them to stay and stay quiet, and went off to scout another. He scouted with one other crewman and the only one of the locals who could speak more than two or three words of English, so Tim and the others had to wait. The other five local men liked it not at all.
Eventually, talking in Spanish, they got up and headed inland. Not a thing that the Cuttlefish crew could say to them would stop them.
“I reckon the lieutenant's going to be as mad as a cut snake,” said Artificer Thorne, who was the next most senior submariner, and had a pair of very big muttonchop sideburns that Tim really envied. Tim didn't have any really decent chin hair yet, but one day…
The thought was disturbed by some shots in the distance. Some yells.
They all froze for a second. Then Thorne said, “Right boyos. Let's take cover. It might be all right, but if—”
Lieutenant Willis reappeared with the men who had gone along with him. “There was a trip-wire on that trail. Who the Hades went up it?” he demanded.
“Them foreigners, sir. Excitable lot,” explained Thorne.
The lieutenant hissed his irritation. Spoke to the other local, whose eyes were the size of saucers in the moonlight. “Ees trap, señor! Only one guard always. We go!” In the distance, there were more shouts and shots. And then, from above, a searchlight came stabbing down onto the trees.
“Trap all right,” said Lieutenant Willis, laconically, lifting his rifle. “No, hold your fire. No need to advertise with the muzzle flash of more than one rifle.” He took careful aim at the questing searchlight. Fired.