Steemjammer: The Deeper Truth

by John Eubank

  “Get up,” thought Will.

  “Hey Stevens!” Bram shouted through his suit’s diaphragm. “What the stroont was that?”

  Will wasn’t sure what that meant, except he didn’t think it was a word he’d ever heard his mom or dad use.

  “Just showing a little ‘snap,’ Bram,” he replied, finally finding a button that made the speaking system work. Wondering if he could pull off another lucky move, he rolled onto his stomach and pushed up into a crawling position.

  Bram scrambled to his feet amazingly fast and kicked him in the head. He kicked again while Will’s knees slipped back and forth on the floor. This was getting very annoying. He could hear Bram cackling with glee. Also, his sister was shouting something from the stands, but he had to focus on the fight.

  Timing it just right, Will dropped flat. Bram’s next kick went over him, and the young Raz lost his balance. While he teetered, struggling to recover, Will repeated one of the few motions he understood and hurled himself up and into Bram, who toppled to the floor. To his amazement, Will found himself on his feet.

  “Vershpletter hem!” he could hear Cobee’s muffled yell. Splatter him!

  He kicked Bram in the face plate. Again and again, he kicked him. The helmet absorbed the blows, and Bram felt no pain. But from his growl, Will knew he’d angered him.

  “I’ll get you now!” Bram shouted.

  Faking a lunge at Will’s legs, Bram instead hopped back on his feet and began jabbing. His armored fists came in too fast for Will to dodge or block. Even worse, he noticed the gauge inside his helmet that indicated his suit was taking damage. Some of Cobee’s playful whacks had already advanced it, and now Bram was about to cause his suit to shut down and surrender.

  No way, Will thought. He was not going to let that happen. Because his armor was too loose, he found he could free his right arm and shove it up inside the fighting suit’s chest cavity toward the gauge.

  BAM! Another hit. An experienced steemsuit fighter would not have used such an ill-fitting suit and could never have done what Will was trying. He was just able to worm his hand up inside his helmet, in front of his face.

  Bram punched him. “Push the glass cover on the gauge,” Will thought. He managed to duck Bram’s next swing. One more hit and his suit would freeze up.

  “Yes!” Will shouted as he heard a click.

  The tiny cover came loose, and he shoved the gauge’s needle back to zero, tricking the system. His suit registered as unhit. Bram kept swatting him, but it no longer mattered.

  Now, Will finally felt he could try something. Worming his arm back into the suit, he blocked the next punch and hit back. Then, he kicked, planting his heavy, armored foot into the young Raz’s gut. Though Bram continued landing punches, Will found that if he timed it right, he could counterstrike and sometimes land a hit.

  “What is this?” came Bram’s frustrated shout.

  Tired, Bram found he couldn’t swing anymore, and Will connected a series of easy punches. Lowering his head, he rammed the young Raz. Bram fell to his back.

  “All right, Stevens,” he shouted. “You got snap.”

  Will kicked him.

  “That’s enough! Stop it!”

  Another kick. HISS! Bram’s suit froze up, and the embarrassing white flag popped out of his helmet.

  “Winst!” came Cobee’s muffled but triumphant shout. Victory! “Ya, winst!”

  “Now we show him,” Will thought, and he brought back his leg to kick Bram, really hard.

  But he hesitated. It didn’t feel right. Of course, he needed to pretend to be working for Bram. He shouldn’t have done this. Even though Bram had broken the rules and behaved horribly, attacking Cobee from behind and then kicking him while his suit was frozen, Will just didn’t feel good about doing the same to him. He backed away.

  HISS! Will’s suit froze up. The little white flag, however, did not pop out of his helmet. Still, his suit no longer responded. Someone had cut off his steam.

  “That’s enough,” came a voice from above.

  They looked up to see a blue-eyed man with a waxed moustache in a high window. Cobee had told Will this was Robert Axworthy, a descendant of the man who had invented Steemball and a professional referee over many sports. He was also in charge of the arena.

  “These suits are dinged up enough as they are,” Axworthy said. “See that they’re stowed properly, and no more mischief.”

  “Miserable swine,” Bram mumbled, and Will realized it was directed not at Axworthy but him.

  Steam returned to them, and they stomped over to the safe area where they could get out of their suits and leave. Angelica jumped up and down, clapping and cheering, until Bram opened his visor and shot a chilling look at her.

  Will noticed the bodyguard in the stands, and he worried. What if his actions had made the young Rasmussen suspicious? Bram lifted his visor and sneered at him.

  “You sleebish cheater,” he accused bitterly. “How’d you do that?”

  “Do what?” Will replied, lifting his visor and playing dumb.

  “You took far more hits than should have been allowed. I actually beat you!”

  Will saw his chance and knew exactly what to say.

  “Of course you did, Bram,” he agreed cheerfully. “You’re a great fighter. I just didn’t like you thinking I had no ‘snap.’”

  Bram stopped Will and let Cobee go ahead. He leaned in, whispering. “That was un-gaaf!” Uncool!

  “What?” Will whispered, thinking fast. “You told me to be sleebish to you around others. What else was I supposed to do?”

  Bram started to growl a retort but found he couldn’t say anything to that. His lip curled with frustration. “What are you doing, wasting time like this?”

  “I couldn’t get away from them. Thanks for roughing up Cobee. Maybe he’ll leave me alone, and I’ll be able to go downstairs and do some proper searching.”

  Bram was about to say something nasty but stopped, leaving Will to guess that he’d told him exactly what he needed to hear.

  “Fair enough,” Bram said. “It felt good ringing that sleeb Ren-stink’s bell again.”

  And it felt good, Will thought, making you send up a white flag. The young Rasmussen mistook his satisfied grin as support for his comment against Cobee.

  “Remember,” Bram warned, “what you find here determines what you earn from the Protectorate, so don’t blow it.”

  Flipping his visor down, he stomped off to a different changing area.

  ***

  “Extremely clumsy,” Cobee assessed Will’s performance at lunch, acting out parts. “Tangled in the hose, smashing into the walls, but the way he tripped into Bram’s chest and knocked him on his backside, puur ontzagwekkent!” Pure awesome!

  They ate with Cobee’s friends inside a steem contraption or steemtrap they’d been working on for months. A junior-league version of the destroyers used by adults in Steemball, the kids had improved their device since Will had last seen it. It now had metal side panels and a roof.

  “Then, somehow - bap, whap, bap,” Cobee continued. “Will hit him, and up went Bram’s white flag of shame!”

  Jack Waterford, a boy their age from New London with brown, messy hair, cheered. His twin sister Kate, who often hid her pretty face behind cascading, long brown hair, seemed less shy and withdrawn now. She smiled with admiration.

  Sully Spinoza, a skinny kid with huge glasses and a mop of red curly hair that kept wanting to fall down over his eyes, gave a thumbs-up. His sister, Rachel, clapped. Her hair was much like her brother’s but easier to control. Having befriended Angelica, they sat together.

  Will made a face. With the new panels on the steemtrap and the fact that the workshop outside them was very noisy, no one was likely to overhear them. Still, he wished Cobee had told no one about the fight. Then, guilt built up inside him as he realized how much he’d yet to tell them.

  “Please,” he said. “We can’t have people talking about this.”


  “Are you kidding?” Frog exclaimed between bites of pickled herring. “No one’s popped Bram’s white flag. It was a zeega!” Triumph!

  His real name was Hoondarus Naaktegboren, which – like many Dutch names on Old Earth and B’verlt – had a bizarre translation: naked born. With eyes set far apart and an extremely wide mouth, he went by the rather obvious nickname of Frog.

  “It was luck,” Will insisted, “and I don’t want any attention drawn to me. Please, don’t mention it at all.”

  He noticed that Giselle didn’t look too happy. Angelica put down her pofferjees, uneaten, and climbed out the hatch.

  “Luck?” Kate said. “I’d call it something else. Goot steem!”

  “Hear, hear!” Jack agreed. “Goot steem right in his ratty Raz face!”

  As they cheered, Will smiled, but inside he felt conflicted. The whole fight he’d stumbled and fallen about. It had only been good luck and cheating that had let him win, he felt sure, and not goot steem.

  “Seriously,” he said when they quieted down. “I don’t want anyone knowing this for now. Can I count on you?”

  They reluctantly agreed. To change the subject, he got them talking about the big Steemball tournament starting on Thursday, the same day the verltgaat was supposed to reopen. They speculated eagerly on favorite teams and who might win the right to represent New Amsterdam in the championship games to come.

  Frog and Jack favored the Green Guard, a group of militiamen whose history went back to the founding of New Amsterdam. They always fielded a strong team and fashioned their steemtraps after fantastic or mythical beasts. Kate agreed they’d probably do well but said she’d be rooting for a new team called the Vanishing Points.

  “They’re a bunch of artists who made the most beautiful steemtraps I’ve ever seen,” she explained. “They’ll get crushed, but I’m cheering them on, anyway.”

  Cobee seemed depressed by the topic, and Will knew it was because he feared they’d have to completely miss it. Giselle, he noticed, had gone to try to comfort Angelica, and a feeling of guilt welled up inside his chest. Again, he was asking them to keep information from others, to mislead. What if, he worried, it ended up damaging them as it had him?

  He looked up and noticed Kate, who normally allowed her thick hair to hide her face, was staring at him. She didn’t quite seem herself, and he noticed she wasn’t blinking, like she was in a trance. It made Will uncomfortable.

  “I know who you are,” she said in a quiet voice.

  Cobee and the other boys had left the trap to tidy up and throw away the paper sacks their lunches had come in. No one else was close enough to hear her, but still, Will felt alarmed.

  “You do?” he asked.

  “Well,” she whispered, “it’s more like I know who you’re not. You’re not Will Stevens.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “You’ve got a secret.”

  “That’s true. Do you know what it is?”

  “I could guess.” She continued staring at him, but while she’d early seemed to be in a daze, she now appeared to be calculating. “But maybe I shouldn’t try. Whatever your secret is, the Raz shouldn’t know, right?”

  Will’s relief was palpable. “You got that right.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said in a more natural sounding voice. “Jack and I hate the Raz, too. They ruined our family’s business and drove us out of our home. We think they killed my uncle, but we couldn’t prove it.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “We refined rare chemicals for industry. They either saw us as competition to get rid of, or maybe they wanted our machinery. The important thing is that I won’t betray you. You can count on that, Will.”

  Letting her hair cover her face, she got up and went out of the steemtrap. Will was left wondering just how much she knew or if she’d been bluffing. He also wondered if Steemjammers were the only ones who could see deeper truth, or perhaps others could see hidden truths. He felt he could trust her, but if she could tell he wasn’t who he said he was, he worried that the Rasmussens could or soon would. Now, he felt a lot more vulnerable than he had before.

  ***

  That afternoon on the cable car ride back to Tante Klazee’s, they saw workmen hanging large banners on buildings and lamp posts about the upcoming Steemball tournament. Cobee looked disappointed but managed not to say anything about it.

  “How’s Alfonz doing?” Will asked. “Is he going crazy yet from being cooped up in the house?”

  Will wasn’t quite sure how they were related to Alfonz Zeldemthoos, the family’s mailman back on Old Earth, save that they seemed to be distant cousins. He had a condition that made it hard for him to stay in one place very long, but he’d been trying to resist his vaanderloos or wanderlust and hang out in case they needed him.

  “He’s been gone since the day they took you to Texel,” Giselle said. “He told Tante Klazee he’d be back Thursday morning at the latest.”

  When the verltgaat was supposed to open, Will couldn’t help thinking.

  “He hasn’t even dropped by?” Will said. “I’m not sure I understand his vaanderloos, but I’d think he could at least do that.”

  “He may have gone looking for you,” Cobee said, “or trying to find some way to help you.”

  Will wondered if something had happened to him – if he’d been captured by the Rasmussens. More passengers were boarding the cable car and coming up to the upper deck, however, so it wasn’t safe to ask. They had to stay relatively quiet the rest of the way. When they got off and approached Cobee’s house, an amazing aroma of cooked food wafted down the street and made most of his worries vanish.

  Their Tante Klazee – really a great aunt – opened the front door before they could knock and ushered them inside. She was a little heavy, with eyes that were made large and owl-like by round-framed metal glasses, and her white hair stood straight up. A calico apron was tied around her simple blue dress. The moment her door closed, she wrapped Will tightly in her arms.

  “Wilhelmus Anselm Steemjammer,” she said, letting go and stepping back to admire him, “tegen alle hoep, oo keert terung!” Against all hope, you return!

  She gave him another overpowering hug before showing them to the dining room.

  “When I heard the goot news,” Tante Klazee said apologetically, “I wanted to make a feast to celebrate, but with Raz agents snooping around, it seemed too risky.”

  “It’s all right, Tante Klazee,” Will said happily. “Every night’s a feast at your house.”

  She smiled warmly at the complement and began bringing out food, starting as usual with a large tureen of snert, or split-pea soup, followed by butter-seared salmon and a perfectly browned beef pie called draadjesvlees. Also, she served kaspraak, a casserole of mashed potatoes with so much Gouda cheese melted in that it was yellow. Finding his appetite had returned, Will filled his plate and even managed to eat the stamppot mit rookwurst, mashed vegetables with smoked sausage, which tasted a lot better than it smelled.

  For dessert, Klazee served slemp, the warm, spicy milk drink that was like hot cocoa, and a platter of mixed berries, some originating from earth and some native to Beverkenverlt. Instead of a cake, she’d fried some light, crepe-like pancakes and stacked them high, filling each layer with hazelnut cream and smearing the outside with a honey-flavored icing. Topped with whipped cream, it was incredible.

  When Will said it was the best thing he’d ever eaten, Klazee came over and almost smothered him with a hug that, if anything, had been even more crushing than the ones he’d received earlier.

  “I’m zo glad you’re back,” she said, finally letting go. “We were worried, Wilhelmus. Zo worried.”

  He looked at their faces and could see the anguish his disappearance had put them through. His sister, who’d been having trouble with her emotions all day, looked very upset. At last she couldn’t contain herself anymore.

  “I don’t get it,” she said angrily. “We were told to wait in the
steemwagon. If they hadn’t disobeyed, nothing would have happened.”

  A troubled silence filled the room.

  “Angelica,” Will said delicately, “you’re right, except for one thing none of us planned on. I was dying.”

  Klazee, who’d just returned from the kitchen with her bottle of remedy and a large spoon, looked baffled. She’d assumed he’d need another dose. Horror crossed her face as he explained the terrible new Rasmussen concoction that converted their remedy into a deadly toxin.

  “I was killing you, then,” she said aghast.

  “No, Tante Klazee,” Will said. “I had to take that to survive its first attack. What’s really strange is that the only thing that could have saved me from the second poison was disobeying orders and getting caught. Bram and the Rasmussens were the only ones who could have stopped my death.”

  Giselle frowned. “That makes no sense. Why would they save you?”

  “Because they wanted to question me. When they decided I was only Will Stevens, they let me go.”

  Again, a huge surge of guilt hit him for withholding large parts of the story.

  “More lying!” Angelica complained. “She’s right. It makes no sense at all. We were taught to obey and always tell the truth.

  “Now you’re saying that being bad and telling lies is good. I’m glad you lived, but I can’t make sense of this. It’s totally begekkin!”

  “No,” Will explained. “I never said it was good. I don’t really know how to explain my feelings, except that in this case, I did the only thing I could do. Now I can see how difficult this is for all of you, and I’m sorry. If I could only explain how much this hurts me...”

  He let his words trail off, and silence settled over the table. Though none truly understood what he meant, they could sense his anguish and empathized. Angelica, however, took little comfort from his explanation and continued to brood.

  Gustaavus, who’d felt well enough to join them at the table, studied her. Their home on Old Earth, Beverkenhaas, was filled with garden gnomes. One, however, had turned out to actually be alive. Gus had helped them survive a Shadovecht attack, and after bringing him back to his native Beverkenverlt, they found out he’d been suffering on Old Earth, needing to remain still most of the time to preserve his health.