by John Eubank
The wooden parts of the spinning machine burst into flame. Little bits of Incendium wedged in the metal gears, warping them. Some pieces of Incendium landed on the stone floor. For now they only heated it, but Clyve knew that before long they’d melt holes through the stone.
Men in protective suits rushed into the room and began picking up the pieces of Incendium with steel pinchers. With no place to put them, they ran out, and at last someone entered with a large slab of Moderacium. The red-hot pieces of Incendium were dropped on it, and soon they all sat there, safe and cold. Wet blankets were tossed over the flaming machine, and men hauled it out.
Grasping his shoulder and trying not to pass out from the pain, Clyve stared in horror. How had this happened?
“Hoeg Bloodzoyger, are you harmed?” he cried, knowing it was the only thing that might save him.
Zander said, “I was not the intended victim.”
Clyve seized up with horror. “The verltgaat machine!”
“Our only one, yes. You and Bram were fooled, Clyve. They wanted to destroy it, and they would have, if Uncle Viktor hadn’t voiced skepticism over your claims.”
This was it, Clyve thought. Behind him, a phalanx of silent, black-clad guards would enter and escort him to the Shadoverks.
“Well?” the voice behind the painting roared.
Clyve knelt in terror.
“Explain yourself,” Zander demanded.
“This can’t be excused,” Clyve muttered, thinking his only hope was to ask for what he most feared. “I’ve failed the family. Take my unthinking brain, and maybe it can be of some small service inside a Shadovecht.”
“Is there any doubt who this ‘Will Stevens’ is?”
“Wilhelmus Steemjammer.”
His knees hurt because of the heat imparted by the Incendium into the stone floor, but he didn’t dare move.
“Get up,” Zander ordered.
Trembling, Clyve struggled to return to his feet.
“Get that burn salved,” his cousin ordered, “and report to Skyshadow.”
Clyve shivered. Would he actually be spared?
“The moment she’s refueled,” Zander continued, “return to New Amsterdam with all possible speed. If you catch a tailwind, you might beat the dawn. Locate the Steemjammer children and take them into custody, particularly Wilhelmus Anselm Steemjammer. I don’t care how many are harmed in the process. Once you have them, bring them directly to me, alive.”
Clyve’s chest heaved with relief as he realized he was being spared the Shadoverks, at least for the time being. “Thank you, Hoeg Bloodzoyger. I won’t fail you this time.”
Chapter 10
PARK VOLUNTEERS
On Wednesday night, Marteenus tried to sleep in the gondola of his airship but couldn’t. He fought off waves of depression until he realized that he had very little to lose, and he ought to go straight back to Henry’s house. Maybe the Rasmussens had taken the verltgaat machine, but maybe they hadn’t. He’d only know when he either found it or discovered the place where it had been.
The next morning, he made his way gloomily through the pre-dawn darkness to hide in the woods near Beverkenhaas. He saw the Amazon arrive and leave with her goat-squeezings in the absurd pink vehicle. As he carefully crept along the side of the house, a sudden and violent thumping sound startled him. He froze in his tracks, wondering if at last Henry had come for him.
“Stupid birds,” he muttered, realizing what it was.
The igloo had melted substantially, he noticed, but the wooden door still held shut, keeping the animals trapped. Steeling himself, he lit a lamp, crept through cluttered doorway, and entered Beverkenhaas.
“Bold and brave we are now,” he said in a sing-song voice as he explored. “Bold and brave.”
He went back to the library and crawled through the hole in the wall into the hidden room, which he studied. Except for the pit, which may very well have had a Shadovecht stuck under some logs, he’d seen no traps. That lying Deetricus, he thought, was getting exactly what he deserved: death by starvation.
Just like the time before, he could make no sense of this stupid room. This morning, however, it seemed that luck was with him. A frustrated stomp rang hollow on the wooden floor. After getting on his knees and examining the area, he found a hidden catch that opened a trapdoor. Elated, he rose to his feet, clutching the lamp and peering down into darkness.
“Great Maker be praised!” Marteenus gasped.
As his excitement ebbed, he couldn’t believe he’d said that. He thought the Great Maker was superstitious nonsense, but he’d become excited and had spewed words without thinking. At last he’d found it.
Soon, his happiness was trumped by paranoia. No traps? Hah, that was a laugh. This is where he’d find them in abundance, he was sure.
A false step. A spear shooting from a hole in the wall. Blocks of stone tumbling down. The possibilities were endless.
Turning up his oil lamp to its brightest setting, he slowly, painstakingly went down the steps. The more he searched without finding any traps, the more worried he became.
He noticed his chest tightening, so he ran up into the sunlight and fresh air. Was it poison gas? No, he realized, it was his own hyper-anxiety. He was so nervous that he wasn’t breathing properly.
“I will not break down like this!” he chided himself angrily. “I will go back and do this, now.”
He went back down. Feeling bold this time, he made himself breathe normally and soon reached the bottom of the steps. There it was. The verltgaat machine. He could see his freedom, his escape from the prison of this world.
Just walk over, he thought, and turn it on. But no. No, no, no. Surely this is where the traps were placed. This would be his end if he didn’t use the utmost caution.
He set up lamps and candles at the base of the steps. This verltgaat machine was bigger than the one he’d stolen and learned to use. It had been tricky to match the crystals but not impossible. Of course, he’d needed to use the Variable Engine in Beverkenfort to calculate the positions of his destinations, but there was such a machine here, too. It looked slow and primitive, but he felt confident he could make it work.
“After all,” he raised his voice as if to shout at the ghosts of his ancestors, “I have steem! Not goot steem by your ridiculous standards, but steem a’plenty for this!”
Feeling heady, he wanted to skip to the control panel.
“No need to rush,” he told himself. “This is it. I’ve won.”
A long string of delirious laughter escaped his mouth. A release of eleven years of pent up fear and frustration, he realized. It felt so good. He was going home, he told himself, and with possession of this verltgaat machine, he’d have all the bargaining power he’d need against the Rasmussens to extract his reward.
“I’ll make them double it!” he growled fiercely.
***
During the Steemjammer kids’ streetcar ride home on Wednesday afternoon, the streets of New Amsterdam had been abuzz with excitement as Steemball teams rumbled into town in preparation for the tournament. Things were also busy that evening at Tante Klazee’s house. Reacting to a letter that had been sent earlier from Stefana, Klazee’d been packing up and getting ready to leave. There’d been no time to cook, so they ate leftovers for dinner.
“Aren’t you sad, Tante Klazee?” Angelica asked.
“Not one bit,” Klazee said. “This house isn’t my real home, and I always wanted to see Old Earth again.”
Early the next morning, Thursday, they woke up well before dawn and ate a quick breakfast of oatmeal, pan fried sausages, and fresh fruit. It was still dark outside as they got ready to go to the Steem Museum and make an appearance.
“I wish Alfonz was here,” Angelica said, pausing at the front door.
“I’m sure he’s on his way, leef,” Klazee said. “He knows the day and time.”
“What if he doesn’t show up?”
“What’s on your mind, kint?”
&n
bsp; “I’m worried about you. What if the verltgaat opens early? What if we aren’t back in time, and you have to deal with it by yourself?”
“Kint, your Tante Klazee opened many a verltgaat in her youth! You think I can’t do it again?”
“You don’t know Beverkenhaas, but I do,” Angelica said. “Someone should be here to help you. I know what to do if the boiler thumps and where the Shadovecht is.”
Klazee’s eyebrows arched. “Shadovecht? I thought they were destroyed.”
“Not completely. It’s trapped in a pit, and I wouldn’t want you falling in.”
“What are you saying, Angelica?” Will asked. “You want to stay here with Tante Klazee?”
His sister nodded.
“I think that would be all right,” Will decided.
“When you get there,” Angelica said, “you don’t have to lie and say I’m sick. Just tell them I was needed at the house. That would be true.”
He smiled. “I think people will be too busy to notice who’s missing, but that’s a good idea.”
***
Will happily boarded the castle-shaped cable car and followed Cobee and Giselle to the upper deck – glad they weren’t taking the high-speed Hemel Snoor in the early morning darkness. As they rode along, Will saw a rosy glow in the eastern sky and found himself wondering if the sun really was some sort of giant burning disk suspended from tracks. Why didn’t the dome of the sky melt, and would staring at this fiery orb make a person go blind? Best not to try, he decided.
He knew he was thinking about the sun because he was too scared to dwell on the things that might happen that day. What if the verltgaat didn’t open? He realized that Tante Stefana had no understanding of Old Earth and how primitive it was, at least as far as a steam society was concerned. Here, a back-up boiler-fueling system might be feasible or even normal, but there?
Furthermore, Marteenus had to have noticed Beverkenhaas was empty. If they were lucky, he told himself, the evil man may not have found the trap door, but Will couldn’t remember if they’d even shut it. Sighing, he realized there was nothing he could do except follow the plan – show up and be seen at the tournament, sneak back, and hope all went well. He forced his mind onto other things.
As early as it was, the streets of New Amsterdam were already filled with locomobiles and steemwagons carrying rowdy Steemball fans to the tournament. Some waved banners, blew trumpets and sang songs. On the roof of a steemwagon, a group of bald, pot-bellied men with ridiculously large moustaches chanted at the top of their lungs, when they weren’t guzzling from their half-gallon purple tankards.
“They’re going early,” Cobee explained, “to get good seats. Traffic will get much worse soon.”
“I thought today was a work day,” Giselle said.
“Oh, most places are closed so people can attend. On the weekend it will be really packed!”
A glum expression crossed Cobee’s face.
“We’ll be back,” Will said quietly, as the cable car had filled up with people.
Cobee whispered, “I know. I’m trying not to be so selfish anymore. What worries me now is whether or not that verltgaat’s going to open.”
***
They got off near the Steem Museum, like they had on previous mornings, but this time Will, Giselle and Cobee crossed the street and followed a growing throng of people to the Steemball Park. Not far in, there stood a large stadium featuring several thousand bleacher-style seats. In the early morning sunlight, a long line of fans already stood before the main gate, which was locked.
Giselle frowned and quickly looked away, whispering, “What’s with the hats?”
She referred to a group of tall, slender men wearing black coats and bowler hats. Each carried an umbrella.
“A fan club, perhaps,” Cobee said, “here to root for their team. Maybe hat makers have entered this year.”
“Why the umbrellas?” she asked critically. “Not a cloud in the sky, and no one else has one.”
Her cousin shrugged. “Part of their outfit? Like the bread-heads.”
He pointed. A couple dozen people walked up in white aprons with hollowed-out loaves of bread on their heads.
“The bakers have a team?” Will said.
“Why not?” Cobee replied.
“There’s something about them,” Giselle said, stealing a glance at the men in bowlers, and then she sighed. “Maybe I just don’t like those hats.”
Cobee urged them along, and because they were on the volunteer list, they got to enter a side door guarded by Mildred.
“You’re late,” she said. “Inside and go right.”
***
Under the rows of seats ran a long, high-ceilinged enclosure for the competing teams to keep their steemtraps. An acrid haze filled the air, though powerful fans expelled most of the smoke through vents. Work stations and machine shops had been set up for last minute repairs.
“That’s a destroyer,” Cobee said, pointing.
A powerful, tank-like steemtrap bristling with attack systems lined up in front of a wooden target, like the ones they’d seen from the Hemel Snoor. With a blast of steam, its main weapon, a crusher, shot out with such force that the target burst into splinters.
“Destroyers sacrifice speed for power,” Cobee said, “and go after the other team’s ball-carriers. Or they protect their own. That’s a scout. Move over, quick!”
A small, lightly armed steemtrap sped by as they leaped out of its way, and Will wasn’t sure if the driver had even noticed them.
“Their job is to find the ball,” Cobee explained, “but they can sneak up on a dueling destroyer and cause real problems, if they’re allowed to hack away unnoticed. You’ll see.”
“It’s about time!” a familiar voice rang out.
Dressed in a plaid kilt of red, yellow and green, Donell Ogilvy handed them badges to pin on their shirts. Unlike the ones at the Steem Museum, these read “PARK VOLUNTEER.” A man with large, bushy sideburns ran straight at them, and for a moment Will thought they were being attacked.
“Mr. Ogilvy,” the man huffed breathlessly, “the Sewer Rats had an expansion joint seize up. They need a replacement, or they’re going in shy one destroyer!”
“Ye know the rules,” Donell chided. “If they dinna bring spares and if nobody will lend ‘em one, tough. Lots o’ teams have gone in light and come out victorious.”
The man took off running. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Tsk, tsk,” Donell laughed. “People get so emotional over this game.”
“Sewer what?” Giselle asked.
“Rats,” Cobee explained. “New Amsterdam’s sewer workers always field a team. They usually-”
“Time for tha’ later,” Donell interrupted. “There’s a serious matter we must discuss. Over here.”
Opening a door marked “PRIVATE,” he led them inside a lamplit office. Paintings and black-and-white photos of winning Steemball teams from the past lined the wall, and in some Will recognized his grandfather, Ricardus Steemjammer, presenting prizes.
“Did ye notice any Raz,” Donell asked, “on yer way in?”
They shook their heads.
“We had extra people followin’ ye, and they didn’t, either. This is probably a good sign. Let’s hope they’re busy studyin’ the little bauble we gave ‘em, and they have no need tah bother with ye for now. However, Ogilvies are known for caution.”
“I thought you were known for sharp tempers,” Cobee prodded.
“Aye, we’re known for many things, but not wanderin’ around unarmed like some mince-headed dobber, so pay attention.”
The short man opened a drawer and removed a metal baton about six inches long.
“This is a stokee,” he said with severity. “Never point it at a person, unless ye mean to knock out their teeth!”
“So that’s what you make groat klonks with, then?” Cobee couldn’t help teasing.
Donell arched an eyebrow but otherwise ignored the comment. “This
here, with the iron tip, is the business end, so tah speak. Tah use, ye grip it tight – and I mean tight. Get in close and press this catch.”
He pointed it at a green and purple vase resting on a nearby table. With a huff of compressed air, the metal baton shot out with great force, almost doubling its length. The vase shattered, sending a spray of garish ceramic shards into the wall.
“I always hated tha’ ugly thing,” Donell muttered.
“Gaaf!” Cobee said.
“It’s like a miniature crusher,” Will added, “that fits in your pocket!”
“Aye,” Donell grinned. “Ye only have one charge, so make it count. It’ll knock a man cold, if ye aim it right, and yer left with a metal fighting stick.”
He dropped it on his desk and handed Will, Giselle and Cobee each a compressed stokee.
“Speakin’ o’ pockets, mind tha’ it don’t go off in yers. Now, ye need tah be seen, so I want ye handin’ out programs. People will be watchin’, and needless tah say, don’t do anything craicte.” crazy.
“We won’t be able to see anything!” Cobee protested.
“Ye’ll see the openin’ ceremony just fine. When the steemgun shoots and the teams rush out, tha’ is when ye’ll make yer way back here. I’ll drive ye personally tah yer Auntie Klazee’s, and, if the Maker wills it, we’ll all go back tah Old Earth!”
With sparkles in his eyes, he looked them over and then glanced at a pocket watch.
“Two minutes,” he said, “and the gates open. Let’s get goin’.”
***
Will, Giselle and Cobee went to a walkway that ran along the top of the stadium behind the highest seats while excited Steemball fans streamed in. They half-heartedly offered programs while mostly staring at the events below. The first two teams rolled to their starting areas, one sporting orange flags and the other blue, ready to race out into the lightly wooded park.
“Clear out!” Will heard a distant, assertive voice shouting from somewhere out in the park. “If you don’t leave this instant, the tournament will not start!”