Steemjammer: The Deeper Truth

by John Eubank

  “What are you waiting for?” Angelica screamed from the bathroom doorway. “Hurry!”

  “Groes Vevardinker!” Tante Klazee said, blinking like she’d just come out of a trance. “We’re saved!”

  “Hurry!” Will yelled. “Help them!”

  Jack and Kate were so overwhelmed with fear that they couldn’t move. Cobee and Klazee had to shove them through the opened verltgaat. Alfonz gained control of himself and ran toward the large glowing circle.

  “Giselle?” Will called anxiously.

  She came running from a back bedroom and went through to Beverkenhaas.

  “Go on,” Will told his sister and great aunt. “I’m coming.”

  The ominous stomping got louder.

  “Hurry!” he said.

  Angelica ran through the hole, followed by Klazee.

  Will turned and saw the Shadovecht at the top of the steps, looking this way and that. It seemed to be processing information before attacking, like the other had done in Beverkenhaas.

  Bravely, Donell forced himself to stand in front of it, clasping his hammer, his entire body shaking and racked with fear.

  “We’re all through,” Will yelled. “Come on!”

  “OCH!” Donell shouted, and he hurled his heavy hammer right at the monster’s face. It smashed out one of the green eyes, which only seemed to irritate it. Will could hear its springs unwinding as it surged forward.

  Unable to take any more, Donell turned and ran through the verltgaat. Will heard a mechanical hum coming from the monster and knew that it drew power from its internal system of heavy springs. Seeing him, it charged incredibly fast.

  Right then, as it took a step near the steemball, the ton of bronze was overwhelmed by a buildup of internal heat. It had been like an egg, a hard shell with a mostly molten core, and then it rapidly converted to liquid.

  Melted bronze flowed across the floor. Confused, the Shadovecht hesitated. The entire top landing and staircase collapsed in a huff of heat and flame. The house blazed away now, and Will realized he only had moments. He rushed into the bathroom and saw the large verltgaat against the wall. He ran through.

  ***

  It took Will a moment to process what had just happened. The heat was suddenly gone, and only a tiny amount of smoke had come through. Angelica, Giselle and Cobee stood with Jack and Kate, assuring them that they were safe. Alfonz trembled. Tante Klazee grabbed a pillar to hold herself up, and Donell bent down to kiss the floor.

  “Thank the Great Maker,” he said.

  Then, Will saw his sister tug the lever, closing the verltgaat, but something else caught his eye. The ghostly image of Tracium continued to spin above the machine. The intense heat hadn’t destroyed it, and he realized the Rasmussens would now get it.

  Turning, he looked through the verltgaat, which hadn’t yet shut. Through the open bathroom doorway, he could see where the steemball had once rested. There, in all improbability, the lump of Tracium hung in mid-air.

  “NO!” Angelica screamed as he took a step.

  He rushed through, and the verltgaat closed behind him, trapping him in the burning house.

  ***

  Immediately Will dropped to his belly to avoid the hot, churning smoke, and he lost sight of the Tracium. The heat felt like an oven door had been opened. As fast as he could, he crawled forward, hoping to reach the lump of Tracium.

  Why, he wondered, was it floating in the air? Was this piece ghostly and intangible, too? If so, how had it been trapped in the bronze, and how could he get it out?

  He reached the place where floor and staircase had collapsed and was assaulted by a rush of intense heat. Below him lay a puddle of molten bronze, flame and at least one ruined Shadovecht. Then, he saw it. There, floating in the air just out of his reach, was the piece of Tracium.

  “Help me!” a voice surprised him.

  He turned to see little Gus coming up behind him, dragging a board. Will picked up the piece of wood, and the Gnome came to his side, studying the situation gravely.

  “Very hot,” he said. “You get back, Wilhelmus Steemjammer.”

  “But it will burn you, too,” Will objected.

  “We are tough. Besides, Gus is your guardian gnome. Let me do this.”

  “You could get killed!”

  “You hold the board. It’s the only way. Haast!”

  Realizing the little Gnome was right, Will slid the board out over the gap toward the Tracium and held his end down with his body. With surprising agility, Gus walked out and grabbed the piece of Tracium.

  “It’s cold,” he said, returning along the board, which was smoking and emitting flames.

  Reaching the solid floor, Gus handed Will the piece of Tracium. Surprisingly cold, it was very slippery and shot out of his hand, bouncing off the wall. It seemed unaffected by gravity and was heading back toward the blazing stairwell.

  Gus grabbed it using even pressure on opposite sides and just managed to get it under control. He came back, and this time Will opened his pocket. The Gnome shoved it inside, and Will buttoned the flap. The smoke, however, engulfed them. Even though he hugged the floor, Will realized it would smother him in seconds, if the heat didn’t bake him first.

  “This way,” Gus said. “Vershneelen!”

  Gus led him down the hallway. Will crawled past the bathroom and looked in, hoping to see the verltgaat opening, but all was dark. In a back bedroom where the smoke was less, Gus closed the door and pointed at a hole in the ceiling.

  “Up,” he said, pointing at a hole that had been knocked through the ceiling. “Get air. When verltgaat opening is, I’ll shout.”

  Will looked for a way to climb out, but he felt Gus tugging on him. He looked down.

  “Not so loud am I,” Gus confessed, “at shouting. What if you’re not hearing?”

  Will looked around frantically for an object the Gnome could bang on, and then he remembered something. His hand went into his pocket, and he found the whistle the man at the toy shop had given him.

  “Can you blow this?” he asked.

  The Gnome nodded and took the whistle. Climbing on a dresser, Will went up through a hole the Raz agents had made in the ceiling. The attic was too full of smoke, so he climbed out a hole in the roof.

  Here, the smoke was bad, too, but enough of it was carried away by the breeze to give him air to breathe. He knelt, holding the edge of the hole to keep from sliding down the slippery slate roof tiles, when a horrifying sight caught his eye. Clyve Rasmussen stood not ten feet away, drawing a glinting steel saber.

  “Well, well,” he said with a wicked grin. “Wilhelmus Steemjammer. Just the young man I was hoping to find.”

  ***

  “What was he thinking?” Giselle cried.

  “I don’t know,” Angelica said, “but we’ve got to get this thing open again!”

  “Then, open it already!”

  “I’m trying, but it won’t do anything!”

  She shoved the lever into the on position. The carousel spun, and the ghostly image of Tracium could be seen spinning in the correct place.

  “Verdoor!” Angelica gasped. “The crystals!”

  She pointed at the crystals, which flickered randomly instead of showing geometric shapes in synch with each other. Looking at the control dials, she pointed.

  “They zeroed out!” she said. “Quick, where’s Dad’s journal!”

  “I’ve got it!” Giselle said, reaching into her dress pocket. “We almost forgot it in Cobee’s bedroom, but I went back for it just in time. Here!”

  Instead, in her excitement, she pulled Velocitus from her pocket and placed it in her cousin’s hand.

  “That’s not funny!” Angelica snarled.

  “It wasn’t meant to be. Here.”

  This time, she got out the journal, and the little girl thumbed furiously through the pages, trying to find the right one.

  “Angelica,” Cobee asked worriedly, “do you think you can really do this?”

  “Not i
f you don’t let me concentrate,” she snapped, but deep inside she felt very worried.

  Could she really tune the crystals and make this work?

  ***

  On the roof of Tante Klazee’s blazing house, Will clutched the edge of the hole and stared with horror. Clyve seemed to have no trouble on the slick roof tiles and swished his saber in the air threateningly. Glancing down, Will saw that the man was barefoot. Quickly pulling off his shoes and socks, he found he could stand on the slate tiles without slipping.

  “Well now,” Clyve said, taking a step forward, “are you going to run?”

  Will looked down and saw the Rasmussen Agents had stopped fleeing from the Shadovecht and surrounded the building.

  “Or,” Clyve continued, “are you going to stay here and burn to a crisp? I don’t think I’ll allow that. My cousin wants to meet you, Will Steemjammer. And if my cousin wants something, he always gets it.”

  Clyve lunged forward, stabbing at Will’s leg with the intention of wounding him. Will scrambled around to the other side of the hole in the roof, evading the attack. The man scowled, and his skeletal face became inhuman.

  “You lied, Steemjammer,” he said. “How? How did you manage to deny your name under the influence of Glass Dragon?”

  Will strained his ears, hoping that Gus would soon shout for him to drop and crawl for the verltgaat, but no such sound came.

  “Did the power of Glass Dragon,” Clyve asked, “somehow allow you to turn facts into a double negative, lying to save some greater truth? It’s never failed before.”

  As Will looked into the hole, flames grew, and there was no sign of Gus.

  “I wouldn’t go back there,” Clyve grinned. “The smoke will knock you out in seconds, and we’ll have to drag you out. You might make it, or you might not. But as much as I’d like to see you die, I need you alive.”

  Again, Clyve charged, stabbing at Will’s leg, but he managed to scramble away. This time, however, he was driven away from the hole. Clyve pursued, but Will saw in the gutter a sword that one of the fleeing Raz had dropped. Reaching, he grabbed it just in time and swished it up to parry Clyve’s next stab.

  Springing to his feet, Will backed away as his father had taught him. Clyve pursued confidently.

  “You don’t stand a chance,” he sneered.

  “Don’t I?” Will challenged back. “You don’t have a steemsuit to hide in this time, and because there are no rules, you can’t cheat. I don’t think you can win without cheating, can you?”

  Infuriated, Clyve lunged with a flurry of slices and jabs. Will just managed to parry or dodge them, and he felt a panic as he realized the man was no longer trying to wound him. He was swinging the saber to kill.

  “Nice try,” Clyve said, pausing. “But death won’t free you from your fate.”

  Again he attacked, this time going back to jabs aimed at Will’s legs. They were easier to block or dodge, but a terrible cracking sound came from below. Damaged by the fire, a major support beam had ruptured, and a large section of the roof collapsed.

  Will almost fell in but managed to scramble away. Shifting his sword just in time, he parried Clyve’s next slash at his foot. Getting back to his feet, Will hustled around to the other side of this new gaping hole.

  They had to open the verltgaat soon, he thought, or he wouldn’t make it. However, he was turned around, and now there were several holes in the roof. He had to remember where the bathroom was if he’d have any chance of reaching safety.

  Drawing on the same spatial awareness that had allowed him to sense the secret room in Beverkenhaas, he imagined the layout below and thought he knew where the verltgaat would be. He almost let Clyve stab him but dodged at the last moment. Had Clyve not slipped on the treacherous slate, he might have caught Will with a follow-up.

  “I don’t know about you,” he said, “but this roof’s getting too hot to stand on. It’s over, Steemjammer. No more running and hiding.”

  Another loud cracking sound came from the house below. Again drawing on his spatial awareness, Will had a good sense of what was happening. The beams that held up the second floor were breaking, and the entire structure would soon collapse.

  “It’s about to go,” Will told him. “Neither one of us are going to make it.”

  Clyve laughed derisively, nodding at a rope ladder that dangled from Skyshadow. “Wrong, Steem-failure. After you, unless you really plan on letting yourself burn to death.”

  Will heard a high pitched whinny from below. For a moment he found himself wondering how on B’verlt a horse had gotten inside, and then he remembered the whistle wasn’t a normal one. Closing his eyes, he dropped through a hole.

  “What?” Clyve screamed.

  He rushed after the boy, hoping to reach into the hole and grab him. Another deafening crack sounded, and he felt himself dropping. The roof had disintegrated under his feet, and as he fell, he looked down. The last thing his terrified eyes saw was a puddle of molten bronze ringed by a blazing inferno.

  ***

  In Beverkenhaas, Angelica and the others stared in mute shock at the roaring flames on the other side of the open verltgaat. She’d finally gotten the right numbers and the crystals tuned, and now she felt on the verge of tears, seeing how it seemed too late.

  Then, as a muffled cracking sound came through, a shadow appeared against the flames, and she saw Will running for them. But he stopped and looked back, kneeling. Reaching, he picked up something and hurled it.

  A small, humanoid object came flying through the world hole and skidded across the sub-basement floor. Gus! But as Will resumed racing for safety, the floor began buckling under him. He staggered but managed to guess where the support beams were. As parts of the floor fell away to either side, he sprinted along a strip that held up.

  The entire ceiling and roof, however, were coming down. He flexed his knees and drove himself forward, flying through the air but coming dangerously close to the lower lip of the verltgaat. Clearing it by a mere inch, he sailed into the cool safety of Beverkenhaas and rolled across the floor.

  Everyone cried with joy. Angelica tugged the lever off and ran over to him. Will looked around with astonishment and realized, as his sister and the others hugged and squeezed him, that he’d made it.

  “My feet,” he groaned.

  “Quick, get cool water,” Tante Klazee ordered, kneeling to examine the soles of his feet. “What happened to your shoes?”

  “Long story.”

  “You’re lucky I know how to treat burns.”

  “Will?” Giselle said, still holding Velocitus in her left hand. “Did you get it? Or will the Raz find it?”

  He put his hand in his pocket to make sure and felt the strangely slick lump of Tracium. He left it there, not wanting it to go flying around the room, and buttoned it.

  “I got it,” he said, smiling with relief.

  “Groes Vevardinker, we thank you,” Tante Klazee said and then tousled Will’s hair. “And you thought you’d lost your goot steem! Well, young man, that wasn’t goot steem. That was groes steem! Miracooleus steem!” Great steam! Miraculous steam!

  “Hoyzaa!” Cobee shouted, joined by the others.

  Will saw his little sister kneeling by him, unable to cheer because she was so choked up with emotion.

  “I think,” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder, “that Angelica deserves all the hoyzaas! Without her, we wouldn’t be here. It must have taken some truly incredible steem to have gotten that verltgaat open!”

  “Hoyzaa!” the others shouted, even louder, Will being the loudest.

  Tears streamed down Angelica’s face, but she didn’t try to stop or wipe them away. They were tears of joy and relief, and they felt marvelous.

  Then, Will noticed that Giselle was crying, too, but it wasn’t out of happiness. She stared at Marteenus’ unconscious form on the floor, clearly worrying about her father.

  “Is that him?” Cobee exclaimed, grabbing a hammer. “Is that the dirty trait
or?”

  “Wait,” Will commanded. “We need him. We’re back on Old Earth, but we still have work to do.”

  Chapter 16

  A PROMISE IS A PROMISE

  “Is Mrs. Norman here?” Jane Gables asked.

  At the front door of his mother-in-law’s house, Ron took a moment to process the fact that a county health inspector and school police officer had just knocked. Only minutes earlier, he’d returned from an errand to discover the aliens carrying his wife across the street on a stretcher.

  “Yes,” he said, “she’s resting. Poor dear isn’t feeling well.”

  This time, he recalled, there’d been some new aliens: a very short but strong one with a full beard and two new children. They’d been understanding about his wife’s interference with their business, and Waverly herself was still alive, though she seemed in a deep state of shock. They’d put her on the couch, handed him another diamond, and left in a hurry.

  “She filed a number of complaints,” Jane explained, “against the people across the street, and I have to see them through.”

  Ron smiled. “Oh, that won’t be necessary.”

  “It won’t?”

  “She’s dropping them all.” He turned his head. “Isn’t that right, dear?”

  From the couch game a garbled utterance that sounded more like Mongolian than English.

  “Was that a yes?” Jane pressed.

  Ron offered to take the papers and have his wife sign that she was formally dropping her complaints. He went into the living room and returned moments later.

  Jane studied the strange squiggles skeptically. “Is that her actual signature?”

  “Her hand’s been hurting lately,” Ron assured.

  “Very well. Speaking of that, they have a problem with their water well. I assume it’s quite old, perhaps made by farmers who lived her in the 1800s, because who would hand-dig a well in this day and age?”

  Ron suppressed a grin. “Who, indeed?”