Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3

by Melissa Scott

  Jerry looked at the ladder that led up to the platform overlooking what was left of the ship’s deck. This was the problem, the reason he wasn’t here, wasn’t still in the field. The words were bitter on his tongue. “I could probably get up, but I can’t get down.”

  “Oh, down’s no problem,” Searce said. “We’ve got lots of rope.”

  There was no pity in his tone, just practicality, and Jerry smiled in spite of everything. “I’m not really dressed for it —”

  “Scuse, Signor Dottore.” It was one of the workers, a foreman by the look of him, slightly less muddy, with rubber boots that reached almost to his knees. “One of the men would like to speak with you.”

  “Has he found something?” Searce asked.

  “He wouldn’t say,” the foreman answered. “He wanted to speak to you in person.”

  “I’ve offered a bonus for each significant artifact,” Searce said, and Jerry nodded. It was a fairly common practice, though on a rich site like this, it was hard to pay the workers what a good piece was work. Although with government money to play with, and government sanctions behind them, maybe there was a chance. He remembered the tablet in his luggage, and wondered when Searce had established the policy.

  “All right,” Searce said, to the foreman. “Send him over.”

  “He says he’s left it in the ground,” the foreman said, and Searce gave a nod of approval.

  “Well, he gets ten lire for that alone. Thanks, Marcello. Who is it?”

  “That one there.” The foreman pointed to a man standing toward the edge of the site, a few yards from a new-looking shed. Tools, Jerry guessed, and maybe shelter in bad weather. “Imperiale — Gianni Imperiale. One of the new men.”

  “I’m impressed,” Jerry said. His mouth was dry. There was something wrong here, he could feel it. An old hand might have the sense to leave an object where it was found, but not a new man, not a new hire. The excitement always overcame them, made them pick whatever it was up out of the ground….

  “So am I,” Searce said. “Care to come along?”

  The mud of the lakebed stretched toward the horizon, pocked with stones and still dotted with shallow puddles. It would be a painful walk, at best embarrassingly awkward, and at worst — at worst, he’d be stuck, someone would have to carry him out. Jerry took a breath, wanting to refuse, but the same sense of unease made him smile and nod. “Sure. Just — take it slow, if you don’t mind.”

  “No worries,” Searce said. There were planks lying around seemingly at random, and he caught up a few of them, tossed them out into the mud with a nonchalance that suggested this wasn’t the first time they’d improvised a walkway. That bought them maybe ten yards, but after that it was mud all the way, and Jerry clung grimly to Searce’s shoulder, the peg leg sinking inches deep with every step. Searce didn’t seem to mind, just braced a hand under Jerry’s elbow, and at last they reached a band of more solid ground near the little hut. The man who had been leaning on his shovel straightened, frowning slightly, and Jerry felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. The man himself was a stranger, young, fair like a northern Italian, with a homely, pock-marked face, but the eyes, and the darkness behind them, were terribly familiar.

  “So,” Searce called. “Imperiale, is it? What have you found?”

  “A tablet, Signor Dottore. At least, I think that’s what it is.”

  The ground gave way under Jerry’s leg, and he threw his weight onto his good foot just in time to keep himself from sinking knee deep. “Damn it.”

  Searce stopped, offered his hand, and Jerry hauled himself free again.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” Searce said. “This might be right up your alley.”

  Thank God for that. Jerry managed a smile and a nod. “I’m curious, I admit. What would a tablet be doing out here?”

  “An excellent question,” Searce answered. “Probably it was pulled free in one of the earlier attempts to raise the treasures? We’ll see.”

  Imperiale said, “Signor Dottore, the ground is worse further on. It’s not good for a one-legged man.”

  “Dr. Ballard is a colleague of mine who specializes in inscriptions,” Searce answered. “He’ll manage.”

  “I could bring the tablet,” Imperiale offered. “After you’ve inspected it, of course.”

  Searce glanced over his shoulder, at Jerry struggling to keep up. “We could do that. I doubt there’s any real significance in the location. This was all lakebed.”

  “No, no,” Jerry said. “I’d like to see myself. Just in case.” He couldn’t let Searce be alone with the creature. That had to be what it wanted, he realized, a chance to take one of the senior archeologists. They would have plenty of time with Mussolini, showing him over the site — perhaps even time alone, or relatively alone, and that — that was what they had to stop.

  “Suit yourself,” Searce answered, and Jerry hauled himself through the mud. He couldn’t see the others, couldn’t risk looking for them to warn them, and he wasn’t strong enough — didn’t have the tools or the ritual prepared — to do anything except keep it from jumping.

  Imperiale — the creature — gave him a single malevolent glance as he joined them, and pointed to a spot in the mud. “I was digging there, a sample to take to the sieves. And I saw that.”

  It was a rounded bit of metal, bronze rather than lead. Not a missing tablet, then, Jerry thought, though on second thought he doubted the creature could stand to get this close to one of them. Searce squatted in the mud, carefully feeling for the object’s edges.

  “Definitely a tablet,” he said, and looked up with a smile. “Nice work.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Imperiale answered.

  Searce probed a little further, and then stood up, wiping his hands on his pants. “Let me have that,” he said, and Imperiale handed him the shovel. Searce planted its edge carefully, brought up the tablet and the surrounding mud with a single deft movement. He held it out to Jerry, who took it automatically, reaching into his pocket for his handkerchief. His fingers brushed the sigil, and it took an effort not to palm it, keep it close against his skin. He concentrated instead on cleaning off the worst of the mud, revealing a square of bronze incised with Latin and inset with a stone seal.

  “Interesting,” he said, and felt the creature smile.

  “It looks a little like a curse tablet,” Searce said.

  Jerry shook his head. “Votive — no, memorial,” he amended, and adjusted his glasses. “See? That’s a memorial inscription.”

  “Not a standard form, though.” Searce leaned close. “And — is that Etruscan?”

  “In gratitude to — no, in honor of the Thracian Gaius Caesar offers this token to the gods below,” Jerry said. “And, yes, then Etruscan. That’s unusual.”

  “We’ve run into some other Etruscan inscriptions at the temple site,” Searce said. “Very interesting.” He straightened, wiped his hands on his pants again, and reached for his notebook. “Good job, Imperiale. Give this to your foreman, and he’ll pay you your bonus.”

  The creature hesitated, but there was no excuse for it to stay. “Thank you, sir,” it said, and backed away across the mud. Jerry put his head down, studying the inscription, but he could still feel it watching for what seemed like a very long time.

  “We’ve run into some other Etruscan inscriptions at the temple site,” Searce said. “But not associated with the ships.”

  Jerry fumbled in his pocket and came up with his small magnifying glass. With its help, he thought he could make out the design of the seal, worn though it was: a warrior, holding a net and spear. A gladiator. He shivered in spite of the sunlight. No, not part of the binding, not at all. This was Caligula thumbing his nose at the goddess, the thing that possessed him making an offering in pure mockery. The gladiator who had killed the king of the grove: that had to be what had released the creature in the first place, and from the gladiator, returning in triumph, it had seized an emperor. And feast
ed until finally the Praetorian Guard had risen against it…. And it had positioned itself to begin the terrible cycle all over again.

  “The design, the seal, looks like a retiarius,” he said. “So…. Caligula lost a gladiator here? The Etruscan formula looks like ones I’ve seen on burial stele, so I’d say it was a funerary marker. If the Thracian were a favorite, maybe Caligula wanted him commemorated? Perhaps there were even games aboard the ship?”

  “Maybe,” Searce agreed. “There’s certainly room. And of course there’s the story about Caligula and the Rex Nemorensis.”

  Jerry nodded. That definitely wasn’t a subject he wanted to pursue. “Before I left the states, I was in touch with Bill Davenport, and he said he was particularly excited about tablet inscriptions from the ships. I was hoping there might be some more Etruscan evidence here on the ships, but you said not?”

  Searce shook his head. “Bill had a bee in his bonnet about Etruscan material, I’m afraid. There’s no reason we’d find anything Etruscan on the ships, they’re much too late. We did find some nice stelae at the temple, though.”

  That was that, then. Good news and bad news: the good news was, the expedition hadn’t yet found the remaining tablets. The bad news was the same — well, that and that the creature was here already. And that Mussolini was coming. The noise of the pumps beat in his ears, the smell of the mud and the rotting ship filled his lungs. Somehow, they had to stop it, and he still had no real idea how. He took a breath, and let Searce move them on, struggling back through the mud toward the solid shore.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  They returned to the penzione at mid-afternoon, collecting in Alma and Lewis’s room. Alma sat down on the bed with crossed legs and looked at the three men.

  “It’s here,” she said.

  Lewis nodded, his face stiff. “Somewhere among the workers. It was watching —”

  Jerry interrupted. “It’s in a laborer called, or calling itself, Imperiale — ironic, but apparently it has something like a sense of humor. It tried to lure Harris — Dr. Searce — away from the dig, but I happened to be with him. And I stuck to him like a burr all the rest of the afternoon.” He paused. “And they haven’t found the other tablet, by the way.”

  “How the hell did it get here ahead of us?” Lewis asked.

  “By air?” Mitch said. “A commercial flight from Paris to Rome while we were on the train?”

  “They hired a bunch of new workers,” Jerry said. “To get ready for the Prime Minister’s visit. Which, of course, is exactly what it’s waiting for. All it has to do it take one of the archeologists, someone who’s going to be close to Mussolini, showing him something, and then, hey, presto! It jumps, Il Duce has a fainting spell, and we are all screwed.”

  “We could take out a laborer,” Mitch said, thoughtfully.

  “It could still jump,” Jerry said. “May have already jumped, for that matter. It’s got plans of its own, its own schedule to keep. We could easily go after Imperiale and find that the creature’s long gone.”

  “So what do we do?” Mitch asked.

  “What we planned,” Alma said. “If we can bind it, tonight, before the Prime Minister gets here, then it doesn’t matter whether it’s jumped or not. We’re calling the creature, not its host.”

  “But that means we need the other tablet, right?” Lewis said, after a moment, and Alma nodded.

  “Which Jerry says they haven’t found. So let’s see what we can do. It must be somewhere on the site still.”

  Jerry sank down into the curved chair at the dressing table and produced a piece of stationary. “Give me a minute. I can sketch out a rough map of the site.”

  Alma unfastened the chain around her neck. Her wedding ring and the amulet hung together on it, glittering. She took a deep breath. She’d found Davenport this way when he’d fled Los Angeles. It ought to be easier to find the other tablet when they had its mate.

  “Don’t lose that,” Mitch said, sliding the amulet off the chain and holding it out to her.

  “I won’t.” Alma tucked it down her front to rest against her heart, loose inside her combinations. That would do for now. She’d put it back on the chain as soon as they were done.

  Jerry was drawing on the paper with a fountain pen, swift sure strokes delineating the shape of lake and forest, of buildings and ruins. The boat dock, the pump house…. “Every archeologist can draw a site plan,” Jerry said, glancing sideways at Lewis with a half smile. “It’s one of those things.”

  Alma frowned at the map. “We may need a larger scale.”

  “We need to find the general area first,” Jerry said. The ships were taking shape just as they’d seen them, half exposed in the middle of the lake. “There’s no point in drawing a large scale map of the sanctuary area if we’re looking somewhere else.”

  Alma shrugged. “Your call.” She knew better than to tell Jerry his business.

  This time when Jerry began the Hebrew invocations Lewis didn’t flinch. He stood quietly beside Mitch as Jerry walked a circle around the room, truncated by the bed, speaking in a very low voice, presumably not to be heard by Signora Ruggieri. Alma bent her head over the map on the desk, the tablet unwrapped beside it, gleaming with a soft, oily sheen, her wedding ring held loosely in her hand.

  There should be peace in this, or perhaps transcendent experience. She should feel something, some vast tide, some sense of presence. Instead there was nothing. If Diana spoke she did not hear her.

  Alma closed her eyes, her fingers resting lightly on the tablet. But it didn’t matter if she could hear the goddess or not. That was her limitation, not Diana’s. And so instead she summoned memory.

  The moon rising out of the clouds, or rather appearing to do so. It was they who rose out of the clouds, and there was nothing between Alma and the moon, not even the ghost of a pane of glass. The Jenny’s open forward cockpit hid nothing. The clouds clung to her face like wisps of tears, and then they soared free of them, the low clouds streaming past like a blanket impossibly soft. Above, the countless stars paled before their lady, the full moon rising clear and untouchable in the heavens.

  Behind her, in the aft cockpit, she heard Gil laugh with sheer delight. She could not speak. She could not find voice for this unimaginable beauty. They skimmed the surface of the clouds, the Jenny as graceful as a water bird just skimming the surface of a pond, mist rising beneath its wings. The mountains rose far above the clouds as well, standing like islands in a sea of glimmering white. Gil steered between them effortlessly. Even the familiar peaks of Colorado seemed new, transformed by moonlight, the entire world made into a white ocean beneath the moon.

  “Do you want to take the wheel?” Gil called, and she nodded. She had no words yet, no words for this singing beauty in her heart, for this thankfulness that threatened to overwhelm her. From autumn rain and blood had come this, transformed in seven short months. Armistice and peace, home and Gil, and this — this transformation — to soar like a freed spirit. This he gave her, home and freedom both, and the magic of flight. To run, and to come home.

  Diana, Alma whispered in her heart. All the contradictions made sense, huntress and protectress at once. The hound runs, and her coursing is a joy to behold. And then she comes home and sleeps by the fire she guards, safe beside those she loves.

  Diana, Alma whispered. Help us.

  Alma put her left hand on the tablet, and looped the chain that held her wedding band twice around her finger, her elbow propped at ninety degrees so that the ring swung freely over the map Jerry had drawn. “All right,” she said, clearing her throat. “Let’s see where the other tablet is.”

  “Or others,” Jerry said. “There might be more than one.”

  “Or others,” Alma agreed. She closed her eyes again, letting the ring swing in wide loops, crossing and recrossing the page. “Where are you?” she said softly. “Show me.”

  The ring swung in tighter and tighter loops. She felt it tug against her hand, as though a mag
net pulled it. Tighter and tighter, circling a single spot. Alma carefully let the chain out until it touched the page, and then opened her eyes. The band of the ring overlapped the smaller of the two ships midship, where they had found the Medusa earlier today. “I’m sure,” she said.

  “Damn,” Mitch said.

  Jerry shook his head. “It makes sense. They would have wanted the tablets aboard the ships. It makes sense if they hadn’t been moved. Probably this one was the first excavated, but as we saw today the ships are only about half exposed. If the other tablet or tablets are still on the ship, they must be on the lower levels, either because they were put there or because they fell through the decking when it was waterlogged and rotting. They could be a couple of decks down, still underwater.”

  “I think they were aboard the ships to begin with,” Lewis said. “That makes sense with what I saw.”

  “So we need to get aboard the ships,” Mitch said. He shook his head. “That’s going to be fun.”

  “Is this a good time to mention that I can’t swim?” Lewis said.

  Jerry laughed. “Neither can I. Not anymore.”

  “Well, you can row,” Alma said. “Both of you. If there’s any swimming to do I’ll do it.”

  “Or I can,” Mitch said.

  Alma stared at him. “You’re going to tell me you’re up to diving on that wreck? I don’t think so.” Mitch couldn’t fool her, much as he might like to think he did. He’d pulled something in the airship crash. She could see the way he moved. “Mitch, I know you’d give your all for this, but it’s not necessary. I’m as good a swimmer as you, and I’m uninjured. This part’s mine.”

  Slowly, Mitch nodded. “Ok. If we have to dive, you’ll do it.”

  “We’re going to have to wait until after dark,” Jerry said. “There’s no way we can get out on the lake without being in plain sight of everybody at the dig. We’ll have to wait until everybody has gone home.”

  “Nine o’clock or better,” Alma said. “It’s the end of May. Full dark is late.”