The Deirdre

by Michael Schulkins

  Calvin and Mister Lang returned a moment later with the goods, and they, Perkins and Lang that is, began to put it to work. Bemis and I looked on with the same rapt attention one might pay to an experienced lion tamer preparing his tools before entering the cage, and knowing that you might be asked to wield the whip and chair at the next show.

  They began by excavating a narrow hole in the rock face, into which, I presumed from its size, they would insert the cigar of explosives. Then Lang produced a small box, which had been a passenger in the hod, but one that I had ignored due to the presence of the dynamite. I saw the famous name of Mister Nobel on its lid. Lang opened the box and drew out a tiny cylinder with two wires hanging from one end.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Blasting cap,” said Lang. Then he turned and inserted the end without the wires into one end of the cigar of dynamite.

  “Can it explode?” I inquired.

  Perkins laughed. “Can it explode, he asks. Yes, Clemens, that is its sole purpose in life. It is perhaps a more valuable invention than the dynamite itself, and has prevented many an accidental death, both here and on Earth. The job of the blasting cap is to detonate the dynamite,” he added helpfully.

  “I see,” I said. “And what detonates the blasting cap? Or does it have a mind of its own in that regard?” And to think I had wasted my time caressing the mere dynamite, when my terror should have been saved for this unassuming device.

  “No, no,“ Perkins said. “That’s the whole point, you see. This fellow—” He held the dynamite in the beam of his headlamp. “—is made from nitroglycerine, which by itself is extremely volatile.” Perkins waggled the deadly cigar about as if his place in Heaven had been bought and paid for in advance. “But thanks to the great Alfred Nobel, who thought to mix the nitroglycerine with diatomaceous earth and thereby render it harmless—” He tossed the supposedly harmless exploding cigar up into the vacuum, preparing to catch it once it had turned over and made its laborious descent, but it struck the ceiling of course, his sausage-shaped fingers fumbled the catch, and the dynamite fell to the ground. Before I had learned of the existence of diatomaceous earth, I would have ducked and thrown myself to the ground, in an altogether different direction, but enlightened as I now was, I only cringed a bit.

  “Booger,” muttered Perkins, then he bent and retrieved the dynamite, which I remembered too late also held the blasting cap. “See,” he said, “entirely harmless.”

  “But,” I said, “what about your blasting cap? Why didn’t—”

  “Yes,” he continued, “Mighty ingenious, i’n’t it?”

  “I hope so,” I said.

  “It’s made from fulminate of mercury, you see.”

  I didn’t see.

  “Once it’s ignited, it’ll set off your dynamite every time.”

  “And what angers the fulminate of mercury enough to set it off?” I asked.

  “Electricity,” he said triumphantly.

  “I should have known,” I said.

  Calvin and I watched as Lang attached a pair of wires to those protruding from the blasting cap, and snugged the completed assembly into the hole they’d prepared in the rock. The wires were then strung backwards away from the rock face. I stood watching this until Mister Lang turned his lamp on me and said, “Come along now, unless you’d like to be exploded.” This was not a part of my plans, so I followed on his heels, trying to stay as close to the twin air cylinders on his back as I could without knocking him over.

  The four of us moved a fair distance from the dynamite, but, unlike everywhere else in the Deirdre, there was no dogleg close at hand around which we could hide from the blast—or to be more accurate, no dogleg within reach of the available length of wire. Had I been in charge I expect we would have got more wire, a lot more wire, then uncoiled it all the way back to the belowdecks, if not to Lucky Strike, but my opinion was not solicited in the matter.

  Lang said, “We’ve only another few yards left on the spool. Any ideas, Lawrence?” this being Perkins’s given name.

  Perkins did not respond with his superior’s Christian name, which was Percy, or perhaps Percival, but he did respond with an idea, and one I liked, which was no easy task under the circumstances. “You and the men go back out past the last bend in the tunnel. I’ll go down into the hole here and set it off.”

  “Yes,” Lang said after a moment, “the hole. I’d forgotten that. But let’s see if the four of us can get into it. If so, it’ll make for a good base of operations for subsequent blasts.” I didn’t like this plan nearly as well as Perkins’s, but once again I wasn’t asked for my opinion.

  “Very well,” Perkins said, then added, “In you go, boys, and bring the hod with you, or the supplies in any case.”

  Calvin went first, disappearing into the crevasse at our feet until only the shiny top of his helmet was visible in the light from my lamp.

  “Hand down the air cylinders, Sam,” he called. I did as instructed, then passed along the remaining contents of the hod, including the rest of the dynamite, which still received first class service, despite its lowered status in our eyes. We kindly let Mister Percy Lang keep charge of the box of blasting caps.

  All the supplies having been shifted, I climbed down into the hole after them. It was not a lot snugger than the usual tunnel in the rest of the Deirdre, but it led nearly straight down, which meant that I had to take care not to step on Bemis on the way in. There were plenty of protruding points of rock to entertain us on the descent, and I noticed that more than one of them had a smear of the execrable grease, or slush as the whalers called it, on them. The odd thing was, Bemis didn’t wear the slush, nor did any of the rest of us—but then, I thought, it could have been deposited back when D2 was a fresh spur with its whole life ahead of it.

  Calvin was wedging the contents of the hod into niches and cracks in the sides of the crevasse with an admirable resourcefulness, and would soon have had everything neatly stowed if I had not inadvertently kicked him on the side of his helmet while trying to establish my footing. He lost his grip on the air cylinder he had been holding, and it fell between his feet and rattled on down into the craggy darkness below. I say it rattled just to be entertaining; in fact we heard no sound at all from its glancing descent.

  “My apologies, Cal,” I said. “I’ll go on down and retrieve it.”

  “That’s all right,” he replied. “I’ll fetch it,” and he soon climbed down out of sight of my headlamp’s penumbra.

  With nothing else to do, I took what I assumed to be my station in the crevasse, bracing myself against the surrounding rock. I could hear the scraping of the air cylinders on my back as they found purchase on the wall behind me. This was a sound I had heard conducted through my haggis often enough while worming my way along the Deirdre’s tunnels, but this time it gave me a renewed sense of the closeness of the space I was currently occupying. A previous blast, and one a fair distance away, had collapsed a portion of the tunnel above us. What if the charge we had set so close to hand collapsed the crevasse, or else discharged a shower of rock down into the already snug hole? Fortunately, Calvin stopped this unhappy train of thought by speaking to me out of the darkness below.

  “Sam,” he whispered, “will you come down here for a minute.”

  “I suppose, Calvin, but what can I possibly—”

  “Just come, will you please, Sam.”

  His tone, although not revealing his intentions, brooked no argument. I pointed the beam of my helmet lamp downward so I could locate handholds and other protuberant hazards, then worked my way down to where my partner sat, resting on a narrow ledge that seemed to mark where the crevasse abruptly turned sideways and stretched away more or less horizontally into the rock.

  “Well, here I am, Calvin. Now what is it that—”

  “Shh—”

  “But I—”

  “Quiet, Sam. Just take a moment and listen.”

  I did as he asked, and for my trouble heard Mis
ter Lang order Perkins into the hole above us. Then, once Lang had ceased speaking, I heard another sound.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “Shush, Sam”

  I shushed, and listened intently, trying to resolve the sound coming through my radio into something I could recognize and comprehend. Straining to hear over the sounds of my own breathing and other telltale noises inside my suit, I at last made out an odd wavering noise that just might have been a human voice. It was tenuous and distorted, with static discharges rattling through it like gravel thrown into a miner’s rock-washing trough. I continued listening, even holding my breath, and I could tell from its absence that Calvin was doing the same. And the longer I listened, the more certain I became that the sound I was hearing was indeed a human voice, and by my reckoning it appeared that its producer was not in the best of spirits. I could not make out a single word of what it said, so faint and distorted was the sound, but it seemed to me that the voice, or the owner of it anyway, was angry, sullen, demanding, forlorn, indignant, and distraught by turns. For some reason it did not occur to me that the voice I thought I heard could have belonged to more than one man.

  I listened, and longed to understand what the eerie, distant, disembodied voice was saying, but still not a word was clear enough to be sure of its meaning. All that could be made out for certain was its dreadful, chilling tone.

  Then I recalled Chalk, and the tale he had told.

  “Holy God, Cal,” I whispered. “It’s Chalk’s ghost.”

  Bemis made a derisive grunt. “It’s something, anyway. I’ll grant you that.”

  Then Perkins’s voice came loud and clear over the radio. “Clemens. Bemis. Where the booger have you got to?”

  “We’re here,” I said inanely. “You’ll never guess what we’ve—”

  “Shh,” Calvin whispered, and he poked me with his boot for emphasis. “Not now.”

  “You two get up here where I can keep an eye on you,” Perkins said. “We’ll be blasting any minute now.”

  I scrambled up into the narrow passage above me until Perkins’s boot landed a blow to my helmet.

  “Ah, there you are. Pardon me, Clemens,” he said.

  “Think nothing of it,” I replied. I was in a mood to be generous. After all, what was a simple kick to the head when compared to being stuck at the bottom of a crevasse in company with a ghost? And then there was the dynamite to consider, and the fulminate of mercury. “What happens now?” I said.

  “Put out your helmet lamps,” came Lang’s voice. “They’re no use in here.”

  Except perhaps to ward off the occasional ghost, I thought, but I did as he suggested. In my current frame of mind, the sight of the unyielding rock a hand’s breadth from my faceplate was far too evocative of the grave.

  It was Perkins, perched directly above me, who answered my question. “Now we attach the leads to a charged condenser and throw the switch.”

  “When?” I said.

  Perkins laughed. “Whaddya mean when? Now.”

  Lang called out, “Fire in the hole.”

  “When will we know if it—” I began, then the rock all around me trembled, as if the planet had been stuck by a meteor. A loose pebble clattered off my helmet, but aside from that there wasn’t a single sound to mark the occasion.

  A minute later, we had our helmet lamps alight again, and were climbing out of the hole. Bemis began to hand up the supplies, but Lang said to leave them where they were for the moment, as more blasting was likely to be needed before we were through, and he was right.

  Once we had returned to the belowdecks and removed ourselves from our pressure suits, I took Calvin aside. “Don’t you think we should tell Mister Lang about what we heard?” I said. “Or Perkins anyway. He’s a decent fellow.”

  He said, “And have them mock us for a pair of superstitious fools? No, thank you.”

  “We’ve been laughed at before, as I recall, and for sounder reasons.”

  The belowdecks was close and overcrowded, as always. Bemis glanced around at Chalk and the other men who had refused the assignment in D2 as they worked doggedly at their fantastical game of poker, then led me over to the vestibule containing the shaft leading down into Mister Lovelace’s lair.

  Taking me by the arm, he said intently, “We’ve got no proof, Sam. No evidence at all of what we heard. Nor can we say with any degree of certainty what it actually was.”

  “It has to be Chalk’s ghost,” I said. “The ghost of his jonah John Jones, that is, stalking the tunnels of the Deirdre in search of, I don’t know, revenge, I suppose, or whatever it is that a ghost might desire.”

  Bemis looked at me with a contempt only slightly diluted by consternation. “I don’t believe in ghosts,” he insisted. “And unless I miss my guess, you don’t either, Sam Clemens, despite the pleasure you take in playing the fool.” He had me dead to rights, of course, but that didn’t alter the facts.

  “But what else could it be?” I insisted. “I haven’t heard a voice so steeped in vitriol since I contrived to get a raccoon into bed with my old nanny.” Calvin smiled in spite of himself. I added, “It was only a kit, but she was profoundly perturbed, so the critter had the desired effect.”

  He said, “I suppose I’d better check my hammock carefully with you about.”

  “No. I think you’re safe from me, Calvin, at least for the time being. The pickings for such mischief are mighty slim hereabouts. One of Mister Kent’s chickens might do, but I doubt it would sit still for the gaff, and Puss is far too proud to accept the role. But honestly, you heard that voice. Where could it have come from but beyond the grave?”

  “So how was yer time down in the D2, shipmates?” This was Chalk of course, and he had snuck up behind us.

  “Fine,” Bemis said.

  “Don’t s’pose ya found any ice.”

  “We blasted three times,” Calvin said. I noticed a tinge of aggravation in his tone. “Nothing much as yet.”

  “Well, leastways you’s back in one piece. That’s about as good as ya c’n e’spect, considerin’. Now, c’n I borrow yer sewin’ needle then, Samuel Clemens? I bent the tip a mine probin’ at a tooth, an’ now she’s broke clean off.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Happy to, but I think it may still be in the sickbay.”

  “I’ll be checkin’ wi’ Mister Kent then,” he said, then added with a twinkle in his eye, “I ‘spect you heard the voices.”

  Neither of us spoke.

  “Thought as much,” he said. There was a hint of triumph on his weather and tattoo ravaged face. “Wouldn’t go back down there, I was you.”

  “I told you, Chalk,” Bemis said. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  Chalk turned away, saying, “Ghost don’ care a lick if ya believes or not, Calvin Bemis, an’ that’s a fact.” He glanced at me then. “I don’ s’pose you’ll mind if I keeps the needle then, Samuel.” I looked at him without comprehension. “Once yer dead, that is,” he said, then turned and shuffled off toward the galley.

  Chapter Eight

  The next course of dynamite gouged out a deep hole in the floor of D2, and once the dust had settled, which didn’t take long, Perkins climbed into it to inspect the wreckage for signs of ice. I looked on with a good deal of anticipation, tempered somewhat by previous disappointments. I had been working in the Deirdre mine for several months by then, and had yet to see a nugget of ice much bigger than my fist, and I was with child, as the saying goes, to be witness to a big strike.

  Perkins reached up and threw a shovel-full of blasted rock onto the ground at Mister Lang’s feet. Lang picked some shards of rock out of the pile and gave them a brief examination in the beam of his headlamp. Then he tossed the shards aside and said, “So what do you think, Mister Perkins?”

  Perkins’s helmet lamp peeked over the edge of the rubble and lit up the floor of the cavern as he lifted another scoop of freshly blasted rock from the hole. “Well, I don’t know,” he began. “I expect you’re a b
etter judge of ore than I am, Mister Lang.”

  Lang snorted. “Don’t be shy, Lawrence. What’s your honest assessment?”

  Perkins stood silently for a while, then at last he sighed and said, “There’s booger all, Percy, that’s what there is.” And so it looked as if I would have to wait a while longer to see that big strike.

  “I’m afraid I have to agree,” Lang said, then added solemnly, “Captain isn’t gonna like it much.”

  “No. I expect he ain’t,” agreed Perkins. “Well, shall I have the men—” by which he meant Bemis and me of course, “—collect this up and take it topside?”

  “Not worth the hauling,” said Lang, with evident disdain, then after half a minute of silent contemplation, added, “But then we’ve got to give it every chance, don’t we, Mister Perkins. Let me have a closer look.” He grabbed Perkins by the bloated arm of his haggis and, taking unthinking advantage of the meager gravity, hoisted him effortlessly out of the six-foot deep hole. Then he jumped down and began to examine more pieces of rock, which he then tossed out of the pit with a casual indifference that did not speak well for their quality.

  Bemis and I stood by with nothing in particular to do. Despite several worthy explosions that produced plenty of destruction, we had found no ice ore of sufficient quality to be escorted out of the depths, and we were not sent down into the great crack in the floor either. A new, far lengthier skein of electrical wire had been obtained from stores, so instead of descending into the crevasse for protection, we retreated around the final dogleg of D2 to hide from the blasts.

  I approved of this arrangement on several counts. Although the procedure amounted to lying flat on the ground and waiting for it to shake apart beneath you, it was easily more comfortable and convenient than climbing down into a crevasse, and by my reckoning just had to be safer—unless of course the roof fell in on top of us, as it had on the ill-fated John Jones. The new procedure also prevented me from listening to the ghost, since there wasn’t a trace of its anguished vocalizations up in the D2 itself. It seemed that the vituperous, if otherwise unintelligible, creature only deigned to speak to Bemis and myself, and then only when we were at the bottom of the crevasse.