by K. G. McAbee
“You’ve got me there, sir, you have indeed.” O’Rourke’s chortles died away slowly. “The lives of others have no hold on me; never have done. I’m out for myself at all times. As, if you will forgive me for pointing it out, are you.”
“I?” Kurt sat up even straighter and shook his head. “I am a loyal officer of the Kaiser, may God preserve him from his enemies. I wish only to serve the Most High in all I do and say. Do not taint me with your own dark intent.”
“Taint, is it?” O’Rourke grinned impishly. “Don’t fool yourself, my boyo; you’re as eager for some things as I am, and you’ll wade through blood to get ’em. I know your type.” He laid a finger against his nose. “You want to be at your Most High’s right hand, and you know, if you get the bloody English off Venus, you will be. That’s what you are…sir.”
Kurt had his hand on his pistol, but did not draw it—to O’Rourke’s carefully hidden relief. “Have a care how you speak to me. I am a Junker,” he said, his teeth gritted. “My blood is noble and my temper is short.”
O’Rourke decided he’d better listen—this time. His opportunity to take the wind out of this kraut’s sails would come soon enough. He touched a finger to his new hat and put a solemn look on his face, though his eyes still twinkled.
“Sorry, Herr Oberst.” He turned and eyed the lizard-men still loading the cargo hold of the small zeppelin. “Won’t happen again,” he said over his shoulder, and only then let his smile return.
Oh, he had Kurt’s number, and that was a fact. If he played his cards right—and when did he not?—he would have his ticket of leave and be back on Earth in no time. Perhaps he’d visit the Americas, he thought idly; he had some relatives in New York. Not that they’d be glad to see him…
A lizard-man, an old one by the faded and washed-out colour of its scales, dropped a heavy box and bent over, panting. The box split open, the wood gone soft and spongy from the constant humidity of Venus. Half a dozen weapons spilled out, gleaming .577 Snider-Enfields, the breech loading artillery carbine, which had been phased out by the British army when they began using the Lee Metford instead. Phased out on Earth, at least; they were still the official weapon of Her Majesty’s Colonies on Venus.
O’Rourke strode over and kicked the lizard-man, who curled up into a ball and began making soft, mewing noises. The Irishman bent over and examined the rifles. The weapons were in good shape, not damaged yet by the ever-present danger of rust. A bit of a cleanup with an oily rag and they’d be top notch. He wondered where the Germans had gotten them, but decided it was safer not to ask.
“Get these weapons packed up in another crate,” he shouted. “And clear this old skink out of the way. He’s for the cook pot soon, I’ll wager. Though he’ll be naught but stringy meat, and no fat on him at all.”
Simon O’Rourke had been on many expeditions in the jungles of Venus. He knew how to make sure his men were fed, and how to make the best use of those who were no longer able to carry on.
The Irishman strolled towards the overhang and lounged before the table where Kurt sat, papers spread before him. The oberst ignored him for a time, then looked up.
“You have questions? Concerns? Reservations?” he snapped.
O’Rourke threw his head back and laughed. “Reservations? Me? How little you know me…sir.” He pulled up a chair and sprawled in it. “Is it you who’s the one with reservations now? A bit hesitant at spilling red blood instead of green, are you?”
“If the blood belongs to an Englishman, I have no compunctions at all about seeing it spilt,” was the reply. Kurt gave a grim smile. “I would happily wash in the blood of their kind. Wash my boots, at least; I would not deign to use it for any other purpose save staining the ground below me.”
“A real fire-eater, aren’t you now?” O’Rourke sat up straighter. “I’ll have to watch my step around you; that I can see.” He waved his hand at the zeppelin. “Aren’t you worried about supplying any sort of weapons to skinks?”
Kurt shook his head slowly, economically, once left, once right. “Worried? Why should I be? The native species under German control follow orders. Or else.”
O’Rourke nodded slowly. “Or else what?” he asked.
“Or else they die,” Kurt said simply. “As you have already seen, we do not coddle our slaves. Indeed, you are much like us in that. It is only the damned English who treat these inferior creatures as if they were almost human. It is their single greatest weakness, and it will destroy them.” He closed his notebook and put the cap on his fountain pen, then laid it precisely at the top. “You should not be too concerned about the lizard-men being armed. They shall not. I will supply German soldiers to do the shooting. Your main concern, O’Rourke, is to provide the corroborative English bodies we shall need to make our farce look real.”
O’Rourke cocked his head to one side. “Now don’t you worry yourself about that little bit of the plan,” he said. “Once we get our stage set, all I need is a lift to the nearest English settlement.”
“Timing is critical,” Kurt reminded him. “The American journalist is already at Fort Collingwood. He is scheduled to remain there for another two weeks before he comes to tour our own, far superior settlements.”
“No problem at all,” said O’Rourke, hiding a smile at his employer’s arrogance. “We have the time. All you have to do….”
Kurt opened his notebook and uncapped his pen. As he talked, O’Rourke watched as the German took copious notes.
These krauts, he thought; all the same, every one of ’em. Lists and schedules and outlines. If the dear Lord had been a German, he’d have taken months to create the world instead of six days.
5.
Aboard the Aeronaut III
It was early morning and already hot. Nathanial wasn’t surprised. After all, it had been hot all night, and all the previous day, and would doubtless continue to be hot until the sun exploded in a fiery Armageddon. He wiped sweat from his eyes and sighed.
The Aeronaut III cruised at a sluggish ten knots and something around a thousand feet over the dense green jungles of Venus. Nathanial Stone sat under an awning on the poop deck at a rickety wooden table, one of its legs propped up on an empty cigar box. He had doubted the even ricketier chair would hold his weight but had found it was, at least thus far, reliable. In his special cryptogram which none but he could read, he scribbled busily in his journal:
17 June. At A’s insistence, we have been travelling between some of the smaller English settlements in F-H’s little airship. I find the journey thus far beyond boring, but at least it keeps A out of trouble. She has made several conquests: J is her slave, F-H thinks highly of her, and the lizard-man T seems to look on her as some sort of amusing pet. When we set down at a settlement, he disappears at once, only to reappear with flowers or fruit, which he solemnly presents to her on a large leaf. She smiles at him and takes the gift; really, her social skills continue to amaze me, considering the sort of life she has led.
The airship thus far has surprised me. It is far roomier than I’d suspected, and is delightfully easy to pilot. I may consider getting one of my own when we return to Earth, purely for enjoyment. I understand, at least a bit, F-H’s fascination with the theory behind it. It is far different from flying on the Zeus, however, no doubt due to its smaller size.
We had a bit of excitement late yesterday. We moored last night near edge of the vast escarpment on which Her Majesty’s colonies sit because F-H, and J as well, insisted that it was a safe place. I, for one, did not believe in the danger, as I’ve not seen any lizard or saurian any larger than a mastiff thus far. This is because, I now understand, our brave colonists have cleared all the major predators off the plateau.
At least, nearly all.
Yesterday we found out that some are still in residence.
We had moored the ship as usual, and J had started a campfire to boil water for tea. I was sitting at this very table, making notes on F-H’s engines for future reference—see pag
e 37—and A, in that irritating way she has, was insisting on going with Thymon to fetch some fresh water from a stream we had flown over just before touching down.
“I have my bow,” she reminded me. Yes, she has brought hers from Earth, and she found a craftsman in Fort Collingwood who fletched some arrows for her with some quite odd yet colourful leathery feathers.
I could see no danger in it and gave my permission for her to go, at which she quite bridled and said, rather tartly, that she hadn’t asked for my permission in the first place. Really, the girl can be most uncivilised! Due, no doubt, to her distressing time in the Americas.
And so she started off, T in tow; the lizard was bristling with weapons, A had her bow and a quiver full of arrows, and it never occurred to me to worry. J started the kettle on to boil, while I asked F-H some questions about displacement and air speed. The time passed quite pleasantly, and I was just getting into a rather invigorating discussion—J later said it sounded more like an argument—with F-H when we heard a roar that shook the bones within me.
“Good gad, what was that?” I asked.
F-H immediately dashed up the gangplank to the Aeronaut, tools falling from the pockets of his frock coat like he was a flower shedding his petals, only to reappear an instant later with a rifle under each arm.
“Get onboard,” he shouted. “We may have to cast off in a hurry.” He tossed a rifle to J and the two of them disappeared into the heavy brush, leaving me, I fear, with my mouth open.
Another roar; this one quite shook the airship. I could feel the vibrations spread out like rings in a pond where one has tossed a stone. I raced up the gangplank and looked about hurriedly for some sort of weapon, but was unable to find anything more useful than an iron belaying pin. Hurriedly, I unwrapped the lines about it and pulled it out of its slot, then I dashed back down the gangplank with it in my hand. I didn’t dare go too far from the ship, for if F-H were indeed correct, we might have to make what the Americans call a “quick getaway.”
Then, silence, which went on for what seemed like forever. I felt a bit silly with the huge iron pin in my hand and was looking about for a convenient place to put it.
But the silly feeling did not last long. In all too short a time, I was glad I had it, and wished I had a dozen, nay, a hundred more.
For the most fearsome beast chose that instant to come charging through the underbrush, straight for me. A massive head filled with far too many teeth sat directly on a thick trunk without benefit of a neck; two ridiculously small arms waved about aimlessly, each ending with a four-fingered clawed hand. The heavy hind legs were bowed out, and a thick, short tail waved back and forth with the most menacing air imaginable.
I will be quite honest; my very heart quaked within me. I felt my back press against the wooden hull of the airship before I was even aware I had moved, and the air seemed to have oddly lost its oxygen content. I gasped and held the belaying pin out in what I hoped was a threatening manner. Much good it would have done me against the huge beast now bearing down on me.
Then, I noticed the arrows in the thing’s right flank, and the bright green blood gushing from a huge wound in its throat. It slowed, seemed to look about as if wondering where it had got to, and staggered a bit.
A loud whoop came from the dense forest behind the thing, and A burst into view, waving her bow above her head in a most unladylike and quite bloodthirsty way. T was right behind her, and F-H and J were behind him.
I gave them the merest glance. My eyes were caught by the thing before me. I could see now it was in its death throes. It tottered forward a step or two, and one huge splayed foot came down directly on the small fire J had lit before all the excitement. The great lizard jerked with pain, but sluggishly, as though its scorching skin was little more painful than an insect bite. It gave one more step forward, another, getting ever closer…
Then A, the mad child, came running at the thing, waving a branch at it.
“We’ve got to keep it away from the airship!” she shouted.
I saw at once what she meant and ran forward—carefully—to help her drive the thing away, for its great bulk would damage the gondola of the ship irreparably if it fell on it. T and the others joined in, and the great lizard changed its course just enough to bypass the ship. It fell, dead, a little to the left of the stern.
For a moment, there was nothing but silence. Even the constant cheep-chirp-chitter of the jungle was still, as if all the local inhabitants were offering a moment of silence to commemorate the passing of this great jungle lord.
J ran up, a grin on his face, and broke the silence.
“I say, Stone, what a smashing girl Miss Annabelle is! Look at that shooting! Why, she hit it three times before any of us could get a shot in!”
Then, after the fire had been built up again and the kettle was on the boil at last, I had to hear them all tell me about A and her bravery and her skill and her courage…all while I was trying to learn more about the beast.
“It’s what the natives call a baratnor,” J explained, in between glances of admiration at A. “I haven’t seen one on the plateau before, though I know some of our chaps go hunting them below the escarpment.”
T, who had removed several of the beast’s teeth and claws—no doubt to add to his spiked war club—nodded in agreement. “Very fierce,” he said. “Ssstrong warriors fear them. But not Missss Annabelle.” He looked at her adoringly—or, at least, I suppose that was the feeling he displayed on his leathery, knotty face. For all I know of him and his kind, he might have been considering her suitability for the cookpot.
“A remarkable creature,” F-H chimed in, and for a moment I thought he was talking about A. Then he went on, “Carnivorous, of course. They get considerably larger. This one was little more than a cub. Perhaps it was able to make its way through some of the subterranean passageways that link the plateau with the jungle below. The tunnels are far too small for a full grown one, naturally, but a youngling might just make it. Really, Miss Annabelle, your archery skills are most impressive.”
A smiled at him, turned to me and said, “No more than Nathanial’s skill with a belaying pin, surely.”
Everyone laughed merrily. I’m sure I even heard the lizard-man make a sort of gravel-shaken-in-a-bucket sound which I thought might be construed as amusement.
Really, the girl can be most irritating.
“Oh, do put that journal down and look around you, Nathanial!” Annabelle said.
Nathanial sighed, capped his pen, closed his journal and tucked the pen into his pocket. He got up from the rickety chair and joined Annabelle at the starboard railing.
“Just look at the size of some of those trees!” Annabelle waved at the passing jungle below them. “Isn’t it lovely? So very different from the deserts in the Western Americas…”
Her voice trailed away. Nathanial knew quite well why. Annabelle had seen her parents die in the deserts. No wonder she was dazzled by the lush greenery of Venus. She didn’t even seem to mind the ever-present damp, though he, for one, did not like it in the least.
He wiped the sweat from his brow with a damp handkerchief.
What in the name of Heaven was he doing here? He had examined the engines designed by Forbes-Hamilton and found them, at least to his knowledge, barely different from those used in the German zeppelins. Of course, on this ridiculous, time-wasting flight over endless trees, their host had not shown Stone every one of his alterations and additions; Nathanial was quite sure of that. There was one particular valve series that he was itching to investigate, but Forbes-Hamilton kept changing the subject when he asked questions and leading him away to examine yet another dirty bit of engine or section of ripped airbag material. One useful thing; the airbags seemed to be made of some sort of local lizard skin obviously far stronger and even lighter than canvas.
Still, he was glad to have the opportunity to learn more about the craft. He had spent so much time on aether engines, their design, workload and forms, that
he was quite enjoying learning about a system that worked within an atmosphere, instead of outside of one.
If only Annabelle hadn’t insisted on this endless trip between tiny, boring villages, all of which looked precisely the same. They could perfectly well have stayed at the capital instead of traipsing all over Victoria plateau. Thank the Lord, they were heading for a larger fort at last, though not Fort Collingwood, and could get off this cramped little airship and into a semi-civilised spot.
“If you’ll look just there, Miss Annabelle,” Giles Jericho said, pointing down over the rail, “you can make out one of the smaller outposts; see it there? It sits very near the edge of the plateau. Fort Saint George is the nearest major outpost from here, though it’s far from the size of Fort Collingwood, naturally. We’ll arrive there soon.” He turned and smiled at her. “I’ll be happy to show you about the place, if you like?”
“Is it indeed a fort? I mean to say, is it surrounded by a tall stockade, like Collingwood?”
“Yes indeed. Quite necessary, don’t you know. The native fauna can be rather hard to deal with, and I’m not just talking about the huge ones like the one you so brilliantly and bravely killed last evening. Why, there’s a lizard no bigger than your hand; travels in packs of thousands and they can strip a field of sugarcane in a day. Luckily, they can’t fly, and they seem to prefer the lowlands. That’s one of the main reasons we’ve colonised the plateau. Easier to grow crops, and the larger lizards tend to stick to the lowest jungle, where they have plenty of prey.” Jericho gave what Nathanial thought was a rather inane laugh. “We wouldn’t want to end up on the receiving end of a trantor’s teeth or a gizzleback’s claws, I assure you.”