Ganymede

by Priest, Cherie

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute. Hold your horses, ma’am. Let me go back to my rooms and have a chat with my men, all right? I’ll tell them what you’ve told me, and they can decide whether or not they want to take the chance.”

  “But, Captain!” Hazel objected. “You can’t go running around willy-nilly, spreading the story around the Quarter!”

  “And I won’t. But I won’t ask my men to risk their lives spying and smuggling against two governments at once, not without knowing what they’re risking. For what it’s worth, I expect they’ll be willing to help. Two of my crewmen are Chinamen, without any more political allegiance than I’ve got, and the other is Kirby Troost, who you met downstairs, He’s always game for anything—the more unlikely and dangerous, the better—and if the prospect of friendly women is involved, you may as well call him sold. So they can make up their own minds, and even if they decide they don’t want in, you can sleep well knowing they won’t have any interest in handing you over to Texas, either.”

  Hazel chewed at her lip and tapped Josephine’s silver letter opener up and down on the desk’s edge. “We were hoping for a definite commitment.”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s the best you’re going to get right now.” He glanced out the window. “It’s almost sundown, and the curfew will be settling soon. I know you’re not too worried about it—and honestly, neither am I—but if we want to hang around without drawing extra Texian attention, we need to follow the rules. Until we break the ever-living hell out of them, anyway.”

  Much as they didn’t like it, the women had to admit that this was reasonable. Ruthie said, “In the morning, then. Tell me where you are staying, and I will come for you. I will take you out to Pontchartrain, and you will see Ganymede up close, and crawl inside, and show the bayou boys how to make her swim.”

  “That sounds fine to me,” he told her. “We’ve got a couple of rooms over at the Widow Pickett’s on the other side of the Square. You can come collect us there in the morning. So if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go round up my engineer and … On second thought, you know what? Keep him. Or send him along when he’s ready to come back.”

  With that he climbed to his feet, returned the papers he’d collected, and excused himself.

  But Hazel said, “No, you keep those. And this one, as well.” She handed him another sheet, detailing the propulsion screw and the diesel engine, as well as its exhaust system. “Look them over. Make yourself familiar with them. And for the love of all that’s holy, don’t let the Texians see them.”

  Nine

  Ruthie Doniker knocked on Andan Cly’s door brighter and earlier than he truly cared to see her, but he’d told her “morning,” and so it was morning when she came calling. When he opened the door, she stood there swathed in a green cotton dress too formfitting to be called plain, with a very light jacket that had a high cream-colored collar cinched around her neck. Before the captain had a chance to greet her, she said, “It is time to leave for your day at the lake, Captain Cly.”

  “No kidding.” He blinked blearily. He was awake, but he hadn’t been for long. Not long enough to shave or wash his face, and only barely long enough to realize that Kirby Troost hadn’t come back to the room. “Well, I guess you can come on in while I get myself together.”

  “Merci,” she said, and sidled past him.

  “Have a seat wherever. Give me a minute, would you?”

  He pulled out his razor and tried to forget that Ruthie was present and looking at him. It was easier said than done. Every time his eyes slipped away from his own face in the mirror, he caught her reflection and felt strange about it.

  At some point, he paused with the razor braced under one cheek and asked, “So, Kirby. I guess he stayed at the Garden Court last night?”

  “I guess he did. Marylin took care of him. He came here with me.”

  “Oh. He did? Where is he?”

  “Awakening your other crewmen.”

  As he drew the razor across his skin, Cly realized that she’d never asked him if they’d agreed to take the job or not. Ruthie was assuming they would take it, as if she could bend reality to meet her whims.

  He was glad he wouldn’t need to disappoint her.

  The night before, he’d sat with Fang and Houjin after supper, showing them the schematics in the privacy of their room, where no Texians, Confederates, or other unwelcome eyes might take a look. Houjin had responded with enthusiastic glee—he would’ve risked a coin-flip’s chance of drowning for the mere opportunity to get a look at the Ganymede, much less crawl around inside it. His passion for all things mechanical would draw him to the lake even if they told him it’d cost a dollar and he’d get a beating when he arrived.

  Fang had been his usual unflappable self, nodding his agreement to investigate the craft and, later, when Houjin could not see his hands, signing to the captain, Very dangerous? To which Cly had shrugged a maybe. Then, while the boy’s nose was still stuck in the diagrams and drawings, Fang had added, I will do this, for the Union.

  Cly signed back, Didn’t know you cared one way or the other.

  I care for the West. If the South wins, and claims new states, they will be states where men can be owned as slaves. If the North wins, maybe the new states will be … He paused. Not much better. But where freedom is declared, it can be negotiated. Besides, I liked Josephine. Smart woman. Easy to agree with.

  “Easier to agree with her than to argue with her, that’s for damn sure.”

  As Cly finished up his shaving, wiping down his face and neck, a knock on the door was followed shortly by the entrance of Fang, Houjin, and Kirby Troost, who touched the edge of his hat in Ruthie’s general direction.

  Ruthie stood to her full height—three inches taller than Troost, though that was emphasized by the boots she wore—and announced, “If everyone is ready, we should go catch a carriage.”

  “Shouldn’t we just grab the street rails, instead?” Cly asked. “Surely that’d be faster than a cabriolet.”

  “A carriage to the edge of the Quarter, and then we can take the rails to the far side of Metairie, but no farther. Where we go beyond the City of the Dead … only trusted eyes may lead us.”

  Together they followed Ruthie’s lead down to the street, where she nabbed a carriage in the blink of an eye, even though she needed a larger transport than was usually running. Before long, they were back at the street rail station where they’d first entered the city, and then on the car to Metairie, to Houjin’s continued joy.

  On the way, Kirby Troost sat beside the captain. When Ruthie stood at the protective guardrail, likely out of hearing distance, the engineer asked quietly, “Are you sure about this?”

  “No.”

  “Me either. Did they tell you about what happened to Betters and Cardiff?”

  “Who are Betters and Cardiff?” Cly asked.

  “The Texians who went missing. They’re the reason New Orleans has a curfew.”

  “No, the ladies didn’t mention it.”

  “Josephine knows,” Troost said softly. “The girls at the house say she was there when they died. Do you know they’ve got a rotter problem, here in New Orleans?”

  Taken aback, Cly gave Troost a hard stare of uncertainty. “That’s impossible. No gas, no rotters.”

  “Impossible or not, that’s what they sound like to me. Except they don’t call ’em rotters here. They call ’em zombis. And I don’t think they’re made by the gas. I think they’re made by the sap.”

  Cly considered this and said, “We’ve known for a while that the drug makes people sick, if they use it too long.”

  “I think it does worse than make them sick. I think it kills them, and keeps them upright, just like the dead in Seattle. All I’m saying is, when you meet back up with this lady friend of yours, you should ask her about it. The girls say she saw the whole thing. Her and some voudou queen, but I don’t rightly know what to make of that part.”

  The captain stayed hung up on the undead part
iculars. “I’m not saying there aren’t any rotters outside the city, Troost. Ten minutes talking to Mercy Lynch’ll tell you that much. But those rotters happened because a dirigible crashed, and the gas got loose—poisoning the air where all those people were. That was a mess of an accident, but I don’t think that could happen around here, not without people noticing it.”

  “I’m not arguing with you. A big load of hungry dead folks didn’t just appear one night down by the river. They weren’t here ten years ago, were they?”

  “If they were, I never heard about it.”

  “That’s what I mean,” the engineer said. He was wheedling now; he had an idea and he was determined to share it—by verbal force if necessary. “They didn’t spring up overnight, but they’ve been happening gradual-like. One or two sap-heads, here and there, going so deep into the drugs that they didn’t ever come back. Then what happens if another one or two, here and there, does the same thing? And another few?”

  “It’s a stretch, Troost.”

  “I know it is. But it’s not a big stretch, and I don’t think I’m wrong. The streets aren’t crawling with them, not like in Seattle, but they’re a problem down by the river, and the Texians are on a rampage, trying to wipe them out and make the place safe again.”

  “How do you know that?” the captain asked.

  “You saw that Texian in the lobby, the fellow who practically lives there? His name’s Fenn Calais, and as long as you’re buying, he’s talking. You know what else he told me?”

  “Go on.”

  “He said that the raid on Barataria was an official operation, and Texas was looking for a ship—something they thought the pirates might be hiding, or in the process of smuggling out to sea. And when we saw them from the sky, watching over the bay, they were poking around in the water, weren’t they doing just that?”

  “Doesn’t mean they were looking for—” He chose not to say the name aloud. Just in case. “—the ship we’re looking at.”

  “All I’m saying is, I hope we’re not biting off more than we can chew.”

  Cly grinned. “You don’t hope that. Not for a second. You hope it gets so messy, you can make your own fortune.”

  “Goddamn, sir. You know me entirely too well.” Troost rolled a cigarette and stuck it between his lips, then lit it and puffed on it the rest of the way to Metairie.

  At the Metairie station, they all disembarked and were met by a handsome, heavyset black man named Norman Somers. He greeted them wearing denim pants, a linen button-up shirt with a vest, and a big smile that did not appear practiced or false. If he was a spy or a man with a covert mission to attend, he was a very fine actor—or so Cly thought.

  Ruthie gave Norman a kiss on the cheek, which he returned. “You must be the captain and crew,” he said to the rest of those assembled. “I hear your ship is out here at the Texian yards, over yonder.”

  “Just on the other side of the station, that’s right,” said Cly. “Having a little work done while we’re in town.”

  “You’ve picked a good shop. Mostly it’s run by Texians and a group of colored fellows from the Chattanooga schools. They’ll do good work for you. But I understand you’re here to take a gander at another fine piece of machinery, isn’t that right?” He did not lower his voice or treat the subject with any specific gravity, and this was no doubt for the best—given that they conversed in public, with dozens of passengers fresh off the street rails milling to and fro.

  Cly replied in kind, “That’s the plan.” And then he made the rounds of introductions, following which, Normal Somers urged them to follow him to a service lot beyond the edge of the cemetery.

  “Lots of folks park their buggies and carriages and whatnot, then ride the street rail into town. This here lot,” he said with a sweep of his arm, “is watched by Charlie over there.” His sweeping gesture ended in a wave at a tiny old negro with at least half a dozen firearms in his immediately visible possession, probably more. “Charlie keeps an eye on things, and if you come back to your ride and it’s in one piece, you tip him whatever you’ve got handy. That’s our buggy—if you want to pile inside, I’ll go settle up.”

  The buggy in question did not come attached to a horse. It had a front-mounted motor that drew a big wheeled contraption that looked cobbled together from a rolling-crawler, a cabriolet, a street rail car, and perhaps a two-man flier. It was a hodgepodge piece of machinery, but it was big enough to take everyone wherever they felt like going, and the stretched-wool surrey top kept the worst of the sun off their heads.

  Kirby Troost again sat beside the captain, and leaned over to mumble, “I was going to complain that this was a conspicuous sort of ride, but looking around at the lot, I am forced to revise my opinion.”

  It was true. All the vehicles in Charlie’s lot were similarly patchworked and rigged together. It could not be said that they were all of a single type, except that none of them had started out looking like they did at present. The captain detected the occasional small dirigible chassis, boat motor, carriage frame, and dual V-twin engine protruding from a hood … but most of what he spied was made of unidentifiable bits.

  The captain said, “I suppose people out here like to improvise.”

  Ruthie replied, “They do it because they must. Many of these—” She cocked a thumb at the next row of buggies. “—are made with things the machine shops throw away.”

  “I believe it,” Troost said. “The whole yard looks like a big science experiment.”

  Shortly, Norman Somers returned and climbed up onto the driver’s seat. He pulled a lever, which produced a large black umbrella, and with a popping sound it opened to shade him from the sun so that he was protected as well as his passengers. “All right!” he declared. “Now we can get on our way. And how was your trip from the city?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “Just fine,” said Cly, who was still a bit surprised by how unstealthy this whole production felt. “And might I ask, where exactly will the rest of our trip see us heading?”

  “The rest of your trip?” He gave a narrow chain a hearty yank, and the engine burbled to life, spewing fumes and soft puffy smoke clouds in every direction. Over the diesel rumble he said, “We’re going to take a stroll around a lake, that’s all we’re goin’ do. Maybe we swing by the bayou’s edge and visit with some of the fellas we find there, huh? This your first time in New Orleans?”

  Cly said, “Mine and Fang’s? No. Huey, yes. Troost?”

  “I never been here before,” the engineer informed them. “Been around the Gulf a bit. Visited Galveston once, and Houston. Spent some time in Mobile. Somehow, never managed to land myself right here on the delta. Not till now.”

  “Then, let me welcome you to my home city, and I hope you enjoy your stay.”

  The rest of the way was filled with jovial chitchat of a similar nature, and gradually the tall grasses, half-paved roads, and spotty marshes gave way to more fully untamed wet, thick grasslands and roads that were not paved at all. The rumbling buggy drove them bumpily along the rutted dirt paths and beneath gigantic trees that oozed lacy gray curls of Spanish moss and peeling spirals of bark and vines. Though the day was young, the world became darker as they moved farther from the city’s hub; before long, the paths were so overgrown that the long elbows of cypress trees met above them, and the whole road was cast in shadow. Whereas before, they could hear the guttural hums of other buggies and the clattering buzz of the street rail cars moving back and forth between their stops, now the passengers heard nothing but the rollicking grumble of their own engine. And behind it, in shrieks and whispers, they picked up the calls of birds and the croaks of a million frogs, plus the zipping drone of clear-winged insects the size of bats.

  Off to the side of the road, among the trees, the land grew less landlike and more swamplike.

  “Where the hell are we?” wondered Kirby Troost aloud.

  Norman Somers somehow overheard him, and he replied, “Over there, to the right, see? That�
��s the Bayou Piquant.”

  “Where’s the lake?” Troost asked, louder than he needed to, given the superior quality of Mr. Somers’s hearing.

  “On the other side of the bayou. No worries, my friends! I get you to Pontchartrain just fine, okay? We’ll be there soon.”

  True to his word, Norman pulled off to the side of the road on the far side of what could reasonably be proclaimed a swamp. He dismounted from his seat and said, “One moment, fellas.” And Ruthie did her best not to look put out at being lumped in with the lads.

  Somers disappeared behind a buttonbush slightly taller than himself. Sounds of rustling, heaving, shoving, scraping, and finally the steady tick-tick noise of a chain cranking clattered out from the spot where he’d vanished. He did not immediately emerge again, but a definite shift occurred—some strange motion that at first made so little sense that Cly and his crew members couldn’t be sure what they were seeing.

  But as the seconds clicked by and the chain pattered on, seams appeared in the landscape.

  What had seemed at first to be a pair of colossal bald cypress trees were lifted, and as if mounted on a track, they slid to the left, taking a significant chunk of the landscape with them. The buttonbush and two smaller members of the same species went jerkily scooting away as well, and the whole scene slipped as easily and thoroughly as the dropcloth background of a play—revealing a pair of large mirrors that served as the juncture of three unnatural lines. Their angles made the trunks, mosses, twigs, and vines repeat indefinitely, creating the perfect illusion of infinite swamp-space as long as they were touching.

  Fang let out a low, impressed whistle.

  Houjin’s mouth hung open.

  Kirby Troost adjusted his hat and sniffed as if he encountered this kind of thing every day.

  Ruthie gave a small, smug smile.

  And Captain Cly said, “I’ll be damned.”