by Dave Freer
“Keep your skirts on, too.”
“You want to boil me?”
Her father nodded. “Boiled will be better than chafed. We could try it for a little anyway. Lampy could come and put his foot up. He’s sore, poor lad. Now, you said you had some laudanum drops. We could try some on McLoughlin here. Can’t make him worse, surely.”
Tim set the steam mole in motion. He was not as familiar with it as Clara was, but he liked machinery, and he noticed things. Clara and her father had already mounted fresh horses and were ahead and to the right. Tim didn’t have a lot of concentration to spare for her, but it looked as though she was a lot less comfortable on a horse than in the steam mole. He said so to his new companion, who chuckled. Lampy had a warm laugh that reminded Tim of the aboriginals who had rescued him after he’d failed to catch the mole.
“I reckon she needs to ask for her money back from that riding school,” said Tim with a grin.
“Too right,” said Lampy, putting his foot up against a strut on the wall. “Didn’t know there was any blackfellers working on the railway.”
“They tried to kill me for it,” said Tim.
“That sounds like them bastards to me. Shot me uncle,” said Lampy.
It was hard to know what to say to that.
Eventually, Tim said, “I hope they caught whoever did it.”
“They don’t care. We blackfellers are like ’roos to them.”
“That’s not right. Mind you, that Vister seemed to think he could kill me. It’s different where I come from. Tough in the tunnels, and I had some fights because of it. But not just…killing.”
“Yeah? So where you come from, man?”
He and Lampy fell into easy talk, both finding the other’s world so different from their own, and oddly fascinating. And Tim did a little fishing about Clara’s father.
“Jack’s a bonza bloke. Madder than…I dunno, the maddest thing you ever met. But he’s decent, see. Buried the bloke what got killed, did his best for McLoughlin. Wouldn’t let the others kill that Quint.” Lampy looked askance at Tim. “Wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him with his daughter, though.”
“She’s fairly crazy, too. I mean, she came up here to cross the desert to get her old man out of stir. And she’d have probably done it, too. She doesn’t know what ‘give up’ means. She’d be loyal to her last breath. Best girl in the world,” said Tim fervently. “I hope her father doesn’t mind me…Well, I don’t know what I’d do.”
Lampy grinned at him. “Sounds like you’re in deep.”
Tim didn’t pretend not to understand. “Yep. Mind you, we’ve had some good fights. She won’t admit she can’t do anything. She usually can, too.”
“Looks like some smoke over there,” said Lampy, pointing. “Maybe that’s where the flying thing came down.”
They headed toward it.
Duke Malcolm listened, stony faced, to the transmission from Australia. Then he turned to the head of the Australia section, who, like himself, showed signs of having hastily donned his uniform. The duke had had a sleepy valet to help him, but Major Simmer, by the looks of him, had done it himself. “So. The vehicles have already left Camp Baltimore?”
“So the general said,” replied the major. “They should be ready to leave the railhead by four o’ clock this afternoon, their time, Your Grace.”
“It’s not certain that the flying wing was able to communicate, or would grasp the significance of one airship. But they’re bound to send more up to search for the crash. And it is possible that they will have put these ‘power stations’ and Sheba onto an alert footing.” He picked up the microphone. “General Von Stross, this is Duke Malcolm Windsor-Schaumburg-Lippe. You are hereby instructed to have your troops use the tunnel option. I hope your sappers are up to it.”
The general reassured him.
Duke Malcolm was too wise to military doublespeak to believe him entirely.
He wondered just how much the crew of the airship actually knew. They’d lost their motors and part of the gondola and were now drifting west. Into the desert and into Westralian territory. Territory the Westralians relied on the desert to hold.
For a few moments after the wing had come down, Linda just sat there, holding onto her knees. Then she sat up.
The copilot, bloody-faced, said, “Right. Better get everybody out, in case of fire.” He looked rather as if someone should get him out.
Linda could see the rocky ground through a hole in the fuselage. She already had the rope knot loose, and dashed into the crawlway to one wing. “All out!” she bawled at the top of her voice. And then she did the same on the other side, before coming back to the navigation nacelle. Dr. Calland lay very still in her seat, with a little blood on her forehead. Horrified, Linda knelt next to her, wishing she knew more about medicine. She felt for a pulse and was rewarded by feeling one. Then a submariner shooed her out and carried Dr. Calland out. The hatch was jammed onto the ground, but someone had broken open part of the wing, and they took her out of that.
Linda saw the advantage, very quickly, in the fact that almost all the men were submariners and used to working to orders and keeping calm. Lieutenant Ambrose and the captain directed the evacuation of the people from the wing, Lieutenant Willis had already set up a first aid station, and he was doing his best to deal with injuries.
Linda went over there to help. There didn’t seem much wrong with her, besides some bruises.
“Nearly made it down,” said the copilot. “We’d have done it in one piece if the undercarriage had come down. But those first shots must have hit that. Still. What a piece of flying! I hope Dan is all right.”
“I can’t believe what you did on that engine,” said Linda.
He sighed and shook his head sadly. “Mickey, the starboard engineer, didn’t have time for a safety line when they hit the engine and he had to get out. I couldn’t have detached the engine without him. He was pretty badly burned, and he came off with the engine. A good man gone.”
“So brave!”
“I was scared out of my wits,” he said. “Yes, Lieutenant?” Lieutenant Ambrose had come up to them.
“Captain wants to know what the risk of fire is, and whether we can try to get supplies out of the plane, and if there’s a system for signaling distress.”
“I got a Marconi message out. Said we were under attack. There’ll be fighter wings coming, I would guess. Poor old Wedgie was just a transporter due for retirement. I can’t believe what Danny managed to do with her.”
“You fliers did magnificently. But the captain needs to know how safe it is. And whether we can make a fire for signaling.”
“If she hasn’t caught fire yet, she probably won’t,” said the copilot, getting to his feet and staggering a little. “I cut off the fuel to the port engines. There’s a fair amount of fuel there if we need to make signal fires. But I’d like to get to the Marconi set…”
“Sit down, man,” said the lieutenant, sitting him down firmly, “and stay there. I know a Marconi set when I see it. I’ll bring it out if it is intact. Not going to generate sparks in there. And we’ll keep the number of men going in to a minimum. The captain’s got most of the men backed off to a hundred yards now. There’s no one still on board.”
“I could use a fire, Amby,” said Lieutenant Willis, binding a nasty gash, “and some boiled water and sterile dressings. And a couple of men as runners.”
“I’ll get some men onto it, Bob,” promised Lieutenant Ambrose, leaving at a run.
“Can I help?” asked Linda. “I don’t know anything about bandaging, but I could do the smaller cuts and things. I could try, anyway.”
“If blood doesn’t worry you, I’d like another set of hands,” said the lieutenant. “I like to at least see the patients, Miss. I’ve got them ranked in priority here.”
“Is Dr. Calland going to be…? I mean, is she…?”
“Hard to tell. She’s concussed, at least.”
The Marconi set w
as in fragments. The fire that Lieutenant Willis wanted for sterile dressings was kindled and tended with amazing speed as they worked their way down the line of patients.
“Except for the pilot’s nacelle, the landing did us less damage than you’d think. The pilot stalled the wing almost perfectly at the last moment. Most of our injuries come from that loop-the-loop. I know why he did it, and I know it took great skill…but I wish we’d all been strapped down. I got out unhurt by being squashed between Gordon, here, and Tamworth, and they ended up with Big Eddie on top of them. I prefer softer cushions,” said the lieutenant, feeling Gordon’s nose. “Yes, it’s broken. There is a lady present. You don’t have to use words like that. You’ll live.”
So far, with the exception of the poor engineer, and possibly the unconscious pilot and Dr. Calland, it looked as if most of them would live.
Linda knew just how lucky they’d been. Or rather, how good their pilot had been, and how brave the copilot and the unfortunate engineer had been.
It made her little troubles back in Ceduna seem so small.
Her relief at seeing Dr. Calland trying to sit up and being made to lie down again, as some of the crew constructed a sun shelter over the patients, was enormous. So was her relief when one of the lookouts called, “Looks like the Westralians are onto it all quicker than we thought. Steam car coming.”
The steam car—Linda recognized it for what it was, a scout mole in the colors of the Discovery North Railroad—slowed as it came closer. There were some horsemen with it, too, riding just out of the dust.
Only one of them wasn’t a horseman.
She had blond plaits under a straw hat, and one of her plaits had come undone.
“Clara!” called Linda, as the door to the mole opened and a young man bounced out “Ahoy, Cuttlefish!” he bellowed.
“I see we found Tim Barnabas, or he found us,” said the lieutenant with a smile, as several of the crew carried him on their shoulders up to the captain.
“Over here,” yelled Linda, waving as someone helped Clara down from her horse. She looked like she needed help. And by the looks of the way she walked, holding on to the bearded man with her, she might need Lieutenant Willis’s medical skills, too.
Clara was surprised, but not amazed to see Cuttlefish crewmen around the wreck of the flying wing. Captain Malkis had obviously done his magic with her letter. She was amazed to see Linda. Was Mr. Darlington also here? Or her stepmother? Or had they…the thought was put aside. Linda looked far too happy. She bounded toward them like one of those kangaroos. “What’s wrong, Clara?”
“Horse riding,” grimaced Clara. “It’s for nothing I’ll tell you, Linda, a riding school hack in a paddock in Ireland two years ago is no training for Australia. I didn’t realize it until we slowed down. I don’t think I’ll be able to stand tomorrow, let alone walk.”
“Oh. I thought, well, I thought it might be something serious. Look, come quickly. Your mother is here.”
“What? Where?” Clara wasn’t too sore to try running, and neither was her father. He virtually carried both of them along.
The two of them dropped to their knees next to Mary.
“What’s wrong? Is this the coma she was in?” demanded her father. “Dear God, Mary.” He touched her face as you might the most fragile piece of porcelain in the world.
“No,” said Lieutenant Willis, who had come up, too. “Concussion, I hope. She was awake a little earlier. A bit confused. She’s not to move.”
As if ordered, Mary Calland opened her eyes and blinked. “My glasses.”
“There love. You don’t need them right now. Lie still. We’re here. You’ll be fine.”
Clara’s mother tried really hard to sit up and was held firmly down.
“You’re not to move, Mother,” said Clara.
“Being dead really is a better place,” said her mother dreamily. “Or am I just dying? I’m still sore, so I’m just dying. I thought I heard my Jack, and my baby.”
“If you’re going to call me a baby, I’ll go and get lost again,” said Clara fiercely, holding her hand. “You’re not dying. You can’t die. I’ve brought Daddy back to you.”
“Just what hurts?” asked her father, calm and caring.
“My head. And my hand. Is…is that really you Jack-love?”
“It is indeed. Our girl found me and brought me to you.”
“Clara. Little Tim. I’m so sorry…”
“Tim’s fine, Mother. Actually, I think he found Daddy.”
“T’was a group effort, I think,” said her father. “Now lie still. Everything is fine.”
Tim saluted Captain Malkis. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you, sir, no matter what kind of trouble I’m in.”
“I can’t tell you how glad we are to see you, too, Barnabas. I’d half convinced myself they’d killed you. I gather your death was a bit exaggerated.”
“Only just, sir. It was touch and go that my own stupidity killed me. But we have found him, sir.”
The captain tugged his beard in the way Tim knew meant he was laughing. “And who have you found for us, Tim?”
“Clara’s father, sir. We found him, a prisoner, and Lampy…uh, an aboriginal boy, sir. He’d be great on the crew. Um, the prisoner is quite injured, sir. He’s lying in the steam mole. Maybe Lieutenant Willis could have a look at him?”
The captain nodded. “Of course. Is it possible to move him or should he see him there?”
“Well, moving him hurt him, and I think we’ll just have to keep him there, sir, if we’re going to take him anywhere. He can’t ride. Mind you, I don’t know what we’ll do with transporting all these people. You don’t have water, do you?”
The captain turned to one of the other submariners. “Nichol, will you ask the lieutenant to come to the steam mole, please?” He put a hand on Tim’s shoulder and began walking them back to the steam mole. “I am a little sore from our crash. Now, tell me all of it, Barnabas, because I am the captain, and if there is any reason you might be in trouble, I need to get you out of it. When did Miss Calland find you?”
“Yesterday morning, sir. I was found by some aboriginals, and they were found by Clara. She saw their fire.”
They’d arrived at the steam mole, where Lampy sat on the step, looking wary. “Ah,” said Captain Malkis. “This must be one of the gentlemen who rescued you.” He reached up, offering his hand. “Thank you for looking after him. Tim is a valuable member of my crew, and I’m very grateful.”
Lampy looked confused, but he took the extended hand and shook it. “Not me, Mister. I didn’t have nothing to do with it.”
“That wasn’t Lampy. He’s the one who escaped with Mr. Calland.”
“Oh. Well, I am still pleased to meet you. I see you’re injured, too. Lieutenant Willis is our medical officer from the boat. He’s not a doctor, but he has some experience.”
“He’s good at it,” said Tim. “Let him have a look, Lampy. He’s coming to see McLoughlin.”
Lampy jerked a thumb back into the cab. “He’s out of it. Doesn’t know where he is, Tim-o.”
“Cookie calls me that,” said Tim, grinning. “Is he here, sir? I’ve missed his food.”
Lieutenant Willis arrived as the captain shook his head. “We couldn’t bring everyone, Barnabas. For which I am grateful. You bring up a good point about water for thirty-four people.”
“I think you need to go and talk to Jack Calland, Captain,” said the lieutenant. “He was telling the copilot about the troop build-up the British Imperial forces have in the desert. Calland is of the opinion they’re getting ready for something soon.”
“Yeah,” said Lampy laconically. “Those jokers are up to something.”
“That’s what the aboriginals who found me said, too,” said Tim. “They said there was a big army camp and a railway about three days walk away. Mind you, that’s their walk, not mine, but it’s quite close, really. And the Westralians back at the power station didn’t know anything about t
hem. Someone said there weren’t even any people closer than this side of the dividing range, you know where the rivers either flow back to the east coast or into the desert. Well, Clara’s letter, the one she got from her father, was from near Winton. Which is this side, a long way, from what Lampy says, and the railway the prisoners were working on…that’s still further west.”
Captain Malkis turned to Lampy. “How good are you at judging distance, young man?”
“Reckon I know ’bout how long it takes to walk a mile,” said Lampy with a sketch of a grin. “We be maybe a hundred mile at most from the railway. An’ that maybe…three hundred mile from the dividing range. That’s where you find a few whitefellers again.”
The captain looked thoughtful. “Surely the Westralian authorities know all about this. I mean, if the aboriginals do…surely they’ll tell them?”
“The people won’t go tell ’em,” said Lampy, scornfully. “That’s these Westralian blokes’ problem. Make no difference to us, see.”
The captain nodded slowly. “I had gathered there was something of an issue,” he said. “I think we need to go and talk to the copilot, and Mr. Calland. No wonder they had airships out searching the desert. They really don’t want this news getting back to Westralia.”
“Shows how stupid the Westralians have been,” said Tim.
“That, too. But we all do that. Some of us learn from it. Mr. Lampy, would you come with us to explain? By the looks of it Lieutenant Willis will be busy for a while.” The captain mopped his brow. “Phew, it is hot. I thought we might use the flying wing for shade, but that’s probably fairly risky if there are going to be other airships.”
“It’s Mr. Green, Captain. And he’s got an injured foot,” said Tim.
“My ma called me Lampy. Everyone does.”
Lieutenant Willis raised his head from cutting aside the dressing. “I’ll need hot water. What happened to this man?”
“Lampy speared him,” said Tim, unthinking. It was only when he’d said it, and saw Lampy’s face, that he wished he’d kept his mouth shut.