Empire of Ruins

by Arthur Slade

  “Tomorrow, our little adventure will begin,” he continued, “and you, my friends, will be the first to see this country from the car of a steam-powered airship. We’re making history, though no one but us will know of it. Now come along, back to our quarters. We’ll need a good rest; I’m afraid sleeping arrangements on the Prince Albert will be rather dreadful.” He paused. “Oh, and don’t overeat. We’ll be weighing you in the morning to plan for ballast.”

  Then he laughed in a way that made him seem ten years younger.

  Through a Spyglass

  Michael Brown had followed the group from Cockatoo Island to their hotel. It had been relatively easy to recognize them from the telegraphed descriptions; no other man on the Rome had an Indian servant. He waited outside the hotel as they ate, watched the Indian arrive, and minutes later, followed them on a stolen horse. When they disappeared over a hill, he at first kept his distance, then dismounted and crept up to look down on what they were doing.

  He watched through his spyglass as they entered the ranch house. There was no safe way to find out what they were discussing, not with all those armed men wandering around.

  At first he wondered what they could be assembling. But he’d been a military man before turning to a life of detective work, and it was soon clear to him that it was a dirigible.

  He rode back to Sydney and sent a telegram to his employer.

  The Lofty Heights

  At sunrise Modo dressed in the khaki trousers and jacket that had been delivered to his room by Tharpa, then wrapped a cloak around his shoulders and placed a sun helmet on his head. He hadn’t been given orders about what persona to assume, so he had chosen the Doctor face. This time he buttoned his mask into a pocket. He threw his rucksack over his shoulder and went to Octavia and Mrs. Finchley’s room, where he waited for a full minute, hoping to say goodbye to his governess—but she was likely still asleep. He knew Octavia would already be outside, ready to go.

  Shrugging, he went down the hall through the dingy pub, left the Rag and Famish Hotel, and climbed into the waiting carriage.

  “Let’s see a little more jump in your step, Modo,” Mr. Socrates said. “Once again you’re the last to arrive.” He too was in khaki, and had a sun helmet on his lap. The walking stick in his hand looked more like a cudgel.

  “I had hoped to say goodbye to Mrs. Finchley.”

  “No need,” Mr. Socrates said. “We’ll see her again soon enough.”

  “She was sleeping when I left,” Octavia said as she adjusted her dress.

  Modo was glad to see she’d been wise enough not to wear a puffy crinoline. She was holding a red sun helmet.

  “I didn’t say goodbye either. She was up late last night working on a secret sewing project.”

  The door to the Rag and Famish opened and Mrs. Finchley came running out, hat askew, and holding a brown-paper package. Tharpa opened the carriage door and she stood at the step, breathless. Modo looked at the package. Perhaps it’s a gift for me! he thought.

  “Good morning,” Mrs. Finchley said. “I want to wish you all the best of luck on your journey.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Finchley,” Mr. Socrates said, “though, of course, I never rely on luck.”

  “I’m aware of that, sir,” she replied. “Tavia, this is for you.” She handed the package to Octavia. “Don’t open it until you’re up in the air.”

  “Why, thank you, Mrs. Finchley!”

  Modo stared at the package. She had called her Tavia. They were that close now. And there was no gift for him.

  Still, she squeezed his knee and said, “Be a good boy.”

  “I’m not a boy!”

  “Be a good young man, then,” she said with a smile. “All of you, farewell.”

  As Mr. Socrates closed the door, Modo thought he saw tears in Mrs. Finchley’s eyes. His master tapped the ceiling with his walking stick and they started on their way, leaving Mrs. Finchley waving on the slate sidewalk.

  She likes Octavia more than me! he fumed inwardly. No gift. What had he done wrong? He allowed himself to sulk for a while, then came to his senses. Ah, you’re being a child, Modo. He was being a boy, when he wanted her to see him as a young man.

  There was a light fog on the ground as they made their winding way out of Sydney and into the hills. At the Hades Acres ranch house Mr. Socrates jumped out of the carriage and led them toward the back of the house as though on a charge. He was positively beaming with pride.

  The Prince Albert sat tethered to the ground, looking as if it should have been leading a royal parade. The balloon was as red as any serge on a British soldier; its conical shape ensured it would cut through the wind. Netting encircled it from stem to stern, as did several tin braces.

  Lizzie was bellowing orders at the men loading the wicker car with supplies. Maybe she’d been shouting the whole night through.

  Mr. Socrates stopped beside the airship. “Twilled taffeta from Lyon.” He poked his walking stick into the outer balloon. “Treated with gutta-percha. It can hold the hydrogen for a hundred years without a single atom escaping.”

  Three men were lugging a square metal container into the car, and Mr. Socrates signaled them to stop. They did, but struggled to hold on to the weight as Mr. Socrates approached. Two silver metal tubes poked out of the top. Mr. Socrates tapped it with his walking stick and it gave off a metallic bong.

  “Yesterday, Modo, you asked how we would descend. It was a very good question. There are twenty-five gallons of water in this container. But let me ask you, what is water made of?” The laborers’ faces grew red with the strain.

  “Wetness,” Octavia answered with a laugh.

  “Ah, a layman’s answer. Modo, would you care to illuminate Miss Milkweed?”

  Modo tried to recall a chart he’d memorized as a child.

  “Modo?” Mr. Socrates prompted, tapping the box again.

  “Two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen!” he blurted.

  Octavia rolled her eyes at him anyway.

  “Correct, albeit a little slow on the draw. I won’t belabor this, but must explain that the Buntzen battery and a few drops of sulfuric acid begin the process of separating the hydrogen from the oxygen. One platinum tube”—he pointed, oblivious to the grunting of the men holding the box—“goes up into the balloon. The other dispels the oxygen. It took a fair bit of tinkering. Thank you, gentlemen, please carry on.” The men, now sweating, hoisted the box into the balloon’s car.

  “You invented this device, too?” Modo asked, incredulous.

  Mr. Socrates laughed. “Yes, I did, Modo. The understanding of scientific principles comes easy to me. This is the height of technology, Modo, forgive my pun. After this test run, the British army will be so pleased to learn about our success.”

  “Test run?” Octavia asked, just as Modo said, “This balloon hasn’t been flown before?”

  Mr. Socrates shrugged. “First, a small correction. It’s a dirigible—an airship. As you can see, it has a steam engine and an internal skeleton. It’s self-propelled, therefore it’s a ship.” He sniffed. “The odds of anything untoward happening to our craft during this flight are acceptably low, according to my calculations. Besides, as I’ve said before, it’s the most practical way to travel across this forbidding landscape.”

  “As long as we don’t end up dead,” Octavia whispered to Modo.

  When Modo stepped into the wicker car, rucksack in hand, he was surprised that it bounced. The car was twenty feet in length and eight feet wide, so there was quite enough room for the five of them.

  Modo spotted two Winchesters and a larger gun in a leather case in a small gun rack near the front of the car. A selection of machetes leaned beside them, bound together. Along both sides of the car were bags of flour and dried meat, biscuits, wine and brandy, and several clay bottles of water.

  Octavia climbed up beside him and jumped up and down, making the whole car bounce. “Whee!”

  “Stop that!” Lizzie shouted, and Octavia froze.
“There are springs on the bottom of the car,” Lizzie said, her tone not quite so harsh, “to soften the landing.”

  “All aboard!” Mr. Socrates shouted.

  Modo wasn’t certain where to stand until Mr. Socrates pointed at the front and Tharpa joined him. Lizzie took the helm in the center of the ship, and Mr. Socrates hollered, “Tethers off!”

  Modo grabbed the railing and watched as the men undid the ropes tethering the Prince Albert. The car jerked as each rope was loosened. He tightened his grip, and his heart sped up. Tharpa looked as calm as ever.

  “Are you excited?” Modo asked. “You may be the first Indian ever to take to the skies.”

  “We Indians came from the sky,” he said solemnly, then grinned at the expression on Modo’s face. “What will be, will be. This won’t be much different than riding an elephant.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that!” Modo said.

  “Anchor up!” Mr. Socrates shouted, and Tharpa began to draw the heavy anchor into the car. The Prince Albert rose slowly off the ground. Modo’s stomach tingled. Was he going to be seasick? Or rather, airsick?

  “We’re going to the moon,” Octavia said beside him. Her eyes lit with excitement, but she maintained a firm grip on the railing.

  Her hair was tucked up under her sun helmet, but one lock hung down next to her cheek. Modo resisted the urge to brush it behind her ear.

  “You’d need bottles of air on the moon,” he pointed out.

  “Ah, you’re such a stickler for facts, Modo. We’re going to the moon, I tell you. And the stars beyond. I can feel it in my bones.”

  The balloon climbed into the sky, cutting quietly through the air. Modo hadn’t expected the silence. To think that they could leave the earth without so much as a bang! And yet it felt like the most natural thing in the world. They rose above the short trees, then higher. The men on the ground grew smaller, their upturned faces becoming tiny, featureless dots. None of them waved. The ranch house was a retreating rectangle.

  Mr. Socrates read his altimeter and looked over the edge. “We’ve climbed to nine hundred feet above sea level.”

  Lizzie moved the wheel back and forth, testing the flaps, though it seemed to have little effect. Modo assumed it was mostly the propeller on the back that would decide their direction once they started the steam engine.

  Had he ever been this high before? he tried to recall. He’d climbed to the top of Big Ben one night and looked down on all of London. But how high was it? At least when he was clinging to it, the tower was attached to the ground. Here, if the ropes snapped they would fall to their deaths. The Prince Albert lurched up about ten feet and Modo grabbed hold of the railing. Mr. Socrates and Lizzie seemed perfectly calm. They were definitely a lot higher than Big Ben now.

  “We must find a good northeast wind stream,” Mr. Socrates said. “Let’s get that engine running.”

  Lizzie tied the wheel in place, then lifted a jug of paraffin oil and began the process of lighting the firebox to heat the water in the boiler. The scent of paraffin wasn’t at all pleasant, but more troubling to Modo was the knowledge that a coal fire burned directly below the hydrogen balloon. It took several minutes before the steam and smoke began to drift, then plume, out of the long, narrow smokebox. A minute later the piston was hammering and the propeller began to turn, which caused the engine to rattle and the whole car to shake.

  “Do you feel like a bird?” Octavia shouted.

  He tried to laugh as he replied, “A bird? No, a rock.”

  “Modo,” Mr. Socrates said, “you’ll be first on coal duty. Please keep the motor running happily along.”

  “Yes, sir.” Modo walked past Lizzie to his station, grabbed the small shovel, and began adding coal to the firebox. As long as he kept his mind on his job he didn’t feel as though he were about to fall out of the sky.

  The Solution for Closed Doors

  Miss Hakkandottir carried a canvas bag up the steps of the Egyptian temple and paused at the entrance, resting her metal hand on the huge paws of the sphinx. Despite more than two thousand years of rain wearing down the statue, and vines that had worked their way into the cracks, she could still make out the lion-shaped head and the eyes that stared out over the ruined city below. The door to the temple was in the mouth of the sphinx.

  What clever builders the Egyptians were to carve the temple into the side of a black mountain formed from hardened lava. The hundreds of steps leading to the entrance were a wonder. The sphinx itself must have inspired terror and awe in anyone who saw it.

  She and her soldiers had been camped on a flat area of the ruins for over two weeks. Behind her, soldiers continued to cut away the forest to make more room for their white tents, set up in neat rows. Piles of green bush burned along the edges of the expanding territory. They hadn’t been bothered by any natives since their arrival. Rifle fire had kept the first group of inquisitive tribesmen away. She’d learned that lesson in Africa. Shoot one and the rest will flee. It would take the natives weeks to regain their courage, and by that time her task would be done.

  Guild soldiers had spent the first week cutting away the overgrowth around the temple, revealing the black stone door that was the main entrance. The door had proved impossible to open; they had smashed it with hammers to no avail, had even worked a team of horses to death trying to pull the rock away. How had Alexander King managed to open the door on his own? There had to be a secret lever to push or some other ancient trick.

  Fortunately, in this modern day she was able to bring along her own final trick—dynamite. She opened her canvas bag and tied a bundle of dynamite to the center of the door, then added two more bundles for good measure. Then she ran the fuse halfway down the long stone stairway and lit it herself, watching as it burned along the stones and toward the dynamite. The soldiers took cover, but she stood out in the open to watch the explosion. The mountain actually seemed to shake, flocks of birds shooting into the sky, and she imagined animals and savages shuddering for miles. A beautiful sight; the explosion was immensely satisfying.

  Miss Hakkandottir was the first to climb up through the dusty air to where the stone door had been shattered into black shards. That will teach you to stand in my way, she thought. She stared into the darkened chamber, then picked up a shard and threw it inside. It landed in shadows.

  The Chinese man, Zedong, had likely known the easy way to open the door, and had she realized there would be such an obstacle, she wouldn’t have pushed him out of the airship at five hundred feet. She shouldn’t have gotten so frustrated with his inability to remember the exact location of the temple. Less than an hour after the unfortunate tumble, they spotted the temple from the air. Sometimes she was too quick to hand out punishment. One of her few faults.

  Zedong had confirmed the reports that Alexander King had gone mad after entering the temple. Madness was something she didn’t want to fool around with. She was pleased that Visser had arrived the previous day after taking a shortcut through the waterways of the Malay Archipelago. She signaled him to send one of his falcons inside. A few minutes later it emerged unscathed.

  She turned to three of her soldiers. “Enter the temple and find the God Face.”

  With ropes and climbing equipment on their backs, rifles and bull’s-eye lanterns held high, they strode into the darkness.

  She didn’t move from her position.

  An hour later one of the soldiers stumbled out, his face bloody, and fell at her feet, staring directly into the sun.

  “What happened?” she asked. “What did you see?”

  She kicked him in the ribs. He had scratches all over his face, and his fingernails were broken and stained with blood. Had he gouged his own face? His uniform was drenched in sweat, and he had perhaps even soiled himself.

  “Take him away,” she commanded bitterly, and two Guild soldiers carried him down to the medical tent.

  She stared into the dark, blast-marked mouth of the sphinx. So the God Face was real. She began to fe
el an emotion she hadn’t experienced for a very long time.

  Fear.

  The Necessary Mask

  The moment the Prince Albert left the earth, Octavia felt as though she’d bark up her breakfast. But, as with any other time she was upset or afraid, she gritted her teeth and put on a smile. She drew particular inspiration from Lizzie, who wasn’t the least bit bothered by the heights or the blustery wind. She was busy at the wheel, handling it as though she were piloting an ocean steamer through calm waters. The fact that it was actually a few thousand pounds of metal, wicker, and human flesh floating above the earth seemed not to trouble her. As she stared out at the horizon through her goggles, Lizzie looked as though she had flown hundreds of times.

  After a few minutes the butterflies in Octavia’s stomach vanished and a sense of exhilaration rushed through her. How many people had ever been above the earth in a balloon? If the pickpockets and drunkards she’d grown up with at Seven Dials could see her now, they’d be yellow-gloakin’ jealous to the gills. She was the queen of the sky! Or at least this little bit of it.

  She could tell Modo was afraid by the way he had gripped the guide ropes and the railing when the Prince Albert took to the air. She couldn’t believe he was the same person who’d climbed some of the highest buildings in London, but she decided not to tease him. He was such a hard person to read sometimes. Right now his body was slim and a little taller, but she knew that it would gradually widen and he’d cover himself and become more … crooked. He already looked hunched over as he tended to the firebox. The more crooked he became, the more he retreated into himself.

  She distracted herself by looking down at the landscape, which was marked with rivers and roads like a great map. Mr. Socrates had given her the task of making tea, using steam from the engine to heat the kettle. “I’m not a bloody steward!” she’d wanted to say, but at least it was something to do.