Edwin puzzled over the events that led to his getting shocked. He would have to inform Harriet. She would be very interested to know about it. He bade the others goodbye and set off in search of her.
"Way to go, kiddo," Agatha said softly to Eleanor, touching her shoulder as she left. "You'll do just fine here."
Albert and Eleanor stayed and talked for a bit, discussing feelings. He warned her that she might find herself in love with him, and he encouraged her to seek out Agatha for help if it happened. She nodded. Then the two went off to eat. The airship's horn blew, and the gangplank was lifted as it made its way into the sky. Eleanor's career onboard the HMS Rapturion had begun.
*****
~Volume Two~
The HMS Rapturion departed the dock, and the passengers huddled next to the giant windows to spy a glance of the breathtaking view of the city as the airship took to the sky. The city lazily fell below them, replaced by clouds and the sun. Those on the starboard side watched as the land snaked its way below them and the dawn of the day. Those to port watched a placid sea reflecting the sunrise behind them. The majestic vessel gleamed in the sunlight, the flagship of Air Cruise Co. and the most luxurious airship in the world.
Below deck, the propulsion team was already hard at work. Many of the newcomers paused for a moment near the smaller portholes along the port and starboard sides of the ship. For many of them, this was their first time on an airship. The view was surreal: the gentle motion of the craft felt as though they weren’t moving at all, yet the land and water sank below them ever further. Unlike travel by sea, none felt sick; an uncanny sense of disbelief was the worst that any felt.
Edwin observed the newcomers’ expressions of awe and the veterans’ indifference with quiet interest as he made his way to the staircase at the forward end of the ship. A long-time veteran himself—he’d been on board the very first airship a few decades before, when travel by airship was harrowing at best and lethal at worst—he had seen many a departure, many a landing, and many, many crewmen on the propulsion decks of a dozen ships over the years.
Of course, the propulsion deck had not always been the way it was now, an entire deck of common areas, tiny cabins, and propulsion rooms filled with beds and power-input jacks. No, back then, propulsion had been hard work as the entire crew shoveled coal to make sufficient steam to drive the turbines to keep the ship aloft and moving. Back then, a fifth of the propulsion deck was furnaces, three-fifths were fuel stores, and the final fifth was a cramped combination of communal quarters and galley kitchen. Back then, there were no portholes to take in the view; there wouldn’t have been time to do it, even if there were. As he watched the crewmembers around him, he marveled at how much had changed in the last 30 years. The industrial revolution had made major changes throughout the world, but the discovery that energy could be harvested from human intercourse had revolutionized his life in a much more personal way.
The credit for that discovery belonged to Harriet Beechworth, resident engineer on the HMS Rapturion. While working on some contraption that did who-knows-what at Cambridge, she happened to be watching a gauge as she orgasmed, and in the afterglow-induced haze, she’d managed to make a note to investigate further. Edwin didn’t know all the details of what happened next, but he did know that she’d made her discovery known to Air Cruise Co., who had offered her a king’s ransom to come work for them. She’d declined most of the offer, stating only that she wanted her own lab on the ship, a modest salary, and to be left alone to do her work, to which the executives at Air Cruise Co. eagerly agreed. Disturbing her was not prohibited; however, it was highly discouraged unless it was for a very important reason. Edwin had just such a very important reason, and it was to her lab on the deck above that he made his way.
The nice thing about having your own entire deck on an airship is that you will never feel claustrophobic. The downside to someone else having an entire deck to herself is that she can be very difficult to find, especially when she’s shorter than five feet tall. Instruments and gadgets made of brass, glass, wood, and iron littered the floor and the rows of simple wooden tables as Edwin began his search for the elusive scientist. Given her stature, she could, realistically, be anywhere.
“Harriet!” Edwin called as he navigated through stacks of notes, careful not to brush up against the chalkboards that covered the walls or stood freestanding as dividers between different experiments. Scrawl in tiny print covered all of them, occasionally circled, boxed, or blown into giant letters and vigorously underlined, usually followed by question marks. How one person could have enough strength in her hand to write so much in a lifetime, let alone in the few months she’d been residing on the ship before its maiden voyage, Edwin could not fathom.
A tall figure appeared suddenly and regarded Edwin perfunctorily.
“Yes, sir?” he asked simply.
“Oy, Giles, good to see ya. Where’s Harriet?”
“Dr. Beechworth is in the machine shop, sir, and terribly busy.”
“I’ve got some information that will pique her interest, Giles. You know I wouldn’t bother her if I didn’t,” Edwin said.
If he were a person whose feelings got hurt easily, now would be a time. After all the years he’d worked with Harriet, it seemed they were never any closer than the day they’d been introduced to one another. Giles, the newest of her assistants and the chilliest in demeanor, had lasted longer than most, probably because of that demeanor. Edwin figured that he and Harriet must get along swimmingly.
“Go at your own risk, then,” Giles said indifferently as he passed Edwin on his way upstairs, likely to fetch Harriet’s meal.
Edwin finally freed himself of the jungle that made up the front two-thirds of the lab, where chaos lived, yet Harriet — and Giles, for that matter — seemed to know exactly where to find anything at the drop of a hat. Abruptly, the open space turned into a narrow hallway with doors on each side, each labeled with etched-glass placards, dead-ending into a door at the end marked “Chalk.” Yes, Dr. Beechworth had an entire store room dedicated to storing nothing but chalk. Before that was a room for ink, parchment, and pens on the left, followed by several large observation rooms. On the right was a room for brass, wood, glass, iron, and other raw materials, followed by the machine shop. It was here that Edwin entered.
Harriet was sitting in front of a lathe on a booster seat atop a lab stool, her back to the door, turning a tiny piece of brass and wearing the thickest glasses Edwin had ever seen on her — and Edwin had seen some very thick glasses on her. His footfall on the metal floor of the lab distracted her, and her hand slipped, sending the tiny work piece flying across the room to some obscure location.
“Newton, Lovelace, and Maxwell!” she screamed in frustration, slamming her now empty hands down on the workbench and whirling to face him. “What do you want?” she demanded.
Edwin, nonplussed, grinned, his eyes shining with the delight of getting to share a secret of deep import with someone who could appreciate its value. “I made a discovery today that I thought you’d find interesting,” he said.
“Oh? What’s that?” Dr. Beechworth’s demeanor instantly became businesslike, yet with more than a hint of intrigue. She swiveled in her chair — an innovation she’d picked up from chatting with other men of learning at a conference a few years back — and leaned on the armrest, her steel-gray eyes looking like those of a bug through the thick lenses.
“Uh,” Edwin said, making a flicking motion near his eyes.
“Right,” Harriet replied, using one of her diminutive arms to flick the glasses up above her head, where they remained, suspended from a brass band around her head. She returned her gaze to him.
“We got a new recruit today,” Edwin began.
“We get many new recruits, Edwin,” Harriet snapped, taking up a pen and wiggling it impatiently between her thumb and index finger and kicking her short legs back and forth on her booster seat. “That is not newsworthy enough to make me lose concentrat
ion while tuning the latest-model coition transconductor. These things are extremely delicate, and the latest model is much more intricate than the last.” She sighed wistfully, knowing she’d have to start over. Turning, she reached into a pile of brass rod stock sitting nearby and began putting it into the lathe, completely forgetting about Edwin.
“There’s energy to be had in the afterglow,” Edwin said quietly. Harriet froze, thinking. She turned abruptly.
“What did you say?” she asked, her full attention now on Edwin again.
“There’s energy,” Edwin said emphatically, grinning ear-to-ear, eyes shining, “to be had in the afterglow.”
Harriet frowned, thinking, bringing her hand to her chin and squeezing it. “Hmm…”
“The new recruit and Albert just took a tumble in the sack, and the needle jumped off the scale.” Seeing her about to interrupt, he continued hurriedly, “not that that’s out of the ordinary. What was out of the ordinary is that it stayed there after they both climaxed. I thought it was stuck, so I tapped it with my foot.”
Harriet opened her mouth, her expression stern. She was about to lecture him about treating the equipment with respect, but his next revelation silenced her.
“When I went to unplug it, I got a nasty shock that just wouldn’t stop! I finally aborted the attempt, and the needle eventually dropped on its own, but it must have gone on for a minute or more!”
Harriet’s eyes went wide with excitement. Thinking quickly, she murmured, “Which bed?”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Which bed? Which bed?!” she asked impatiently, jumping from her seat and making hastily for the door.
Edwin chased after her as she hastily made her way to one of the observation rooms. Opening the door and clicking on the light, rows of racks full of clattering machines greeted them. Rolls of paper made their way through the machines, and jagged lines appeared on the part that had made it through.
“Twenty-seven,” Edwin replied.
“Twenty-seven, twenty-seven,” Harriet said absent-mindedly, going down one of the rows and scanning the brass nameplates. “Ah, ha! Twenty-seven!”
She climbed a ladder that rolled along the rack of interest carefully stretched the roll out, examining the line the machine had made. She frowned. “Edwin, that was over ten minutes ago! Why didn’t you tell me sooner?!”
Edwin sighed in mock exasperation. He knew she was joking. Well, sort of. “It took me that long to find you! I came straight away. That rats nest of a lab you keep up here leaves scores of places for you to hide!”
“Yes. That’s why it’s perfect,” she retorted, poring over the paper. “That is some impressive output,” she said, marveling at the duration of a high point in the chart, “but I need to run more tests.” She re-rolled the paper and placed it carefully behind the machine so that it wouldn’t interfere with the current monitoring. “See to it that the new recruit and Albert make their way up here, won’t you, Edwin, dear?” she asked sweetly, reaching up to squeeze his hand before breezily leaving the observation room. Edwin trailed behind, turning out the lights and closing the door as he went. He smiled to himself: he was right; Harriet had loved the news. He made his way back downstairs to locate Eleanor, the new recruit, and Albert, her first-ever sexual partner. He needed to make it quick so that he could catch up on payroll for his crew. He met Giles on the staircase, sure enough, carrying Harriet’s lunch. Giles ignored him. Fine bunch of good it’d do, Edwin thought. Harriet would be pacing the lab, awaiting Eleanor’s arrival. He shook his head and grinned.
Arriving back downstairs, he made his way to the common room. Eleanor and Albert were there, eating and talking together. Edwin approached them and smiled pleasantly.
“Edwin!” Eleanor beamed, “that was just…so wonderful. Thank you!” She hugged him.
Edwin roared with laughter. “Don’t thank me; thank Albert there. He’s Mr. Golden Cock.” Albert laughed and bowed his head humbly.
“But listen, the two of you did something that has piqued the interest of the ship’s engineer,” he said, getting to the point, “and she wants to see you right away. Albert, you know the way. Last I left her, she was near the machine shop, but she’s probably pacing her lab waiting.”
Eleanor looked at Albert in bewilderment, and he smiled uneasily, rising from the table and extending his hand for hers. She took it and the two left.
Edwin looked down at the plate they shared: a half-eaten hunk of cheese, a generous slab of bacon, some roasted potatoes, and some turnip greens looked back at him. Waste not, he thought, and took the bacon and cheese with him as he made his way to his quarters. Rest assured, there was plenty more where that came from; the propulsion crew was the best fed of the staff on the HMS Rapturion and even ate better than some of the third-class passengers.
Edwin’s quarters lay down the forward-most hallway that connected the port and starboard sides of the ship. Across the hallway was the gay propulsion room, one of three propulsion rooms, each geared towards a certain kind of energy: masculine, feminine, and bipolar. Harriet would be able to explain the details, but Edwin couldn’t, and he was fine with that. He’d stick to the day-to-day tasks of making sure people were getting laid frequently and orgasming plenty. He really liked his job.
Right now, though, he had the week’s drudgery to do. He still hadn’t caught up on the last week’s production payments, and the last week had been a big one with the push to fully energize the ship before it took off. There were a lot of numbers to crunch.
He entered his quarters. To his right were his bed, nightstand, and washbasin, the same as everybody else’s. To his left was his roll-top desk, open, with a sheaf of papers from Engineering and a few chairs for himself and people he invited in. Giles had compiled reports on the energy collected from each person and had delivered them to him a couple of days ago, but with the new recruits to train, Edwin had been too distracted to get to them.
Now he sat at his desk, took a pen from one pigeonhole, an inkwell from another and unstoppered it, and a piece of fresh parchment from a tray to his right. He pored over the pages, making notes for his report to the captain, comparing the output from this week with the week before, and ranking his crewmembers in descending order of output. Agatha was, once again, at the top: she was always the top by a fair margin. Albert came in second. The list continued down, and he sighed. One name caught his attention at the bottom of the list: Clarence Nightgood. The name caught his attention because it was always at the bottom of the list, despite Edwin’s best attempts to rectify it. If Clarence could not improve his numbers by the end of the voyage, Air Cruise Co. would bid him ‘bon voyage’ as soon as the airship returned.
Edwin massaged his white temples with calloused hands. His face was rugged and lined from years of hard work and a lot of grinning ear-to-ear. A jovial man, beloved by his crew and infectiously cheerful, he preferred to spend his time joshing around with the other crewmembers, not disciplining his subordinates. And while he wanted the best for Clarence, he was at his wit’s end. The man simply did not have the libido or motivation to maintain his numbers. Edwin had searched for a cause, sickness, perhaps, but nothing had turned up. He’d thought that perhaps Clarence wasn’t as straight as he said he was, and maybe some time in the gay propulsion room would help. It had failed abysmally. He had tried a threesome and a foursome. The others’ performance had suffered in Clarence’s presence, and Clarence’s performance remained the same: terrible. It wasn’t that he was a bad man or a lazy fellow; he just lacked sexual prowess and drive.
Edwin knew, as did Eleanor and every other crewmember who had come from poor-class living conditions, what the alternative was to working on the HMS Rapturion: workhouses with little to eat, freezing to death in the bitter winter, and threadbare clothes that barely preserved decency, let alone provided shelter from the elements. He had to get through to Clarence, whatever it took. He glanced at the brass-and-wood clock on his desk. It read a little past eleven in t
he morning. If he could finish his report by noon, he could spend the afternoon working with Clarence. Glancing over his notes, he decided to push for it.
At 12:05, Edwin finished his report. Stopping to pick up a hunk of bread and some more cheese on his way up the stairs, he made his way up the three flights of stairs required to get to the fifth floor. As he exited the stairwell, facing aft, a plaque in polished brass designated the floor “Third Class, Floor 3.” He liked coming up here occasionally. While certainly not nearly as lavish as the floors above it, third class was a significant step above the crew’s accommodations: the floors were carpeted, and the walls were painted in earth tones. Lighting came from recessed fixtures rather than bare bulbs. Passengers moved to and fro, enjoying the entertainments the floor had to offer: nice cabins for two or four with comfortable bedding, excellent views of the world below them through large portal windows on the port and starboard sides, a restaurant that provided local fare for free and alcohol for a price, and a pianist.
Steampunk Desires: An Erotic Romance (The Complete Collection) Page 3