“Look guys,” Fishy said grandly as Garret sat down. “The Captain’s steward has come to join us lowly seamen.”
“Did you fluff his pillows for him?” Velvet asked from Pun’kin’s armpit.
“Don’t forget to put a chocolate on ‘em!” Pun’kin said loudly.
“Nah,” Fishy said. “I heard that the Captain asked Garret to make him a baked potato, but Garret didn’t know how so he gave him a hand job instead.”
“I hate all of you,” Garret muttered as he sat down.
Curtis laughed loudly at something Fishy had said that Garret hadn’t caught. It was a deep belly laugh, bubbling up freely from down inside his big chest.
Theo had separated his peas and carrots and was now showing Burl how to cut the gristle off his meat, for probably the twelfth time.
Sweet Cheeks was there too, talking intently to Twitch about something. Garret watched them, though he couldn’t hear what they were saying. He’d always wondered how they had met. Neither of them had told him.
Sweet Cheeks winked at Garret and turned away to say something to Fishy. Twitch, however had turned to Garret.
“Aren’t you hungry, Lover Boy?” he asked.
Garret looked at his plate, blinking hard. “I miss you guys so much,” he said.
Twitch raised an eyebrow at him while chewing on a cheekful of roast beef. “We’re right here buddy,” he said.
Garret smiled through his tears. “This is a dream, isn’t it?”
Twitch nodded. “So eat up. You’re going to need your strength for when I beat you up in dream-boxing later.”
Garret laughed and looked around the table again. Velvet was trying to wipe the mashed potatoes off his cover. Pun’kin was laughing loudly at him from six inches away. Red-faced though he was, Velvet laughed and shook his head. Then, without warning, he tried to grab Pun’kin in a headlock.
They went off the table backwards. Curtis sighed and got out of his seat to break them up before Greely had them all on extra duty. “If my mashed potatoes get cold, you’re talking the mess steward into warmin’ em up for me,” Curtis threatened.
Theo whispered something in his brother’s ear. Fishy rolled his eyes in exasperation, but handed his dinner roll, which he never ate, to Theo.
Theo quietly handed it to Burl.
Garret put his fork down and just watched.
“We’re right here, buddy,” Twitch said again, drawing Garret’s attention. But this time, Twitch was pointing at Garret’s heart. “We’re right there, all the time.”
Garret dropped his head as bittersweet sorrow overcame him. “But you’re gone, Twitch.”
Twitch laughed softly. “Do I look gone, Garret?”
Garret smiled through his tears. “No.”
“You’re gonna need us buddy,” Twitch said. “And we’re gonna be there for you. Don’t forget it.”
Garret looked up. On the other side of the table, Curtis was holding both Velvet and Pun’kin up like kittens, by the scruffs of their uniforms. Velvet had his arms crossed with mock disdain. Pun’kin had his hands on his hips.
Velvet’s uniform was bunched up under his arms, so Fishy reached over and poked him in the bellybutton. Velvet flailed in righteous indignation.
Garret smiled at them both, then he blinked and looked at Twitch again. “Wait, what do you mean, I’m going to need you?”
But Twitch was already deep in conversation with Sweet Cheeks again, and Garret felt a tug at his sleeve. It was Theo’s tug. Somehow, the seating had rearranged.
Theo looked up at him and smiled his open, gentle smile, but he was curious. “You never told me your baby’s name.”
Garret swallowed hard as he could, then whispered so only Theo could hear him.
“I…” he began. “I don’t know.”
“Why not?” Theo asked, puzzled.
Garret dropped his head. “I left before we named him.”
Theo only watched and listened.
“I’m sure by now Molly’s named him, but I don’t know what it is,” Garret said.
Theo pushed his peas to the side, gently rounding the pile until the base of it was a perfect circle. “What’s your middle name, Garret?”
“Daniel,” Garret said. “Garret Daniel Vilner.”
Theo asked cautiously, “Do you think that would be a good name?”
Garret thought about it. It wasn’t his first name, which he refused to pass on any longer. But his middle name, that was an interesting idea.
“I think… I like it,” he said slowly.
Theo relaxed visibly. He smiled. “I’m glad.”
After a moment, Garret nodded to himself.
Theo smiled, nodded as well, and turned back to his dinner. He paused. He sat there until Garret had to ask, “Theo, you okay?”
Theo seemed to be working his way up to saying something. It took a little while longer.
“It didn’t hurt,” he said quietly, looking at his plate.
“What didn’t?” Garret asked.
“Dying,” Theo whispered, pushing his peas around. Then he turned and looked at Garret. “When we were all standing in a circle beside Nancy, right before I died, my brother told me it wouldn’t hurt. He was right. Will you tell him for me?”
Garret had a wooden knot in this throat around which he rasped, “I tried. He won’t listen to me.”
“He will. You just have to wait until he’s ready.”
Theo gripped his sleeve in the same way he’d done the night Garret had almost drowned trying to save Theo’s ditty box. The dream began to fade.
“Tell him for me please,” Theo said as he slipped away. “Tell him it didn’t hurt.”
The last thing Garret saw was Theo’s smile.
“We’re okay now Garret. Tell my brother I’m okay.”
Chapter 38
A young man clung to the wispy curtain that separates life from death. The curtain was blowing in a constant breeze. The breeze always blew here, in the in-between-world. It was a soft, gentle breeze that carried away people who had died into the Skyline. The young man blew with the breeze too, because he was weightless, but unlike his friends who had so recently gone on before him, he did not let go. He clung to the curtain with all his strength.
He didn’t know why he was holding on. He wasn’t even sure who he was anymore. So much of what defined him had been left behind in the other place, the solid place filled with pain and laughter and warmth and cold.
He couldn’t remember why he had to hold on, or how long he’d been holding on, but he knew it was important. There was something he needed to understand before he could move on. So he clung to the curtain with one hand, and sifted the airless expanse around him with the other, hoping to catch hold of the things he had forgotten.
The breeze gusted, ruffling the curtain. He billowed with it, and for a second, he considered letting go. It would be so easy to release it and drift away into the Skyline. The wind wanted to take him there, and part of him wanted to go. So many of his friends had gone, Cricket, Charlie, Atlas, and his new friends from the Kearsarge as well. He had no idea what adventures they might be experiencing, but he knew they were at peace. That thought made him not want to return, because peace was a rare thing in the shadowland. And yet…
Yet there was more to do here. He had left many things undone. They were specific tasks that he, like every human being, was purposefully outfitted to accomplish. If he did not finish them, they might never be accomplished.
Though his name was gone from him, he hadn’t lost his sense of identity. In fact, it was stronger now than ever. So was his sense of loyalty, and it was that loyalty which kept him clinging to that curtain. He concentrated, gathering his spirit and focusing it on the shadowland from which he had come. He had to remember. He had to understand.
As he focused, his grip on the curtain strengthened. He began to feel his hands, clinging to the fabric. They felt solid, thou
gh cold. The fabric in them didn’t feel like the gossamer curtain between this life and the next, it felt like rough sickbay sheets.
The next thing that came to him was a sound. A name.
Emery? Emery? Someone was calling.
It was his own name, he realized. Though not his real name. Twitch, that’s my name. It was his real name because that’s what his friends called him.
Friends. Oh God…
That was why he had to get back. His friends were in grave danger, and they didn’t even know it. But how? What was so dangerous? Why couldn’t he remember?
He couldn’t remember because he hadn’t been able to figure it out even while he was still in the shadowland. For a week prior to his death, the worry had consumed him. He could feel the true picture, the real plot, hanging around him in half formed pieces. Suspicions and hunches hung over his hammock at night like specters, but there were too many missing pieces. He hadn’t managed to put it all together before he’d been shot.
“Emery? Gunner’s Mate? Can you hear me?”
Twitch didn’t know how long he’d clung to the curtain, but he knew it had been far more than a few hours, which meant Maxwell had long since fired the Astra. If the weapon had been used, then Kearsarge’s mission was over. The decision had been made, and there was no undoing it. The Astra would obliterate the convoy, and all traces of it would be lost to the unsearchable depths of the sea.
The sweeping destruction of a multi-national convoy would give everyone in Europe the opportunity to blame everyone else. Europe would finally come apart at the seams. With war erupting at every boarder, the major powers wouldn’t spare a second thought for the old battleship that had started it all. So why couldn’t Twitch shake the feeling that his friends were in graver danger than they had ever been?
“Emery? Can you hear me? Come on sailor, you’ve got to wake up now.”
Twitch knew the voice. It was the kindly old surgeon. Kearsarge’s surgeon.
Twitch began to feel the weight of his body. Heavy and leaden. He even began to feel the scratchy wool blanket above him. His fists were weakly clenched, not around a goassamer curtain between life and death, but around the sheets. His head felt like it was full of cotton.
Twitch’s consciousness returned slowly, as if he was working his way free of strong, cold fingers. As if the Skyline was reluctant to relinquish him back to our world. He breathed in again. His chest was heavy. There was nothing but a thin sheet over him, but it felt like lead.
“Emery? Can you hear me son?”
Twitch groaned. He felt the surgeon’s large, but gentle fingers take his carotid pulse, then he felt the man’s palm rest briefly on his forehead. Twitch opened his eyes, and the man’s face filtered into focus. The surgeon had deep lines in his face and dark circles under his eyes. He brought his other hand into Twitch’s view. He was holding a small piece of metal between his thumb and index finger.
Twitch recognized it, though sluggishly. It was a mangled bullet.
“Missed your aorta by less than an inch, son,” the surgeon said. “You’re lucky the compression waves from it didn’t tear your pericardium. We had you in surgery for hours.”
The surgeon’s face tightened with concern. “You’ve been out for days. I think you were drugged, though I can’t figure out how.”
Drugged? Twitch’s eyes went in and out of focus, but he concentrated on the bullet until his vision sharpened again.
Let me see that, Twitch tried to say. All that came out was a dry hissing.
The bullet disappeared, and the surgeon held a tin cup of water in its place. Twitch felt the surgeon lift his head and put the cup to his lips. Twitch drank, finishing the cup, and the next.
“Bullet,” Twitch rasped loudly. “Sir, let me see it.”
The surgeon gave Twitch an appraising look, then said. “First, I want to know what this is all about.”
“I just woke up. I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.”
The surgeon was angry, though perhaps not directly at Twitch. “The Captain ordered me to keep you hidden from the crew until we reached port. Then I’m supposed to transport you off the ship without anyone knowing. Why?”
The new information gave Twitch pause. Keep me hidden? That wasn’t a good sign at all.
“Bullet!” Twitch insisted again, trying to sit up. He was weak as a kitten.
“Don’t try to move,” the surgeon ordered. “You’re severely dehydrated and you haven’t eaten in days.” The surgeon was getting angrier, but it wasn’t anger at Twitch or even the Captain. It was anger at himself. “I should never have dosed you with a stimulant, my first duty is to the safety of the crew, even above the Captain’s orders.”
“Sir,” Twitch said. “I’m fine. Now please give me the bullet!”
“Only if you eat,” the surgeon replied.
Twitch nodded acquiescence. The surgeon gripped him under the arms and hauled him upright in the bed, setting the pillow behind him against the bulkhead. It hurt like crazy and Twitch was shocked that the surgeon had done it. Twitch tried to get a look at the bandage on his chest, but his eyes were having trouble focusing at that angle.
He gave up and looked around. They were in a small room, barely large enough to contain the bed on which Twitch lay, and the chair on which the surgeon sat. The surgeon had vials and bottles and surgical instruments laid out on every flat surface available, from the bulkhead supports to the foot of Twitch’s bed. Apparently the surgeon had cared for Twitch by himself.
Twitch leaned weakly against the pillow, and the surgeon handed him a deep-sided tin filled with three sandwiches, one of corned beef and two of pickled ham. Twitch picked up one of them with an unsteady hand and took a huge bite. The surgeon held out the cup of water with one hand, and the deformed bullet with the other. It took Twitch three tries to grasp the bullet. His manual dexterity had suffered as badly as his strength.
The pickled ham sandwich was probably the best tasting thing he’d ever eaten. He ate quickly, taking an occasional sip of water to make swallowing easier.
Twitch turned the bullet over in his hand and rammed his brain back into high gear. The bullet hadn’t been mangled as badly as he first thought. The tip of it had mushroomed a bit, but that was all. Twitch knew enough about ordnance to recognize what the surgeon had not. The bullet was steel, an unusual enough choice in itself. Furthermore, steel bullets usually didn’t deform at all inside the human body. If the tip of this one had mushroomed, then that was because it had been hollowed out. But the bullet had not fragmented, nor had it been designed to. So that must have meant it had been designed to deliver something within the hollowed cavity.
That must have been how it delivered the paralytic that kept me under. But that makes even less sense than—
The surgeon was still frowning. He held out a telegram slip. It read: “Wake Emery. Sabo—”
“It’s from Captain Maxwell,” the surgeon said grimly. “We didn’t receive the last of it before our wireless telegraph failed completely. First the phones, now the telegraph. I risked your life based upon nothing more than a telegram containing three words.”
So Captain Maxwell’s not on board the ship, Twitch thought. Hmm. What kind of game is he playing now? If he ordered the surgeon to wake me, then…
The surgeon tried hard to keep any accusation out of his voice. “The men think you’re dead, but they’re talking about you being the saboteur. Whether that’s true or whether it isn’t, I want to know why Captain Maxwell himself carried you in here and told me not to let anyone know that you survived.”
Twitch was halfway through the second sandwich when he finally recognized the most obvious fact about the bullet.
It’s too small… Holy shit, it’s too small. That would have to mean…
Twitch replayed the memory of his confrontation with the Captain. He saw the captain’s stony face. He saw Commander Sharpe pulling the trigger. He heard Sharpe’s Co
lt roar.
Twitch blinked in shock and stared hard at the bullet, as if it would suddenly change to fit Twitch’s previous understanding of the universe. It didn’t. Twitch turned it over in his hand and set it on its mushroomed tip so he could look directly down on the diameter of its round tail.
It IS too small.
That changed everything. Hundreds of little pieces began to reorganize themselves in Twitch’s mind. The picture they formed was becoming very, very different. As they did so, Twitch began to see how gravely mistaken he had been. More importantly, if the new picture was accurate, then everyone aboard the Kearsarge could die at any moment.
Twitch rolled the bullet it his palm. This was why Captain Maxwell sent the telegram.
“Help me up,” Twitch said, struggling towards the edge of the bed.
“Lay down!” The surgeon ordered, restraining hands on Twitch’s shoulders.
“Sir, you’ve got to let me up,” Twitch said while he weakly fought the surgeon. Desperation began to overcome him. “You’ve got to let me up right now!”
“Why in tarnation would I let you out of this bed? If you really are the saboteur, maybe you’ll blow this whole ship up!”
“If you don’t let me up, that may be exactly what he does!” Twitch yelled.
“Who?” The surgeon demanded.
“I don’t know! You have to get Roogie’s medical file and Mr. Pauley and both of the guys who ran the phone switchboard and meet me in the Captain’s cabin!”
“Who is Roogie? I’m not getting anyone or anything and you are going to lay down this instant or I’m going to strap you down, young man!”
“Petty Officer Rogers,” Twitch yelled. “Whatever report you wrote after he died! Go get it and… let go of me!”
“Lay down sailor!”
“Hands off, sir!”
Exasperated, the surgeon barked, “What is so damned important?”
“It’s too small!” Twitch ceased struggling just long enough to hold the bullet up in the surgeon’s face. “It’s too damn small and that means if you don’t let me up, a lot of good people are gonna die!”
Ironclad Page 70