by Jay Lake
“The Solomnic Kingdom of Ophir is an ancient and honorab—,” he began, but al-Wazir put up his hand.
“Stop right there, friend Boaz. Have you come to kill me and mine?”
“No. I follow her.”
“You’re from Ophir. Them as has been attacking us these past months.”
“I am a Brass of Ophir.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I follow her.” Boaz’ anger and passion seemed to flee him as quick as they had come upon him.
“And would you follow her to England?”
Boaz and Paolina exchanged a long look. Al-Wazir tugged his collar and cursed the heat with a silent inner voice. The silence between them finally broke off.
“He will not go,” said Paolina. “We are not so close as you might think.”
“I am more of the Wall than she,” Boaz added. “I do not concern myself with the doings of some flatwater kingdom. No matter how many ships your queen may have.”
“Then will you give me your parole?” al-Wazir asked Boaz. “To remain among us without working against our efforts and our safety, and to raise no hand against England or English forces.”
“Am I free to walk away?”
“Not without my permission. If you will not place yourself under my oversight, I cannot allow you to stay here.”
Boaz stiffened. Then: “I accept your terms. For her sake only.”
“What about me?” Paolina asked. “Am I under parole as well?”
“My girl, I think a truly prudent man would most likely place you in irons.” He smiled. Oh, to have had such a girl as a daughter. “Thankfully I am not a truly prudent man. Besides which, if you are half the woman you claim, irons will be of little use in tempering you. You may consider yourself under parole so long as you are willing to give your word on the same terms as friend Boaz here. As you wish to go to England and meet with the great minds of the age, I am not so concerned about your behavior.”
“You will send me to England? When?”
“When I can, madam.” He felt the urge to bow, but took himself in hand. “I have no scheduled voyages right now, but there will surely be ships or airships calling soon enough. I can arrange a berth, believe me.”
Boaz nodded. “And when Paolina departs, what becomes of me?”
“You, Johnnie Brass, will then either walk free into the forests around us, or stay here to help me plot an end to these ridiculous attacks. Until she leaves, you are the one best suited to watch over her and secure her safety, day and night. I do not control all of the men in this camp. If you are loyal to her, this is your test.”
Boaz nodded. “Thank you, Chief Petty Officer.”
Al-Wazir looked Paolina over again. She nodded, but there was nothing demure in the challenge of that direct gaze.
He wondered what Kitchens and Lloyd George would make of this strange girl who’d come off the Wall. It seemed possible she might indeed be a modern-day Newton. He couldn’t say what that might mean for England and the world, but he knew it would be worse if she found the Chinese first, or simply made her own way into adulthood with no guiding hand at all.
Al-Wazir sought out Ottweill. The doctor would be at the digging face, of course. Though there had not been a plan to provide quarters hard by the tunnel, al-Wazir had asked a team of men to build Ottweill a little teakwood cabin there. Ready access to the work seemed to stem some of the doctor’s tantrums, and kept him close to his beloved machines.
They’d been cutting for eighteen days, and bored almost four hundred yards within the rock. So far they’d found no hard layers that required a change of cutting surface, or a withdraw for traditional blasting. Ottweill had announced the number one borer would back out on the twentieth day and be replaced with the number two. He wished to analyze any metal stress and mechanical failure that might be occurring.
Not that any such thing was expected, of course.
There was a work gang just outside the tunnel. They loaded a short string of flat cars with the additional rail required for operations within. The progress of the borer was slow enough that the crews had been able to practice their various crafts and drills. If the cutting sped up or things went wrong, they would be fully prepared.
Al-Wazir approved.
He tapped Mercks, the stoop-shouldered railroad man he’d first met back in Kent. “Is himself down the hole?” al-Wazir shouted. The vibrating racket from within the Wall was enough to make a man’s ears ache if he stood near the tunnel. Al-Wazir wondered how the borer’s driving crew withstood it. Even if Ottweill had not meant to hire the deaf, he would soon have them in his employ.
Mercks nodded. “Aye, and shouting about the cutting heads or summat.”
Ottweill was almost always shouting about something.
Al-Wazir knew better than to ask a railroad man about the state of the digging. Each crew was vitally jealous of its function, and practiced an aggressive indifference to the work of others.
“You going down the hole soon?”
Another nod. “Aye.”
“If the good doctor is in a listening mood, tell him I’m wanting him.”
Al-Wazir retired to the little porch of Ottweill’s cabin. There were several corkboards propped there, covered with notes and diagrams and lovely shaded drawings of one of the steam borers. They were not Ottweill’s hand. Some artistic genius lived among the crews. He’d seen sailors turn out work that could have hung in the National Gallery, save they’d never had the schooling nor the patronage. Few ever knew their worth as artisans, carving and drawing between swarming the lines and brawling over rented jennies in the ports they visited.
Likewise here. Whatever quiet talent had done that would end soon enough with some accident or another.
The rest of the boards told the story of Ottweill’s work. Much of it was beyond al-Wazir—numbers and charts showing force and stress and how the machines might work or break, the death of iron and steel and steam. He wondered if the Barthes girl could have made more of it.
It was al-Wazir’s firmest ambition not to have her and Ottweill meet. He needed to inform the doctor he had prisoners from the Wall, on parole, but he would present them as turncoats now aiding him in the defense of the camp. He simply didn’t want to encounter Ottweill’s reaction to a girl of such gifts.
The doctor would at best ignore her. Worse, he might sabotage her, or worst of all, draw her into his own work.
If she was what she seemed to be, Paolina Barthes deserved far more than the digging of holes. He settled in to wait for the doctor, thinking over ways to mask the truth without actually committing insubordination in the process.
Luckily, the better part of a lifetime’s service in the Royal Navy had given him extensive practice at such creative reporting.
Ottweill finally emerged from the tunnel so coated with dust that he seemed to be a man of sand and stone, save for the pale circles where his goggles had sheltered his eyes. “You on the porch are being, I see,” he said. “No work needing attention there is?”
“Aye, work and more. But sometimes there’s ’at which requires even your attention, sir. A patrol brought in two locals off the Wall. Hornsby’s seen to ’em and so have I, but I figured you ought to have the saying of it, too.”
Ottweill grabbed a rag from a bucket by the porch step and wiped his face. “Of what the saying?”
“I gave ’em a pardon on my parole, in return for they tell us that which we need to be knowing about the Wall, and especially these brass men what march against us.”
“You know best, sure I am.” Then, in German, “Unwissender Affe.”
“Indeed, sir.” Al-Wazir was just as glad he didn’t speak Ottweill’s native tongue. Otherwise he was fairly certain he would be forced to take offense. “I’ll be seeing to it, then. How goes the tunnel?”
“Deeper, ever deeper.” Ottweill bowed from the waist. “And now going I must be.”
“Going indeed.” Al-Wazir nodded and headed back towar
d the north end of the camp, where the rows of tents and shacks were that housed everyone but Ottweill.
All he needed now was a ship to get that girl out of here.
CHILDRESS
That night around the fire they roasted a boar some of the men had shot in the woods. Childress didn’t know whether pigs were indigenous to the islands of the North Pacific, or if the Chinese had previously introduced them by way of providing resupply.
It did not matter. The meat smelled good.
Other sailors had gathered wild onions and half a dozen more varieties of shoots and herbs. These were chopped fine, along with carrots and peppers from the ship’s stores. She’d not seen the galley aboard Five Lucky Winds, so the opportunity to watch the cooking process was fascinating.
No English cook would cut her vegetables so fine. And Childress had never seen a pan like the big ones they brought over from the submarine—shallow shields without any flat base, that quivered on the rocks stacked within the fire. Woks.
But two little men, each wizened and folded as tightly as any monkey, were in complete command of their craft. They approached it with a mixture of parsimony and art that she found delightful. Oil was husbanded as shredded pork was mixed in. Some dark sauce sprinkled on as needed, and eventually the vegetables added to the mixture. Childress resolved that if she were able to spend time among the Chinese under ordinary circumstances, she would learn to cook as they did.
The result tasted divine. Their cooking aboard ship was excellent, miles above anything the Royal Navy could ever serve if rumor was to be believed. She would believe this food rivaled the best a duke’s yacht might offer. Here outdoors, served steaming hot over rice warmed in a clay pot by the fire, it surpassed any meal she’d eaten in her life.
Even with the leaping glare of the flames, the sky was vivid. Earth’s track rose high and bright. The moon’s crossed over it. Luna herself was approaching full, a gravid silvered presence along her gleaming track. Her silvered light pressed down upon the waters of the bay without masking the shine of the stars. Stepping away from the fire a moment with a bowl of hot, steaming pork in her hands, Childress traced Venus’ orbital track rising in the east. The stars were so bright, she thought she could make out the guttering of their individual lamps. If she knew where to look, she might find the tracks of Mars and maybe even Jupiter.
Was this how God saw the universe? Childress imagined Him looking at His Creation, His view from everywhere at once. What would it be like, having eyes in every ray of light? To even encompass such magnitude was beyond her understanding.
It was like falling into the sky, slipping beneath a pool of water she’d never noticed hanging over her head. Childress had never supposed God listened to her personally, but she knew He listened to the world. How else could things be arrayed, in His Creation?
She began to pray.
“Our Father, who art in Heaven
“Craftsman be thy name
“Thy Kingdom come
“Thy plan be done
“On Earth as it is in Heaven
“Forgive us this day our errors
“As we forgive those who err against us
“Lead us not into imperfection
“And deliver us from chaos
“For thine is the power, and the precision
“For ever and ever, amen.”
When her voice trailed off, she stared at the heavens and wondered what was on the other side of the velvet wall of night. Was that where the dreaming mind of God lay?
“It is your religion,” said Leung, startling her.
Childress turned, letting a flash of surprised anger roll away from her. “It is not my religion. It is the world.”
“No, it is your view of the world.” He stared up, setting his arm on hers. “In China, we consider the way each person is connected to another to be the heart of who they are. So a son is a son to his father, and a soldier follows his general. Everything in the world is made to fit with everything else. His Celestial Majesty is at the center and head of the order of the world, as the sun is at the center and head of the universe.
“Look.” Leung pointed at the thread of Venus. “Everything in the sky relates to everything else. There is a position and an order to the world. In that, we see what is and what must be. A view of the world, much as you have your view.”
“Who made your world?” she asked softly.
“It exists. That is enough. People tell stories, but the world has no beginning and no end, any more than the track of its circle around the sun does.”
“But the universe is a made thing.” She hated the way her voice trembled with her insistence. “The gears are cut. You can see them through the simplest glass, and sometimes when the light is just exactly right.”
“So?” Childress could feel Leung’s shrug. Such an English thing for him to do. He continued: “We are made, as well. Every tree and rock and waterfall is made. It is not so hard to see the world as a garden. You Europeans are so concerned with first causes. It is the order of things which matters, not their origin nor direction.”
“Still, we live in the same world.” Holding her breath, she stepped closer into his arm.
Leung did not pull away.
When he spoke again, his breath puffed in the chilly air as if he, too, had been holding it in. “You are not the Mask Poinsard, are you?”
A cold stab of fear shivered her heart. Childress almost pulled away from him. She knew she stiffened, and she felt him stiffen in response. There was no point in lying after her body had betrayed the truth.
“No,” she said. “Poinsard died with Mute Swan, so far as I know.”
“Unfortunate.”
She wondered what he meant by that, but Leung did not elaborate. After a while, she asked the next question. “What will become of me?”
“That is up to you.” Leung hugged her even closer. “I can sail to Tainan with the Mask Poinsard aboard. I do not believe the Beiyang Navy would know any difference. There are some in Nanking who would, eventually, but you could play that face for some time.”
“My name is my passport to life and death, in this ocean, far from the protection of my country.”
“Yes. We have a school of thought which calls for the rectification of names. That a thing is not in its proper place until it is properly called.” He paused, perhaps for a smile. Childress was afraid to look at Leung’s face. “In the languages of China, a sound may carry different meanings. Tiger, or bravery, or lake, all in one sound and the tone of its speaking. This is a more careful question than it would be in your language, I think. Still, here is a chance to choose your name. Be who you will. The Mask Poinsard. Or some other woman of valor and thoughtful demeanor and careful wit.”
Childress puzzled through his words, trying to unravel both the criticism and the compliment she thought she found there.
“I think he knows,” she finally said. “Your political officer.”
“Choi?”
She laughed. “You have more than one?”
“No, no.” Leung pulled away, distracted. “He speaks English?”
“A little. And he knows something of the avebianco. I think he knows who I am. Or more to the point, who I am not.”
“I see.” Silence awhile, then: “His discretion will be difficult to assure.” Childress chose her next words with care. “Another man would arrange an accident.”
“I am not another man. Besides,” he admitted, “there would be consequences. He is the only sailor on the ship not under my direct command.”
“Practical as well, I see.”
“Indeed.” Leung hugged her again. “So what would another woman arrange?”
“The Mask Poinsard would cut his throat,” Childress said. “Or at least have someone do it for her. Li—Another woman . . .” She cleared her throat. “Another woman would find a way to convince him otherwise.”
“By cutting throats to demonstrate her resolve?”
It took Childr
ess a moment to realize that Leung was gently mocking her. “Perhaps.” She noticed then that her pork had grown cold. “I think I need the fire.”
“All men need the light,” he told her. “If only to set borders on the darkness.”
Five Lucky Winds sailed at first light. Childress understood they were going to cruise the surface while the weather held, for maintenance and cleaning. She seemed to have more freedom of movement, extending to being abovedeck herself. Shy sailors had shown her various rooms one at a time—bunks in one, a dispensary lined with jars of herbs and snakes, storerooms, big sweating tubes of obscure purpose, a kitchen not much larger than the dispensary, where the two old cooks fit together like monkeys in a puzzle.
Only the bridge and engines remained off-limits.
That was fine with her. She was no spy, trained to see the secrets by the arrangement of dials or the lights of a map table.
Childress spent some time above decks, but if there was any swell at all to the sea, she was distinctly uncomfortable. The submarine was not designed for the convenience of passengers in any case. Still, she craved the sunshine. Every time she saw Leung, there was inquiry in his eyes.
Who was she—the Mask Poinsard, or a woman of valor?
That was the sort of question any good person should ask of herself. The metaphor was usually not quite so literal, however.
When she saw Choi, her thoughts ran a different direction. It was neither in Childress’ nature nor within the reach of her arms to cut a man’s throat, but she kept wondering what the political officer would say to his secret masters when they stepped off the boat in dock at Tainan.
Could she kill a man to save herself?
That she could even ask that question frightened Childress.
NINE
PAOLINA
After two days, Paolina was bored. She wasn’t permitted to wander the camp unescorted, and not at all near the diggings or upon the stockade. The same restrictions applied to Boaz, but he seemed content to sit quietly in their quarters. Of course, she reminded herself, he had stood for years on the trail. Time seemed to flow differently for the Brass.