Escapement

by Jay Lake

  “We do not raise ghosts to bedevil our enemies,” she said. “Perhaps our need for obedience is less.”

  His humor vanished into the stiffness of command. “This was all done at your wish. I have had my own accommodation with the political officer for quite some time. He sleeps now to protect you, Mask.”

  Childress felt a rush of mingled shame and irritation. “I know. I must be stronger. More like the Mask Poinsard, who would have driven the knife home herself. In my heart, I would as soon pretend there was no knife at all, even if it was my word that set the blow in motion.”

  “In that, you are both human and charming.” Despite his words, Leung’s eyes were still cold. He took his leave. Childress remained, staring at the last of her squid and wondering how she might have better expressed herself so as not to lose his hard-won respect.

  She just could not find easy acceptance in the thought that her words had least plunged Choi into an endless and likely very troubled sleep.

  After breakfasting alone the next day, Childress sought out Leung. A sailor blocked her access to the bridge. She looked at him and repeated “Leung zai nar?” until he leaned through the hatch and began a lengthy conversation with someone unseen.

  A few minutes later, Leung stepped out. “How may I be of service, Mask Childress?”

  His tone was still formal and cold, she noted. “I have thought and prayed on this,” she said. “I desire that you awaken the political officer. I will not have his death on my conscience.”

  Leung shook his head. “That is not possible.”

  “I do not wish him to die.”

  “He has been slain,” Leung said. “His body does not yet understand, but his spirit is gone to the dark country of dreams with little possibility of recall. In time, his breath will fail, or his heart will weaken, or he will simply slip away from starving in his bed.”

  “I do not want it.”

  Leung leaned close, almost touching her, his eyes locked on hers. “When I donned a uniform and made my oaths to the Dragon Throne and the Beiyang Admiralty, it meant that I might be called upon to kill, and kill again, in service of my Emperor. On my order your Mute Swan sank with all hands save one. The judges of the dead will see this in my tally, and balance their deaths against my oaths. It is what we do, who serve the will and logic of Empire.

  “You, Mask Childress, are no different. If you would play this game, then know the price. Else you should have stayed home in New England and tended whatever garden was yours.”

  He turned without bidding her farewell and pulled the bridge hatch shut behind him.

  Back in her cabin, Childress wondered if she could have stayed in New England. She had not questioned Anneke’s summons at the library that day. A lifetime of obedience—to her mother, to her teachers, to God, to the deans of the university—had moved her. Her only real infraction was allowing herself to be drawn into the avebianco without permission.

  That was the root of the issue, she realized. Permission. Childress sat on her bunk and stared at the metal wall, thinking on that.

  God had not given humanity permission to live in the world. He had supplied instead free will, sending His children into Creation to find their own way. He trusted humanity to return to God on their own. Some of us have, Childress told herself, some of us have not.

  But everything she’d ever done fell within the bounds of permission. She was permitted not to marry, if she served the world of men in some other capacity—librarian, teacher, nurse. All words that meant “mother,” without the bother of procreation or parturition.

  Permitted work for women. Permitted by the deans to serve their college. Permitted by the widow who ran her rooming house to stay on and on and on, though Childress had long since ceased being the sort of young woman expected to marry away in a year or three. Permitted by the white birds to serve in their loose corps of eyes and ears, writing occasional letters and sending them through the monthly meetings in the basements of fraternal lodges and the upper rooms of restaurants.

  She’d had the choice of carrying on her deception or not. Choi held the power of permission over her through his reports to the Ministry of Correct Thought.

  That made her angry again. Who was he to hold her fate over her head? But then, who was she to balance her life over his?

  The Mask Poinsard would have, without a second thought. The Feathered Masks had balanced their lives over hers, sending Childress to the Silent Order as a sacrifice to keep the peace.

  The idea that struggled inside, gnawing at her conscience and attacking her sense of balance and goodwill both, was simple enough.

  She was worth more than this.

  She was worth more than permission, or the answer to prayer, or the winds of the world. She was her own woman, her own human being.

  Silent tears ran down her cheeks as Childress wondered why this was so hard to say to herself. Permission or no, she set about praying for the dead aboard Mute Swan, and especially for the lost soul of Choi. God would forgive them their sins, whatever hers might be.

  Leung joined her at dinner that night. The meal was stir-fried mushrooms with sliced peppers. She picked at it with her kwai-tsze, wishing for a roast chicken with mashed potatoes and corn. This Chinese food was good, even tasty, but lately it seemed to lend her no comfort, only nutrition.

  After a little while, she looked up at the captain. “I have taken your words to heart, sir.”

  “And how would that be?”

  “Everything has a price. You made that clear, though I have known it long since. I regret the fate of Choi, but this is my price for continued freedom of action. I am not willing to lay down my life so he might do his job.”

  He frowned. “I see.”

  “I . . . I swore no oaths. No oaths of office or fealty, or commission, as you have done. My purposes are different. But they are mine.”

  “Good.” Leung’s face relaxed a bit.

  “And so I have something else to ask. When we reach Tainan, I want to accompany you to report to Admiral Shang. Do not tell my story for me, Captain Leung.”

  “You would approach the admiral yourself?”

  “He is expecting a Mask, bring him a Mask. I will explain what I am about.”

  “Chersonesus Aurea.”

  “Yes,” Childress replied. “The Golden Bridge. This project is wrong, and it will damage far more than it aids.”

  “He is expecting a Mask who will speak for the project, bring aid from the Feathered Masks.”

  “Oh, sir, I will bring him aid. I will aid him in recognizing the madness of opening the Wall. And I will set limits and extents on what the Feathered Masks shall do to assure China’s safety in the face of British tests.”

  “I did not think you had a remit to speak on such things.”

  She shrugged, smiling. “I do not require permission to speak. Who is to say how Masks succeed one another? I declare myself heir to the Mask Poinsard. She cannot say differently.”

  Leung smiled back. “You are learning, I believe.”

  “No, Captain, I already knew what could be. I merely lacked a sense of how to proceed. Something which you have provided to me.”

  Leung bowed. “Very well. You will accompany me ashore when we make port in Tainan.”

  ELEVEN

  PAOLINA

  “Will you take me to Strasbourg?” Paolina asked Captain Sayeed the next day when she met him walking on Notus’ main deck.

  “This is not a passenger vessel, young lady,” the captain replied, but he smiled. “Why should I do such a thing?”

  “Because you want me to go there.” Paolina kept her voice simple, not challenging. She could not storm this man, nor push him. Only ask politely and convince with what logic could be summoned. “Else you would not have told me of the Schwilgué Clock. You are neither a cruel nor a casual man, I believe.”

  “Your faith stirs my heart. Walk with me.”

  The two of them mounted the half flight of steps to the poop,
then proceeded to the stern rail.

  Africa this morning was sere. The jungles of a day or two before had vanished into pounding sunlight, which flooded the land below. Only the shadow of the gasbag and the continued wind of their passage kept the deck from being an oven as well.

  “The Wall has already fallen below the horizon,” Sayeed said. “Though I imagine it is truly never far from your thoughts.”

  “No, sir.” She stared into the blued south, though there was little enough weather aloft at the moment. “It forms the center and circle of the Earth, dividing the Northern and Southern extents, and defining all that is. Without the Wall, the world would fly free from its path around the sun. We would either die in the fires of daylight or freeze in the crystalline forests of night.”

  “Well said. Now consider this: The Wall is one of the greatest parts of God’s magic. It holds air high above the earth, where elsewhere there is only thin and starveling gas tending toward vacuum. It does as you have said, anchoring and defining our world. At the same time, the Wall is nothing but the stay and support for a giant ring gear that meshes us with the larger fields of Creation. You, my dear girl, carry a piece of clockwork in your pocket which is an echo of that vasty Divine magic. You can call spirits from the timing of the world.”

  Paolina smiled. “Whether they come is another matter entire.”

  Sayeed cleared his throat. It was obvious that he was reaching for something he found difficult to say. She stood quietly, wondering what could move the man so.

  He finally spoke. “There are . . . schools of thought . . . among the various communities of faith and reason throughout the British Empire.” Sayeed stared south, avoiding her eye. “I find my sympathies lie with the Rational Humanists, as one such school is called. A very wise man named William of Ghent provided many of our writings for some years. He believed that the world could not continue to exist without sentient intervention. It is too orderly, too well settled, to have been pushed into motion by some absent God, then allowed to roll forward like a ball bounding down a hill.”

  “That is one way to see Creation,” Paolina said cautiously.

  “Indeed. There are others, Spiritualists, who look for God’s hand in every shadow. Arrant wish fulfillment, children seeking the safety of an omnipotent father.” He snorted. “I have never seen a fingerprint of God’s on this world. However Creation was effected, He has found other business to occupy Himself since.”

  “Indeed.” She wondered what point he was reaching toward.

  “The Schwilgué Clock . . . in Strasbourg. It was made by men seeking to measure and divide the world all the more closely. Looking for the tracks of the Clockmakers, those who might be God’s proxies.” He glanced at her, his eyes troubled. “We . . . we believe their presence far more likely than the reassertion of the Divine principle.”

  “Why are you so nervous?”

  “No, not nervous. Though this might be seen by some as blasphemy, it is more fair to say that we pursue a difficult topic.” Sayeed was speaking to the distant surface now, refusing once more to face her. “I told you, I follow a different prophet, one who walked the Northern Earth centuries after your celebrated horofixion. A man of my people. The Empire has a rule of tolerance. There is no requirement for me to bow to the Church of England. Our own belief stands outside the Spiritualist canon which is so popular in London, though it aligns well enough with the Rational Humanist creed. Musselmen do not concern themselves so much with the history of Creation as with the perfection of self within the laws of the Prophet.”

  Paolina found this very strange. She didn’t realize there had been other prophets after the Brass Christ. “Is Strasbourg a Musselman city?”

  Sayeed laughed. “No, far from it. And they would be most surprised there to even hear you ask the question. But Strasbourg is a Rational Humanist city. Universität Straßburg remains an important center of our thought. So the Schwilgué Clock is there in Strasbourg Cathedral.”

  Paolina couldn’t help but laugh. “The Rational Humanists built their masterwork in a cathedral?”

  “It has not been so long since Rational Humanism and its antecedents were blasphemy,” Sayeed said stiffly. “Once we had to work within the churches. Some of us still do. We do not deny God. We simply see Him at a more distant remove than most would credit.”

  “Indeed. Living on the Wall, I never met God personally, but He was closer there than perhaps He is in the flatwater kingdoms.”

  “Fair enough.” Sayeed fell silent. Below them, a line of animals crossed a sand-colored plain amid far-spaced trees. The animals were big, moving by the thousands to send a plume of red-gold dust to hang in the air at nearly their own altitude. “With your talent and skills, there are men in Strasbourg who would well care to meet you. Modern heirs to Newton, the keepers of the great clock there.”

  Paolina’s heart raced. He spoke of the wizards she’d sought since before leaving Praia Nova! “Them I would meet. Strasbourg is in the British Empire, if not in England. That is indeed my goal.”

  Sayeed spoke slowly. “I can lay a course more northerly, and cross the French territories rather than the western coast of Andalusia and the Bay of Biscay. Strasbourg is in Alsatia. The Royal Navy has towers there.”

  She tried to remain calm. “And you would take me?”

  “If you wish to go. The Rational Humanists meet there in conclave under the banner of the Silent Order of the Second Winding.” His voice became intense, thick with passion. “They will welcome you, with my testimony, and you will be treated with all the respect you have never been properly accorded before.”

  “Please,” Paolina whispered. “Take me there, and show me what I need to know.”

  “I have already set the course,” Sayeed admitted. “I wanted to ensure that you are with me in this.”

  She wondered what might have transpired had she not been with him. That question was not worth pursuing, Paolina quickly realized.

  Not if she was going to see the Schwilgué Clock and those who had mastery of it.

  In the days that followed, they crossed a seemingly endless country of sand. Sometimes it was long dunes that stretched across the land as far as the eye could see; other times the stuff spilled over cliffs and dry riverbeds and bluffs of red and gray stone. The trees were gone, as were the animal migrations, the little villages, the braided silver streams.

  A terrible country, she thought, and wondered why God had seen fit to include it in His Creation.

  Sayeed met with her from time to time, but he avoided the strange passion of their discussion of Strasbourg and the Silent Order. Instead they spoke quietly of the airship’s operations, the note of the engines, how the heat affected the gasbag. All the details of the Notus’ operation seemed overwhelming, yet Sayeed held them in his memory and at the tip of his tongue. He understood his ship the way most people understood their own hands. Maybe better.

  Sayeed, al-Wazir, Hornsby—she wished there’d been men like that back in Praia Nova, instead of the petty, venal fidalgos with their imaginary empires of manhood and privilege. Men who might have been worthy of their women, and of her.

  Of course, there had been that mad Dr. Ottweill, as well, and a camp full of scheming, aggressive laborers and soldiers.

  She could admire the good in a few men without foolishly ignoring what made all the rest little better than animals.

  These Rational Humanists in Strasbourg promised a much more civilized breed of man. Like Sayeed himself. Paolina was profoundly grateful that she had been able to find this path.

  She looked forward to reasonable discourse with reasonable people who could see beyond the walls the world set on the minds of men and women alike.

  To Paolina’s surprise, the desert sea ended in a real sea. This ocean was the color of glass—nothing like the sullen gray heave of the Atlantic north of Praia Nova. Instead it seemed almost a jewel, some decoration set down by God to make beautiful a corner of His Creation.

  �
�It’s the Mediterranean, what is,” Bucknell explained, gulping and bobbing. “She’s the ocean at the middle of the world.”

  “Thank you,” said Paolina, who knew perfectly well what the Mediterranean Sea was. She just didn’t realize this was it. There were no charts available to her aboard Notus, while her knowledge of the geography of Northern Earth was necessarily limited by her lack of access to maps and globes.

  She understood what those were, and what they were for; she’d just never seen one.

  There were times when the shame of being a primitive swept over her. She didn’t want to speak with Bucknell or anyone else. Rather, she just wanted to grab on to the rail and stare down at that eye-blue sea, pretending she knew everything needful to find her way and place in the world.

  “John Chinaman don’t sail into the Mediterranean,” Bucknell offered. “Hard to pass Suez without the Royal Navy knowing all of it.”

  “So it’s safe?” She stared down at two boats, small things though still big enough to be dragging nets behind like wings beneath the waves.

  Where there was water, there were fishermen. The sea was infinite in her bounty. Paolina knew that from Praia Nova. Perhaps they had not felt the great waves here, on this water bounded by desert where the Wall storms did not rule. She wished them the joy of their catch and fair sailing.

  “Safe as houses, ma’am.” He mused on that a moment, biting his lip where the big raw scar pulsed livid. “If you likes your houses wide as a horizon and filled with sharks, I guess.”

  Paolina tacked the conversation. The lad was never much good at moving in a straight line for long anyway. “Have you been to Strasbourg, Bucknell?”

  “No, no ma’am. Notus, she patrols the African coast mostly. Not so much with John Chinaman over the Sahara or the Continent.”

  “I can see why the Chinese would not patrol the desert,” she said dryly. “And I suppose there’s no friendly ports of call for them in Europe.”