Ganymede Page 20

  Maybe she hadn’t left their relationship as mad as he’d thought.

  He resolved to have a word with the crew on the way home to Seattle, and during this word, he intended to give them all a firm understanding of why there was no earthly good reason for Briar Wilkes to know anything at all about Josephine Early.

  By way of making conversation, or maybe only for the sake of business, Josephine said, “We call its resting place ‘the dock,’ but it’s no dock to speak of. We have to keep it submerged. Texas watches from the clouds, and if they spot it, they’ll claim it in a heartbeat.”

  “They’ll try,” Deaderick said.

  His sister chided, “Don’t talk that way. Especially not now. Texas took the island, and they could take the lake, too. I feel like a goddamn coward about it, but right now, all we can do is hide. It’s the only way to finish this operation.”

  “It’s not cowardly; it’s strategy,” her brother corrected her. “I don’t want to have to defend it. We might have the firepower, but we sure as shit don’t have the manpower. And it’s hard smuggling diesel back here in decent quantities. The rolling-crawlers are ready to ride, but they can’t go more than fifty miles without refueling, so we can’t waste it.”

  Houjin dived into the conversation with a question, as he was so often inclined to do. “Does the Ganymede run on diesel?”

  Josephine answered. “It can, and does. But Wallace Mumler—he’s one of the Fort Chattanooga lads—thinks he can run almost anything on alcohol, if you make it pure and strong. So he’s experimenting. He keeps a still out in the trees, away from the main camp.”

  “Why?” the boy asked.

  “Because the still requires fire, and fire makes smoke. We keep it to a minimum, and he’s working on a converter that would process most of the smoke out of the air before anyone ever sees it—but that’s not ready yet, so for now he does it all the old-fashioned way.”

  Deaderick said with a smile, “He’ll distill anything. Or by God, he’ll give it a shot. Corn works best, but from a scientific standpoint, there’s no good reason he can’t distill all kinds of things. And by God, he’s giving it a shot.”

  “I bet he’s a popular fellow.”

  “And how. Even the alcohol that won’t work to power anything … usually it’s drinkable.”

  Josephine shuddered. “After a fashion.”

  “I didn’t say it was fine wine,” Deaderick joshed her. “But after hours, when things are quiet and we’re all settled down for the night, most anyone in the camp is happy to give his latest batch of … whatever he’s brewed … a taste.”

  Hiking the rest of the way down to the water was a warm, sticky experience fraught with a hundred slaps against mosquitoes and a general wish from Captain Cly that it would rain or dry up already. The heavy, humid lingering of the damp air so close against the earth, so moist on his skin … it felt like inhaling through a wet bath sponge. He’d all but forgotten the weight of it, in his ten years of absence, and though he’d been in town not even two days, he’d already forgotten the season. Springtime in the Gulf was hardly any different from its summer, though the nights were still cool enough to breathe, and the days were not yet hot enough to fry bacon on the side of a ship. It was still too warm to be comfortable, and too moist to breathe deeply.

  Conversely, the springtime chill of the Pacific Northwest was not terribly different from its fall, or its winter either, for that matter. With all his heart, he missed it—even though he’d left it not so long before, and could expect to find himself once again cool as the tides within the month.

  Even now it blew his mind that Josephine had preferred this sunken swamp to the cooler, clearer Northwest. Then again, back when they’d first started fighting about who should live where, she’d said it blew her mind that anyone would want to live in the rain by an ocean that was never warm enough to swim in, and didn’t even have a beach.

  Then they’d fought about the differences between a beach and a coastline, and fought furthermore about what on earth she’d wear to stay warm all year if she left—and what he’d wear to stay cool all year if he stayed.

  In reality, they weren’t arguments about the weather. They were always about other things. Other issues. Other matters of control, and autonomy, and money. It was the same fight again and again, regardless of the details, and it took them months to figure out that they were bickering over who was being asked to give up the most … and who would do so, for the sake of being together.

  So she’d felt abandoned. So he’d felt rejected.

  So neither one of them compromised, and both got what they wanted most. Or least. Sometimes it was hard to recall.

  The smell of dead fish swelling in the sun invaded the usual odors of the bayou, and soon the hum of mosquitoes was matched and drowned out by the fiercer buzz of larger insects. Stagnant pools and puddles rippled with the small slaps of long-legged water birds stepping carefully among the tufts of grass, fishing with their javelin-sharp beaks; somewhere not too far away, a heavy-bodied pelican with shimmering brown feathers launched itself off the surface of the lake and into the air, its powerful wings spreading wider than Captain Cly’s arms and pumping hard to lift the big bird into the sky.

  The pathway opened against a sodden, silt-thickened bank, and Lake Pontchartrain sprawled before them.

  The water was quiet, save for the softly broken rushes of short waves pushed by wind, alligators, muskrats, or more pelicans with their pendulous torsos. Mostly it spread out flat and dark, its water the same shade of murk that made up the sopping bayous and the bubbling swamps. The tall, stiff grasses sagged as small white birds with spindly feet clutched at and bounced atop the vegetation. Turtles as slick and black as oil clustered on logs and rocks, sometimes ignoring the intruders and sometimes slipping away with a quiet plop. Glistening spiderwebs wider than curtains were strung between plants, trees, and the occasional piece of man-made pier blocking.

  Everything, everywhere, was alive.

  “This is the dock,” Deaderick said, and he leaned up against a rough-hewn banister that led to a wood-slat walkway over the water’s body. He looked as if he’d very much like to sit or lie down, but had no intention of doing so.

  Houjin asked, “Where’s the ship? I don’t see it.”

  Josephine flashed her brother a look that told him to stay right the hell where he was, and led the way out onto the planks. “Over here,” she told them, as she stopped to kneel at the walkway’s edge. Leaning over, she reached underneath and pulled a lever or a switch that no one could see. With a loud clank and rattling of chains much like what they’d heard at the gate, the pier began to shake. Its pilings cast ringed waves in tiny loops as the whole structure shuddered.

  “Look!” cried the boy.

  He pointed at a separate set of pilings hidden in the grass. These, too, were wobbling, straining to heft something enormous—lifting it up between the two structures on a platform that must have been resting on the lake floor. The pulley chains twisted and tightened, and the clattering was raspy with rust, but the underwater lift did its work.

  Up from the silted basin of Lake Pontchartrain rose the hull of a grim metal leviathan.

  The whole of its steel cranium sloughed off swamp water and grass, clumps of runny mud and slippery tangles of fallen moss. It reared up out of the water, its bulbous and misshapen skull hammered into a shape influenced by the airships. But even with two-thirds of its bulk yet submerged, Cly could see the design elements that made this machine ready for water, and unworthy for air.

  At water level, a pair of fixed fins were mounted on either side, left and right; larger fins were barely visible beneath the murky lake. The front was remarkable for what could not be called a windscreen, but a rounded glass window split down the middle and reaching up like a forehead.

  This window gave the overall impression of a nearsighted mechanical whale wearing an oversized pair of spectacles.

  Through it, Captain Cly could spy seatin
g in the ordinary configuration: one spot for the captain, two chairs on either side for a first mate and engineer. All the fixtures were bolted to the floor or the wall, in case of … not turbulence, but waves, and tides, and currents.

  Cly walked to the end of the pier in order to see the back end of the Ganymede, or what was visible of it above the water.

  From the rear, the ship more closely resembled an actual sea creature. The back was snubbed, and then fitted with a fin that clearly moved not side to side, but up and down; below this fin—which must serve for stability more than for propulsion—a set of flaps were mounted, maybe for steering. Below these flaps, a pair of propulsion screws jabbed, dripping with river-bottom muck.

  The large round portal to the left was likely matched by one on the far side, and if Cly recalled the schematics correctly, these were vents for taking on or ejecting water in order to let the craft rise or sink more easily.

  Around front, Houjin was leaning so far off the pier that a sparrow’s wing could’ve knocked him flat into the water, bouncing him off the front windows of the Ganymede. Probably, he wouldn’t have minded.

  “Watch out, Huey. I don’t know if we could fish you out of there before the alligators get you.”

  Houjin jerked back upright and peered anxiously into the water. “Are there alligators? I didn’t see any?…”

  Deaderick said, “There are always alligators. The damn things are a fact of life around here. But,” he added as an afterthought, “they do tend to keep unwanted visitors away.”

  “Can we take a look inside?” Houjin asked.

  “I’ll just open the hatch,” the guerrilla replied.

  Josephine said, “No, I’ll do it. You hold tight.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “If Dr. Polk says so, then all right. And here he comes.”

  “Now I need a permission note?” he argued.

  “No, I need one. You don’t want me to worry, do you?” Without waiting for an answer, she stepped to Ganymede’s side. She anchored herself by holding on to a piling with one arm, and then she leaned out with the other to grasp a lever embedded on the craft’s upper left side. When she gave the lever a yank, a panel jerked open with a sucking pop, revealing a bright red wheel.

  Josephine turned the wheel with one hand, still holding tight to the dock with the other one. Going was slow until Cly joined her, saying, “Let me.”

  “I can do it.”

  “I know you can, but I’m the one with the ape arms, so let me help.”

  He could reach the wheel without leaning and without bracing himself, so Josephine sighed and let him at it. Cly gave it a couple of twists, and then a second, much louder sucking pop was accompanied by the sudden appearance of a round seam. It was a door, its edges announced by rivets the size of plums, but otherwise indistinguishable from the various nodules and lumps that made up the Ganymede’s exterior.

  The captain glanced at Josephine, who gave him a quick nod of encouragement.

  He tugged and the door squeaked open, pivoting on a thick round hinge as wide around as a woman’s wrist. A puff of air escaped the interior. It smelled like rubber, lubricant, and industrial sealant, with a hint of diesel.

  “Captain?” Houjin asked.

  Cly jumped. The kid had moved so quietly, so quickly to come stand at his side—right under his lifted elbow. “What?”

  “Let’s go inside!”

  “I’m going, kid. I’m going.”

  Behind them, Dr. Polk emerged from the path, mumbling something about how he ought to be in Ohio right now, but not sounding much like he meant it. Chester Fishwick was behind him, and Cly heard other voices bringing up the rear from the camp. Fang and Kirby Troost were on their way as well.

  “We’re about to have a regular crowd,” he told Huey, bracing himself on the pier with one foot, and on the ship with his other. The craft felt firm underneath him, and when he left the pier completely to straddle the door, it bobbed only gently.

  Inside the round door—which admitted him, but only if he crouched—a vertical row of slats functioned as a ladder. He didn’t need it. It took only one long step and half a hop to drop himself into the interior. From this vantage point he spied a smaller, more flexible ladder rolled up and stuffed to the right. He picked it up and tossed it out the door, letting it unfurl against the exterior.

  While he listened to the scrambling patter of Houjin’s hands and feet against the wood dowel rungs, he surveyed the bridge. All things being equal, it was only a little smaller than the Naamah Darling’s seating area, though the ceiling was lower, and of course the captain’s chair wasn’t tailored to his height.

  Inside the craft, the architectural details were more prominent and less delicately concealed than they would’ve been in an airship, for few people would be subject to seeing them in a war machine such as this. Every exposed edge, every low beam, and every unfinished surface declared that this was a workhorse, not a passenger ship.

  “Work sea horse,” he said aloud to himself.

  Houjin answered him anyway, dropping down off the ladder with a thud that gave the vessel a slight quiver. “Sea horse? Maybe that’s what they should’ve called it. Why’d they call it Ganymede, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. I doubt the fellows outside know either—they didn’t name it. I don’t even know what a Ganymede is,” the captain confessed.

  “Who.”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “Ganymede was a who. He was a prince of Greece—kidnapped by Zeus, and brought to Olympus on the back of an eagle. He became the cup-bearer of the gods,” the boy said off the top of his head.

  “Oh.”

  “But I don’t know what that has to do with this ship.”

  “I don’t either,” the captain admitted. “But look at this thing, will you?”

  “I’m looking, sir. I’m looking. This, over here—,” he said, waving his arms at a central column that disappeared up into the ceiling. “What’s this part?”

  Cly consulted his memory of the diagram. “I think it’s a viewing device. It cranks up and down, see that wheel over there? Try that, and see if it does anything.”

  “Why does it crank up and down?”

  “There are mirrors inside. It lets you look out on the surface without bringing the ship all the way up out of the water. Or that’s the theory.”

  “Brilliant!” Houjin declared. He inspected the column, poked at the wheel, ran his fingers across some of the buttons and knobs … and with a deft, instinctive tug, he deployed the mirrored scope.

  Cly almost stopped him—almost reached out and cried, No! But he withdrew, letting the boy inspect the scope, and turned his own attention to the bridge.

  Over his head, the curved window sloped. He dropped his shoulders and leaned forward to cut his height by half a foot, and nudged the swiveling chair to the right so he could step sideways past it. He examined the console, touching its buttons. He tapped at one label, screwed onto the surface above one of the nearer, more prominent levers. DEPTH was all it read. And a series of marks scratched below it notched off feet, or yards, or fathoms. The captain had no idea exactly what they designated, for they were not marked with any corresponding numbers.

  A ratcheting noise drew his attention.

  He looked over his shoulder and saw Houjin walking in a circle, his face smashed up against a visor. “I can see it, sir!”

  “See what?”

  “The pier! The woods—or, the what-did-they-call-it?”

  “Bayou.”

  “The bayou! And … oh…” He paused with near reverence. “Sir, I think I see alligators—real ones, up close this time. Are they real dark, almost black? And do they look like they’re made of old leather? And do they have eyes on top of their heads, that stick out of the water?”

  “Sounds to me like you’re answering your own question.” Cly smiled, returning his attention to the console—but only for a moment. More footsteps and the climbing crawl of hands announce
d a newcomer, Troost. And behind him, Fang.

  “Get a look at this, will you?” Troost said. He jabbed a thumb at the exposed metal beams, curved like ribs—like they were really within a whale, and could call themselves Jonah. “Not a lot of creature comforts went into this thing.”

  “It’s not meant to be comfortable,” Cly told him. He pushed at the captain’s chair, which had been furnished with a leather pad in the shape of a cushion. It looked approximately as soft as an old book.

  Fang joined Cly at the console, investigating the controls and the seats as Cly had before him, occasionally pausing over a set of lights or buttons, or a handwritten note stuck beside a switch with a daub of glue. He indicated one, scrawled on rough pulp paper. It read, forward charges—top two/aft charges—bottom two.

  Cly scanned it and said, “Charges. Must have something to do with the weapons system. I’m sure it’ll all make sense in time.”

  Fang showed him another note, mounted on another glob of adhesive.

  “Diesel-electric transmission/propeller,” he read. “That’s almost self-explanatory, ain’t it?”

  The first mate nodded, but swept his hand across the controls.

  “Yeah, more notes. These fellows, they’ve been figuring it out as they go along.”

  “You’ve got that right,” said Deaderick Early from the doorway. He lifted up his knees and climbed onto the round rim of the opening. He did not descend to join them, but spoke from where he was perched. “After McClintock died, and Watson was gone … we had to sort it out from scratch. We’ve messed up a lot, and we even scuttled her once by accident.”

  “Ah,” said Cly. “That’s the extra smell. It’s old water.”

  “We pumped her out as best we could, and left her open to dry—but there’s only so much to be done about it. She doesn’t leak,” he added quickly. “She’s just hard to clean. Inside, there’s not anything much that’ll rot. The designers got that part right. Everything you see can be swabbed down, and shouldn’t get too nasty. I’d worry about rust, but the special paint they used in here protects it pretty well. The electric system is built into the walls, sealed off tight, and the diesel engine—and the propulsion mechanics—are also cordoned off. You’d need a fuse and a keg of powder to soak it down.”