Ganymede (The Clockwork Century #3)

Ganymede (The Clockwork Century #3) Page 37

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 announced 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.”

Houjin was still facefirst in the mirrorscope mechanism. He swiveled it toward Deaderick and announced, “The top of your head is huge! I mean, it looks huge. From here.”

Early laughed. “You got that working right quick, didn’t you?” He stretched up out of the doorway and waved with one hand.

Houjin waved back. “It’s amazing! And it’s all done with mirrors?” Before Deaderick could answer, he asked, “Did Mr. Worth set this up, too? Did he just make the mirrors, or did he design the scope, or did someone else do all that?”

“Mr. Worth didn’t make it, but he’s the man who told us how it works. He also improved it a bit, adjusting the angle of the mirrors and changing a few of the searching gears. What you see now, when you see Ganymede,” he said, blinking back some deep internal pain, and talking past it, “is dozens of men, working together, building on the knowledge of the men who came before us. The ship was working when McClintock died, and it was working when we first dredged it up from the bottom of the lake. But in the last six months, as we’ve been forced to figure out how it works … we’ve also figured out how to make it better.”

Cly waved at the console and asked, “Are these notes yours?”

“Mine and Mumler’s, mostly. A few might’ve been written by Chester, or one of the other lads. We’ve been meaning to draw up plates like McCormick started, and get ’em engraved. But for right now, all we have is pencil and paper, and a nail to scratch marks into the metal when we feel like we need them.”

The captain said, “Whatever works. Hey, when is it safe to fire this thing up and take it around the lake? Or is it a crapshoot, given how Texas is watching from above?”

“Safest time is always night, of course. But as far as we can tell, it’s not honestly that much different from swimming around during the day.”

Kirby Troost looked up from the control panel he was examining. “How’s that?”

“The water’s pretty dark, and even when the sun’s up, you can’t really spot the ship from the air—not unless you know exactly what you’re looking for, and even then, sometimes you can stare right at it without seeing it.”

“Spoken like a man who’s given it a try,” the captain observed.

“Absolutely. I went up in one of the Barataria ships and took a look for myself. In fact, that’s what I was doing at the bay when Texas attacked—returning with the crew of the Crawdaddy from doing a little reconnaissance. It was miserable timing on my part, but it was a good exercise and I don’t regret doing it. We brought that little flier over here and scanned from all altitudes, high and low, making double sure she wouldn’t draw any extra attention if we tested her out and ran her around the pond.”

“It’s a shame it cost you a couple extra holes.”

Deaderick said, “Every day’s a risk. I was bound to take a scratch eventually, and this one didn’t kill me—so there’s something to be thankful for.”

“True, true.”

The guerrilla continued. “Ganymede’s outside surface isn’t black, but it’s such a dark brown, it might as well be. It matches the lake bottom just about perfect, especially if there’s been a storm of any kind. Then all the dead grass and moss, all that swampy stuff, it gets stirred up and pools on the surface. It’s damn near perfect camouflage.”

“Like the tents you’ve got, out in the camp,” Troost noted. “You could look down from the sky and never notice a thing on the ground. It’s nicely done.”

“Thanks. And it has to be nicely done, otherwise we’d be dead by now. That’s the first thing I learned when I joined the bayou boys a couple years ago. Our technology isn’t everything, but it’s second only to our wits when it comes to keeping us alive. Sometimes it’s hell to maintain. Wet as it is out here, we have to paint everything over and over again, to keep it from rusting.”

Houjin finally withdrew his face from the mask at the mirrorscope. “But paint won’t keep rust away. Not forever.”

Deaderick said, “We use what Texas puts on its naval skimmers and the like. It’s made with a few extra ingredients, and it keeps things more waterproof than not. Still, we have to keep layering up the coats to keep things straight.”

The boy gave this a moment of consideration, and then said, “It’s a good thing Texas uses so much brown.”

Early laughed. “You’re right about that! We steal most of what we use, but they don’t ever notice it’s missing.”

“So when do we get to try and—” Houjin hunted for a word. “—drive it?”

“We should wait until later in the afternoon, at least. Let the shadows get good and long, and take some time to sit around with our operators. We can teach you everything we know about making this fish swim, and then I’ll hand you over to Wallace Mumler,” Deaderick said to the captain in particular.

“What can he tell us?”

“Wally’s been busy making maps—but not maps of the land. Maps of the water, of the lake out at this end, and of the Mississippi.”

Cly settled gingerly into the captain’s chair, spinning it with his knees so that he could face Deaderick, sitting up in the entrance portal. “Getting Ganymede through water won’t be as simple as flying at night.”

“The currents won’t be very different—air and water, they move in a similar way. And you can actually see the water gusting around, and sometimes you can tell which way it’s pushing just by looking. But it’s true, the sky doesn’t have much in the way of obstacles, I wouldn’t think … except maybe other ships, sometimes. Hidden in the clouds.”

“That hardly ever happens, but I’ve heard of it—once in a while. And I’ve sailed right into a flock of birds once or twice, but I bet that’s not half as bad as the shipwrecks, charges, and other boats waiting at the bottom of a river.”

“You’re betting right. You’ll be piloting more blind than not. They don’t call it the Muddy Mississippi for nothing. Everything is a danger, something to be run aground on. Uneven spots on the bottom, sunken trees, boulders, roots, and worse. And out on the river, you won’t just be hiding from the forts, you’ll be hiding from commercial vessels. Mostly they’re flat-bottomed things, riverboats and barges, which you’ll need to dive beneath, or dodge. We’ll have men on the river who’ll help out as much as they can, guiding you from the topside.