Behemoth

EIGHT

That night in the machine room, Alek stared at the eggs, his mind drifting.

They were such insignificant-looking objects, but this giant, marvelous airship had fought its way across Europe to bring them here. What was inside them? What sort of godless creature could keep the Ottomans from joining the war?

The heaters packed around the eggs glimmered softly, and in the ship’s quiet, Alek felt sleep creeping up on him. He stood and shook himself awake.

It was just after three a.m., time to get started.

As he pulled off his boots, a twinge crept down his side. But the pain in his rib cage was only a dull ache. Nothing that would trouble him tonight.

It had taken an hour of arguing to make Count Volger see the logic of this plan. Klopp was still under guard, Bauer and Hoffman were busy with the engines, and Volger had already been caught skulking below. It was up to Alek to find their avenue of escape.

He pressed an ear against the machine room door, holding his breath.

Nothing.

He turned the latch and pushed it slowly open. The electrikal lamps were dark. Only the glimmer of glowworms lit the corridors, a green radiance as faint as starlight. Alek stepped into the hall, dead silent in his stocking feet, and eased the door shut behind him.

He waited for a moment to let his eyes adjust, then started for the stairs. There had to be an escape hatch somewhere, a way for the crew to abandon ship by rope or parachute. The lowest deck of the gondola was the logical place to look for it.

Though, where they would find five parachutes—or a few hundred meters of rope—was beyond Alek. They would have to escape when the ship was grounded in Constantinople, then buy their way to safety with the last bar of his father’s gold.

The stairs made no complaints beneath his weight. The Darwinists’ wood came from fabricated trees, and was lighter than natural wood and stronger than steel. The airship didn’t groan and creak like a sailing ship, but felt as still as a stone castle. The distant, rumbling engines were reduced to the barest trembling under his feet.

Alek slipped past the central deck of the gondola quickly. At night a guard stood at the door to the bridge, two more were stationed at the armory, and the ship’s cooks were always in the galley before dawn. But after the ship’s five days on the glacier, the lower cargo holds and storerooms lay empty and unguarded.

Halfway down the last flight of stairs, a sound froze Alek in his tracks.

Was it a crewman walking past on the upper deck? Or someone behind him?

He turned and looked back up the stairs—nothing.

Alek wondered if airships had rats. Even metal land dreadnoughts could be infested. Or did the six-legged sniffer dogs hunt for pests as well as leaks?

He shuddered and kept moving.

At the bottom of the stairs, the deck was chill beneath Alek’s feet. The night air was coursing past just below, thin and close to freezing at this altitude.

The corridors were wider down here, with two rails set in the floor for cargo trolleys. On either side lay open storerooms. They were shrouded in darkness, the glowworms reduced to a few green squiggles on the walls.

The sound came again—the scrape of boots on wood. There was someone behind him!

His heart racing, Alek walked faster toward the bow. A few half-empty feed sacks sat in the shadows, but there was no good place to hide.

The corridor ended at a closed doorway. Alek turned and saw a silhouette moving behind him. For a split second he considered giving himself up and pretending he’d gotten lost. But Volger had already been caught down here …

Alek pushed his way through the door and shut it behind himself.

The room was pitch-black, and a heavy smell hung in the air, like old straw. He stood there in the darkness, breathing hard. It felt small and crowded in here, but the click of the closing door seemed to echo for a moment.

Alek thought he heard mutterings. Was this a bunk room full of sleeping airmen?

He waited for his eyes to adjust to the blackness, willing his heart to stop pounding in his ears.…

Someone, or something, was breathing in here.

For an awful moment Alek wondered if there were creatures aboard the Leviathan that Dylan hadn’t told him about. Monsters, perhaps. He remembered his military toys, and the Darwinist fighting creatures fabricated from the life threads of extinct and giant reptiles.

“Um, hello?” he whispered.

“Hello?” someone answered.

Alek swallowed. “Oh, I seem to have gotten lost. I’m sorry.”

“Gotten lost?” came the reply. The words sounded hesitant, and there was something eerily familiar about the voice.

“Yes. I’ll just be going.” Alek turned back to the doorway and felt blindly for the knob. The metal squeaked a little as he turned it, and he froze.

Suddenly the room was full of tiny screeches and complaints.

“I’m sorry,” a voice said. Then another whispered, “Hello?”

The murmurs increased, building in intensity. The room felt no bigger than a closet, but it sounded as though a dozen men were waking up around him. They muttered half-formed words, in a nervous and agitated babble.

Was this the airship’s madhouse?

Yanking open the door, Alek banged it into his bare foot. He yelped with pain, and a symphony of angry voices answered. More cries filled the darkness, as though a brawl were breaking out!

Through the half-open door a green face stared back at him.

“Barking spiders! What are you doing?” the intruder said.

“Spiders! Barking spiders!” came a dozen cries from every direction.

Alek opened his mouth to scream, but then a low whistling sound floated through the room. The cacophony instantly went silent.

A glowworm lantern lifted in front of Alek’s face. In its green light he made out Dylan squinting back at him, a command whistle in one hand.

“I reckoned it was you,” the boy whispered.

“But … but who are these—”

“Shush, you ninny. Don’t get the beasties started again.” Dylan pushed him backward and slipped into the room, closing the door behind them. “We’ll be lucky if the navigators haven’t heard this ruckus already.”

Alek blinked, and in the light of the wormlamp finally saw the stacks of cages climbing the walls. They were full of message lizards, crowded together like puppies in a pet store.

“What is this place?” he breathed.

“It’s the barking lizard room, isn’t it?” Dylan whispered. “It’s where Dr. Erasmus takes care of the beasties.”

Alek swallowed, his eyes falling on a table where a dissected lizard lay pinned. Then he saw that the ceiling was covered with the gaping mouths of message tubes, tangled like railroad tracks at a station. “And it’s a sort of junction, too, isn’t it?”

“Aye. Dr. Erasmus is in charge of all that palaver—origin and destination tags, emergency alerts, clearing up traffic jams.”

Alek stared at the dozens of tiny eyes peering at him, all glowing with wormlight. “I had no idea it was so … complicated.”

“How did you think the beasties always found you? By magic?” Dylan snorted. “It’s a tricky job, even for a boffin, especially with half the lizards still dizzy from that Clanker lightning. Look at the poor things, and here’s you riling them up!”

A few of the lizards started to murmur, repeating Dylan’s words. But when he blew another soft, low note on his command whistle, they settled again.

Alek looked at Dylan. “You didn’t just happen along, did you?”

“No. I couldn’t sleep. And you know how Dr. Barlow doesn’t want us bothering each other on egg duty? Well, I thought if I dropped by now, she wouldn’t be about.”

“But I wasn’t there,” Alek said.

Dylan nodded. “And that was a wee bit odd. So I thought I’d sniff around and see what you were up to.”

“Didn’t take you long to find me, did it?”

“The beasties’ ruckus helped, but I reckoned you’d be down here in the storerooms.” Dylan leaned closer. “You’re looking for a way to escape, aren’t you?”

Alek felt his jaw clench. “Am I that obvious?”

“No. I’m just dead clever,” the boy said. “Have you not noticed?”

Alek took a moment to think about this, then smiled. “I have.”

“Good.” Dylan took a step past him and knelt at a small hatch on the opposite side of the room. “Come through here, then, before we start the beasties yammering again.”