Ganymede

Eight

The captain said, “Goddamn, Kirby. Your acquaintances weren’t half-kidding.”

“Nor was the lady from the taps,” the engineer graciously replied.

Everyone gazed out the thick glass windscreen in silence, even Houjin — whose incessant questions had drawn up short when confronted with the wreckage at Barataria Bay, where the great pirate Jean Lafitte had established his empire … an empire that had stood a hundred years and might have stood a hundred more, were it not for Texas.

The Naamah Darling drifted slowly past the big island’s edge, steering clear of the thin, curling towers of black smoke that still coiled from the ground, and avoiding the other ships flying nearby, likewise creeping up to the edge of the destruction and gawking at what was left. Everyone gave everyone else a clear berth, since the details were still so few, and the devastation so very awful.

Below, the pipe docks were melted and twisted into a crumpled parody of their prior shape, and the burned-out hulls of dirigibles were flattened against the ground or in the water. Their stays jutted like the ribs of huge dead animals, like the big stone bones of long-extinct beasts from another time. Dozens of ships. Maybe fifty or more, charred and useless.

They dotted the landscape in lone craters and in clusters. What few buildings the island had boasted were burned or blasted into obsolescence, leaving the whole scene below a weird panorama of a place cleansed by fire.

Even from the Naamah Darling’s height, the captain and crew could see brown-uniformed Texians moving about below. Digging trenches. Toting corpses to burial — or here and there, moving a survivor on a stretcher. Cly wondered why they bothered. Surely anyone found on Barataria would be tried and jailed at best, hanged at worst, for being found on the island and firing back at the Lone Star’s airships.

But there was much he did not know about the situation, and the uncertainty left an uncomfortable warm spot in his stomach, as if this impersonal attack on someone else meant more to him, personally, than it ought to. It would be an exaggeration to say that the sight of the blighted island churned his stomach. He hadn’t visited it in years. But it’d been one hell of a bustling place once — a rough-and-tumble spot, to be sure, but one where a certain kind of man could find a certain kind of freedom.

When he pulled out his spyglass and aimed it at the mess below the ship, Captain Cly could see alligators, nearer to the island now than they tended to creep in daylight. Their long brown-black forms lounged as motionless as logs — and easily mistaken for the same — but their bulbous eyes and heavy tails twitched in the afternoon sun.

“Are those—” Houjin finally found his questions. He’d found a spyglass, too, and was likewise watching the water’s edge. “—alligators? Down there, look — one just dove under the water, and it’s swimming, you can see it. Right there, Captain.”

“Yes, that’s an alligator.”

“It’s very big, isn’t it? It looks almost as long as that canoe.”

“They’re sometimes very big, yes.”

“They aren’t afraid of people, are they?”

He swallowed. “The smell of death is drawing them out — even more than usual.” And before Houjin could demand to know what he meant by that, the captain changed the subject. “Anyway, look what else is going on — over there in the water, around the old island docks.”

“Let me see,” Kirby Troost said to Houjin, who handed over his spyglass. Upon getting a gander, the engineer said, “A handful of strange-looking flatboats, and something bigger. And nets. Looks like they’re dredging for something. Maybe they sank something they didn’t mean to.”

“Maybe. People call those flatboats blowers. Some spots out in the bayous, and in the marshes, it’s the only good way to travel. The boats are nice and light, see. And the fans just blow them along.”

Houjin grasped the situation instantly. “And since the fans are up, out of the water, their blades don’t get clogged by the grass!”

“Atta boy,” Cly told him. “Any other propeller or engine you stick in the water is done for.”

Things might have digressed into a conversation about transporting men and goods through inhospitable terrain, but a loudly shouted, “Ahoy, Naamah Darling!” jolted the chatter in another direction entirely.

All the men on board tore their attention away from the scene below and looked around, trying to spot the speaker. The captain pointed out to the west and nudged the steering levers to better point the dirigible toward another airship — one much closer than they’d realized.

Someone had snuck up on them.

The ships were near enough to each other that Cly, Troost, Houjin, and Fang could plainly see three men in the cockpit of the other dirigible. Houjin waved. One of the distant men waved back. The voice came again, and this time its source was obvious: a large electric speaker mounted to the exterior of the hull.

“You’ve entered airspace deemed restricted by the Republic of Texas. I have to ask you to accompany us to a landing dock a short ways east, at Port Sulphur. Do you agree to comply at this time?”

Cly and his crew members looked back and forth between one another.

Houjin, always the first with a query, asked, “Captain?”

Fang shrugged, and Troost did likewise. The engineer said, “We aren’t carrying any contraband. We can play dumb.”

Thoughtfully, Cly said, “We’re from out of town. Nothing bad on board. No reason to put up a fight or make a stink.” Out the windscreen he could see more Texian ships, approaching the other gawkers in the same way. “They haven’t singled us out. They’re just clearing the area. Sure, let’s see what they want. I’m not familiar with Port Sulphur, but maybe they can point us at a good machine works.”

He returned his attention to the Texian ship, waved, and nodded. He added a thumbs-up for good measure and held out one long arm as if to say, After you!

One by one, they buckled back into their seats and waited for the Texian ship to lead. When it did, they followed at a respectful distance — but close enough to make it plain that they meant no trouble, and were abiding by the Republic’s orders.

Houjin said, “I don’t like this, sir.”

“I’m not highly keen on it either, but it might work out. Maybe we’ll learn something. And we’re headed in the right direction, anyway. There’s nothing to worry about, you hear me? We haven’t been up to any mischief, and they aren’t shooting at us. Mostly, I think, they didn’t want us watching what they’re doing in the bay.”

“That’s my guess,” Kirby Troost observed quietly. “And it backs up what my acquaintances and your tapper lady said.”

“How’s that?” asked Houjin.

“Texas took Barataria apart with a goal in mind. They’re looking for something — something they thought the pirates were holding or hiding.”

“Something in the water,” Cly added.

The boy frowned. “Some kind of ship? But you were just saying how hard it is for ships to—”

The captain shook his head. “I know what I said. But I also know what I saw. This has the stink of a military operation all over it.”

It was Troost’s turn to frown. “Isn’t everything Texas does in New Orleans a military operation?”

“Mostly they’re here to keep the civil order. Police work, and the like. They occupy, they don’t govern — that’s still left to the Confederacy. And this wasn’t police work. This was army work. I wonder how much we can get them to tell us about it.”

Fifteen minutes later, they were setting down at a large industrial pipe dock on a promontory near a wide canal, at the edge of the marshy swamplands, like almost everything else between the city and the Gulf. Being careful to preserve every appearance of innocence, the captain disembarked and used the lobster-claw anchor to latch the Naamah Darling into the nearest slot.

As he did so, he was approached by a Texian who might’ve been tall by anyone else’s standard, but was merely neck height to Andan Cly. The beefy blond was wearing the local version of the brown uniform — pants and boots as usual, but jacketless and with the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up past his elbows and unbuttoned halfway to his waist. It was the captain’s opinion that telling any Texians anywhere to wear any uniform was an act of futility, but it wasn’t his army and he didn’t say anything except, “Hello, there,” when the man stuck out his hand for a shake.

Handshakes accomplished, the Texian said, “Hello back at you,” with a heavy Republican accent. “And I want to thank you for your cooperation. Not everyone has been so quick to leave when asked. I’m Wade Bullick, captain of the Yellow Rose,” he said, waving a hand at the ship that had escorted the Naamah Darling out of Barataria’s airspace.

“Andan Cly, captain of the Naamah Darling.”

“Pleasure to meet you, and I do beg your pardon about all this. We had ourselves an incident at the pirate bay, and right now we’re in the middle of getting it all cleaned up. You know how it goes.”

“I suppose I do.”

“And I don’t suppose you had any business there yourself?” Bullick asked casually.

“None whatsoever, I assure you. We saw the smoke, is all. And I won’t lie — we heard rumors, on our way east.”

“On your way coming east? Most folks come here by flying west. Where do you all hail from?”

“The Washington Territory,” Cly told him. He also took this opportunity to provide his ship’s licensing papers, which he’d stuffed into his vest before leaving the ship. He knew they’d be asked after, and it was always better to offer such things when one was innocent of any wrongdoing. “We’re registered out of Tacoma.”

Wade Bullick examined the papers, and Cly noted that the man either read very quickly or made only a show of reading — and he couldn’t tell which. “Everything does look to be in order here. Might I ask why you’ve come to the good land of Louisiana, Captain Cly?”

“Supply run, mostly. We serve the little frontier towns up and down the Pacific Coast, and I homestead in a tiny port town called Seattle,” he exaggerated only slightly. He preferred to think of it as an optimistic prediction. “Also, this bird was built to move cargo I don’t care to carry, so I was hoping to find one of your Texian machine shops and get her all fitted up for regular trade and supplies. You’re welcome to climb inside and take a look.”

“You got crew with you?”

“Three men — my first mate, but he’s a mute Chinaman and can’t tell you about it; an engineer; and a young fellow who’s apprenticing to ride aboard more permanent-like. We don’t have cargo right this moment, nothing but our own possessions. We flew down empty, with intent to load up before heading home.”

Captain Bullick went to the stairwell and climbed halfway up, poking his head into the interior and looking around. Cly couldn’t see if anyone waved at him, swore at him, or stuck out a tongue, but he trusted that nothing too out-of-the-ordinary took place outside his line of sight. He also trusted that Bullick had noticed the tracks running along the ceiling, and the empty sacks he’d once used to move the blight gas.

“I see what you mean,” the other captain said as he retreated back down to ground level again. “Been moving things to make other things, have you?”

“Once upon a time,” Cly confessed. “But I’m giving it to you straight — that’s not what this is about, and not what we’re here for. And I really am hoping you can make me a recommendation for a shop where I can get some of that unnecessary gear stripped out.”

“All right, then, I’ll take you at your word — since you’ve been so agreeable thus far, and all. And as for Barataria, I don’t blame you for wanting to come take a look. It left a big ol’ hole in the marsh, didn’t it? Not that I expect the fun’s been rooted out for good.”

“Excuse me?”

“Aw, come on. Between you, me, and the entire Gulf coast, everybody knew what was going on out there.”

Cly retrieved his papers and stuck them back in his vest. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance you could tell me what all the hoopla was about, is there? Gossip was all over the taps, but that’s all we heard. Nothing but gossip.”

“Honest to God, I don’t have much more than that to share. A couple nights ago, the bay went up like firecrackers — and yesterday Colonel Travis McCoy called everybody out to help clean up what was left. I’m not a military man myself, except in the loose sense. I mean, I’ll show up if they offer me Republican money to fly around like I was going to anyhow, that’s for sure. But I’m no fighter, and no Dirigible Corpsman. McCoy told the fellas like me to act with Texas authority and keep the sky cleared. And now you know about as much as I do.”

Cly assumed there was plenty Bullick was leaving out, but pressing for it would only look suspicious. “Well, then, I thank you for clearing that up for me. It’s strange business all around, but I suppose it’s none of mine.”

With another minute or two of chitchat, Cly learned that Travis McCoy had taken over the city’s management following the disappearance of the previous colonel, which Bullick was not prepared to divulge any extra information about — or perhaps Bullick himself wasn’t sure what happened, and he was only parroting the official line. He also said that the nearest machine shop of the caliber Cly required was located in Metairie — and he offered this recommendation without hesitation, including the instructions to, “Tell Baxter Devitt I sent you, and he’ll fix you right up!”

With this, they were free to go so long as they steered clear of the pirate bay. By evening the Naamah Darling was moored at the machine shop in Metairie, where Baxter Devitt had been tickled pink to hear Wade Bullick was sending him customers. Devitt was a small, dark man — almost the descriptive opposite of Bullick — but he possessed a similar savvy cheerfulness that Cly had come to recognize as a general trait of Texians, or at least one common enough to remark on.

Before long, Captain Cly had an estimate for the price — at the high end of reasonable — and time frame — within the week — for all the work he wanted accomplished on the Naamah Darling, and a general tour and inspection of the facilities had convinced him that this was an establishment capable of doing good work, and worthy of being trusted with his most valued possession. With a gentleman’s agreement and another round of handshakes, Cly took his crew out to the street rail station near the great cemetery, and together they waited for the next available car to take them into the city proper.

The street rails were halfway between a streetcar and a proper train, running on standard rails but lighter than any long-distance freight or passenger movers, and without the creature comforts of a Pullman car. But they were quick by anyone’s standards, able to take people between Metairie and New Orleans proper in twenty minutes on a good day, and thirty on a bad one.

A smallish station had been erected, again almost halfway between a streetcar stop and a train depot. Mostly it was open, with a tall roof overhead to shield the waiting passengers from sun and rain — and a set of enormous propellers set into the roof’s underside to keep the airflow circulating. It didn’t do much to cool the station, but it kept the diesel fumes and coal smoke from collecting, and that was something.

“Why do I smell both diesel and coal smoke? Are there street rails leading in and out of the city everywhere, or just here? Is that a cemetery across the street? How much longer until our streetcar comes?”

“Does he ever shut up?” asked Kirby Troost.

Cly defended him. “If he doesn’t ask questions, he’ll never learn.”

“I never asked questions like that. And I didn’t grow up to be no dummy.”

The captain kept his eyes on the rails, watching Track 6 for any sign of an incoming transport. He picked Houjin’s two easiest questions, and he answered them. “Huey, you smell coal and diesel because some of the streetcars are coal powered and some are diesel. I reckon one day they’ll make them all one thing or the other, but it hasn’t happened yet. And yes, that’s a cemetery.”

The boy whistled, drawing the attention of a small colored girl seated on a bench with her mother at Track 7. The child’s eyes went wide, but her mother said, “Don’t stare. It’s not polite.” She stared anyway, and Houjin gave her a wave that she sent back with a dubious flap.

“It’s a cemetery? Must be about a million dead people. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one so big.”

“Not a million, but a lot,” Cly told him. “They call it the city of the dead.”

“A whole city full of dead people. Hey, we’ve got one of those back in—”

Cly whomped him on the arm and gave him a look that said to shut up.

“Ow,” he complained. “Well, you know what I was going to say.”

Fang rolled his eyes. Kirby Troost said, “We all know, yes. Maybe you could put a lid on it, eh, kid?”

Fang gave the captain an elbow jab and pointed at the tracks.

“Here comes our car,” Cly said. “We’ll be in the city soon. Save up a few questions for when we get to town.”

“Can I ask just one before we do?”

“One. Just one.”

“Where will we stay while the Naamah Darling gets her work done?”

Troost said, “Actually, that’s not a half-bad thing to ask. Where will we stay, Captain? That lady friend of yours has a boarding house, doesn’t she?”

Cly rose to his feet and stretched. “We won’t be staying at the Garden Court. It’s not that kind of boarding house.”

Troost said, “Ah,” and Fang looked relieved.

Houjin didn’t get it. “Why not? If she’s an old friend, and if she has rooms—”

“We’ll find someplace else. I’d hate to impose. Let it go, Huey. The Vieux Carré is full of places we can stay. Hotels by the score. We’ll pick one.”

Soon Track 6 was host to a street rail car called Bayou Bess. Houjin rode the whole way to town up front, hanging over the rail and watching the scenery change. Cly, Troost, and Fang sat on a bench behind him, taking it easy since they didn’t know when they’d next get the opportunity. The wind blew through their hair and clothes, and even though it was every bit as warm as Cly had promised, they were comfortable riding along beside the main road, past the swampy parts of earth that filled up the space between grasslands and forest.

Fang nudged the captain, and since no one was paying much attention to them, he signed. Someone has to teach him, someday.

He said under his breath. “Not me. Not now.”

One of the women at the Garden Court?

“God Almighty. His uncle would never let me hear the end of it.”

They arrived at the downtown station just past Canal Street late in the afternoon, and upon debarking they headed toward Jackson Square, a few blocks nearer the river. “That’s strange,” the captain observed, watching someone draw down the shutters and begin the work of closing a restaurant.

“What’s strange?” asked Troost.

“I remember this as more of a round-the-clock town. Folks seem to be shutting up shop early.”

From the stoop of a narrow, unmarked store that smelled of incense and coal, a stout black woman with a broom informed them, “It’s the curfew, closing us up. Costing all kinds of business, too — not that the Texians give a sainted cuss about it.”

Cly and his crew members stopped, and the captain asked, since she sounded happy to share—“What curfew?”

“The city goes home at sundown,” she said, swooshing the broom back and forth, clearing a day’s worth of dust from the two short steps. “Ever since those two Texians went missing. As if the world ought to stop for a pair of brownbacks without the sense to come up from the river at midnight.” The woman spit fast and hard, leaving a damp spot on the cobbled walkway.

“I didn’t know,” Cly admitted. “And if that’s the case, we need to find ourselves some rooms for the night. Could you recommend anything?”

She stopped her sweeping and appraised the group before saying, “Other side of the Square is the Widow Pickett’s place. She puts up men, soldiers, sailors. Folks like yourselves — airmen, I’m guessing?”

The captain said, “That’s right.”

“And a couple of Chinamen like you got there — they shouldn’t be a problem for her. She takes negroes and Creoles and everyone else, as long as you can pay. Or if she’s all full up, I think the Rogers place on Esplanade could take you.”

“Thanks for your time,” Kirby Troost told her. He touched the front of his hat as they walked away, on toward the Square at a somewhat quicker pace. As they walked, he added to the captain, “Shame we can’t just stay at the Garden Court. Can’t cost that much more.”

“Don’t you start, now.”

“Who’s starting? He’s what — sixteen, seventeen? I was younger than that when I got married for the first time.”

“When you—?” Cly gave him a confused gaze, then shook his head. “Forget about schooling Houjin. Leave that up to his uncle.”

“Back in Seattle, where there are about fifty men to every woman?”

“More men than that, if you count all the fellas in Chinatown — and there’s no reason you shouldn’t.”

“And the women who’re there, you could count ’em on one hand … most of them so old, they could be his mother. Not that there’s anything wrong with learning from an older woman, mind you.”

“Can we change the subject now?”

“Sure. Why can’t we stay at the Garden Court?”

“How about we don’t talk at all. I like the sound of that even better.”

To the captain’s left, Fang laughed, silent except for a series of soft snorts.

“Not you, too,” Cly complained.

I didn’t say anything.

“You didn’t have to.”

“What are you talking about?” Houjin had been walking ahead, eyes up on the brightly painted buildings with their brilliant white latticework balconies and tumbling planters full of gardenias, daisies, and flowers with bright pink petals like trumpets.

“Nothing,” Cly said quickly. “Turn left up at the next street, will ya? We’re almost there.”

The Widow Pickett was not precisely what anyone had expected, but Kirby Troost in particular was quite charmed to meet her acquaintance. Said widow wasn’t thirty unless she was practicing witchcraft. She had a figure to inspire envy in ladies and lust in gentlemen, with a tall pile of hair the color of wheat and strawberries. As the black woman on the storefront stairs had predicted, the widow had no problem whatsoever providing shelter to the oriental men or anyone else, and before long two rooms were arranged, paid for, and settled in.

Fang and Houjin shared one two-bedded room, for Houjin could ask all the questions he wanted and Fang never appeared to mind; the captain and Kirby shared the other — though the captain never did bother with the skinny, too-short bed. As a matter of habit, he pulled the mattress onto the floor and flipped the frame up against the wall. He’d hang off the padding one way or another, but there was no reason to let his feet dangle in midair.

“You may as well settle in for the night,” he told Kirby Troost. “Go downstairs and see about some supper. The sun’ll be down in another hour.”

“You say that like you don’t intend to do likewise.”

“I figured I’d head over to the Garden and have a real quick business chat with my old friend.”

“You’re headed to the whorehouse without me?” he asked accusingly.

“Yes, but I can’t stay long, not with the curfew, and—”

Troost nodded knowingly. “And that’s why you want to go now. Shit, man. You must be scared to death of this woman.”

“Am not.”

“I’m coming with you. Maybe I’ve got the pocket cash to stay the night and you can have this whole room to your lonesome.”

Cly threw up his hands and said, “Fine. Suit yourself. Let me go tell Fang and Huey we’re headed out.”

Fang agreed to stay behind, and Houjin was so excited about eating the big weird bugs called crawdads that he was prepared to miss almost anything for the adventurous culinary fare. They planned to meet again at sundown to discuss the next day’s duties, and Fang signed, I’ll keep him out of trouble.

“Thanks. I do appreciate it.”

On their way out the door, Kirby Troost asked, “But who’s going to keep us out of trouble?”

“I didn’t know you understood his signing.”

“I’m picking it up as we go. It’s one-part Native, what they use between two tribes — and one part deaf-man’s hands, and one part something that’s just between you two. But it’s not so hard to figure out, once you get a few of the phrases down.”

Cly said, “It’s worth your time to learn it, I suppose — if you plan to spend any time with us.”

The walk to the Garden Court was only a few blocks, ten minutes of ducking beneath balconies, dodging the tickles of hanging plants, staying out of the path of the rolling-crawlers, and ignoring the insistent last calls of every tavern and pub house in the Quarter.

Troost hesitated in front of a sign advertising in no uncertain terms the availability of women and alcohol both, but Cly ushered him past it. The engineer complained, “It isn’t right — imposing a curfew on a place like this. This is a town made to stay up all night and toast the sunrise.”

“That’s one of the things it’s made for, but not the only thing.”

“I’m still right.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t,” the captain said. “I don’t know why Texas has done it, but I’m sure there was a good reason.”

Troost’s eyes didn’t believe him.

Cly sighed. “Whatever their reasoning, it doesn’t matter to why we’re here. And I’m frankly glad for it right now, because I don’t want to spend more time in the Garden than I have to.”

“You’re a madman.”

“I’m … happily attached.”

“So you agree with me.”

Cly escaped answering with a pointing jab of his long index finger at a swinging sign. “Look, that’s it.”

“Just like you remember?”

“The paint’s new.” He hesitated, standing still on the sidewalk and making two small, dark-skinned boys walk around him. “Otherwise, it looks pretty much the same.”

“You’re stalling. But we came all this way, and here we are. Let’s get inside and take a look around.” Troost set off down the walkway.

Cly surged forward and caught up to Troost with only a few long strides — just in time to open the door and propel himself inside it first. Kirby couldn’t decide whether to be annoyed or amused, but settled for amused and followed the captain into the plush, pretty lobby.

The carpets were red and maroon, laced with a buttercream trim, and the curtains were thick but colored to match. All the visible wood was dark with polish, age, and imported glamour. A long couch with a back curved like a sea serpent was pressed against the far wall, and a matching love seat was propped for cuddling inside the door to the right. Two plush solitary chairs that should’ve held one body apiece were spaced between the larger pieces of furniture, but in the nearest chair were two lovely colored women on the lap of a white-haired Texian — identifiable as such by a fluffy mustache that might have been made of a dove’s wings … and then by his accent, when he exclaimed, “Newcomers, girls.” Then to Cly and Troost, he said, “Y’all come on inside and make yourselves comfortable. Hazel or Ruthie will be downstairs in a minute.”

The women on the Texian’s lap smiled in welcome, but he showed no interest in letting them leave, so they stayed.

“Thank you, sir, I do believe I’ll do exactly that,” Kirby Troost declared, taking off his hat and making himself comfortable on the love seat. Cly was less certain. Partly for the sake of comfort, given his size — and partly because he’d rather not be crushed up against the engineer in such an intimate setting — he retreated to the couch and folded himself awkwardly, looking and feeling like a grown man sitting inside a dollhouse.

The captain asked the Texian, “You said Hazel and Ruthie. Is … is Josephine still here?”

“Miss Early? Oh, sure. She’s the woman in charge, but she’s not around — not right this moment. I believe she’s out with a family emergency of some sort,” he said vaguely. “Ruthie went with her, but she came back last night. Anyway, for what it’s worth to you, I don’t think Miss Early takes customers too often anymore.”

“No? I mean, no — that’s not … that’s not why I ask. She’s invited me here, to hire me for a job.”

“What sort of job?”

“I’m not too rightly sure yet. But I’ve finally made it to town, and I mean to ask her about it.”

The fluffy-faced Texian nodded and said, “Perhaps Hazel or Ruthie can help you out. They’re real competent girls themselves, and so’s Marylin. They’re the ones she usually leaves running the business while she’s out.”

“Good to know. Thank you, sir.”

A slender mixed-race woman who was more white than anything else chose this moment to descend the staircase and enter the lobby, a vision in pink taffeta and ivory lace, with her hair tufted up and fastened with elaborate combs. “Mr. Calais,” she said to the Texian, “you surely do look comfortable, sir.”

“Couldn’t be happier, Miss Quantrill!” he assured her, though when he reached for his scotch, it was barely beyond his fingertips. The girl upon his right knee retrieved it for him and leaned so that he could squeeze her close and take a swallow at the same time. “And these men here, they’re looking for Josephine.”

Kirby and Cly both came to their feet, and Troost announced, “He’s looking for Josephine. I’m just looking.”

She gave them both a demure smile that showed no teeth. To Troost, she said, “You’ll be the easiest to assist. My name is Marylin, and I’ll be happy to make any arrangements you require. But as for you, sir,” she told the captain, “Miss Early isn’t here right now.”

“That’s what your friend said. Any chance you know when she’ll be back?”

Before Marylin could answer, a second woman slipped up behind her. The dark-haired beauty was wearing maroon that bordered on brown, and every inch of her shimmered. Kirby Troost’s eyes went wide, and he opened his mouth. Then he closed it.

She swished forward, taking in Troost’s gaze and discarding it in favor of catching Cly’s. Unabashedly she appraised him from head to foot, and when she felt she’d seen everything she needed, she declared, “Je suis Ruthie Doniker, and I manage the house for Miss Early while she is out. Are you Captain Cly?”

“Yes … yes, ma’am. I am. Josephine sent for me.”

“Oui, I know. For a while, she thought you would not come.”

He hunkered, even though the ceiling accommodated his height. “I do apologize — I tried to reply to her telegram sooner, but I had a hard time getting hold of the taps until a few days ago.”

“Your message reached us, but she was called away suddenly. She has left instructions. Could you come upstairs with me, monsieur?”

Marylin gave Ruthie a look Cly couldn’t decipher, but he thought it might mean, Trust me. And she turned with more swishing to ascend the stairs.

“You won’t be needing me, will you?” Troost asked with optimism dripping from every word.

“I don’t guess so.”

So the captain left him there, in the company of Marylin Quantrill, the Texian Mr. Calais, and the two women on his lap who were spoken for; Cly followed the stunning, slim-bodied woman up the stairs while trying to neither knock his head nor stare too hard at the swaying bustle that covered her backside.

By way of making conversation he asked, “Does she — does Josephine, I mean — still keep an office up here?”

“She does, oui, monsieur. And that is where we are going.” Ruthie paused on the stairs and looked back at him, appraising him afresh, though the captain didn’t know why. She turned and continued upward, added, “Madame said that she knew you, a long time ago.”

“That’s right.”

“She said you are a very good pilot.”

“I don’t get any complaints.”

“She said you were the tall man, and I should know you that way.”

“Many men are tall.”

“She said that in any room, filled with any group of men, you were the tall one.”

As she said this, he swung his head to avoid an old wall sconce that had not yet been fitted for gas, but still held a candle that had melted down to a thumb-sized nub.

On the third floor, the stairs emptied into a walkway, just as Cly remembered, and he followed Ruthie to Josephine’s office. The office was not quite the same as the last time he’d seen it, but he would’ve recognized her touch anywhere. New curtains, in burgundy instead of green. Two new chairs — no, two old chairs with new striped upholstery. And the desk she’d inherited from someplace or another, half as big as a bed and ornately carved at the corners — where cherubs held harps and the wings of angels curved gently downward to the lion’s-paw feet.

Gaudy, she’d called it once. But she’d never replaced it.

Behind this desk sat an attractive colored woman with a curvy body and kind eyes. She wore a beautiful blue dress in some high style that hadn’t yet made it to the West Coast, and when she gracefully rose to meet Andan Cly, the tiny bells sewn into her sleeves made a delicate tinkling sound. Ruthie introduced them by declaring, “Captain Cly, Hazel Bushrod.” And in French she said, “Hazel, this is the airman Josephine sent for.”

Hazel ducked her head in a discreet bow, and said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir. I’m sorry Miss Early isn’t here right now, but I hope I can help you all the same.”

“Miss … Bushrod? Is that right?”

“Yes, and no, I didn’t make it up or acquire it on the job,” she said, the kindness in her eyes hardening briefly into something else. “It was my father’s name, and now it’s mine. And if you have anything further you’d like to say—”

“No, no, ma’am. It’s an unusual name, that’s all. I’ve never heard it before.”

“Well, now you have. And if we’re finished with the subject, I’d like to invite you to pull up a seat.” She sat back down, her skirts and those tiny silver bells conspiring to make music. She crossed her legs beneath the desk, unleashing a new round of rustling, and the rubbing together of fabrics and thighs.

Ruthie pulled up one of the striped chairs and offered it to Cly, who sat gingerly upon it. Then she drew up the second one and positioned it beside Hazel’s, so that the captain could not escape the feeling he was about to be interrogated, quizzed, or possibly sentenced.

He didn’t recognize either of these women. They hadn’t been with Josephine back in the old days, which stood to reason, given that neither of them appeared to be older than her mid-twenties. A decade before, they would’ve been young for such a life, by Josephine’s business standards.

Cly shifted in his seat, attempting to get comfortable without damaging the furniture, which looked delicate on the surface but bore his weight without creaking. “I suppose Josephine told you, she called me here about a job.”

Hazel said, “How much did she tell you about it?”

“Almost nothing. She wants me to fly something from the lake to the Gulf.”

“Did she say what she wanted you to fly?”

“No.”

“And did you think it was strange?” she asked, reaching into a drawer and withdrawing a collection of papers without taking her eyes off the captain.

“I did,” he admitted. “But I needed to make a big supply run for my town anyway. And say what you will about Texians — I’m sure they’re none too popular in this house — but they know their way around a machine shop. And I need one, because I’m having some work done on my own bird.”

Ruthie and Hazel considered this response and exchanged the kind of gaze that old friends can sometimes share — squeezing a whole conversation into an instant’s worth of facial tics, blinks, and small frowns. When the moment had passed, Ruthie rose from her seat and went to shut the door. Then she returned to her position beside Hazel, and the pair of them turned their full and absolute attention upon Cly, who could scarcely recall having felt so uncomfortable in his life.

“I get the feeling this is trickier than I thought. Stranger than I thought.”

Hazel said, “Miss Early told us you weren’t stupid, and so far, so good. Yes, what we have to tell you — what we have to ask you — is tricky and strange, and I want you to understand how much danger you could put us in, simply with one wrong word.”

“Danger? For you?”

“For us,” Ruthie said. “For the Garden Court. For Josephine.”

Hazel folded her hands on the desk and said, “Dangerous for you, too, once we tell you everything. So first I must ask, and I expect you to answer me truthfully: Have you now, or have you ever, owed any loyalty to the Republic of Texas or to the Confederate States of America?”

Easily, he responded, “No. Nor the Union, either, if you want to get precise about it. I was born on the Oregon Trail, somewhere east of Portland. I’ve been a merchant by trade most of my life, and it’s been worth my time to keep from making enemies.”

Ruthie snorted, and Hazel said, “A merchant? Josephine said you were a pirate.”

“Same thing, in a way. I’ve run plenty of goods that weren’t good for anyone. But I’m trying to leave that life behind me now. That’s one reason I’m here in the city, getting my bird refitted up in Metairie.”

Hazel asked, “Why would you leave pirating? The only money anybody has anymore comes from working while the law isn’t looking. We know that better than anyone, don’t we, Ruthie?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Ladies,” he said, opening his hands as if to entreat them. “Josephine and me, we have birthdays only a week apart — and I want to settle down while I’ve still got the life in me to enjoy retirement. But whatever Josie wants, I’m prepared to help her out — even if it’s something that we don’t want the law looking at, since that’s what you’re implying. I told her I’d fly for her, and I will. But you have to tell me what’s really going on, and what Texas and the Rebs have to do with it. Is this a military thing? You want me to sneak something out past the forts?”

“Yes,” Hazel said bluntly. “That’s precisely what we want. We have a craft out at Lake Pontchartrain, and we need to bring it out to the Gulf of Mexico—into it, past the edge of the delta and then some — and deliver it to Admiral Herman Partridge aboard the Union airship carrier Valiant.”

“An airship carrier? I’ve heard of those, but never seen one. Fairly new to the war, ain’t they?”

“Fairly new. Very big ships,” Hazel said in a rush. “But if you chose to accept Josephine’s mission, you won’t be flying an airship.”

A hush descended on the room as Andan Cly struggled to figure out what on earth these women could possibly mean, and the women teetered on the brink of spilling everything, unsure whether they could trust him. Ruthie cracked first. She blurted to Hazel, “Just tell him! Or ask him, and then we will know whether to shoot him or pay him, eh?”

“Shoot me?” he asked.

Hazel took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and opened them again. “Captain, please understand — we are asking you to participate in smuggling something the likes of which you’ve never smuggled before. And the entirety of the Confederacy and the Republic of Texas will be stacked against you.”

“Must be important.”

“Very,” she told him gravely. “We are not talking about an airship. We are talking about a war machine with the power to enforce the broken naval blockade. A machine that can choke off the ocean supplies, and perhaps the river supplies … and in time, the whole South. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“You’re telling me you want me to spy for the Union, here inside a Southern city controlled by the South’s number one ally. You’re telling me I’ll be risking my neck to take the case, and you’re risking your own necks to describe it.”

“Sums it up rather nicely,” Hazel agreed. “So what do you say?”

After half a dozen seconds of silence, he told her, “I suppose the war’s got to end one day, one way or another. And all things being equal, I’d rather it gets won by the Federals. I can’t much rally for any government that’ll call a man a piece of property. So if you’re asking if I can keep my mouth shut and do the job, I’m telling you I can.”

“Are you sure?” Ruthie asked, hope in her lovely face, but also fear.

“Yeah, I’m sure. If Josephine thought it was important enough to bring me here, then it must be a job worth doing. But I do want to know, before we come to any formal arrangement: What do you mean, it’s a war machine, but not an airship? I’ve never flown anything but an airship. Is this some special kind of warbird? I’ve seen a few armored crafts, including a big one a buddy of mine stole from a base in Macon … but you’re going to have to be more specific.”

Hazel smiled. It was a worried smile, and it trembled around the edges — but it was a smile that had come to a decision and was prepared to dive on in. “Captain Cly, if it’s specifics you want, it’s specifics you’ll get.” She sorted through the loose papers on Josephine’s desk and selected a few she wanted, then pushed them toward Andan Cly — who scooted his chair closer for a better look. “These are … schematics,” he observed. “For something I’m not sure I understand.”

Ruthie nodded, encouraged by his initial grasp of the matter, if not the depth of his knowledge. “They are old designs. For a machine.”

Hazel picked up a newspaper clipping and turned it around so that it faced the captain right side up. “Horace Lawson Hunley,” he read from the caption beneath a line drawing of a mustachioed man striking a dashing pose.

Hazel said, “Hunley was a Tennessean by birth, but his family brought him to New Orleans as a child, and this is where he did most of his work. He was a marine engineer, and those schematics you’re holding are engineer’s drawings for his first successful machine.”

“If you could call it successful,” Ruthie mumbled.

“It did drown a few people,” Hazel confirmed. “But ultimately, it worked.”

“Worked at what?” he asked.

“It sailed underwater.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Hazel said, “You heard me. The Pioneer was a tube designed to hold men and move them underwater, by the use of these hand-cranks and whatnot, as if they were in the belly of a shark. It was a flawed design, put together with the help of these two men — James McClintock and Baxter Watson.” She pushed forward another clipping with a pair of portraits. “The first sailors drowned, or nearly drowned, when the Pioneer sank in Mobile Bay. The folks who tried to pilot the next version of the craft, the Bayou St. John, didn’t fare too much better.”

Ruthie spelled it out. “They drowned, too.”

“You’d think this Hunley fellow would’ve had a hard time finding crew members after a while.”

“He did, but there are always eager young men who want to be in a history book. Besides, the Confederacy was willing to pay big money to fellows who’d try it out. Imagine it, would you? A boat that sails underwater, loaded up with explosive charges and contact fuses, sneaking up on ships and blowing them to pieces without ever being seen … then slipping away and doing it again.”

Cly stared down at the papers. “I can imagine it.”

“A few years and a few more dollars later, Hunley made himself a new model — which he named for himself. The Hunley did better than his earlier boats, which is to say that it drowned only five men on its first run, and eight on its next — including Hunley himself, who was riding on board. But his old partners, McClintock and Watson, they kept on working, kept on designing. Kept on building,” she added quietly.

Ruthie selected a folded sheet of paper. She unfolded it and handed it to Andan Cly.

It depicted the interior workings of a ship, but not one like anything he’d ever seen before. It looked like fiction, there in his hands.

These lines showing gears, and valves, and portals; these careful engineering sketches showing bolts, and curved walls, and compartments for flooding or pumping; these enormous rooms that seated six to eight, with side and bottom holds for ammunition — and tubular sleeves for explosives and fuses.

He did not look up from the schematics when Hazel began talking again, but he listened to her as he perused the pictures with wonder.

“Then McClintock caught Watson red-handed, with telegrams and instructions from the Union army. Whether Watson was a double agent all along, or he simply wanted the bigger payday from the bigger army, no one knows. But he was all set to sell their research to the North, and McClintock wouldn’t have it. They fought, and Watson shot McClintock through the heart before trying to flee inside the vessel he’d helped create.

“But Watson was a designer, not a skipper. He understood the mechanics of the beast, but not the nuance of making it sail — even if that were a task a single man could accomplish. The ship sank halfway across Pontchartrain. Watson drowned.

“But his message had already gone back to the Union engineers, who knew the craft existed. They came to investigate — only to be caught by the Texians, who were also looking for the ship.”

“How did Texas know about it?”

Hazel nodded approvingly, as if this was a good question. “It had been made with Texian technology, and Texian machinists, so they knew it was out there somewhere. They didn’t find, it, though.”

“And your people did?”

Both of the women smiled, identically and in perfect time with each other. Hazel continued. “It took three weeks of looking, but the ship was found and lifted by a group of guerrillas in the bayou … the free men of color who fight Texas and the Confederacy from the shadows. They hauled it to a different shore and hid it there, where it remains now — waiting for the right man or men to take it all the way to the ocean, where it was always meant to go. And that, Captain Cly, is the story of the Ganymede.”

Cly finally looked up from the intricate engineering sketches. He looked each woman in the eye and said, “You want me to fly a ship underwater.”

“Once we can man-haul it to the river, yes. The Mississippi is deep enough to take it, and once you’re in the river, you’ll have slip past Fort Jackson and Fort Saint Philip. From there, it’ll be smooth sailing straight out into the Gulf of Mexico.”

“In a ship that’s drowned … how many men?”

“Ganymede? Oh, hardly any,” Hazel dismissed his concern hastily, and with a wave of her hand. “Only Mr. McClintock, so far as we know. As you can see from those plans, Ganymede is a much stronger design — a much better ship than the ones that came before. Learning how to create a ship like her … it was costly, yes. But the end result is this majestic creation. And it will end a war, Captain.”

Ruthie rose and left her chair, approaching Cly and crouching beside him. With her elegantly gloved hands, she called his attention to various highlights on the schematics that sat across his lap.

“Right here, you see? This is the steering mechanism, and the power system for the propellers. They were designed like thrusters on an airship.”

“I see that, sure. But there’s no hydrogen to keep steady. No gas to maintain, or to power the thrust.”

“But of course there is gas, monsieur! The gas is the air you breathe. It is pumped and cycled, through these vents here, by this tube. If the men breathe the same air too long, it makes them sick. They faint, and they die.”

Hazel confirmed, “That’s one of the hard lessons learned from the Bayou St. John and the Hunley. The men inside must have fresh air, drawn down regularly. The air within the cabin cannot support them forever.”

“So this—” He jabbed a finger at one long set of pipes, and drew it along the lines. “—these pipes don’t stay above water, not all the time? So you don’t have to keep this breathing tube up above the surface?” It reminded him of Seattle, of the system that likewise drew fresh breathing air down underneath an inhospitable surface. They did it the same way, essentially. Tubes bringing in the fresh air for four to eight hours a day, always keeping it moving, never giving it time to grow stale.

Ruthie nodded. “The tubes do not stay up. You can close them from within, like this.” She indicated a rubber-sealed flap that was manipulated by a hydraulic pulley. “There is one main breathing tube, with fans to draw down the air — and an emergency tube in case the one should fail. But they can both be shut so that the ship can sink and hide.”

“For how long?” he asked.

The ladies paused, but Hazel replied. “We’re not certain. Twenty or thirty minutes, at least.”

“So really, it’s a ship that can hold its breath for half an hour at a time.”

“Yes!” Ruthie rose to her feet and clapped. “You see? Josephine said he would understand. She said we needed an airman, and she was right!”

“But what about the original crew? You said it’s been tested, out on the lake. Where are the guys who know how to pilot this thing already?”

Hazel handed him another sheet with a different angle on the Ganymede’s inner workings and said, “Most of them were captured. Two men were sent off to a prisoner-of-war camp in Georgia, and three were sent to the barracks here, but escaped and went back to New England. And the man in charge was shot for treason.”

“Treason?”

“He was from Baton Rouge — a Confederate deserter who’d come to work with the bayou boys. Name was Roger Lisk, may he rest in peace.” Hazel leaned forward, restlessly arranging and rearranging the remaining documents. “Without the crew, and without the men who created it, the Ganymede is a big hunk of metal full of potential … but precious little more than that. The bayou boys have all the information — all these schematics, and instructions. But they’re soldiers and sailors by trade, and sailors haven’t performed well so far, when it comes to keeping the ship afloat and running. And the Union is not so convinced of its value that it’ll risk its own engineers and officers on the project — not unless we can get it to the admiral.”

But Ruthie appeared more hopeful, now that the ball was rolling. “Josephine said no one could work the Ganymede because only the sailors were willing to try. But Ganymede is not built like a boat. She is built like an airship, one made to fly in the water, not in the clouds. Josephine said we needed a crew of airmen. Airmen would know how to make her go.”

“Now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Andan Cly cautioned. “I can see that you’re right — partway right, at any rate. Whoever built this bird,” he said, then corrected himself. “Whoever built this fish drew a lot of inspiration from an airship, that’s true. The controls are similar, or so I gather from looking at this. And the shape is more or less the same, with fins instead of small steering sails, and the propeller screws instead of the left and right thrusters. Hmm.”

“Hmm?” Hazel prompted.

“Hmm,” he repeated. “I don’t know anything on earth about sailing, but I understand it’s pretty different from flying. The principle is easy to sort out, but the principle and the practice are two different things.”

Ruthie leaned on the edge of the desk, halfway sitting upon it and halfway resting her bustle there. “It’s true. It’s all true — and we know you are an airman, and not a sailor. But can you make it swim?”

“I … I don’t know what to say.”

“You told Josephine you’d take the job,” Hazel reminded him.

“I didn’t know I was agreeing to a job that might get me and my crew drowned at the bottom of a river, and that’s part of my trouble. If it were just me, that’d be one thing. But a boat like this … it’d take at least two or three men to control her. Maybe more. I’d have to ask my crew members how they felt about it. We’d need to see it in person.”

“That can be arranged!” Ruthie exclaimed. It was clear she’d made up her mind already: this was going to work, all would go smoothly, and the problem was all but resolved.

Hazel was not so confident, but she was willing to risk a shred of hope. She told Cly, “We can take you to it, tonight if you like. Josephine is there, out at the lake with her brother.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. Hold your horses, ma’am. Let me go back to my rooms and have a chat with my men, all right? I’ll tell them what you’ve told me, and they can decide whether or not they want to take the chance.”

“But, Captain!” Hazel objected. “You can’t go running around willy-nilly, spreading the story around the Quarter!”

“And I won’t. But I won’t ask my men to risk their lives spying and smuggling against two governments at once, not without knowing what they’re risking. For what it’s worth, I expect they’ll be willing to help. Two of my crewmen are Chinamen, without any more political allegiance than I’ve got, and the other is Kirby Troost, who you met downstairs, He’s always game for anything — the more unlikely and dangerous, the better — and if the prospect of friendly women is involved, you may as well call him sold. So they can make up their own minds, and even if they decide they don’t want in, you can sleep well knowing they won’t have any interest in handing you over to Texas, either.”

Hazel chewed at her lip and tapped Josephine’s silver letter opener up and down on the desk’s edge. “We were hoping for a definite commitment.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s the best you’re going to get right now.” He glanced out the window. “It’s almost sundown, and the curfew will be settling soon. I know you’re not too worried about it — and honestly, neither am I — but if we want to hang around without drawing extra Texian attention, we need to follow the rules. Until we break the ever-living hell out of them, anyway.”

Much as they didn’t like it, the women had to admit that this was reasonable. Ruthie said, “In the morning, then. Tell me where you are staying, and I will come for you. I will take you out to Pontchartrain, and you will see Ganymede up close, and crawl inside, and show the bayou boys how to make her swim.”

“That sounds fine to me,” he told her. “We’ve got a couple of rooms over at the Widow Pickett’s on the other side of the Square. You can come collect us there in the morning. So if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go round up my engineer and … On second thought, you know what? Keep him. Or send him along when he’s ready to come back.”

With that he climbed to his feet, returned the papers he’d collected, and excused himself.

But Hazel said, “No, you keep those. And this one, as well.” She handed him another sheet, detailing the propulsion screw and the diesel engine, as well as its exhaust system. “Look them over. Make yourself familiar with them. And for the love of all that’s holy, don’t let the Texians see them.”