Ganymede

Nine

Ruthie Doniker knocked on Andan Cly’s door brighter and earlier than he truly cared to see her, but he’d told her “morning,” and so it was morning when she came calling. When he opened the door, she stood there swathed in a green cotton dress too formfitting to be called plain, with a very light jacket that had a high cream-colored collar cinched around her neck. Before the captain had a chance to greet her, she said, “It is time to leave for your day at the lake, Captain Cly.”

“No kidding.” He blinked blearily. He was awake, but he hadn’t been for long. Not long enough to shave or wash his face, and only barely long enough to realize that Kirby Troost hadn’t come back to the room. “Well, I guess you can come on in while I get myself together.”

“Merci,” she said, and sidled past him.

“Have a seat wherever. Give me a minute, would you?”

He pulled out his razor and tried to forget that Ruthie was present and looking at him. It was easier said than done. Every time his eyes slipped away from his own face in the mirror, he caught her reflection and felt strange about it.

At some point, he paused with the razor braced under one cheek and asked, “So, Kirby. I guess he stayed at the Garden Court last night?”

“I guess he did. Marylin took care of him. He came here with me.”

“Oh. He did? Where is he?”

“Awakening your other crewmen.”

As he drew the razor across his skin, Cly realized that she’d never asked him if they’d agreed to take the job or not. Ruthie was assuming they would take it, as if she could bend reality to meet her whims.

He was glad he wouldn’t need to disappoint her.

The night before, he’d sat with Fang and Houjin after supper, showing them the schematics in the privacy of their room, where no Texians, Confederates, or other unwelcome eyes might take a look. Houjin had responded with enthusiastic glee — he would’ve risked a coin-flip’s chance of drowning for the mere opportunity to get a look at the Ganymede, much less crawl around inside it. His passion for all things mechanical would draw him to the lake even if they told him it’d cost a dollar and he’d get a beating when he arrived.

Fang had been his usual unflappable self, nodding his agreement to investigate the craft and, later, when Houjin could not see his hands, signing to the captain, Very dangerous? To which Cly had shrugged a maybe. Then, while the boy’s nose was still stuck in the diagrams and drawings, Fang had added, I will do this, for the Union.

Cly signed back, Didn’t know you cared one way or the other.

I care for the West. If the South wins, and claims new states, they will be states where men can be owned as slaves. If the North wins, maybe the new states will be … He paused. Not much better. But where freedom is declared, it can be negotiated. Besides, I liked Josephine. Smart woman. Easy to agree with.

“Easier to agree with her than to argue with her, that’s for damn sure.”

As Cly finished up his shaving, wiping down his face and neck, a knock on the door was followed shortly by the entrance of Fang, Houjin, and Kirby Troost, who touched the edge of his hat in Ruthie’s general direction.

Ruthie stood to her full height — three inches taller than Troost, though that was emphasized by the boots she wore — and announced, “If everyone is ready, we should go catch a carriage.”

“Shouldn’t we just grab the street rails, instead?” Cly asked. “Surely that’d be faster than a cabriolet.”

“A carriage to the edge of the Quarter, and then we can take the rails to the far side of Metairie, but no farther. Where we go beyond the City of the Dead … only trusted eyes may lead us.”

Together they followed Ruthie’s lead down to the street, where she nabbed a carriage in the blink of an eye, even though she needed a larger transport than was usually running. Before long, they were back at the street rail station where they’d first entered the city, and then on the car to Metairie, to Houjin’s continued joy.

On the way, Kirby Troost sat beside the captain. When Ruthie stood at the protective guardrail, likely out of hearing distance, the engineer asked quietly, “Are you sure about this?”

“No.”

“Me either. Did they tell you about what happened to Betters and Cardiff?”

“Who are Betters and Cardiff?” Cly asked.

“The Texians who went missing. They’re the reason New Orleans has a curfew.”

“No, the ladies didn’t mention it.”

“Josephine knows,” Troost said softly. “The girls at the house say she was there when they died. Do you know they’ve got a rotter problem, here in New Orleans?”

Taken aback, Cly gave Troost a hard stare of uncertainty. “That’s impossible. No gas, no rotters.”

“Impossible or not, that’s what they sound like to me. Except they don’t call ’em rotters here. They call ’em zombis. And I don’t think they’re made by the gas. I think they’re made by the sap.”

Cly considered this and said, “We’ve known for a while that the drug makes people sick, if they use it too long.”

“I think it does worse than make them sick. I think it kills them, and keeps them upright, just like the dead in Seattle. All I’m saying is, when you meet back up with this lady friend of yours, you should ask her about it. The girls say she saw the whole thing. Her and some voudou queen, but I don’t rightly know what to make of that part.”

The captain stayed hung up on the undead particulars. “I’m not saying there aren’t any rotters outside the city, Troost. Ten minutes talking to Mercy Lynch’ll tell you that much. But those rotters happened because a dirigible crashed, and the gas got loose — poisoning the air where all those people were. That was a mess of an accident, but I don’t think that could happen around here, not without people noticing it.”

“I’m not arguing with you. A big load of hungry dead folks didn’t just appear one night down by the river. They weren’t here ten years ago, were they?”

“If they were, I never heard about it.”

“That’s what I mean,” the engineer said. He was wheedling now; he had an idea and he was determined to share it — by verbal force if necessary. “They didn’t spring up overnight, but they’ve been happening gradual-like. One or two sap-heads, here and there, going so deep into the drugs that they didn’t ever come back. Then what happens if another one or two, here and there, does the same thing? And another few?”

“It’s a stretch, Troost.”

“I know it is. But it’s not a big stretch, and I don’t think I’m wrong. The streets aren’t crawling with them, not like in Seattle, but they’re a problem down by the river, and the Texians are on a rampage, trying to wipe them out and make the place safe again.”

“How do you know that?” the captain asked.

“You saw that Texian in the lobby, the fellow who practically lives there? His name’s Fenn Calais, and as long as you’re buying, he’s talking. You know what else he told me?”

“Go on.”

“He said that the raid on Barataria was an official operation, and Texas was looking for a ship — something they thought the pirates might be hiding, or in the process of smuggling out to sea. And when we saw them from the sky, watching over the bay, they were poking around in the water, weren’t they doing just that?”

“Doesn’t mean they were looking for—” He chose not to say the name aloud. Just in case. “—the ship we’re looking at.”

“All I’m saying is, I hope we’re not biting off more than we can chew.”

Cly grinned. “You don’t hope that. Not for a second. You hope it gets so messy, you can make your own fortune.”

“Goddamn, sir. You know me entirely too well.” Troost rolled a cigarette and stuck it between his lips, then lit it and puffed on it the rest of the way to Metairie.

At the Metairie station, they all disembarked and were met by a handsome, heavyset black man named Norman Somers. He greeted them wearing denim pants, a linen button-up shirt with a vest, and a big smile that did not appear practiced or false. If he was a spy or a man with a covert mission to attend, he was a very fine actor — or so Cly thought.

Ruthie gave Norman a kiss on the cheek, which he returned. “You must be the captain and crew,” he said to the rest of those assembled. “I hear your ship is out here at the Texian yards, over yonder.”

“Just on the other side of the station, that’s right,” said Cly. “Having a little work done while we’re in town.”

“You’ve picked a good shop. Mostly it’s run by Texians and a group of colored fellows from the Chattanooga schools. They’ll do good work for you. But I understand you’re here to take a gander at another fine piece of machinery, isn’t that right?” He did not lower his voice or treat the subject with any specific gravity, and this was no doubt for the best — given that they conversed in public, with dozens of passengers fresh off the street rails milling to and fro.

Cly replied in kind, “That’s the plan.” And then he made the rounds of introductions, following which, Normal Somers urged them to follow him to a service lot beyond the edge of the cemetery.

“Lots of folks park their buggies and carriages and whatnot, then ride the street rail into town. This here lot,” he said with a sweep of his arm, “is watched by Charlie over there.” His sweeping gesture ended in a wave at a tiny old negro with at least half a dozen firearms in his immediately visible possession, probably more. “Charlie keeps an eye on things, and if you come back to your ride and it’s in one piece, you tip him whatever you’ve got handy. That’s our buggy — if you want to pile inside, I’ll go settle up.”

The buggy in question did not come attached to a horse. It had a front-mounted motor that drew a big wheeled contraption that looked cobbled together from a rolling-crawler, a cabriolet, a street rail car, and perhaps a two-man flier. It was a hodgepodge piece of machinery, but it was big enough to take everyone wherever they felt like going, and the stretched-wool surrey top kept the worst of the sun off their heads.

Kirby Troost again sat beside the captain, and leaned over to mumble, “I was going to complain that this was a conspicuous sort of ride, but looking around at the lot, I am forced to revise my opinion.”

It was true. All the vehicles in Charlie’s lot were similarly patchworked and rigged together. It could not be said that they were all of a single type, except that none of them had started out looking like they did at present. The captain detected the occasional small dirigible chassis, boat motor, carriage frame, and dual V-twin engine protruding from a hood … but most of what he spied was made of unidentifiable bits.

The captain said, “I suppose people out here like to improvise.”

Ruthie replied, “They do it because they must. Many of these—” She cocked a thumb at the next row of buggies. “—are made with things the machine shops throw away.”

“I believe it,” Troost said. “The whole yard looks like a big science experiment.”

Shortly, Norman Somers returned and climbed up onto the driver’s seat. He pulled a lever, which produced a large black umbrella, and with a popping sound it opened to shade him from the sun so that he was protected as well as his passengers. “All right!” he declared. “Now we can get on our way. And how was your trip from the city?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Just fine,” said Cly, who was still a bit surprised by how unstealthy this whole production felt. “And might I ask, where exactly will the rest of our trip see us heading?”

“The rest of your trip?” He gave a narrow chain a hearty yank, and the engine burbled to life, spewing fumes and soft puffy smoke clouds in every direction. Over the diesel rumble he said, “We’re going to take a stroll around a lake, that’s all we’re goin’ do. Maybe we swing by the bayou’s edge and visit with some of the fellas we find there, huh? This your first time in New Orleans?”

Cly said, “Mine and Fang’s? No. Huey, yes. Troost?”

“I never been here before,” the engineer informed them. “Been around the Gulf a bit. Visited Galveston once, and Houston. Spent some time in Mobile. Somehow, never managed to land myself right here on the delta. Not till now.”

“Then, let me welcome you to my home city, and I hope you enjoy your stay.”

The rest of the way was filled with jovial chitchat of a similar nature, and gradually the tall grasses, half-paved roads, and spotty marshes gave way to more fully untamed wet, thick grasslands and roads that were not paved at all. The rumbling buggy drove them bumpily along the rutted dirt paths and beneath gigantic trees that oozed lacy gray curls of Spanish moss and peeling spirals of bark and vines. Though the day was young, the world became darker as they moved farther from the city’s hub; before long, the paths were so overgrown that the long elbows of cypress trees met above them, and the whole road was cast in shadow. Whereas before, they could hear the guttural hums of other buggies and the clattering buzz of the street rail cars moving back and forth between their stops, now the passengers heard nothing but the rollicking grumble of their own engine. And behind it, in shrieks and whispers, they picked up the calls of birds and the croaks of a million frogs, plus the zipping drone of clear-winged insects the size of bats.

Off to the side of the road, among the trees, the land grew less landlike and more swamplike.

“Where the hell are we?” wondered Kirby Troost aloud.

Norman Somers somehow overheard him, and he replied, “Over there, to the right, see? That’s the Bayou Piquant.”

“Where’s the lake?” Troost asked, louder than he needed to, given the superior quality of Mr. Somers’s hearing.

“On the other side of the bayou. No worries, my friends! I get you to Pontchartrain just fine, okay? We’ll be there soon.”

True to his word, Norman pulled off to the side of the road on the far side of what could reasonably be proclaimed a swamp. He dismounted from his seat and said, “One moment, fellas.” And Ruthie did her best not to look put out at being lumped in with the lads.

Somers disappeared behind a buttonbush slightly taller than himself. Sounds of rustling, heaving, shoving, scraping, and finally the steady tick-tick noise of a chain cranking clattered out from the spot where he’d vanished. He did not immediately emerge again, but a definite shift occurred — some strange motion that at first made so little sense that Cly and his crew members couldn’t be sure what they were seeing.

But as the seconds clicked by and the chain pattered on, seams appeared in the landscape.

What had seemed at first to be a pair of colossal bald cypress trees were lifted, and as if mounted on a track, they slid to the left, taking a significant chunk of the landscape with them. The buttonbush and two smaller members of the same species went jerkily scooting away as well, and the whole scene slipped as easily and thoroughly as the dropcloth background of a play — revealing a pair of large mirrors that served as the juncture of three unnatural lines. Their angles made the trunks, mosses, twigs, and vines repeat indefinitely, creating the perfect illusion of infinite swamp-space as long as they were touching.

Fang let out a low, impressed whistle.

Houjin’s mouth hung open.

Kirby Troost adjusted his hat and sniffed as if he encountered this kind of thing every day.

Ruthie gave a small, smug smile.

And Captain Cly said, “I’ll be damned.”

Ruthie asked in French, “You’ve never seen anything like it, have you?”

“Non,” replied Cly. “Jamais.”

If she was surprised to hear him reply in kind, she did not give him the satisfaction of showing it. Instead she said, in English this time, “Anderson Worth designed it. He grinds glass lenses for spectacles, and he says that mirrors are not so different, the way they change the light — and the things we see.”

Houjin found his voice and asked, “Where’s Mr. Worth now?” “Is he still here? I’d like to talk to him. I want to know how he made this!”

“You will meet him at the camp.”

Before any more questions could be generated, Norman emerged from behind a water oak with a mile-wide smile on his face and said, “This is something else, bien sûr?”

“It surely is, Mr. Somers!” Houjin exclaimed. “Can I come down there and look at it?”

“Right now? No, but maybe later if you want, okay? For now, we got to get out of the road and close this gate back up again.” With that, he climbed back onto the buggy’s driving seat and restarted the engine with a yank of its chain. “We can’t go leaving the way open for anyone to come inside. It keeps out the riffraff, because this is one of only two ways through the swamp to the camp.”

“What’s the other way?” Cly asked.

Ruthie answered. “You’ll find out later.”

Norman drove the machine past a certain line, deeper into the swamp than it felt the wheels could possibly turn, given the terrain … and he dismounted again, landing with a splash in a soupy mess that was not half so deep as it looked. He skipped back to a set of controls, large cranks and a locking lever, and as he moved, he walked on water.

“Another illusion?” Cly asked Ruthie.

She said, “Oui.”

And when Somers returned, still smiling that toothsome grin, he said, “What we do, you see — is we drop down stones into the bayou, and then we build a road on top of them.”

“What do you use to make it?” Houjin asked.

“Oak boards, mostly. We paint them black, and just like that—” He snapped his fingers. “—they disappear, and for all anyone can tell, the bayou is as deep as the ocean. ’Cept for the cypress knees. Those don’t lie, but they fib.”

Another mile through what looked like open swamp — without any roads, without any signs, and without any hint of a path — and the way opened to something like a clearing, though it was not very well cleared.

It might have been better described as a settlement, for such it was, and a well-considered settlement at that.

Tree houses were lifted up above the soft, easily flooding ground. They were mounted six to eight feet up the trunks, and accessible with ladders; they were roofed with native flora and insulated with thick bundles of dried moss, so that when viewed from above, they would not rouse suspicion. Let the dirigibles scope and soar. Nothing at the bayou camp would give any scout a cause for alarm.

Large canopies, woven from palmetto leaves and carefully camouflaged, were strung up on willow poles in order to hide two rolling-crawlers either bought or stolen from the Texians. Another canopy covered boxes of munitions and supplies, which were stashed upon a platform that was raised off the bayou floor much like the houses — and yet a third canopy clearly functioned as a meeting place, and possibly a dining hall.

There beneath the verdant overhangs both natural and man-made, the swamp was a green-black place of beauty and shadow. It was a place of precision and caution, activity and consultation.

At a quick, casual count, Cly estimated perhaps two dozen men in the camp, the majority of them dark skinned and wearing Union uniform pieces in much the same way that the Texians wore their own garb — without any attention paid to the official lines of the garments. Everything was adapted to the thick, wet warmth that was trapped there in the swamp. Everything bowed to the dense heat and close-pressing smell of vegetation being soaked in its own rot — of new plants and freshly broken branches, of stringy grass filaments and gray-felt moss, and the leftover whiffs of catfish fried at an earlier meal but long since eaten.

Shirts were left open, and sleeves were rolled to elbows. But pants were worn down long, sometimes cinched at the ankles or tucked into boots. Cly understood. There were places where a man didn’t dare walk with his ankles unprotected, regardless of the temperature, for fear of stinging insects, snakes, and thorns.

From the corner of his eye, he watched Houjin stick a finger into the mandarin collar of his shirt and wipe away the dampness that collected there. Then the boy swiped at the back of his neck, at the place where his ponytail hung over the collar, and his hand came away wet with perspiration there, too.

The buggy was lured up beneath yet another canopy, which was not otherwise covering anything. It was guided into place by a thickly muscled man with skin that gleamed with humidity and sweat, and hair that grew into a soft black halo. Using both hands, he helped Norman Somers park the machine in the perfect position, where every edge, bumper, corner, and cranny would be covered by the net of manipulated foliage.

“Welcome to camp!” Somers announced. “Everybody be careful getting down, you hear? And stay to the walkways when you can. The earth is half made of mud, my friends. Ruthie, love — you especially. Shall I help you down?”

“Mr. Somers, I am always happy for your assistance,” she said, with a bat of her eyelashes.

When everyone had left the buggy and no one was standing in the mud, the man who’d guided them into the shelter said, “Folks, I’m Rucker Little, and I’m second in command here after Deaderick Early. You,” he said to Cly, “must be the captain Josephine’s been telling me about.”

“Yes, yes, I am,” he said, extending a hand and receiving a shake. “I’d ask how you knew, but Ruthie’s already said that my description is going around.”

“Tall son of a bitch, that’s what Josie told us,” he said. “And this must be the rest of your crew?”

His question called for introductions, and these were made.

By the time the captain had finished, two more men had approached, and these were identified as Chester Fishwick and Honeyfolk Rathburn. Like Rucker Little, they had served in the Union’s colored troops, and they carried themselves like men who’d seen the inside of a military operation.

Once everyone was formally acquainted, Chester Fishwick said, “I can take you to Josephine, if you like. She’s with her brother, in his place. There’s not much room for the whole gang in there, but I expect Rucker would be happy to give the rest of you folks a tour of the camp. When you’re finished speaking with Miss Early, we’ll take you out to the Ganymede so you can see it for yourself.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Cly said, and seeing that everyone agreed to this arrangement, he followed after Chester, who led him up to one of the tree houses closest to the lake’s edge — though he did not realize how close it was until he’d scaled the ladder. From halfway up it, he could tell that they were in fact quite near to Pontchartrain, no more than fifty yards away from one of its banks.

The ladder creaked beneath Cly’s weight, the willow wood flexing and springing as he climbed from rung to rung behind Chester Fishwick, who scaled the thing swiftly, like a man who did so every day and no longer needed to think about the particulars of hanging on, stepping precisely, or watching his head. At the top, the captain hauled himself over the edge and into a cabin that seemed larger on the inside than the outside would have led him to expect.

Again contrary to its outer appearance, the cabin was not remotely rustic. If anything, it looked like the headquarters of an advanced operation. Texian manuals and tools were shelved and mounted on the walls; a large chalkboard was covered with mathematical formulas and maps; and high-grade military guns were racked beside the door, their ammunition boxed beside them in crates with precise stencils detailing the contents. Mosquito curtains hung from the ceiling, but were tidily bundled above a row of three cots, or draped across the open windows to function as screens.

On the edge of one cot sat a man with wide, strong cheekbones and skin the color of coffee. His hair was long and braided tightly into rows, and his chest and shoulder were swaddled in a bandage fashioned from clean cotton strips.

Beside him on a small camp stool sat Josephine Early, looking not remarkably different from the last time Cly had set eyes upon her. She rose from the camp stool and her brother — for the resemblance was not overwhelming, but decidedly present — shifted his weight as if he’d like to do the same. But she stalled him with a hand upon his unbound shoulder.

Ten years had left her body fuller by perhaps that same number of pounds, as if she’d grown into her age. It looked good on her, Cly thought. And he tried not to think any harder about other things that had looked good on her, in other times.

Now she wore a dress that was out of place among the camp full of men; it was too fancy by at least five dollars, and its fabric was meant to shimmer in a ballroom rather than perch upon a stool. It was easy to see that she still wore whatever she’d arrived in. She’d tucked up the lace on her sleeves and traded her pretty boots for a brown set of workman’s footwear — though the boots, as well as a beaded bag and a light brocade jacket were folded as carefully as if they were in a shop-front window. They rested underneath the next cot.

Before the captain could summon any words, Josephine said to him, “Cly, I can’t believe you came.”

“Well, you asked me to.”

“I guess this isn’t exactly what you expected.”

“Not exactly.”

“But, you’re here.”

“Yeah, I am.”

The man on the cot said, “I’m Deaderick Early — and I don’t believe we met, last time you were passing through New Orleans.”

“I don’t believe we did. You were off in the war, weren’t you?”

“Sounds about right. It’s good to meet you now,” he said, and since Josephine had stood, he stood as well — with effort and some pain, but also with dignity. He extended a hand and Cly shook it. “And it’s good of you to come.”

“Rick, sit yourself back down,” his sister told him, more gently than crossly. “You’re supposed to be resting.”

Cly saw a chance to be helpful, so he went to pull up a stool and said, “We should all sit. We’ve got some talking to do.” But upon getting his hands on one of the stools, he changed his mind and said, “I suppose I’ll just go cross-legged,” for he didn’t think the chair would hold his weight.

Chester Fishwick took the seat instead, and when they were all settled again — Deaderick wincing and Josephine working hard to keep from babying him in front of the other men — the captain said, “So I hear you’ve got a big boat, only it’s not exactly a boat. And you want me to fly it.”

“That’s the sum of it,” Deaderick said.

While Cly figured out what else to add, and how to add it, Houjin’s excited voice carried through the windows, spouting a list of questions a mile long. Cly said, “The kid must’ve found Mr. Worth.”

“The lens-maker?” Josephine asked. “Yes, he’s here. Who’s the kid?”

“He’s apprenticing with me. Smart boy. Wants to know how everything works, and he’s real excited about that gate you folks have set up — the one with the mirrors. Norman Somers said a guy named Worth designed it, and now Huey needs to hear the details. But I’m not here to tell you about my crew. I’m here to hear about your ship.”

Deaderick took a deep breath that appeared to sting. He said, “I’m not sure how much the ladies have told you already.”

“The history of it, mostly. And I’ve seen the engineer’s drawings, the ones that show most of the workings. But I’m still trying to wrap my head around how to operate it, or get it to the ocean. I mean, I can tell from what little I’ve seen of your camp that you fellows have plenty of good machines and good mechanics to keep them running. Surely someone here can pilot your bird. Your fish,” he corrected himself.

Chester declared, “We have four mechanics from the schools at Fort Chattanooga, and a couple of men who trained in the machine shops in Houston. So yes, we’re all set for men to make and maintain what we’ve got, that’s a fact. But the men we have … they’re drivers and sailors. They’re engineers who’ve worked on rolling-crawlers and the big diesel walkers the Rebs are using on the northern fronts. They aren’t men who know much about airships, or this kind of … watership.”

Deaderick added, “I think they could be forgiven for not knowing much about the Ganymede. Everyone who ever understood it is dead or in prison, miles and miles away from here. The Ganymede is a tribe of one. Wallace Mumler wants to call it an undermariner, but that’s a mouthful, isn’t it? Hunley called these things submarines, so that’s what I’m sticking to.”

Josephine smiled, every bit as cool and measured as he remembered she was capable of being. “Chester and Rucker, and Deaderick here, and Edison Brewster, and Honeyfolk — they all know how it works. They can tell you what every lever means and what every button does, but not a one of them knows how to turn the thing in a full circle without so much shouting, arguing, and complicated finesse that you can’t imagine them ever moving it down the river. These men have all the paper know-how, and none of the hands-on experience to pilot the thing correctly.”

Chester added, “But like Rick just said: Nobody does. There’s no one within five hundred miles who’s been inside a submarine and hasn’t drowned.”

Deaderick looked to Josephine, whose smile had not melted. She said, “It was my idea to go hunting for an airman instead of a seaman. The sailors all know how to sail, but this isn’t sailing. The drivers all know how to drive, but this isn’t driving. It’s flying under the waves, and I think you’ll have an easier time of it. Your instincts will be the right ones.”

Andan Cly thought about it hard. Slowly he said, “Maybe. Maybe not. I’ve had a word with my crew, and everybody’s interested in giving your job a chance, but I’m not interested in getting any of them killed. Myself either, for that matter. So I think I’d better take a look at this submarine.”

Deaderick once again hefted himself to his feet. “Rick, baby. You should stay here,” Josephine insisted.

“The hell I should. I know that thing better than anybody, and I’ll show him around it.”

Appealing now to Cly, and to Chester, too, she said, “But it’s been only a couple of days since he was shot. He should stay.”

Chester wasn’t about to overrule Deaderick Early, and Cly didn’t know any of them well enough to intervene. So he said, “Josie, if the man says he’s fit to leave, you’d better let him. He’s kin of yours, so I won’t stand in his way.”

She relented unhappily. “Fine. But Chester, do me a favor and get Dr. Polk and have him join us, will you?”

“That achy old drunk?” Deaderick sighed. “I don’t need him watching over me like I’m a baby in a bathtub.”

“I want him here in case you start bleeding again,” she pushed. “I didn’t go through all the trouble to drag you back to the bayou just to have you drop dead because you think you’re too much of a man to take a week and recuperate.” Then she turned to Cly and said, “He was at Barataria when the Texians raided. He took two bullets, and only by the grace of God is he still here living and breathing. He’s a lucky bastard, is what he is.”

“Lucky to have such a devoted sister,” he said, and gave her a penitent kiss on the cheek.

One by one they descended the ladder, and Chester Fishwick went in search of the doctor. Josephine called after him, “Tell him to meet us at the dock!”

When everyone was back on the ground, Cly asked, “You have a doctor out here?”

“Technically. He’s a drunk Federal who was drummed off the field four years ago for killing a man on the operating table,” Deaderick replied. “That’s a hard call to make — a man on an operating table isn’t in the best shape in the first place, but if the doctor’s been drinking, I don’t guess that improves his odds any. Regardless, he patched me up out at Barataria, and Josephine brought him along.”

“I promised him some of Wallace’s grain alcohol,” she said.

Deaderick pointed at a path, a winding trail contrived from dirt ruts and planks that had been jammed into the mud for better footing. “We’re heading that way, down to the river.” He pressed one hand against his injured chest, and for a moment he went pale beneath the hue of his skin.

“Rick?” Josephine asked.

“Don’t, now. I’m all right. Come on. Let’s go.”

“Hold on.” Cly stopped him. “See that oriental boy, badgering that old guy in the spectacles? That’s Houjin. Let me grab him. He’ll want to see this.” The captain rather wanted Houjin to see it, too. It wasn’t that he doubted the knowledge of the men who were guarding the Ganymede so jealously, but he wanted to get the fledgling engineer’s take on the matter as well. Sometimes the advantage of being young and bright is not knowing what’s impossible. “Huey, get over here a minute, will you? Get Fang and Troost if they’re handy.”

Houjin looked left and right, and didn’t spot his comrades. So he shrugged and trotted up to the group alone. Cly introduced him. “Josephine and Deaderick Early, this is Houjin. He’s going to be an engineer.”

“Good to meet you,” said Deaderick, and Josephine said something similar, though she looked at him with open curiosity.

“A bit young, isn’t he?” she asked.

“He’s young, but he does all right. Anyway, Huey — we’re headed to see the Ganymede. I thought you’d like a look.”

“Yes, sir!” he said excitedly, and almost headed off down the trail without them.

“Chester will tell your other men where we’ve gone, and likely bring them along with Dr. Polk,” Josephine assured Cly, falling into step beside him.

He wasn’t entirely certain how he felt about being so close to her again, having been so far away for so very long. But this was business, wasn’t it? And they were friends now, weren’t they? Or couldn’t they be? It’d been long enough since the fighting, the arguing, the battling of wills. It’d been enough years that the good times seemed warmer, and the bad ones were weaker, more fuzzy. Harder to recall, somehow. Surely it was like that for her, too; otherwise, she wouldn’t have called him out.

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 seating 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 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.

“But you have to understand, once you’re sealed up inside this thing, there’s no good way to communicate with the rest of us. You’ll be on your own — no speaking amplifiers like the Texians use, or anything like that. And if you run into trouble, we might not be able to help.”

Cly squeezed the arms of the captain’s chair and looked at each of his crewmen in turn. Fang, first mate. Sitting in the next seat over already, as if he’d assumed it’d play this way all along. Kirby Troost, standing by the bay doors that led to the engines, to the blast charges, and the rest, looking like he wasn’t 100 percent certain of this after all, but was unwilling to say so. And then there was Houjin, one hand resting on the pivot handle for the mirrorscope, his face beaming with excitement because the risks meant little to him. Even if he understood them as well as he thought he did, obliviousness to death was the privilege of the young.

“Well?” Deaderick asked. “What do you say?”

Captain Cly replied, “I say it’s time for supper almost. Let’s have a bite to eat, then spend the rest of the afternoon getting to know this thing.”