Goliath

TWENTY-TWO

It took five days for the sky to clear again.

The storm had pushed the Leviathan across the Pacific swiftly, carrying the airship well to the south. The coast of California stretched across the windows of the middies’ mess. A few white cliffs caught the sun, and behind them were rolling hills, grassy and patched with brown.

“America,” Bovril said softly from Alek’s shoulder.

“Aye, that’s right.” Deryn reached up to stroke the beastie’s fur, wondering if it was only repeating the word, or if it had a real sense that this was a new place with its own name.

Alek lowered his field glasses. “Looks rather wild, doesn’t it?”

“Here, maybe. But we’re halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Put together, those two cities have got almost a million people!”

“Most impressive. Then, why is it so empty between them?”

Deryn gestured at the maps on the mess table. “Because America’s barking huge. One country, as big as all of Europe!”

Bovril leaned forward on Alek’s shoulder, pressing its nose against the glass. “Big.”

“And growing stronger,” Alek said. “If they enter the war, they’ll tip the balance.”

“Aye, but which way?”

Alek turned, revealing the fresh scar on his forehead. His color had returned since the accident, and he no longer complained of headaches. But sometimes he got that daft look in his eye again, as if he didn’t quite believe the world around him was real.

At least he hadn’t forgotten again that Deryn was a girl. Kissing him had made certain of that.

She still wasn’t quite sure why she’d done it. Maybe the energies of the storm had brought on an unsoldierly madness in her. Or maybe that’s what oaths were all about, keeping your word even when it made everything go pear-shaped. No more secrets between them, no matter what…. That had a scary ring to it.

Neither of them had spoken of that moment again, of course. There was no future in kissing Alek. He was a prince and she was a commoner, and she’d made her peace with that back in Istanbul. The pope didn’t write letters turning Scottish girls dressed as boys into royalty. Not in a million years.

But at least she’d done it once.

“They’d never take up arms against Britain,” Alek was saying. “Even if they are half Clanker.”

Deryn shook her head. “But Americans aren’t just a mix of Clanker and Darwinist; they’re a mix of nations. Plenty of German immigrants fresh off the boat and still loyal to the kaiser. And plenty of spies among them, I’ll bet.”

“Mr. Tesla will end the war before any of that matters.” Alek handed the field glasses to Deryn and pointed. “On those cliffs.”

It took her a moment to spot the mooring tower, rising up from an odd cluster of buildings on the seaside hills. They were a mishmash of styles—medieval castles, ramshackle houses, modern Clanker towers, all half finished. Massive building machines moved among them, huffing steam into the clear sky, and cargo ships swarmed the long pier jutting into the sea below.

“Blisters, that’s this fellow’s house?”

“William Randolph Hearst is a very rich man,” Alek said. “And a bit odd as well, according to Mr. Tesla.”

“Which is saying something, coming from him.”

“But he’s the right man for the job. Hearst owns half a dozen newspapers, a newsreel company, and a few politicians as well.” Alek said this firmly, then let out a sigh. “It was a lucky storm that blew us this far south, I suppose.”

“News,” Bovril said softly.

Deryn handed back the field glasses and put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. Back in Istanbul, Alek had spilled his secrets to Eddie Malone to keep the reporter from sniffing out the revolution, about fleeing his home after his parents’ murder and joining the Leviathan’s crew. Everything except the pope’s letter that promised Alek the throne, his last secret. He had hated every minute of being in the limelight. And now Tesla wanted to exhibit Alek’s story on a much larger stage.

“Doesn’t seem fair, making you go through all that palaver again.”

Alek shrugged. “It can’t be any worse a second time, can it?”

They watched in silence as the sprawling mansion drew nearer. The Leviathan came about and turned its nose into the steady breeze coming off the sea, approaching the mooring tower from the landward side.

A lizard popped its head out of a message tube overhead.

“Mr. Sharp, report to the topside,” it said in Mr. Rigby’s voice.

“Right away, sir. End message.” She looked at Alek. “I’ll be down helping with the landing. Maybe I’ll get to see your big entrance from the ground.”

He gave her a smile. “I shall try to look dashing.”

“Aye, I’m sure you will.” Deryn turned to the window, pretending to make a quick survey of the landing field, the obstacles of machines and men, the wind’s patterns in the ruffling grass. “They’re just reporters, Alek. They can’t hurt you.”

“I’ll try to remember that, Deryn,” he said.

“Deryn Sharp,” said Bovril with a chuckle as she headed toward the door. “Quite dashing.”

She hit the airfield softly, her gliding wings stiff with ocean air. A dozen ground men waited to steady her, and a young man in civilian clothes presented himself.

“Philip Francis, at your service.”

“Midshipman Sharp, of His Majesty’s Airship Leviathan,” Deryn said, giving him a salute. “How many ground men do you have?”

“Two hundred or so. Is that enough?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Aye, that’s loads. But are any of them trained?”

“All trained, and they’ve got lots of practice. Mr. Hearst has his own airship, you know. It’s in Chicago at the moment, undergoing repairs.”

“He has his own barking airship?”

“He dislikes train travel,” the man said simply.

“Aye, of course,” Deryn managed, turning to take stock of the airfield. The swarm of ground men was already in position, arranged in a perfect oval beneath the Leviathan’s gondola. They looked sharp enough in their red uniforms, and most wore sandbags on their belts for extra weight, no doubt to guard against the gusty ocean breeze.

She heard the growl of Clanker engines, and turned to find a trio of strange machines lumbering forward—six-legged walkers. Their pilots rode out in the open, and metal arms rose up from their backsides, carrying some sort of contraption.

“What in blazes are those?” she asked Mr. Francis.

“Moving-picture cameras, on the latest walking platforms. Mr. Hearst wants the Leviathan’s arrival captured for his newsreels.”

Deryn frowned. She’d heard about the Clanker obsession with moving pictures but had never seen one herself. The cameras whirred and shuddered, a bit like the sewing machines back in Tokyo. Each one had three lenses like insect eyes, all staring up at the airship overhead.

“That’s the door on the starboard side, correct?” Mr. Francis asked. “We’ll want to shoot them coming out.”

“You want to shoot them?”

“Photograph them.” He smiled. “Figure of speech.”

“Of course. Aye, the gangway drops from starboard,” she said, feeling like a traitor to Alek for helping. This Mr. Francis wasn’t an airman at all, calling the gangway hatch a door. He was some sort of moving-picture reporter!

Behind the walkers waited more men in civilian clothes, recording frogs on their shoulders, cameras in their hands. They surged forward as the airship dropped its lines to the waiting ground men.

“You might want to pull those reporters back,” Deryn said. “In case there’s a gust.”

“Mr. Hearst’s crew can handle it.”

She scowled. The ground men looked sure enough in their duties, but how dare they call her down here just to help with barking camera angles!

The ground men took hold of the lines and began to spread out, pulling the Leviathan downward. When the gondola was a few yards above the airfield, the gangplank lowered itself to the ground, revealing Captain Hobbes, Mr. Tesla, and Prince Aleksandar. The captain saluted smartly, and the inventor waved his walking stick, but Alek looked unsteady. His eyes flicked between the cameras and the crowd for a moment, until he managed a halfhearted bow.

The walking platforms plodded closer, their cameras rising up, and suddenly they looked predatory, reminding Deryn of the scorpion walker that had captured her men at Gallipoli. The cameras even looked a bit like Clanker machine guns.

A plump man with a broad hat and pin-striped pants detached himself from the scrum of reporters, making his way up the gangplank. He reached out and pumped the captain’s hand.

“Is that Mr. Hearst?” Deryn asked.

“The man himself,” Mr. Francis said. “You’re lucky to find him at home. With the war boiling over, he’s been in New York since late summer, tending to his newspapers.”

“Lucky us,” Deryn said, watching Alek greet Mr. Hearst. In the cavalry tunic he’d borrowed from Volger, Alek did in fact look quite dashing. And with his host before him, his aristocratic reflexes seemed to take over. He bowed again, gracefully this time, and even smiled for the cameras looming overhead.

Deryn was glad to see him getting into the spirit of things, but then she had a disturbing thought. What if he started to enjoy all this attention?

No, it would take more than a knock on the head to change Alek that much.

She tore her gaze from the spectacle and checked the landing field once more. To her relief a tangle was developing among the ropes.

“Looks as though your men might need some help after all,” she said to Mr. Francis, and took off at a run.

The snarl of cables was near the bow of the ship, where the breeze was strongest. Overhead the topside crew had already cast a line across to the mooring tower, but they were waiting for the chaos below to settle before hitching the airship fast.

As Deryn approached, two groups of ground men were shouting at each other. Someone had pulled in the wrong direction, crossing the ropes, and now no one wanted to let go. She waded in, barking orders while making sure the men didn’t all drop their lines at once. It was sorted out soon enough, and Deryn pulled out her semaphore flags to flash a quick R-E-A-D-Y to the topside crew.

“I’m afraid that was my fault,” came a voice from behind her.

She turned to find a man in an ill-fitting uniform, a bit older than the other crewmen. Behind his mustache his face was somehow familiar.

“Are you…,” she began, but then a croak came from one of the sandbags on his belt.

“Shush, Rusty,” he hissed. “Good to see you again, Mr. Sharp. Do you suppose we might have a quick word in the privacy of your ship?”

She squinted at his face, and recognized him just as he stuck out his hand.

“Eddie Malone. Reporter for the New York World.”