Drowned Wednesday (25 page)

‘Why not?’ asked Suzy.

‘Well, she might just dive even deeper to get rid of whatever’s making the annoying noise.’

‘One hundred and fourteen fathoms!’ reported the helmsrat. ‘She’s diving again!’

‘It’s not going to make things worse, is it?’

‘Do whatever you can,’ ordered Longtayle. ‘The crush depth is an estimate, but —’ His voice was cut off as several jets of water burst out of the walls at the same time, accompanied by a terrible, deep groan from the hull.

‘Doctor!’ yelled Arthur. ‘Can you make a really long, really high-pitched squeal?’

Scamandros was already unscrewing the parrot head of his walking stick. He nodded as he reached inside the head and made some adjustments.

‘Block your ears!’

Arthur just had time to put his fingers in his ears as the parrot head suddenly shone with a bright light and its beak opened, emitting an incredibly piercing shriek that went on for several seconds, completely cutting through the groans and bellows of the distressed submarine. Scamandros worked the parrot head like it was a puppet, pulling on little levers, and its shriek began to go up and down to a regular rhythm.

The helmsrat was trying to shout something but Arthur couldn’t hear him. The parrot shriek was so loud and so high-pitched that it actually hurt. He could feel it making his cheekbones ache.

Water touched Arthur’s feet. He yelped and pulled his legs up. There was at least a foot of water in the compartment and it looked like it was rising. So it hadn’t worked, and they were all going to be crushed and drowned — The screech stopped. Hesitantly, Arthur pulled one finger out of his ear, just enough to hear a confused babble of voices that included the helmsrat shrieking, all calm gone.

‘One hundred fathoms and rising! She’s going up! She’s going up!’

Whether it was in response to the parrot shriek or not, Drowned Wednesday rose up far faster than she’d sunk. Not that either motion had been very significant for her, Arthur thought. A bit like him bobbing his head down an inch.

‘Ten fathoms and shallowing! Six fathoms! Sea level! We’re out of the water. We’re right out of the water.’

Everyone stared at the crystal globe. All the water was running out of the hole they were in, to reveal the obstruction as a barnacle-encrusted wall of copper-sheathed timber.

‘She must be lifting her head up,’ said Longtayle. ‘That’ll make things easier.’

He lifted the voice-pipe.

‘Cox’n, prepare a diving party for outside work. Four rats with axes. Damage control, get all pumps going.’

‘Aye, aye!’

Arthur was watching the crystal globe carefully, so he was the first to notice the water streaming back from inside the whale. At the same time the submersible shook and tilted down at the stern, the water still in the bridge sloshing around everyone’s ankles.

‘We’re in the sea again. Nine fathoms!’ called the helmsrat. ‘But the current has reversed. It’s coming out of her now, at six knots.’

‘Belay that diving party!’ called Longtayle. ‘Full back both engines!’

The vibration of the engines had just begun when there was suddenly a much bigger and more dramatic vibration, a shock wave that shook the whole submersible with a sound like a china cabinet falling over. Arthur held his hands against his ears as he felt his stomach flip-flop and the blood rush to his head.

‘What was that?’

‘Jaw clash,’ said Longtayle. ‘Guess she really didn’t like that parrot noise. It might help us get free.’

‘Or shake us to bits,’ said Suzy cheerfully.

The shock wave came three more times, each more violently than the last. Arthur was very glad to be sitting down and belted in, as even so he was thrown about in his chair. The teapot and cups were long since smashed to pieces and they combined with various other bits and pieces to fly dangerously around the bridge. Arthur was cut slightly across the cheek before he covered his face with his arms.

‘We’re backing free!’

Arthur stared at the crystal globe. The wooden wall was receding as the submersible backed out. All the bits of flotsam were still flowing back out of Drowned Wednesday, rather more slowly than they’d streamed in, so it seemed she had stopped moving and lowered her mouth.

‘Tail-eye!’

The view changed to show the open sea behind them.

‘If she’ll just stay still long enough for us to back right out and go through another hole. . .’ muttered Longtayle. ‘All we need is a minute. One minute . . .’

No one spoke as they all watched the tail-eye view. It slowly changed, the debris floating more freely and the white walls of bone being left behind.

‘Snout-eye.’

The globe flashed and there was the immense wall of white bone ahead of them, riddled with holes.

‘Do you want to pick a hole, Lord Arthur?’ asked Longtayle as they continued to back through the sea.

‘No! Just aim for one!’

‘Port thirty and take her up,’ ordered Longtayle.

The submarine rattled and groaned as the engines returned to forward thrust. Ever so slowly the
Balaena
began to move towards a new hole. Then there was a strange rush of speed, and both white walls and dark hole rushed towards the submersible.

‘She’s moving forward again!’

‘Steady helm, straight at that hole!’

‘Let’s hope this one’s not bunged up,’ said Suzy.

‘The currents would clean them out,’ said Arthur distractedly. He was trying to watch the crystal globe. They were lined up okay for the new tunnel, but it would only take a slight shift for them to miss it. ‘It must have been a big ship to get stuck. We were just unlucky to hit that one.’

‘But very fortunate to come back out again,’ said Doctor Scamandros nervously.

‘Here we go!’ cried Suzy. ‘Straight as an arrow!’

Twenty–three

THERE WAS NO obstruction in the new tunnel. The
Balaena
passed through it at a steady pace, helped along by the steadily increasing current. Drowned Wednesday was on the move again and seawater, food, and debris were once more rushing into her gullet.

The tunnel through the plate was only a hundred yards long. As they emerged from the far end, Arthur found that he had been holding his breath. He let it out, but didn’t gain any real feeling of relief. There were bound to be so many troubles and obstacles ahead. And even if they did manage to get the Will, they’d still have to come back out.

Which is going to be difficult,
Arthur thought.
I guess we
can go faster forward, but if the current is too strong, the
Balaena
won’t be able to get out unless Drowned Wednesday
stops for long enough …

Once through the straining plate, the
Balaena
followed the current into the broad lake that was the inside of Drowned Wednesday’s mouth. They crossed that in twenty minutes, the engines straining to maintain steerage way as the current grew swifter, the food-laden waters gathering to pass into Drowned Wednesday’s throat.

But this was almost routine work for the submersible, like navigating a tidal estuary. The throat was very wide, and though there was a lot of material being carried along, there was nothing that posed a threat to the
Balaena
. Much of it was fish and sea creatures of all kinds, mixed in with salvage.

Arthur had even started to relax a little as the pumps cleared the bridge of water and both Longtayle and the helmsrat resumed their usual calm dialogue of orders and information.

Then, about two miles down the throat, without any warning, the
Balaena
was suddenly picked up and flipped over in a complete somersault. Arthur nearly slid out of his straps, and once again was struck by flying debris, including the lid of the teapot, which gave the ring of pure silver as it hit him on the head.

At the same time, a strange electric tingle passed through Arthur’s body and the ends of his fingers burst into smoky green flames that disappeared a moment later, just as he cried out and started shaking his hands.

The whole thing happened so quickly that no one had time to react. It was like being on an unfamiliar fairground ride that had suddenly whipped around and no one was sure whether it was going to do it again.

‘We’ve passed through a sorcerous membrane of some kind,’ wheezed Doctor Scamandros. His greatcoat had ridden up around his throat and got tangled, and he was having difficulty pulling it back into place.

‘Pressure gauges have all reset,’ reported the helmsrat. ‘According to this, we’re only five fathoms down, and there’s air above us. No current to speak of either. Still water, or near enough.’

Longtayle scratched his ear.

‘Guess we went through some kind of valve. Take us up to top-eye depth.’

‘Aye, aye, sir.’

A few minutes later, the top-eye view in the globe revealed the surface of a sea within Drowned Wednesday, or a large lake. It was illuminated by a pinkish glow from the stomach roof high above, a glow Doctor Scamandros suggested was from the reaction of specks of Nothing with particles of the House, both of them eaten by Wednesday and caked onto her stomach lining.

‘Very dangerous,’ the sorcerer added, staring into the globe with fascination and dread. ‘Too much Nothing. If enough of it managed to unfix from the House particles and it became concentrated . . .’

‘Can we look for anything like a . . . well, anything big enough to be Feverfew’s worldlet?’ asked Arthur.

‘Rotate top-eye.’

The view in the crystal globe slowly moved around. At first it revealed only more monotonous, greenlit sea. Then there was a sudden flare of colour, bright enough to make Arthur blink.

There, a few miles away, was a shining dome rising out of the sea. A dome easily a thousand yards high and five or six miles in diameter, its rainbow sides shimmering with all the colours of the spectrum, like a giant soap bubble in the sun.

‘Immaterial Walls,’ commented Doctor Scamandros. ‘Very fine work, particularly on such a scale.’

‘That’s it,’ said Arthur. ‘It has to be. Now we need to find the entrance.’

‘Keep us at top-eye depth,’ instructed Longtayle. ‘We’ll do a circumnavigation, see if anything is visible. Snout-eye view.’

‘Probably be guards somewhere,’ said Suzy. ‘Or traps or the like. I mean, it is a pirate’s secret worldlet, ain’t it? If it were mine, I’d have guards and traps all over the place.’

‘Let’s hope not,’ said Arthur. ‘I mean, it
is
inside a giant whale, to start with, and Feverfew comes and goes by sorcery. It’s not as if they’d be expecting anyone to come in except the salvage slaves they sent out.’

‘Speaking of salvage slaves, I think that might be one there,’ said Longtayle. He pointed at a dim shape in the globe. ‘Not moving, though . . .’

Arthur leaned forward to get a better look. There was a human-shaped figure standing still on the stomach floor. As the submersible edged closer and its lights shone through the murky water, the figure became clearer. It was humanoid, rather than human. About seven feet tall, it had a human face with a beard and long hair, but its muscular bare arms glittered with green scales, and there was webbing between its fingers.

‘A Nisser,’ said Longtayle. ‘But petrified or frozen.’

‘What’s a Nisser?’ asked Arthur. The creature had been stilled in the act of reaching out for something, his webbed fingers ready to grab. He looked angry, his mouth open, showing many small sharp teeth.

‘Drowned Wednesday’s guards,’ said Longtayle. ‘Like the Commissionaires in the Lower House, or the Winged Servants of the Night in the Middle House. She ate them up.’

‘This one made it through,’ said Suzy. ‘Do you reckon we can wake him up, Doc?’

Scamandros put his quartz-lensed glasses on his forehead and peered at the globe. Then he shook his head.

‘He is tightly wound with a very sophisticated binding. I could unpick it, but not easily, and not underwater.’

‘Feverfew, I guess,’ said Arthur. ‘Hey! There’s another one, closer in.’

‘Port ten and slow ahead,’ instructed Longtayle.

The submersible gently turned and progressed closer to the rainbow-hued dome. Its light spread through the water now, dimming the white beams from the submersible’s front. In this ripple of colours, there was a dark silhouette. Another Nisser, this time frozen in the instant she had raised a trident for a killing thrust.

‘And another two,’ said Suzy. ‘Over there, right near the dome.’

She pointed at two tiny dark specks on the very edge of the snout-eye view. But when the
Balaena
drew closer, the two figures were not Nisser. They were Denizens, or rather the skeletons of long-drowned Denizens, dressed in rags and manacled at the ankles, a long, algae-covered chain stretching between them. Both clutched long rakes, the metal heads blooming with rusty flakes and curls.

Arthur was both horrified and fascinated to see that the Denizen’s bones were, as far as he could tell in the rainbow light, a dull golden colour.

‘Interesting,’ said Scamandros. ‘Denizens don’t usually decompose. I suppose this water must have stomach acids in it, like a mortal creature. Or it may be the result of Nothing contamination. I presume this pair must be enslaved flotsam rakers.’

Longtayle’s tail twitched. Arthur saw him look around the bridge, as if he might see signs of the corrosive sea already affecting the submersible.

‘That brings up an important matter,’ said Longtayle. ‘We must presume that the waters of this stomach are dangerous to the
Balaena
, so we cannot linger. I’m afraid we can only give you twelve hours, Lord Arthur. After that, we must attempt to leave the Leviathan.’

‘Is that twelve hours from when we find the way in?’ asked Suzy.

‘Twelve hours from now,’ said Longtayle.

Arthur nodded. He was still staring into the globe. There was something about the rainbow-hued wall just beyond the two skeletons. If he looked from the corner of his eye, he could see something that might be an arched doorway. But when he looked straight on, all he could see were swirls of colour, shifting and changing like oil in a puddle on the road.

‘Can anyone else see a door?’ he asked. ‘An archway, about eight feet high, just behind the left-hand skeleton?’