Emilie and the Sky World (3 page)

Less than an hour later, Emilie was in the Marlendes’ coach, with Dr and Miss Marlende, following Lord Engal’s equipage down a wide gaslit street. The Marlendes’ coach was battered, the upholstery well-worn cloth, and the coachman was one of Dr Marlende’s airship mechanics.

Dr Marlende had one of Professor Abindon’s notebooks, holding it up to the window and trying to angle it so the intermittent gaslight fell on the pages. He said to Miss Marlende, “Even if you had opened her wires, there wasn’t anything you could have done about it except to observe the situation while it developed, an activity which she was already engaged in.”

Miss Marlende kept her gaze on the window. “That’s not an excuse.”

“It is an excuse,” Dr Marlende said mildly.

Emilie had her face almost plastered to the window on her side, trying to catch glimpses of the stone façades and pillared porticos of the buildings. She knew most of them were very fine houses, the family seats of various noble families. She had seen the houses of the wealthy gentry who lived near their village, and even gone to parties in some of them, but they were nothing compared to this. She couldn’t quite believe people actually lived in these houses, or how much money they must have. It seems such a waste, she thought. At least Lord Engal spent some of his money on experiments and expeditions and, apparently, suing newspapers on behalf of strangers.

Ahead, Lord Engal’s coach swung into the carriage circle in front of yet another imposing building, with columns two stories high fronting a wide portico with steps leading up to the entrance. Gas lamps on stands of twisted wrought iron lit the walk in front of it.

As they climbed out of the coaches, Emilie saw two men waiting by the carved wooden doors, one in Lord Engal’s livery and the other in a slightly disheveled suit, as if he had donned it hastily. The doors were carved with figures of old sailing ships and views of Meneport Harbor. Not what Emilie had been expecting for the Philosophical Society, but maybe the place had been purchased or donated, and not specifically built.

“Lord Engal,” the disheveled man began, “surely you realize the aetheric telescope can also be used in daylight–”

“Of course we realize that, Elathorn,” Lord Engal said. “But we need to look through the damn thing now. Be a good fellow and unlock the doors.”

Mr Elathorn sighed with weary resignation, took out a large key ring, and unlocked the heavy wooden door. It opened into a dark foyer, illumined only by what little light fell through the doorway.

Mr Elathorn stepped inside and Emilie followed with the others, bumping into Miss Marlende in the process. She could feel a tile floor under her shoes, and the walls were covered with more heavy carving, though she couldn’t tell what the subject was. Mr Elathorn unlocked the inner doors with a different key and pushed them open. Emilie peered into the darkness. She had the impression the doors had opened into a large hall; something in the faintly cool air seemed to suggest a large space, but she couldn’t see a thing.

She thought they might have to light lamps if the gas was turned off for the night, but Mr Elathorn turned to the wall of the foyer and unlocked a small cabinet set into it, fumbling in the dark. Lord Engal helpfully struck a match, holding it up so Elathorn could see.

“Thank you, my lord,” Elathorn muttered. The cabinet was full of small metal levers. Elathorn pushed two down and then pushed a switch.

Clicks and a buzz echoed through the space, then electric lights flickered into blazing life all through the hall. Emilie smiled in delight.
This is more like it.

The grand entrance hall was huge, with a massive polished stone staircase at the far end. The walls were lined with exhibits, some in glass cases and some free-standing. Light gleamed off all sorts of engines and devices, with glass bulbs, brass and silver tubes, switches, levers, and dials. There were glass cases with maps, models of steamships and airships. The electric lights on the walls were in large bronze sconces, with milky glass shielding the glowing bulbs. There were also lights set directly into the walls, between where the wooden paneling ended and the plaster facing began.

Lord Engal said, “That’s all, Elathorn. Go home and get some sleep,” and he, Dr Marlende, and Professor Abindon headed for the stairs.

Mr Elathorn sighed again and said, “I’ll wait down here,” and turned to shut and lock the outer doors.

“Our apologies, Mr Elathorn, and thank you for coming out here so late,” Miss Marlende said, as she, Daniel, and Emilie hurried after the others.

Emilie craned her neck to see as many of the exhibits as she could as they crossed the hall. Daniel noticed and said, “We’ll have to come back on a day when it’s open for viewing.”

“Emilie should have more than enough chances to see it all,” Miss Marlende said. “We’ll be planning a whole lecture series on the expedition.” She nodded toward the doors in the wall past the stairs. “The main assembly hall is there, and there are smaller meeting rooms and lecture halls on the upper floors. This was a shipping magnate’s mansion when it was first built. He bequeathed it to the Society more than fifty years ago, and it’s been modified a great deal since then.”

They started up the stairs, and continued up and up. On the third floor, they turned off through a wide hallway lined with more doors, where they had to stop along the way and look for more switches to turn on the electric lights. After several twists and turns, they went through a door into another much smaller and more utilitarian stairwell.

The lights were less frequent here, the walls plain plaster and the wooden treads of the stairs not nearly as finely grained; this must have been a stair to the servants’ quarters, back when the house had been a wealthy man’s home.

They reached a door at the top of the stairs, and Lord Engal selected another key off the ring to unlock it. Emilie followed the others in, staring as the electric lights popped into life. They were in a large square turret, possibly toward the back of the big house, though when they had been out on the street, Emilie had been too busy looking at the front entrance to glance up.

In the middle of the room was an aetheric scope that made the professor’s look like a toy or a small-scale model. The whole was mounted on a large circular platform, and the scope itself was as big as a cannon. It pointed up toward the peaked roof, which had been replaced by glass panels. Several silver plates stood out from the base of the scope at various angles, designed to show patterns in aether.

The others immediately closed in around the telescope, Dr Marlende and the professor in the lead. Emilie found a chair near the wall and sat down. There wasn’t anything she could do to help with this part, and she was starting to realize just how tired she was. She wished she had been able to sleep more on the boat.

After a short flurry of adjustments with everyone but Emilie weighing in with a conflicting opinion, the telescope was positioned and the aetheric plates moved in front of the lens. Dr Marlende peered through the eyepiece. “Yes, there we are. I–” He stopped abruptly.

Emilie found herself holding her breath. Everyone waited in silence, though Daniel stirred uneasily, Lord Engal’s left eyelid started to twitch, and Miss Marlende’s grip on the platform’s railing made her knuckles go white. Finally, Professor Abindon said, “For God’s sake, Marlende, what do you see?”

Dr Marlende straightened up, his expression deeply worried. Emilie felt a sinking sensation. She hadn’t seen him look this worried when they were trying to escape to the airship while being shot at by angry merpeople. He ignored Lord Engal’s impatient throat-clearing noise and gestured Professor Abindon forward. He said, “I’d rather not say until I get another opinion.”

Frowning, the professor stepped up and bent down to the eyepiece. “Another opinion on what? I–”

It was her turn to freeze. After a moment, she stood up and said, “It’s a vessel.”

Dr Marlende let his breath out in a sharp sigh, as if he had been holding it. “I concur.”

Daniel’s expression was somewhere between horrified and incredulous. “What kind of vessel? An airship?”

“Something like,” Dr Marlende said. “The shape is similar.”

“A vessel?” Lord Engal burst out. “But how? Even if such a craft launched into the aetheric stream from the other side of the world, we would have seen it making its way up–”

No,
Emilie thought, her heart pounding,
that’s not what he means
.

“That’s not what they mean,” Miss Marlende interrupted. “It’s a vessel, but it came from the other end of the aetheric stream.”

“The other end,” Lord Engal repeated. “But that’s… not impossible, I suppose.”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Miss Marlende said.

Emilie couldn’t contain herself. “So it’s people from another aetheric plane, coming to discover us, like Dr Marlende discovered the Hollow World?”

“Yes,” Dr Marlende said. “They could be very much like us. Or very different indeed.”

The next several hours passed in a whirlwind of activity. Lord Engal rushed off to find the nearest telegraph office and send a flurry of wires. Miss Marlende and Daniel followed to make sure he sent wires to everyone Dr Marlende and Professor Abindon thought should be notified too. Emilie, wide awake now, took notes for them as they made further observations with the telescope, writing down directions and rows of numbers. After a short time, more people started to arrive, men and quite a number of women, all natural philosophers, aetheric scholars, or engineers.

They entered the chamber, often disheveled and in one case still wearing a dressing gown, looked into the telescope, and then retired to join one of the many groups having low-voiced, worried conversations.

At first Emilie’s head was almost spinning. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to run into the street yelling a warning, or hide under the bench. Were they actually being invaded?
Please let it be a friendly explorer
. Invasions were something that happened in books, to made-up countries. The last invasion she had read about in the history books had happened to a small country called Tuthari, far to the east. A fleet of pirates had invaded their archipelago, and had been driven off by their ships and the other traders that had been in port at the time, including two Menaen steamers.

The idea of an invasion by strange people in airships was terrifying. It certainly put the whole “Uncle Yeric seeing your name in the newspapers” episode into perspective. Emilie began to look fondly back on the time when that was all she had to worry about.

She reminded herself not to panic yet. There’s plenty of time to panic later, she thought.

As the sky past the big windows started to lighten, a man in a very sober suit came in to speak quietly to Dr Marlende and Professor Abindon. Emilie was close enough to hear him say, “Lord Engal has called a meeting of the Society in the main lecture hall. He wanted you to go over your findings briefly, if you could.” He added, “Dr Amalus, advisor to the Ministry and the Ruling Council, is in attendance. He expects to give a report to them based on, well, your report to him.”

Dr Marlende and Professor Abindon exchanged a dark look. She said, “Isn’t this premature?”

“That rather depends, doesn’t it?” Dr Marlende answered grimly.

She took a deep breath. “Yes, of course.”

They started downstairs, most of the others present following them. Emilie found her way through the crowd and trailed behind Miss Marlende. At the bottom of the stairs, Daniel fetched up beside them. There were still more people down here, milling around, though most had taken more care with their dress than the earlier arrivals.

Emilie thought Miss Marlende would follow Dr Marlende and the professor into the lecture hall, but instead she took Emilie’s sleeve and directed them both toward the open front doors. Daniel followed them.

As they stepped outside, the cool pre-dawn air was like a welcome dash of cold water. A coach with the Ministry’s crest emblazoned on the door was just drawing up in front of the building. Miss Marlende watched it thoughtfully, and said, “Let’s take a break, shall we?”

They ended up in a bakery down a nearby side street, open earlier than anything else so it could supply fresh bread to the other eating establishments. It had tables in its back courtyard and also served tea. With a napkin full of breakfast rolls and a big mug of tea in her stomach, Emilie started to feel less confused and panicky. Maybe I’m not terrified, maybe I’m just hungry, she thought. Or maybe she had just had a little time to get used to the whole idea. Around a mouthful of roll, she asked Miss Marlende, “Why aren’t you at the meeting?”

Miss Marlende stirred her tea, her brow set in a worried frown. “I know what they’re going to say.”

Daniel held his tea under his nose as if it were smelling salts and he was trying to revive himself. The steam made his eyeglasses cloud over. “Dr Marlende thinks we should go up for a better look?”

Miss Marlende nodded. “It’s the only thing we can do, at this point.”

“Up in an airship?” Emilie asked, then realized what a stupid question it was.
No, up in a tugboat, Emilie, what do you think?
But the others were so tired, all they did was nod soberly. “Have you ever done it before? I mean, in an aetheric current, not just the air.”

“Yes, we’ve explored two of the major aether currents above Menea,” Miss Marlende explained. “Father became more interested in the belowsea currents because the signs that they led to another aetheric plane were so intriguing. We didn’t see any such signs in the air currents. As far as I know, no one ever has.” She took a long drink of her tea. “Perhaps we just didn’t look hard enough.”

Daniel shook his head. “There isn’t as much interest in airship travel in general. It’s very dangerous. There have been at least two air-current expeditions that ended in disaster. One crashed and one was never seen again.”

The bad storms that plagued the seas along the best trade routes were dangerous for airships. Ships navigating via surface aether currents had always been safer and more efficient, so airships weren’t popular, even for relatively safe travel between the mainland and the coastal islands. They had been mostly used as pleasure craft over land. Emilie said, “So no one really knows what’s in the aetheric currents up there. I suppose because we can see the sky, we just assumed there’s nothing past it.” She followed that thought for a moment. “Just like everyone in the Hollow World assumed there was nothing above them.”

Daniel cleared his throat. “Isn’t there an old, discredited theory that the world is a series of concentric circles?”

Emilie had seen some mention of that in a book somewhere but hadn’t paid it much attention. She had been mostly reading for the adventure stories of exploration, not the speculation on aetheric structures. But she remembered the picture that had accompanied it, all different circles, stretching out into infinity. Their world, this world, had been labeled the “surface world” and had been shown on top. “This means that theory is right, but we aren’t the surface world,” Emilie said. “We’re not on top; we’re just one of the circles.”

“Yes, it’s been a theory for a long time,” Miss Marlende admitted. She sipped her tea and added, “Apparently, it’s on its way to becoming a fact.”

They started back to the Philosophical Society, and as they turned a corner to the street, Emilie saw a small crowd milling in front of the building. Some of them were clutching notebooks and pencils and were probably journalists, others just looked like confused passersby who had seen something was happening and had stopped to find out what it was. A few early peddlers had gathered on the outskirts, and a vegetable cart on its way to the open market had stopped along the curb and appeared to be trying to take advantage of the unexpected crowd.

As they approached the building, a man suddenly turned toward them out of the fringe of the crowd and rushed toward Miss Marlende.

His face was tight with fury and Emilie reacted before she quite knew what she was doing. As Daniel stepped in front of Miss Marlende, Emilie dodged sideways toward the vegetable cart and snatched up a hard-shelled melon. She braced to throw it at the man’s head.

“Stop!” Miss Marlende held up her hands. “It’s all right, Emilie, Daniel.”

The man jerked to a halt in front of Miss Marlende and demanded, “Is it true?”

Miss Marlende gently pushed Daniel aside and said, “It is, but it isn’t them. It’s a strange craft.”

Emilie set the melon back on the cart with an apologetic nod to the startled vendor. Her reflexes seemed to be still tuned to the Hollow World, and at some point, snatching up a weapon had become more natural to her than screaming or running.

Emilie had time to notice that the man really didn’t look much like a ruffian at all. Though, of course, neither had Lord Ivers. He was young, maybe no more than twenty-five or so. His clothes were well-tailored and his tightly curled hair was carefully cut, but there was something about him which suggested that he wasn’t well. His light brown skin was a little dull, his coat and jacket hanging on knobby shoulders as if he was normally slim but had also lost weight.

The man glanced at Emilie and Daniel with an impatient grimace, then faced Miss Marlende again. “Are you going up?”

Miss Marlende said, “Probably.”

He nodded sharply with a brief expression of relief. “You’ll look for them.”

“Mr Deverrin…” Miss Marlende’s face was a mix of frustration and pity. “They are all dead. Surely you must know that.”

He set his jaw stubbornly. “And you and I both know that means nothing. Especially after the trip you’ve just returned from.”

Miss Marlende said, patiently, “Even if they were in a current that… led somewhere, there is little chance that after all this time–”

“Little chance is not no chance.” He turned away abruptly and strode toward the crowd, shouldering through it.

Miss Marlende let her breath out and rubbed her forehead. “That was unpleasant.”

Emilie demanded, “Who was that?”

“Anton Deverrin. His father, Dr Deverrin, led the second airship aether-current expedition, the one that Daniel mentioned. The one that was never seen again.” Miss Marlende shook her head. “It was last year. There was a sudden storm, with a great disturbance in the aether, the day after they launched. There was no sign of the airship after that. There were twelve people aboard, including Anton’s brother, sister, and two cousins, as well as his father. His mother and the other members of the family threw all their efforts and their family fortune into searching for them. It ruined them, eventually. They wanted my father to mount an expedition in search of them, but…”

Emilie winced. She could glimpse the scene beyond Miss Marlende’s brief description: the grief and hope and desperation of a family suddenly ripped apart. No wonder the young man still looked ill. “But Dr Marlende thought they were dead.”

“Yes,” Miss Marlende admitted. “We – and everyone else – thought the airship must have been torn apart over the sea. Lord Engal and some of the other explorers with steamers searched the area for survivors for days afterward, but they never even found a sign of any debris.”

Emilie hesitated. “But now…”

Daniel’s thoughts must have been moving along the same line. He said, “Maybe we were all wrong.”

“Yes. In light of this new information, we could have been.” Miss Marlende bit her lip. “But it’s been more than a year. I don’t want to get his hopes up. Even if they were trapped somewhere, they may have died by now.”

“Maybe they were lucky,” Emilie said. “Maybe they found nice people like the Cirathi who helped them.”

Miss Marlende gave her a sad and somewhat ironic smile. “You usually aren’t such an optimist, Emilie.”

“Well, I’m trying to be better at it.” Emilie agreed, though, there was no use getting the poor man’s hopes up. A year was a long time to spend trapped or adventuring in aether currents without getting killed. Their trip to the Hollow World had proved that.

Daniel didn’t look optimistic. “But if the air currents are like the sea currents, we still couldn’t find them unless we knew where they left their current.” He looked toward the crowd the young man had disappeared into. “I agree, we certainly can’t make him any promises.”

Emilie realized they had all made a rather important assumption. “So we’re going up in an air aether current to look at the strange craft, then?”

“I would say there is an excellent chance of it,” Miss Marlende said.

The meeting was finished by the time they entered the Society building. Coaches were starting to leave, tangling with the early morning traffic of omnibuses and delivery carts. They found Dr Marlende and Professor Abindon in the hall with Lord Engal, all surrounded by a small crowd of Society members and other people still discussing the strange object and its implications. Emilie thought the mood was a little less tense. Maybe confronting the problem and discussing it had helped. And if Miss Marlende was right, now they had a plan. Or at least a plan to get more information.

Miss Marlende elbowed her way through the crowd to Dr Marlende’s side, waited until the man he was speaking to took his leave, and then said, “We’re going up in the airship, then?”

“Yes,” he told her. “It’s fortunate the larger craft is airworthy and can be made ready in a short time. If we don’t get some idea of what this thing is soon, there could be a panic when the word spreads.”

Miss Marlende jerked her head toward the crowd. “And with this lot, the word will definitely spread.”

Dr Marlende turned toward the door. “It was necessary to inform them.” As Professor Abindon caught up with them, he continued, “Many of them have small scopes and would start to make their own observations. The professor here is an expert at aetheric interpretation, but the anomaly is growing large enough that amateurs will be able to see it soon.”

Professor Abindon snorted. “If you hadn’t gone haring off into the subsurface world and gotten stuck, we would have been able to start sooner.”

Emilie had noted that natural philosophers seemed big on saying “I told you so.” She didn’t think it was very helpful in a crisis.

Dr Marlende gave Abindon a look, but said only, “And I would know a good deal less about the practical difficulties of aether current travel.” He told Miss Marlende, “Besides, we had to assemble the Society. We may need their help.”

Miss Marlende’s expression bordered on the bitter. “They weren’t a great deal of help when Kenar and I desperately needed it.”

“Did they all support Lord Ivers?” Emilie asked. The inner workings of the Philosophical Society seemed a lot more exciting than she had previously thought.

Miss Marlende said, “Many of them thought that it would have been impossible to retrace Father’s route, even though Kenar himself was proof that it was possible. The ones that didn’t had no real resources to offer.”

Like poor Mr Deverrin, Emilie thought. But at least in his case, the storm had given everyone good reason to think that his family was dead.

Professor Abindon said, “I wish you had come to me. I’m also lacking in those sorts of resources, but at least I could have…” She sounded hesitant, which seemed very uncharacteristic of her. “Helped somehow.”

“I didn’t think you’d care,” Miss Marlende said, her voice quite cool.

Emilie saw Daniel wince. Fortunately, at that moment, Lord Engal caught up with them. He said, “I’ve sent for the coaches. I presume we’re going back to the airyard immediately?”

Dr Marlende looked both relieved and exasperated. “I assumed you would stay here and coordinate with the Society.”

Lord Engal seemed to find this an astonishing assumption on Dr Marlende’s part. “Of course not. That’s what Elathorn is for. If he isn’t for things like that, then there’s no point in having him.”

“I’m sure he would disagree,” Miss Marlende said.

“I don’t care if he agrees.” As they came out of the big double doors into the morning sun, Lord Engal jammed his hat on his head. “This is going to be a historic encounter and I’m certainly not missing it.”