Goliath (7 page)

“Most intriguing,” Dr. Barlow said.

“Aye, but what
is
it?” Dylan asked.

“As a biologist, I’m sure I don’t know.” The lady boffin lifted Bovril from Klopp’s shoulder. “But our perspicacious friend has been watching and listening all night.”

She placed the loris on the floor. It immediately clambered onto the machine, sniffing the batteries, the control panel, and finally the three glass spheres. While it moved, it kept up a steady nonsense conversation with
Dr. Barlow’s loris, the two beasts repeating the names of electrikal parts and concepts to each other.

Alek watched with bemusement. He’d always wondered how Dr. Barlow had expected these creatures to keep the Ottomans out of the war. They were charming enough but hardly likely to sway an entire empire toward Darwinism. He half suspected they had been only a ruse, an excuse to take the
Leviathan
to Istanbul, and that the real plan had always been to force the strait with the behemoth.

But was there more to these lorises than met the eye?

Finally Bovril reached out a hand toward Dr. Barlow, who only frowned. But the beast on her shoulder seemed to understand. It slipped its tiny hands behind the woman’s head and unclasped her necklace.

Dr. Barlow raised an eyebrow as the creature handed her jewelry over to Bovril.

“What in blazes—,” Dylan began, but the lady boffin waved him silent.

Bovril held the necklace close to one of the glass spheres, and a trickle of lightning leapt out, creating a shivering connection between the pendant and the glass sphere.

“Magnetic,” Bovril said.

The creature swung the pendant, and the tiny finger of light followed it back and forth. When Bovril pulled
the necklace away, the lightning seemed to lose interest, retreating back into its glass sphere.

“God’s wounds,” Alek said softly. “That’s quite odd.”

“What’s that necklace made of, madam?” asked Klopp.

“The pendant is steel.” Dr. Barlow nodded. “Quite ferrous, I should think.”

“So it’s for detecting metal.” Klopp pushed himself to his feet, then brought his cane up. As its steel tip drew close to one of the spheres, another trickle of lightning leapt out to meet it.

“Why would you need such a thing?” Dylan asked.

Klopp fell back into his chair. “You might use it to discover land mines. Though it’s quite sensitive, so perhaps you could find a buried telegraph line. Or a buried treasure! Who knows?”

“Treasure!” Bovril declared.

“Telegraph lines? Pirate treasure?” Dylan shook his head. “Those hardly sound like things you’d find in Siberia.”

Alek took a cautious step closer, squinting at the machine. The three glass spheres had settled into a jittering pattern, each tiny finger of lightning pointing in a different direction. “What’s it detecting now?”

“One’s aimed straight back at the stern,” Dylan said. “And the other two are pointed up and toward the bow.”

The two lorises made a rumbling sound.

“Of course,” Hoffman said. “Most of the
Leviathan
is wood and flesh. But the engines are full of metal.”

Dylan whistled. “They must be two hundred yards away.”

“Yes, it’s a clever machine,” Klopp said. “Even if it was designed by a madman.”

“I just wonder what he’s looking for.” The lady boffin stroked Tazza’s fur as she contemplated the device, then turned and walked toward the door. “Well, I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough. Mr. Sharp, see that all this is hidden away in a locked storeroom. And please don’t mention it to the crew, any of you.”

Alek frowned. “But won’t this . . . boffin fellow be wondering where it is?”

“Indeed.” Dr. Barlow gave him a smile as she slipped through the door. “And watching him squirm with curiosity should prove most interesting.”

Alek headed back toward his stateroom soon after, wanting to get an hour’s sleep before they arrived at their destination. He should have gone straight to Count Volger, he supposed, but he was too exhausted to endure a barrage of questions from the man. So instead Alek whistled for a message lizard when he reached his room.

When the creature appeared, Alek said, “Count Volger,
we shall arrive at our destination within the hour. But I still have no idea where that is. The cargo contained a Clanker machine of some kind. More later, when I’ve had some sleep. End message.”

Alek smiled as the creature scuttled away into its tube. He’d never sent Volger a message lizard before, but it was high time the man accepted that the beasts were part of life here aboard the
Leviathan
.

Not bothering to remove his boots, Alek stretched out on his bunk. His eyes closed, but he could still see the glass tubes and shining metal parts of the mysterious device. His exhausted mind began to play a game of putting together its pieces, counting screws and measuring with calipers.

He groaned, wishing the thoughts would let him sleep. But mechanikal puzzles had taken over his brain. Perhaps this proved he was a Clanker at heart and there would never be a place for him aboard a Darwinist ship.

Alek sat up to pull off his jacket. There was something large in the pocket. Of course. The newspaper he’d borrowed from Volger.

He pulled it out; it was folded open to the photograph of Dylan. In all the excitement about the strange device, he’d forgotten to show it to the boy. Alek lay back down, his bleary eyes skimming across the text.

It really was the most atrocious writing, as breathless and overblown as the articles Malone had written about Alek. But it was a relief to see someone else’s virtues extolled in the reporter’s purple prose.

Who knows what rampant destruction might have been visited upon the crowd had the valiant midshipman not acted so quickly? He surely has bravery running in his veins, being the nephew of an intrepid airman, one Artemis Sharp, who perished in a calamitous ballooning fire only a few years ago.

A little shudder went through Alek at the words—Dylan’s father again. It was strange how the man kept coming up. Was there some clue about the family secret here?

Alek shook his head, dropping the newspaper to the floor. Dylan would tell him the family secret when he was ready.

More important, Alek hadn’t slept a wink all night. He lay back down, forcing his eyes closed again. The airship would reach its destination soon.

But as Alek lay there, his mind would not stop spinning.

So many times Dylan would come close to telling him something momentous. But each time he pulled away. No matter what promises Alek made, however many
secrets of his own he told Dylan, the boy didn’t trust him completely.

Perhaps he never would, because he simply couldn’t bring himself to confide in a prince, an imperial heir, a waste of hydrogen like Alek. No doubt that was it.

It was a long, restless time before he finally fell asleep.

It was Newkirk who spotted them first.

He was up in a Huxley ascender, a thousand feet above the
Leviathan
in the cold white sky. His flight suit was stuffed with old rags to keep him from freezing, making his arms and legs bulge, like a tattie bogle waving semaphore flags. . . .

T-R-E-E-S—A-L-L—D-O-W-N—A-H-E-A-D.

Deryn lowered her field glasses. “Did you get that, Mr. Rigby?”

“Aye,” the bosun said. “But I’ve no idea what it means.”

“
T
-
R
-
E
-
E
-
S
,” Bovril added helpfully from Deryn’s shoulder. The beastie could read semaphore as fast as any of the crew, but couldn’t turn letters into words. Not yet, anyway.

“Perhaps he’s seen a clearing. Shall I go up to the bow for a look, sir?”

Mr. Rigby nodded, then signaled to the winch man to give Newkirk more altitude. Deryn headed forward, making her way through the colony of fléchette bats scattered across the great airbeast’s head.

“
D
-
O
-
W
-
N
,” Bovril said.

“Aye, beastie, that spells ‘down.’ ”

Bovril repeated the word, then shivered in the cold.

Deryn was feeling the cold too, on top of her night of missing sleep. Barking Alek and his love of contraptions. Sixteen long hours putting the mysterious machine together, and they still had no idea what its purpose was! An utter waste of time, and yet it was the happiest she’d seen Alek since the two of them had returned to the
Leviathan
.

Gears and electricals were all the boy really cared about, however much he claimed to love the airship. Just like Deryn, who’d spent a whole month in Istanbul without ever feeling at home among walkers and steam pipes. Perhaps Clankers and Darwinists would always be at war, if only in their hearts.

When she reached the prow of the ship, Deryn raised her field glasses to scan the horizon. A moment later she saw the trees.

“Barking spiders.” The words coiled like smoke in the freezing air.

“Down,” Bovril said.

Ahead of the airship was an endless fallen forest. Countless trees lay on their sides, plucked clean, as if a huge wind had blown them over and stripped their branches and leaves. Strangest of all, every stripped-bare trunk was pointed in the same direction: southwest. At the moment, straight at Deryn.

She’d heard of hurricanes strong enough to yank trees up from the ground, but no hurricane could make landfall here, thousands of miles from any ocean. Was there some manner of Siberian storm she’d never heard of, with icicles flying like scythes through the forest?

She whistled for a message lizard, staring uneasily at the fallen trees while she waited. When the lizard appeared, Deryn made her report, trying to keep the fear from her voice. Whatever had cut down these full-grown evergreens, which had been as hard as nails and sunk deep into the frozen tundra, would tear an airship to bits in seconds.

She made her way back to the winch, where Mr. Rigby was still taking signals from Newkirk. The Huxley was almost a mile above the ship now, its swollen hydrogen sack a dark squick upon the sky.

The bosun dropped his glasses. “At least thirty miles across, he says.”

“Blisters,” Deryn swore. “Might an earthquake have done this, sir?”

Mr. Rigby gave this a think, then shook his head. “Mr. Newkirk says all the fallen trees point outward, toward the edges of the destruction. No earthquake would’ve been that neat. Nor would a storm.”

Deryn imagined a great force spreading out in all directions from a central point, knocking down trees and stripping them as clean as matchsticks as it passed.

An explosion . . .

“But we can’t stand here theorizing.” Mr. Rigby raised his field glasses again. “The captain has ordered us to prepare for a rescue. There are people down there, it seems.”

A quarter hour later Newkirk’s flags began to wave again.

“
B
. . .
O
. . .
N
. . .
E
. . .
S
,” Bovril announced, its sharp eyes needing no field glasses to read the distant signals.

“God in heaven,” Mr. Rigby breathed.

“But he can’t mean ‘
bones
,’ sir,” Deryn said. “He’s too high up to see anything as small as that!”

She stared ahead, trying to think what letters poor shivering Newkirk might have sent wrong.
Domes? Homes?
Was he was begging for some hot
scones
to be sent up?

Deryn wished she could be aloft herself, and not stuck down here wondering. But the captain wanted her
standing by for a gliding descent, to prepare for a landing in rough terrain.

“Did you feel that shudder, lad?” Mr. Rigby pulled off a glove, kneeling to place his bare hand on the ship’s skin. “The airbeast is unhappy.”

“Aye, sir.” Another shiver passed along the cilia on the membrane, like a gust of wind through grass. Deryn smelled something in the air, the scent of corrupted meat.

“Bones,” Bovril said, staring straight ahead.

As Deryn raised her field glasses, she felt a trickle of cold sweat inside her flight suit. There they were on the horizon, a dozen huge columns arcing into the air. . . .

It was the rib cage of a dead airbeast, half the size of the
Leviathan
and gleaming white in the sun. The ribs looked like the skeletal fingers of two giant hands, clutching the wreck of a gondola between them.

No wonder the giant creature beneath her feet was twitchy.

“Mr. Rigby, sir, there’s an airship wreck ahead.”

The bosun dropped his gaze to the horizon, then let out a whistle.

“Do you think it got caught in the explosion, sir?” she asked. “Or whatever it was?”

“No, lad. Airbeast bones are hollow. The force that snapped all these trees would’ve shattered them. The poor beastie must have come along afterward.”