Johnny Graphic and the Etheric Bomb (15 page)

One morning she had been strolling through a stone formation and came into a black tunnel lit only by her gentle green glow. At that moment the futility of this whole adventure struck her like a blow. To come all this way! To make a new friend! And to lose him so soon! To be all alone again!

Bao squatted down on her haunches and started to sob and sniffle and rub out tears that didn’t exist.

Then, from out of nowhere, came a voice. A living person’s voice. An old woman’s voice.

“Hullo? Who’s there?”

Bao whimpered in reply.

“Can you see me? Can you see the light?”

Bao didn’t say anything, but sniffled again.

“Come out please. I won’t hurt you, you know. If you’re lost I can help you.”

The voice came from the front of the tunnel, somewhere around a bend in the stone passage. Bao very nearly nipped into the pink rock. Because living people who could see her had never talked to her, had always seemed afraid of her. She could no longer stand the horrified looks on their faces when they came upon her. But this time she stayed.

She could hear the shuffle of heavy feet coming her way. Then a dim orange light flickered around the bend in the tunnel and there she was. An old woman in a gaudy, dirty gown of some kind, her mousy hair grimy and tangled. She had a long, gloomy face and dark circles under her eyes.

“I don’t know what to do, Grandmother,” Bao blurted out as she stood up.

The old woman edged closer and held her lamp up to the little ghost. “My dear, what’s your name?”

“Bao.”

“And I’m called Dame Honoria,” the old woman said. “Little one, how did you come to be here?”

“I came with my friend Evvie from the first island. We flew over the water.”

“What do you mean, ‘first island’?”

“Where they made the first bomb.”

The old woman’s face looked shocked, baffled. “What kind of bomb?”

“A bomb with ghosts inside it,” Bao answered. “The thing that truly kills them.”

The old woman seemed as if she had suddenly been transported somewhere else, her mind apparently churning—as though Bao weren’t even there. After a moment, she returned her attention to the little girl ghost. “My dear, did they explode the first bomb?”

For the first time since she became a ghost, Bao felt a connection with a living human. She felt that, somehow, she could trust this person.

“I do not know, Grandmother,” said Bao. “They brought us here, for the second bomb. I thought I wanted to go into the bomb, to truly die. But I was afraid to. My friend Evvie went into it, and I miss him.”

Bao wobbled closer, gazing up—her chin quivering. The old woman was by no means tall, but she towered over the diminutive specter.

Bao tried to take the old woman’s hand, but her fingers passed right through the living flesh and bones—as if through fog. The girl winced and began to cry again, as a profound sadness filled every part of her.

“I want…”

Sob.

“…to hold…”

Sniff.

“…your hand…”

Sigh.

“…Grandmother…”

Sob.

“…but I cannot.”

Bao didn’t need to, but she dragged her sleeve across her nose—just as a real little girl with a real runny nose would do.

“You can hold my hand, if you are willing to work,” said Dame Honoria. “Are you afraid of working?”

Bao vigorously shook her head. “When I was alive I carried water. I helped with the food.”

“Will you help me, then?”

“Yes, Grandmother,” Bao said, “I will. I will help you.”

The old woman reached down and took the little ghost’s hand, gripping it as a real hand grips a real hand.

That warm, solid flesh felt wonderful—the most wonderful thing Bao had known in many a long century.

She threw herself at Dame Honoria, hugging her tightly, as best she could—being so small in relation to the old woman’s fat stomach.

Chapter 29

Monday, October 28, 1935

Old Number One

Ozzie grasped Dame Honoria firmly by the left elbow as they crunched up the old shell road, past corrugated tin buildings in various states of decrepitude. Four spectral guards trudged behind the unhappy couple, swords drawn—as if the famous suffragist might scamper off into the jungle. Her scampering days, she regretted, were far behind her.

As they marched along, Dame Honoria ominously noted that the profusion of ghosts that had greeted her arrival on Old Number One was no longer profuse. A handful of wraiths were mooning about, looking typically ghostly and gloomy. But most of those thousands of specters had vanished. Now she understood why.

When she had discovered Bao in the tunnel, and heard the little ghost’s story, all the pieces began to click into place. Will and Lydia Graphic, along with Mongke Eng, had come up with a theory of etheric power—how ghosts’ “bodies” might be converted into energy in the physical realm. She knew that the three of them had worked on this theory purely as an intellectual exercise, as scientists often do.

Still, it could explain why Mongke Eng died with a spear in his chest. Why the others were killed. Someone is trying to build an etheric bomb, and they’re murdering outsiders who might understand the science. But why then, Dame Honoria wondered, am I still alive and kicking? Couldn’t they simply have done me in back on Gorton Island?

“So the etheric bomb exists, then, Ozzie?” she asked offhandedly, as they passed under some palms that arched over the road.

“Absolutely, of course it—”

Ozzie instantly looked mortified, and muttered a profanity. “Just shut up, you miserable old cow,” he snapped. “You’re to be told nothing until the khan himself informs you.”

“I’m to see the khan then,” sniffed Dame Honoria. “How grand.”

Ozzie looked as if he wanted to slap her.

What a horrendous situation, thought Dame Honoria. Ozzie had confirmed the little girl ghost’s story. The bomb existed. Apparently, more than one. But how in the world could she, a captive old woman, throw a wrench in the works? How could she prevent this horror from proceeding?

And to think that this morning had started off so encouragingly, with the unexpected appearance of one of her red-leather suitcases on the cave floor near her cot. She hadn’t even had a chance to unpack it back on Gorton Island before Ozzie and his friends had hustled her off to Old Number One.

When she had popped the suitcase open this morning, all her things were there. Her Gorton’s toothpaste and toothbrush. Her Gorton’s aspirin and iodine. Her Gorton’s vanishing cream and makeup. Her unmentionables. Even her necklace with the big black diamond, cozy in its pigskin case.

At least Ozzie had done her one good deed.

Another ten minutes of sweaty trudging brought them up to the general offices of her father’s failed cassava operation. It was a long, low structure built of weathered teak logs, with a canted metal roof that provided ample shade. It showed decades of abandonment in its broken windows, rotted front staircase, and sagging foundation. Out in front of it, more Steppe Warriors and other unsavory-looking wraiths were lounging about.

“In you go,” Ozzie commanded.

Dame Honoria carefully picked her way up the staircase. Once inside, amid the rotting walls and dank aroma of decay, she experienced a rush of memories. The days she’d spent in here as a young girl came flooding back. Running up and down the hallways. Dragooning favorite employees to come and play tea party with her. Or hide and seek. Or dollhouse. Happy days.

“Remember where the old man’s office was?” asked Ozzie.

“Of course I know where Papa’s office was. I’m not off to the races quite yet, Ozzie.”

Dame Honoria sniffed and took a crisp left at the first turning in the main hallway. The floor was filthy with years of grime, guano, and the bones of small animals. Still, some of the old paintings remained on the walls—hanging at odd angles, moldering, but yet viewable. Scenes from the estate in Gilbeyshire. Papa’s favorite race horse. The old portrait of a young Honoria, gripping her Sweet Sally doll like grim death.

Passing one of the doors, she heard odd groaning sounds. Before Ozzie could stop her, she pushed it open and briefly saw two men and a woman—not ghosts, but alive—lying on the filthy floor, bound and gagged. They were wearing white laboratory coats. Three pairs of desperate eyes widened when they saw her.

Ozzie dragged Dame Honoria aside and slammed the door shut. He herded her down the hallway, toward the last door on the left.

“Who are those people?” she snapped. “And why are they being held like that?”

Ozzie steered Dame Honoria forward. “Into Papa’s office with you.”

He gave her a mighty shove and in she staggered, barely avoiding a tumble. The door slammed shut behind her.

For a brief moment her outrage ebbed away. For here was another dear memory—her father’s handsome old desk. It had been made from the ash timbers of a whaler that wrecked up on Old Number One’s rocky northern shore. If I get out of this alive, she thought, I shall come back and reclaim this desk and—

The door to the adjoining room creaked open, and a trim young woman in khaki safari clothes came in. Not a ghost, but a living person. Her face was a perfect oval and her hair, gathered on top in a bun, was the lightest and purest of blondes. She had bright green eyes and an oval face with a flawless complexion. Pretty in a way. She looks oddly familiar, thought Dame Honoria, though I’m dashed if I can recall from where. Is
she
the khan?

Then a gloomy figure, also dressed in safari togs, stepped in after the young woman. He had a kind of horsey face and a grim intensity about his eyes, which peered out from beneath a pith helmet. He removed it and regarded Dame Honoria.

He was not a ghost, but a strange-looking creature nonetheless. He had a long, hard face with a jutting jaw. Thick, dark, tangled hair clung to his head. Dark circles framed his burning eyes. He was somehow ungainly—his body at odds with itself, as if it couldn’t quite decide what it wanted to be, how it wanted to move. Dame Honoria blinked at him. A dank, earthy smell filled her nostrils.

This bizarre personage surveyed her, offered a wan smile, then said, as if he’d been away only a few hours, “Hullo, Mummy.”

Dame Honoria gasped. Her pulse raced. She wondered if she was about to have a heart attack.

“Percy? Sweetums? Is that you?”

It was definitely her little darling’s voice. No doubt of that. But she noticed something oddly off-kilter about him, besides the face. Before, Percy had been slender and unathletic. Now he seemed to have the muscles of a day laborer.

Dame Honoria shuffled a few steps closer, for a better look.

“But you’ve changed
, haven’t you?”

Chapter 30

Tuesday, October 29, 1935

Majuro Island

The Como Eagle lifted neatly up off the aquamarine waters of Majuro Island just after sunrise, its four 1,200-horsepower engines roaring. The morning had been perfectly clear, with the dark blue sky retreating west. Johnny and his traveling companions had spent the night on Majuro, after a grueling flight from the Orchid Isles. And it was twenty-six hundred miles to Landfall Island, the Eagle’s next stop. Fourteen or so hours of cruising along, two miles above the waves.

Half an hour before takeoff Johnny had stepped onto the Eagle’s sea wing and entered through the cabin door. His photographer’s backpack hung over his shoulder. Inside the backpack was the brand new Zoom press camera that Uncle Louie had bought for him in Silver City. It was awfully nice, but he missed his old, smashed-up Zoom 4x5. He had taken a lot of swell pictures with that camera. And it had saved his life.

For the takeoff, Danny had allowed Johnny to come up and sit on the flight deck in the empty seat next to Nina. His honorary cousin was happily running the radio gear—twirling dials and sounding very official as she talked to the Majuro control tower. Johnny wasn’t about to let Sparks get a swollen head or anything, but he was impressed. It looked a lot more complicated than taking pictures. Nina was smart all right. But Johnny bet she wouldn’t have the sneakiness to do some of the things he had done—like ambush those lazy sewermen and take their picture.

Uncle Louie handled the takeoff. And as far as Johnny could tell he did it perfectly. Danny didn’t say anything, but he nodded his head in approval. Uncle Louie took the Eagle up to a cruising altitude of ten thousand feet, as Majuro faded away behind them. Then he handed the controls to Danny and went back to the navigator’s desk, next to Johnny’s seat.

“I’m going to figure out our bearings and align the magnetic compass on the south-by-southwest line,” he explained to Johnny. “Then I double-check things with the RDF, the radio direction finder. When you take an aeroboat across a huge ocean like this, your navigation is just as vital as the airworthiness of your ship. Get lost out here, and you’re as good as dead. When I finish, Danny’ll set the autopilot and let go of the yoke. At this point, flying a big aeroboat is easier than driving an automobile. The aircraft flies itself.”

After a half hour with the pilots and Sparks, Johnny started to get bored and excused himself. He climbed back down into the passenger cabin and pulled the newest issue of the
Captain Justice Adventures
magazine out of his backpack. Mel was in the rear of the cabin, reading some etheristic journal.

From his starboard window seat Johnny caught a clear view of the ghost troopers of the First Zenith Cavalry Brigade galloping along just outside, whooping and hollering at the glorious new day. He had never seen the boys look happier.

He planned to spend most of the flight reading his magazine. The picture on the cover was splendid. It showed Captain Justice—in his red cape and streamlined helmet—swinging on a jungle vine, about to knock the stuffing out of the Pirate King of Paranga. More than ever, Johnny felt a kinship with the captain, who had dedicated his life to the battle against dark conspiracies.

It kind of irritated Johnny that they had been forced to stay in the Orchid Isles for three whole days. He was terrifically anxious to find Dame Honoria and then start the new hunt for his long-lost parents. But one of the Como Eagle’s engines had developed a problem and needed a new part, which had to be flown in from La Concha.