Secrets of the Dragon Tomb (13 page)

“You're angry with me,” Freddie said, throwing himself onto one of the beds.

I didn't bother to reply.

A horn sounded. I braced myself against the window frame as, with a slight jerk, the whole passenger gondola winched up toward the airship's balloon.

Freddie sighed. “We're under way.”

I watched out the window, trying to calm myself, as the tether fell away from the nose of the balloon. Springs engaged, and the enormous propellers began to beat. Slowly, the airship turned and pulled away from its tower.

“Are you going to tell me why you're angry?” Freddie asked after a moment.

“What did you show that clerk?” I demanded.

Freddie folded his hands behind his head. “Not sure what you mean, old chap.”

“Oh, don't play the fool, Freddie. I saw you.” I pushed away from the window.

“Can't hide much from you, can I? I showed him the identification of an Imperial Martian Airship Commissioner.”

“You're not a commissioner.”

“I got the papers from the men I sold the carriage to. I thought everything might go more easily if I had some official papers.”

I shook my head angrily. “I don't believe half of what you're saying. I know you're not an idiot, and your stories don't hold up. What are you really up to?”

He turned a perfectly blank face to me. Normally, I could read every emotion on Freddie's face as easily as I could read my magazines. Right now, I couldn't get a thing.

“You're either going to tell me,” I said, “or I'm going to tell Putty and Livvy everything I know and everything I've seen. I'm going to make sure they're as suspicious of you as I am. I'm not going to let you lie to us and put us in danger anymore.”

Freddie sighed, then gestured me over. “If I tell you, Edward, you can't tell anyone else. Not even your sisters. Do you understand? It's important.”

Reluctantly, I nodded.

He let out a deep breath. “Very well. I'm not a student at Oxford—well, I am a student, but that's just cover. I work for the British-Martian Intelligence Service. I'm a spy.”

“You?” I choked out. “A spy?” I felt the color rise in my cheeks, and my throat tightened until it hurt. “You can't be.”

Freddie was a spy? Freddie was an idiot! A famous idiot.
I
was the one who wanted to be a spy. It felt like he'd stolen something from me. I'd rather he punched me in the gut.

Freddie shrugged. “I wouldn't be very good at my job if it was easy to believe. You're not
supposed
to suspect me.” He leaned forward on the bed, bringing himself closer to me. His voice was scarcely more than a whisper. “When Sir Titus Dane disappeared so suddenly ten years ago, the service thought he must be up to something. They'd been keeping an eye on him, but he managed to slip away. They didn't track him down again until a couple of years ago, when they found him working under the identity of Professor Alfred Westfield at King's College, Oxford.” He gave half a grin. “That's where I came in. I'd already been recruited by the Intelligence Service when I turned sixteen. The service often recruits promising candidates young and directs our education and careers.”

“That was when you suddenly turned into a blithering idiot,” I said.

He smiled. “It was cover. Trust me, when you get to that age, most people are half expecting you to turn into an idiot, so no one was surprised. People are much more likely to let something slip if they think you're stupid. Anyway, by the time the Intelligence Service uncovered Sir Titus's new identity, my training was complete. I was the right age and from the right background, so I was sent to Oxford to spy on him.”

“I'm guessing you found out what he was up to,” I said. My voice sounded hollow. “What's it got to do with the map you stole?”

“Copied, not stole. It took me almost two years to find anything, but one day he must have been called away in a hurry. I found the dragon tomb map he was trying to decode, shoved under a pile of papers in a drawer in his office. When Sir Titus disappeared from Mars, he'd been disgraced. He'd led three missions that had discovered and opened dragon tombs, but he'd been stealing their locations from other archaeologists. Society turned against him.”

“Mama seemed happy to see him,” I said.

Freddie nodded. “Sir Titus Dane was an important man. Most people wouldn't have anything to do with him, but he still had friends and admirers. The Danes are an old family, and his dragon tombs gave British Mars some of its most spectacular inventions. But even before his disgrace, Sir Titus had been frustrated that the profit from his discoveries had gone to British Mars rather than to Sir Titus himself. He had no interest in helping his country, only in increasing his own wealth and fame. What the British Martian government paid him wasn't enough for the likes of Sir Titus Dane.”

“So he's been trying to find a dragon tomb on his own?” I said. Despite myself, I was being drawn into the story. “Using this secret map?”

“With the intention of selling the discoveries to whoever would pay the most. Part of my job was watching what he was doing and who he was meeting. He'd started receiving secret visitors late at night. At least one of them was a French agent. You understand what that means? He would've sold the discoveries to the Emperor Napoleon. Neither Earth nor Mars can afford to put more power into that madman's hands.”

“But Sir Titus couldn't decode it,” I said. “That's the whole point, isn't it?”

“Maybe. But he'd been working on it for years. I didn't know how close he was.”

And wasn't
that
convenient? I paced the floor, my footsteps swallowed by the thick rug. “Why didn't you destroy the map?” I said. “Or steal it? Unless you really wanted it for yourself.”

“I won't deny that British Mars would like what's in the dragon tomb, but that's not the main reason. Sir Titus would have copies. He's not a stupid man.”

“So you made a duplicate,” I said. “And then you came to us. You brought those men with you.”

Freddie sighed. “I never meant to. I'd heard about your father's water abacus. I thought I could use it to decode the map, and if I could do it before Sir Titus, British Mars would be able to open the tomb. The discoveries would benefit everyone.”

“So how's that turning out?” I said.

He ducked his head. “I made a mistake. Somehow, they were onto me.”

“A mistake?” I spat. “You got Mama, Papa, and Jane kidnapped. You nearly got Putty and Olivia killed. You destroyed our house and Papa's inventions.” I kicked the writing desk. “God, Freddie. Was it really that important?”

“Yes!” He pushed himself off the bed and grabbed my shoulder. “The technology used by the people who built the dragon tombs was far more advanced than anything we have. Those aren't just toys in there. There are terrifying weapons. We can't allow them to fall into French hands. The Emperor Napoleon has turned his eyes toward Mars. If we give him the means, he will invade.”

“Then you should have asked!” I snapped, pulling myself free from his grip. “The government should have asked. Papa would have helped.”

“Sir Titus still has friends in high places. He still has influence and wealth. We couldn't risk it. If he'd found out—”

“If he'd found out,” I said bitterly, “it would've been no worse than the mess you've managed to make.”

I stalked back to the window. The tempo of the engines increased, and the airship picked up speed. I watched as we curved out over the city, avoiding the spreading plumes of smoke and steam from the vast manufactories in the north of the city.

Freddie in the British-Martian Intelligence Service. It was a joke.

“Edward,” Freddie said urgently, “you
mustn't
tell anyone of this.”

I nodded grimly, still not looking back at him. “I promised, didn't I? I'll keep my word.”

“We should change into some clean clothes,” Freddie said. “I'm not happy leaving the girls alone for too long.”

*   *   *

Freddie had done a good job of picking out clothes for me. The breeches, waistcoat, and jacket fit perfectly. The sleeves of my shirt were a bit long, but I pulled them up under my jacket to hide them. He'd even managed to find a pair of shoes that were my exact size.

He'd done even better with Olivia. When she came out of her cabin half an hour later, she was already blushing. She was wearing a gown exactly the same color as her eyes, and it was far tighter than anything I'd ever seen her wear. Even Freddie seemed surprised. He gaped at her. I had to nudge him to break his trance.

“I, ah, trust you were able to find something that suited? The storekeeper assured me the gowns were the height of fashion in both Tharsis City and London. Um.”

Olivia blushed even more deeply.

“Oh, for heaven's sake!” Putty pushed her way past Olivia. “Are we going to stand in the doorway all day long?” Putty was wearing the exact same thing as me. I hid a grin.

“Ah, quite,” Freddie managed. He was still staring at Olivia. For once, I thought, he wasn't putting on the impression of imbecility. I was used to men making fools of themselves over Jane, or even Mama, if they were men of a certain age, but I'd never seen it happen with Olivia, and by the looks of it, neither had she. A shy smile spread across her face.

“So,” Putty said enthusiastically. “Do we get to see it?”

Freddie blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“The map,” Putty said. “The one you stole from Sir Titus.”

“Copied.”

“Whatever. Can we see it?”

Freddie glanced around, as though he thought someone might be watching. The door leading to the corridor was firmly closed and latched.

With a nod, he summoned us over. He reached into his sleeve and drew out a rolled sheet of paper. We crowded around the table as he smoothed it out. The map showed a steep valley with several towers of rock. To one side, a symbol had been drawn.

“That symbol on its own always means ‘dragon tomb,'” Freddie said, pointing to it. “It's unmistakable.”

Across the top of the sheet, Freddie had copied several lines of symbols and pictures in a neat hand.

“What are those?” Olivia asked, her finger trailing across the symbols.

“Ah!” Freddie said. “Well noticed. They're called ideograms.”

I squinted. “I've read about them.”

Freddie looked up at me. “I'm impressed. Not many people study the Ancient Martian civilization. Where did you read about ideograms?”

I coughed, suddenly remembering and wishing I'd kept my mouth shut. “In
Thrilling Martian Tales
,” I mumbled.

“Edward gets everything he knows from
Thrilling Martian Tales
,” Putty said.

“Oh, that's not fair!” Olivia said, her lips twitching. “He also reads
Unlikely Adventure Stories
.”

“The point is,” I said, “they're what the Ancient Martian tyrants used to write their commandments and their, um, death warrants and…” Now that I thought about it,
Thrilling Martian Tales
had been a bit thin on the details. “Anyway, they're a language,” I finished.

“Almost,” Freddie said, smiling. “But it's a little more complicated than that. They're not the kind of writing we're used to. The symbols and pictures are called ideograms because each one stands for a particular
idea.
That stork”—he pointed to a weird drawing of a bird standing on one leg in the middle of the first line—“means balance, or the equal flow of energy in and out. The cloud next to it represents abstract thought. And so on. When you put them together, the ideograms act a little like a sentence.”

“But you know what the ideograms mean?” I said. “Why can't you read it?”

“It's not that easy. The ideograms don't mean the same when they're together as when they're on their own. They interact with each other to give information, and you have to know how they interact to find out what has been written.”

“And you don't.”

“No.” Freddie scratched at his temple. “Think of it this way. Just because you know all the letters of the alphabet, that doesn't mean you can understand a word you've never seen before. It's even worse if you don't even know what language it's in. The word might be in English or French or German or Spanish, except when you're dealing with ideograms, it's as if there are ten thousand languages and you have no clue as to which one is being used. That's why you need a key.”

“What kind of key?” I asked.

Freddie straightened. “A key is just a set of symbols that give us a hint as to how to read the ideograms.”

“And there's no key?”

Freddie slapped his hand on the table. “No. And there's
always
a key! Without one, it's completely meaningless. It would take us a hundred years to try every key we've discovered, and even then it might be written using a key we've never come across before. Someone didn't want us to be able to read this.”

“But with Papa's water abacus…” Putty said, eyes lighting up.

“Exactly! The abacus is a powerful computational device capable of running hundreds of calculations each minute. It could complete every possible combination using every key.”

And in about eleven days, Sir Titus would have a new abacus. Then he wouldn't need our family anymore.

Olivia bent over the map, frowning. “Why do we need to translate anything? Can't we just find a valley that matches what's shown on the map?”

“Unfortunately not,” Freddie said. “The Lunae Planum around the Martian Nile is riddled with narrow valleys like that. There are hundreds of them, and the map is almost two thousand years old. Even on the Lunae Planum, where it scarcely rains, the valleys have changed shape. It would be impossible to find the right valley simply from the map.”