Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (42 page)

“You have no idea
what you're talking about, do you?”

“None at all.”

“Then stop
talking.”

As we got closer
to topside, a strong and stomach-turning smell invaded my nose.

“Ug!” I grimaced.
“What is
that?!?
It stinks like...raw...something...like petrol...”

“You'll see,” the
Doll said very dryly.

“It just keeps
getting better, doesn't it? I'd complain, but I don't have to nerve to do so in
front of a lady who just underwent emergency surgery.”

“Oh, so you're not
already complaining? I was mistaken.”

“Cute.”

“Sigh...is
everything I do cute to you?”

“Not everything.
Sometimes I'm being sarcastic, if you can recognize such a tone.”

“Apparently,
you
can't.”

By the time we
reached the door to the surface, the smell was nearly overpowering.

“So did it hurt?”
I asked.

“The injury or the
surgery?”

“Either.”

“Both, yes. I
think. Pain exists very strangely to me.”

“How so?”

“It's hard to
explain.”

“Try me.”

“Well,” Dolly
said, “sometimes I wonder if I'm just telling myself I feel pain when I feel
that I should, as if I'm convincing my body to hurt. If that makes any sense.
I'm sure you'll just say, why would anyone claiming sanity ever want to—”

“Because pain is
real,” I interrupted. “It's reaffirming.”

She smirked at me
and wrapped her hand around the door handle.

“You talk like a
writer, Mister Pocket.”

“I should hope
so.”

“And what do I
talk like?” she asked, lowering her voice in a playful whisper.

“You talk like...a
watchmaker's doll.”

She half-frowned.
“Is that the best compliment you can come up with?”

“Why? What's wrong
with it?”

“I don't know. I'd
have to know what such a doll is to know if I should be insulted, so let's not
talk about it.”

“But—”

“Something else.”

I shrugged. “You
seem to be moving well,” I said, noticing her rhythm.

“Thank you. And to
be honest, for a trauma it really wasn't such a bad experience. I got to meet
the captain's cats.”

“Cats?”

“I'll tell you
later. You're going to want to take a moment to brace yourself for this.”

“Why?” I said,
instead of bracing.

She opened the
door to the deck.

And I had my
answer.

“Well...what was
it, Pocket? What was so stirring and surprising and odorous?”

“The sea.”

“The sea, Pocket?”

“The sea, Alan.
The North Sea. I hadn’t realized it, but the pirates had been had piloting
toward the coasts and in the struggle against the Naval steamship, ended up
crash-landing a few miles offshore, smack into the Atlantic.”

“Fitting place to
find a pirate ship. But why the smell?”

“Well, it’s like
this, sir. A sea can be filled with more than water.”

There was nothing
in existence strong enough to pull my hanging jaw back up into a socially
acceptable position as I walked onto the open deck. However bad I had thought
the noxious smell was before, it was now that much worse. Someone eventually
lifted my feet—me, I suspect—and carried them to the edge of the ship. I leaned
over the rail and just stared.

Oil.

And not simply a
drop or a stain or a puddle. It completely surrounded the
Lucidia,
spreading
out in all directions like a blanket of black and swallowing up the surface of
the water. The fallen steamship from which I observed this abnormality was now
approximately three-quarters submerged, the captain informed. It was literally
a black sea that flowed from helm to horizon.

And we were
stranded in the center of it all.

Loose metal debris
softly moved in the great, sulfuric-smelling pool, rising and dipping with
the pushing rhythm of the waves. The Red Priest reminded me of his presence by
offering me a handkerchief, which I graciously accepted.

“What in God’s
name happened?” I asked, covering my nose and mouth with the cloth.

“A lot, Mister
Pocket,” the Priest said, hiding his own face behind a rag. “A very, very lot.”

I sighed and
watched as the waves gurgled and bubbled and rolled away into the distance. The
yellow sun bounced off of the dark surface, and in truth, the whole display
might have been beautiful if it wasn't so disgusting. I tried to ignore the
building nausea that the smell was instilling in me and concentrated on the
sludgy spirals that were forming in the oil. I felt the Doll behind me, staring.
I never looked back to confirm, but her presence at the moment was so actual to
me that I began creating conversations with her in my head.

“What does it look
like to you?” I imagined her saying.

“The end of the
old world,” I would've said back. “The quiet sweeping away of the dust and dirt
of our ancestors. This oil, this lifeblood of new industry, new century, new
life, spilling and covering all that was once here. This is tomorrow's ocean,
Dolly. This is the geography of man's future. Oceans not filled with water and
salt and flakes of skin washed into the mix by the morning swimmers, lungs
expanding and cheeks reddening with each stroke, no. This is an ocean
manufactured of produced substances, of motor oil, engine grease, and iron
filings.”

“Does that bother
you?” I imagined her asking, and since it was only a voice in my head, I
allowed myself to ignore it.

“Hell of a stink,
isn't it?” I said aloud to the Priest. He nodded in agreement.

Kitt in the
meanwhile was pacing like mad, back and forth across the deck. He had removed
the scarf that he normally wore around his waist and coiled it from jaw to
cheeks around his face like some grand serpent. Handkerchiefs for Gren and
Dolly were also produced, while the rest of the crew stayed wisely below surface,
refusing to expose themselves to the toxicity.

“I’ll be damned,”
Gren said. “I’d heard that the Scots were pulling oil outta rocks or something
from the shores of the North Sea, but I didn’t know you could find it floating
out here in the deep.”

“That’s because
you can’t, Gren,” the Priest responded. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“Well, yeah, I
mean, of
course
, it doesn’t! I’m not an idiot, after all! I know the
world wor—“

“So what’s
happened here?” I asked.

“It appears,” the
captain replied, “that we’ve had a little spill.”

“Oh, come on!”
Gren groused. “The
Lucidia’s
a big ship, Priest, but it’s not stuffed
with enough oil to coat this much seawater.”

“Correct. But
we’re not the only toy in the bathtub.”

The Priest
gestured out to some the exposed beams and hunks of metal that poked out from
the oil sea like man-fashioned trees in this petroleum swamp. Confusion dropped
over me as I realized that the scrap did not originate from the broken
Lucidia.

“You mean,” the
Doll spoke, holding her nose, “those are something else’s parts?”

“The Naval ship?”
I suggested. “They were on the way down too.”

“A good guess, but
no,” the Priest said. “Not only are these pieces far too rusty to come from a
fresh crash, but the scene’s missing a key requirement to be proof of our
recent adversaries.”

“And what’s that?”
I asked.

The Priest
adjusted his handkerchief and lowered his voice.

“Bodies.”

Kitt stiffened at
the word and gave me a nervous frown.

“Then…what?” I
asked, stumped. “What’s down there?”

The Red Priest
rested his elbows on the railing before him and sighed.

“London, Mister
Pocket. London.”

His words flew off
with the breeze and stuck themselves thick in the sludge below.

“You look
confused, Alan. Are you keeping along?”

“For a moment, I
thought I was. But then you went and moved London to the bottom of the North
Sea.”

“Oh,
I
didn’t move a thing, friend. But the King did.”

“Who, Neptune?”

“I’m serious.
Alexander.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Neither did I.”

The Priest tapped
his foot in a steady rhythm as he educated us on the situation.

“Boys and girl,”
he spoke, “when the King of England took the throne, what was the state of our
beloved London?”

“It was a pile of
garbage,” Gren replied. “Everyone knows that.”

“Yeeeeees…” the
Priest continued, wagging a finger at us. “And what happened to that garbage
pile city?”

“He cleaned it
up,” Kitt said. “Obviously.”

“Ah! That is where
you’re both right and wrong!”

“Is this a
riddle?”

“It’s easy to say
that the King ‘cleaned up’ old London, put a little spit polish on it, and
rendered it shiny and new—“

“Okay, so he
didn’t
literally
clean the city,” Kitt said, “but he rebuilt it.”

“Indeed. Now, I
ask you, boys and girl—“

“Can you stop
calling us that?” Gren asked.

“—what do you
think became of the old and broken London?”

I glanced out to
the oil sea.

“You aren’t
suggesting…” I began.

“Not every piece
of a broken city can be salvaged,” the Priest pointed out, “and what couldn’t
was hauled away and dumped offshore. Simple as that. This scrap’s been
festering off of the coasts for decades. I’m guessing we collided with a few
disused, sunken machines and squeezed some oil out of them. Just my theory, but
seems plausible enough. Couple that with what our ship’s lost in the crash—“

“So how do we fix
this?” Kitt asked, rather bluntly, while mashing his fingernails nervously into
his palms.

“Fix it?” the
captain cheerfully responded. “We can't fix it. I mean, the
Lucidia
looks to be more or less intact—”

“Then can't we
just take off, fly out of this puddle, or something?”

“I’m afraid not.
We’re partially submerged, after all, and there’s too much weight pushing on
the sunken parts of the
Lucidia
to get her into the air. Besides, the
engine room isn't exactly fully operational. Poor Jack nearly covered himself
in crude and seawater down there while investigating a few leaks.”

“What?!?”

“Well, we did
suffer a crash, Mister Sunner. Only natural that—”

“You mean the
ship’s taking on water?!?”

“
Was
taking,
yes. We've managed to put a stop to that. Well, by 'we,' I am of course
excluding myself. I was a little busy getting Miss Dolly gathered and ready for
her procedure.”

“But the leaks are
stopped, right?”

“Oh, of course. No
need to worry about the
Lucidia
further sinking. Quill assured me that
the doors of all flooded cabins have been properly closed and sealed.”

“That...is your
solution?” Kitt said, his breathing quickening. “Close the doors? Let the rooms
fill and flood? Pocket, did you hear that?”

“Can't say I can
think of a better response,” I said, rather stupidly.

“Look,” the Priest
said gently, “we have this perfectly in control.”

“Like you were in
control earlier?” Kitt snapped.

“That's history
now,” the Priest continued. “Try to calm down. Take deep breaths. Well, maybe
not that. Not out here. But once we're back below, I want you to remember to
breathe deeply. Make a note of it. Mister Pocket, do you have a scrap of paper
on you?”

“Nevermind that!”
Kitt said. “You're telling me that we're stranded here?!?”

“For the time.
From where we’ve landed, I surely wouldn’t recommend we try to swim for shore.
The distance is clearly too great. I think we need properly assess the
situation and begin planning our repairs.” The captain stopped and had a laugh.
“That is, if we’re not found first by our fallen opponents. Or their friends.”

Kitt did not find
the prospect nearly as humorous as his host. His angry eyes looked at me for
reassurance. I shrugged and rubbed my boot's heel into the deck wood.

“That’s another
thing,” Gren spoke up. “That soldier ship was tethered to us when we fell into
a dive. If they aren’t stuck in the sludge with us, then where the hell are
they?”

The Priest
pondered this and tugged on his beard.

“Miss Doll,” he
addressed the girl, “you were the only one to remain conscious during our
landing. Did you happen to notice what became of the others?”

“Um…I was a little
preoccupied,” she responded, hugging the bandages around her stomach.

“Then we have no
answer,” the captain said, sounding disappointed. “It’s possible they managed
to cut their lines prior the crash and touched down somewhere nearby but
unseen, perhaps along the shore.”

“So we have the
Royal Navy to worry about as well!” Kitt groaned. “On top of everything else!”

“Everyone,” the
Priest said, trying to keep order amongst us, “it's been a long day. Why don't
we all retire to my cabin to discuss possible strategy? Fortunately, it had not
sustained any damaged in the collision.”

“Fortunate for
him, maybe,” Kitt mumbled to me. I pretended not to hear it.

“Sounds good,”
Gren said. “I'm tired of smelling this air.”

“Agreed,” the
Priest said.

Dolly bent over
the edge of the ship to the look at the mess, slipped, and let out a
high-pitched “eek.” I caught her by the back of the dress and tugged her back
onboard.

“Thank you,” she
said shyly.

The Priest made a
grand sweeping gesture with his hands and shuffled us down the now-inclined
deck to his personal quarters. The
Lucidia
was resting on a very slight
tilt, and I realized as he opened the door to the room that most if not all of
the cabin had to be dipped beneath the surface of the sea. I had hoped he
wasn't lying about the lack of leaks and damages.