Arachnodactyl (10 page)

“Ain’t that magic?” Sharp asked. “We can’t have open flames when the converters are running. The gas in the cells burns real easy. These lights are like tiny fires made by the generator up there.” He pointed at the ceiling. “But the flame is contained inside the glass bulb. It doesn’t need air. It doesn’t give off smoke. Something, ain’t it?”

Ikey nodded in agreement. He hadn’t seen an electric light so close up before. The brilliance of it squeezed his eyes.

Sharp led Ikey through a short series of empty rooms and explained what each one would be. As he did so, he paused and pointed to each electric light they passed and said, “There’s one.” As they passed through a small galley, they came across three men working to assemble a row of pantries along a wall. Other than them, Ikey saw no one else on his tour.

Finally, Sharp’s tour came to an end as they passed through a steel door and entered a sweltering room lined floor to ceiling with steel plating. Against the far wall sat a squat boiler. Bins brimming with coal surrounded them. Before the boiler sat a half-filled hopper.

From a barrel strapped into a corner, Sharp pulled out a shovel and handed it to Ikey. He then bent over next to the hopper and plucked a shovel off the floor. With the shovel’s blade he pulled back the boiler door.

“It’s like shoveling manure,” Sharp said. “If you put your back into it, if you keep swinging your upper body like so, you won’t tire so fast.”

Sharp demonstrated, and several shovelfuls of coal disappeared into the smoldering orange light. “Now you. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Ikey held the shovel before him and stared into the fire. The coals shimmered. The shifting light made them look mellifluous, as if he poked them, he’d pierce a thin membrane and their light would run out in rivulets to the bottom of the boiler. It was a beautiful sight. But Admiral Daughton hadn’t mentioned shoveling coal. Surely he could have gotten any urchin off the street to do this. He glanced up at Sharp. The coal’s light glistened off his wet, yellowed teeth.

“Surely you’ve shoveled manure before. Ain’t nothing to it.”

“The engine room,” Ikey said, barely above the hiss of the fire.

Sharp cupped a dirty ear in a grimy hand. “What you say?”

“I thought we were going to see the engine room.”

“Engine room? Ha! Man, you don’t want nothing to do with any engine room. Ain’t nothing going on up there all day but Cross and Wendy screaming at one another. Ain’t nothing to do up there. Ain’t nothing to see, either. Wendy won’t let you anywhere near the damned hullabaloo up there. And it smells bad, too.”

Sharp wrinkled his nose. Ikey’s disappointment and discomfort kept him from laughing at the man’s nerve of complaining about an odor.

“No, sir,” Sharp said as he wiped a hairy arm across the sweat of his brow. “This is where you’re needed. Ain’t nothing on this ship can happen without steam, and there ain’t steam without no coal. Now get to shoveling.”

Sharp scooped a shovelful of coal and slipped it into the furnace. A pulse of hot air puffed against Ikey. He thought of the steam-powered thresher he had fixed once, and the pleased looks of delight on the faces of both his dad and the estate manager. It was one of the few times Ikey saw physical evidence that he was appreciated, wanted, or needed. Fixing things made him feel necessary. Shoveling coal would not impress Cross or help make up for the rough start he got yesterday. Regardless, it was work that needed to be done. He stabbed the shovel at the pile of coal before him and lifted. Half the coal slid off the blade, and half of what remained tumbled off as Ikey moved the blade to the furnace. When he had deposited the remaining coal into the fire, he glanced over at Sharp, whose teeth glistened in a bemused smile. He shook his head.

Ikey wanted to crawl into the fire after the coal.

After Ikey and Sharp found their rhythm and had the boiler radiating heat, the boiler room door flew open and clanged off the steel wall.

Ikey startled. In the doorway stood a man festooned in tools. His waistcoat consisted of dark brown leather laden with pockets and loops in which rested an assortment of spanners, screwdrivers, a hammer, even a pair of calipers dangled off the bottom hem. Ikey wanted the waistcoat.

“Damn it, Sharp! Where the hell have you been? Cross is all over my arse on account of the envelope, and when I came down here to tell you to put down your pecker and pick up your shovel, you weren’t here. And guess how much coal got shoveled while you weren’t here?”

Sharp lanced his shovel into the hopper of coal and made a show of leaning on the handle. “Not a blasted bit if it was up to you to lift a finger.”

The man’s eyes scrunched. He had light-colored hair, and in the electric light and the shadow cast by the brim of his bowler hat, his eyebrows almost disappeared. The expression resembled hurt more than scorn. “Shoveling isn’t my job. And I can’t do my job if you’re not down here doing yours.”

Sharp waved a dismissive hand. “I can’t both talk and shovel at the same time. You want fire, leave.”

“The hell you can’t shovel and talk. You can’t do a damn thing and be quiet.”

“Look, I was out showing this nod around like Cross told me to. You got a problem with that, take it up with Cross.”

The man planted his hands on his hips as he looked Ikey over. “A tour? Who the hell are you? The bloody queen?”

Ikey looked down. The frayed hems of the men’s trousers rested against the top of his polished boots.

“He’s Ikey,” Sharp said.

“Does it talk?” the man asked.

“Not hardly. He’s a quiet one.”

The man smirked. “Admiral Daughton sure has a talent for finding the misfits in this town.” He turned back to Sharp. “But pairing a mute with you is a stroke of genius. He can’t interrupt you at all, can he?”

“Piss off, Wendy. You want some bloody fire, you got it. But now you’re down here charming us instead of making use of our work. Just piss off, will you?”

Wendy touched the brim of his hat. “Keep it up, Sharp. Keep it up.”

He turned to Ikey. “And you. I don’t know why the hell Cross brought you aboard, but you sure as hell aren’t earning your keep standing there, propping up your shovel. Cross might be keen to hear his new hand is allowing the fire to grow cold.”

Ikey stabbed the shovel into the hopper, lifted a shovelful, and slipped it into the furnace.

Wendy laughed behind him. “Oh, dear Lord. With work like that, it’s no wonder this anvil’s never left the ground.”

Ikey gritted his teeth and stabbed at the coal again. Sharp’s shovel joined in. A moment later, the door slammed.

“Pay him no mind,” Sharp said as he slipped a shovelful into the furnace. “He’s a dandy bastard who fancies himself handy with those tools. Truth is, he wears them in his waistcoat because otherwise he’d float away, so full of hot air he is. Boy’s over his head, and everyone knows it.”

Ikey smiled. If he could get into the engine room, or show Cross what he was capable of, he’d let Wendy know what skill really was.

A drop of sweat fell from his nose.

T
he next time
someone other than Sharp or himself opened the door, Ikey had to stab his shovel into the coal and use it as a post to straighten his stiff back. A band of pain cinched his lumbar. His hands throbbed. He released the handle and made to wipe his hands on the front of his shirt, but he found it difficult to straighten his fingers.

“Call it a day, gentlemen,” Cross said.

“Aye, and I was just starting to have fun,” Sharp said as he set down a bin.

Cross handed a few coins to Sharp, who slipped them into a pocket in his trousers. He wiped sweat from his brow and told Ikey it was a pleasure to labor with such a hard worker.

Ikey gave an exhausted smile as Sharp bid him a good evening, and then slipped out of the room.

“He’s full of bunkum, ain’t he?” Cross asked.

Ikey thrust his hands against his lumbar and winced.

“Got one last thing I want you to do before we leave.”

Ikey stumbled in the spray of coal spilled across the floor. He followed Cross up a flight of stairs and back to a room above the boiler room. Electric light lit the interior along with two squat windows set high on either side of the room. In the middle of the room, a steel rack housed two rows of the glass vats, five vats to a row. A pair of rubber tubes poked out of each lid. One tube from each pair joined a braid of tubes that ascended through the ceiling. The second tube in each pair disappeared among the tanks, along with the wires that bristled out of the tank lids. A braid of tubes then ran along the floor beside a cable, and both vanished between two turbines sitting on the floor, side-by-side against the back wall.

“See those vats?” Cross asked. “The ones on the left are going home with us tonight. Think you can get the first two?”

“I can.”

Cross jerked his thumb at a toolbox sitting in the corner. “Get at it, then.”

Ikey approached the machine. Removing the vats would be a simple affair. Metallic bands cinched them to brackets that were secured to the frame with nuts and bolts. If one loosened the bolt, the band would slacken, and the vat could be pulled free—after removing the wires and the rubber tubes. It hardly presented a challenge, but it offered a place to start other than the boiler room.

Ikey retrieved a few spanners and a screwdriver from the toolbox. He fitted the correct spanner over the nut, then placed the tip of the screwdriver into the bolt’s head. His hands trembled. The screwdriver slipped loose. He flexed his hands. He stretched the fingers back and gritted his teeth through the stinging sensation. He replaced the screwdriver’s head and gave the spanner a shove. The screwdriver twisted at the tender flesh of his palm. After several turns of the spanner, the screwdriver slipped from of his hand and clattered to the floor.

“Sorry,” Ikey sighed. He retrieved the screwdriver and grabbed the rack to pull himself to a standing position. He repeated his attempt to work the bolt loose, but the trembling resumed and he could not get the hardware going.

Finally, Cross stepped over and plucked the screwdriver from his hand. “I ain’t got all evening. Go sit.”

Ikey staggered back a couple of steps. Cross hunched over the vat and had the nut and bolt free and cupped in his palm within a minute. Ikey stood and watched. If the boiler room’s steel-plated ceiling hadn’t reinforced the floor beneath him, Ikey might have sunk through the floorboards. Once again, Cross had given him an opportunity to prove he could be useful, and once again he had wasted it. He couldn’t even loosen a bolt. He inhaled deeply, thankful that his exhaustion kept him from crying in frustration.

Within 10 minutes, Cross set the last vat at his feet. The liquid inside sloshed and the white sludge swirled and shifted along the bottom. Cross replaced the tools and snapped the toolbox’s lid shut. He stared a second at the rust-flecked top before looking back at Ikey.

“Didn’t I heard you were a farm boy?” Cross asked.

Ikey nodded without a thought as to whether or not Cross would make good on his threat.

“You never do much shoveling on a farm? You all just traipse about knee-deep in pig shit?”

Ikey’s shoulders drooped. The name-calling came next. The yelling. Screaming. The blows came after that until his dad left him quivering and bleeding in the corner, hands clenched over his head.

His eyes drifted closed.

Rose. If Cross sent him away, he wouldn’t be able to see Rose. He wouldn’t get to know her, study her, learn how she worked. He couldn’t build his own automaton. His own army of automatons complete with Rose’s grace and Smith’s strength, and with an army of such automatons, Ikey could stop men like his dad and Cross and that bugger Wendy and every man who spread his mean spirits like an acid over all that couldn’t hurt him back.

No number of chances to impress Cross would pay off, because the man had set him up to fail.

Ikey lifted his chin.

“You set me up,” he said and opened his eyes.

Cross turned from the toolbox. He cocked an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”

Ikey’s stomach growled and quivered. Bile pressed against the back of his throat and he swallowed it down.

“You set me up. You put me with Sharp so I’d shovel coal all day, and then not be able to handle anything other than a shovel, and you did it so you could tell Admiral Daughton that I couldn’t do anything. That I am worthless.” Ikey spat the last. He held up his raw hands. “You want me to show Admiral Daughton what I’ve been doing? He told you to apprentice me.”

Cross stared a moment. His cocked eyebrow settled into a scowl.

“You little shit,” Cross said.

“You never gave me a chance.”

“A chance? What the devil should I give you a chance for? What have you done to deserve a chance?”

Ikey quivered. Cross hadn’t left his spot. He hadn’t charged. Hadn’t raised a fist or done anything more than fold his arms over his chest. The tattooed tentacles flinched as Cross’s muscles twitched.

Ikey had no idea how to respond, so he approached the first vat Cross had placed on the floor. He gripped it around the bottom. With a grunt, he struggled to his feet. The liquid inside sloshed.

“For the Lord’s sake,” Cross said. “Put that down. Those tanks cost a week’s wages each, and the crap inside will burn your skin clean off.”

Pain screamed through Ikey’s hands. The vat began to slip as his open blisters wept. He shuffled forward and pawed at the bottom of the vat, repositioning his hands to keep from dropping it.

“No,” Cross said and approached Ikey. “Put that down. You’re going to hurt yourself. And ruin this floor.”

Ikey staggered out of the engine room and down the hall. The milky liquid inside sloshed and lapped at the edges—a shapeless monster thrashing against its cage.

“Fine,” Cross called after him. “Shatter that damn tank. Blind yourself. Dip your bloody pecker in it for all I care.”

Ikey gritted his teeth and lifted his foot to the first step. He pushed. Why the hell did Rose put up with him? Next step. Push. Did she have a choice? Next step. Push. He wavered and set his shoulder against the wall to steady himself. If she wanted to leave, where would she go? Next step. Push. He readjusted his hands. They were sweating in addition to weeping. He lifted his knee and planted his foot two steps up. As he balanced the tank on his thigh, Ikey took turns wiping each hand on his trousers. The blisters wailed at the coal dust and grit rubbed into them. The cart. He imagined the cart. The wood. The unfeeling iron and how it took his dad’s anguish and grief without suffering a thing.

But blast it. The cart didn’t do a bloody thing but sit there.

Next step. Push.

What if Rose would leave Cross? What if she ran away with Ikey? He could take his time to study her. Give her a home where she would be more than a servant to that ungrateful, drunken jackass. And he would show Cross that he knew when to take a chance. When to grab it.

Reposition the hands. Next step. Push. Push again. He’d show Cross. Push push push.

Ikey stumbled onto the deck. He turned around and sat the tank on one of the steps leading up to the aft castle. He buried his burning hands in his belly and doubled over. A silent scream tore at his tongue and the backs of his teeth. Redness flushed his face and his back rippled with pain.

“Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Cross asked from beside him. He stood with a tank tucked under his arm.

Ikey seethed.

“Now carry these down both flights of stairs and to the end of the hall. There you’ll find a loading door that will let you out onto the hangar floor. Take the tanks outside, and Rob will help you load them into a cart.”

With that, Cross placed his tank on the step above Ikey’s, then galloped back down the stairs.