Cuttlefish (6 page)

“One over at platform seven. I'll get someone to hook it up to a dragline for you.” Clara realised that the “dock” was actually the railway station, with the track area flooded so that the barges were floating in it. They crossed two little makeshift bridges and came to a hanging faded sign that read P
LATFORM
S
EVEN
E
ASTERN
LINE
.

Floating there was a little capsule sitting deep in the water—it looked rather like a barrel, made of wooden staves with iron bands, and a round manhole-like screw-opening. On either end there were metal staples and a cable drooping away into the water.

“It's a bit of a tight fit, ma'am,” said Mick, who was easily twice Mother's size. “But it'll save you a few hours of tunnel walking and a lot of the risks.”

So they'd squeezed into the barrel thing. Mick almost had to pour himself through the opening. It was dark inside, and the wooden walls were covered in quilted padding. “You and the gal
better find a hanging strap, ma'am,” said Mick. “Feel about on the roof.”

Clara had found one, as someone outside closed the hatch and screwed it in place. It was dark and airless, and then they started to move.

“Why is it all closed up like this?” asked Clara, curious as they bumped and swayed. She was very grateful for the handle.

“Tunnel dips right underwater,” said Mick. “We knock about a bit too, so hold tight.”

They did, indeed. Clara was very glad to get out of the dark…into another gaslit drowned station, with the
thrub-thrub
of pumps underlying everything. Here Mick took them to what must have once been the ticket office. And to her disgust Clara got to kick her heels outside while her mother went into an office to talk to people. Time passed very slowly. She didn't even have Mick to ask questions about the clanking and hissing machinery in the distance, or the people who came and went, dropping parcels into a chute in the arch. It was all very mysterious, and very poorly lit, and damp smelling. Damp and coal smoke would always colour her memory of Under London. Eventually her mother came back, with as near to a smile as Clara had seen since they'd managed to give the count the slip. She squeezed Clara's hand, and her voice had some relief in it. “I've been able to send a Marconi message to a prominent scientist I know of in the United States of America. We have had a reply already. He obviously has more government connections than I knew of, and it seems that they also knew the Russians and Imperial Security were up to something. They've agreed to give us both asylum, darling.”

“Does that mean we're safe?” asked Clara, wondering if she maybe was somehow in an asylum already, and all this was some kind of illusion.

Mother sighed. “Not yet. It means that we have somewhere to go. And the alternative was staying here, and that, I gather, would not be safe. It seems that they're still looking for us. The Underpeople
say that collecting our bags for us may have been a mistake. Duke Malcolm's men are setting enquiries afoot in London. The leadership of the Liberty—as they call themselves—want us out of here, as soon as possible. So nice to be welcome. Well, I suppose at least they're not just tossing us out.”

Looking around the station, Clara felt that “out” might have nicer air to breathe. But obviously her mother didn't think so. Soon they were in another bobber, heading for Stockwell Tube and that thing Clara had no real image of: a submarine.

The level of flooding in Stockwell was deeper, and the station's domed roof barely penetrated the murky water. Nobody on the surface would have guessed there were new tunnels down there, and that the generating station branch line led to the deep caverns, which was where the bobber took them—to the Underpeople's main submarine nest. Mick helped them out—it had been a long run and they were bruised and shaken. And there in the light of the methane-gas flares were three submarines being loaded…or unloaded. They were black, broad, and streamlined, the hull-metal bound with rivet-bands, the upper deck planked and tarred, but otherwise near featureless except for their exhausts, and a low cowling. “Our gateway to the world, ma'am,” said Mick, cheerfully. “The
Darter
, the
Plaice
, and the
Cuttlefish
. Over there is the
Garfish
, having her struts worked on.” Clara looked where he pointed. A long sharp-nosed tube hung from several gantries, with the outrigger-like sides protruding outwards and downwards on rails. The sharp, actinic light of welding flashed and flickered from the workers there. “Pity she's not quite ready for sea. They've been working on the outrigger design. They work as hydrofoils when they're under sail. They're trying to adjust
Garfish
so she can run on her coal-fired Stirling on them.”

He took in their expressions and said, “Greek to you, I'd be thinking. Well, let me take you to meet Captain Malkis. Looks like they got word, and
Cuttlefish
is readying for sea. He's a good skipper, and they've got a great navigator submariner in their first mate. He's
one of the original Hollander trainers who showed us how to work underwater.”

He took them to the third of the strange, forbidden craft, moored here, underground and underwater, deep in the heart of the British Empire's capital. And that was how they'd got here. It had only been minutes after they'd arrived that their valises and trunk had arrived, and the submarine had left Stockwell.

The submarine might be yet another new thing, but it was narrow and crushing to someone who had lived—well, at least walked to school and home again—under an open sky. And this cabin was smaller and more closed-in still.

Lying there, Clara finally decided she could take it no longer. She could smell food. She could hear the thump of the motors. When she got up she could even feel it through the soles of her feet. They couldn't still be on silence.

She followed her nose down the passage, and to the tiniest of tiny kitchens. That boy was there, scrubbing pots. So was a short man who was nearly as wide as he was high, stirring another large pot. “Ah, missy. Yer come for some tucker?” he asked with a gap-toothed beam.

She decided then and there she could like him, unlike the boy, who was scowling at her again. “What's tucker?” she asked.

“Vittles, missy. Food. That's what we call it where I come from. The new bread hasn't come out yet, and this porridge needs stirring or it'll stick, but if young Tim can get his hand out of the suds, he can cut you a bit of yesterday's baking.”

Tim obviously got the message, and dried off his hands and fetched out a loaf while Clara asked the cook, “So where do you come from, mister? I've never heard your accent before.”

The cook grinned. “Westralia, missy. God's own Republic, bless 'er. Dry as a…bone. But the finest place on Earth.”

Westralia. She knew where that was. The rebel “Republic” of Western Australia that had declared itself independent when the
Crown abandoned the colony after the Swan River dried up. A desert no one wanted, full of runaways and criminals, so she'd been taught. Well, a lot of what she'd been taught wasn't quite as true as she'd thought it was. “What are you doing here, so far from home, Mr. Cook?”

He beamed at her. “You can call me Cookie; everyone does. It's a long story, missy. Submarines go everywhere, even if they's not supposed to. Westralia, they can sail on the surface and in the harbour too. I reckoned I'd see the world. So far all I seen is me kitchen.” He didn't seem too unhappy about it. “Some butter for her in the icebox there, Tim-o. And there is jam here, see.”

The boy said nothing. Just went back to washing up when he'd given her the butter. Clara had not had much to do with boys. Well, there were knots of them who would tease the girls and whistle at them as she made her way back from school. Of course the other girls told stories. And some of them had brothers. Clara ate. It was more interesting to watch them from the counter than to go back to the tiny cabin. She wondered if she should offer to help, even if Mother had told her to stay out of the way. The boy looked like he needed some lessons in washing up. And in washing himself. He had grease on his nose. And he'd been crying. She could tell.

But they seemed busy, so she ate, said her thank yous, and went back to her cabin. And now sleep came quickly.

She was awakened by someone knocking. Her mother sat up sleepily below her and bumped her head on the upper bunk. “Ouch. Who is it?” Mother asked, plainly trying to get herself orientated.

“Tim Barnabas, marm,” said the odious boy from outside. “Captain's compliments, would you care to join him and the officers for breakfast?”

“Thank you. How long until you eat?” asked Mother.

“Officer's sitting in the mess in half an hour,” said the boy.

“Half an hour. How like men,” muttered her mother. “Very well. We'll be there. Can you come back and show us where to go?”

“Don't worry, I know the way,” said Clara, then wished that she hadn't admitted it.

“Ah.” It was an “Ah” that heralded a lecture later, Clara knew. “Now where is the light switch?”

Clara knew that too. And the way to what the submariner had called “the heads,” all of which was necessary to get them to the tiny “mess” on time. It wasn't really a mess, in fact, a very square and neat dining area, with tablecloths and silver, Clara thought. Clean too. Even the boy Tim had washed his face before serving in.

It was a proper breakfast, with porridge—oats from Norway, and kippers from Greenland. Everyone seemed quite relaxed about their narrow escape from Stockwell Station. Well, there was sadness and worry, about what they'd left behind, but they were away now. Out in the open ocean submarines had little to fear.

And then a lieutenant—the one who was so proud of his moustache—came down from the bridge and saluted. “Sorry to interrupt, sir. We've picked up sign of two armoured cruisers on our track. And Sparks is monitoring a Marconi message. He thinks they're talking to a dreadnought. They were being asked about depths.”

The captain got to his feet. “Excuse me, ladies,” he said, as he left in a hurry.

A few minutes later a bell chimed and the captain's voice—odd-sounding through a speaker tube—said, “Crew to action stations. We're going to run into the Wash Fens.”

“What's that?” asked Clara.

“It's the old flooded fen lands in around Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, and Norfolk,” said the other lieutenant, getting to his feet. “It's shallow, but our charts are better than the Admiralty ones. We land a lot of cargoes there. And those armoured cruisers have a deep draught, missy. They need about twenty-six feet of water. If we flush our ballast and put out the outriggers we can run on the surface in six feet of water. And at twenty-five we're below water level.”

“Not by much,” said the first mate, heavily. “They could see us from the air.”

“But they'd have to come hunting us in shallower draught ships, and the skipper is a canny old bird,” said the lieutenant, taking his hat and leaving them with a sketch of a salute.

So they were left to go back to their tiny cabin again and to worry and to fret.

The submarine touched sand with an odd sugary grating sound a few times, but they kept moving.

And then they stopped.

A little later, the “all quiet” light came on.

T
im was off-watch and asleep when the submarine stopped. It was enough to wake him. “Wazzup?” he asked sleepily of the other sailor in the locker below the bed. It was Big Eddie, who used the bunk Tim was sleeping in during alter-shift. Eddie was one of the two divers aboard, as well as a junior steersman.

“I've got to go out and pull the camo-sheet over her. So if you're feeling like getting wet, you can come for a swim, lad,” said Eddie, with a laugh.

Tim shuddered. He could swim. Sort of. You had to as a tunneller. But Under London water was likely to digest your clothes, or the eels might get you. There was supposed to be a giant killer pike up near Wandle. There'd even been a crocodile from Africa in a flooded tunnel once, he'd heard tell.

“And then?” Tim asked.

“And then we lie still until dark and I take it off again,” said Big Eddie, setting off for the escape hatch in the bow, in a thick Arran pullover and heavy woollen breeches and thick socks.

He came back a little later, to get back into his normal clothes, before Tim had properly got back to sleep. “Not too bad out there for this time of year. Mind you, the Fens are fairly buzzing with boats. They're hunting this woman hard.”

“Why?” asked Tim. She looked like, well, an ordinary top-side modern lady in a flouncy skirt. He'd seen a few when he'd been out with the bloods top-side London at night, before his mam had found out and put a stop to it. The woman didn't say much, not like Miss
Prisms-and-Prunes-snippy, the daughter. That girl had even cheeked the captain. And he'd laughed.

“I dunno,” said Eddie. “Go back to sleep.”

So Tim had done so. But his dreams had been full of the explosions and his mam.

He woke up when they got under way again. Obviously Big Eddie had come and gone again. The camouflage sheet had been taken in, and they were feeling their way through the sandbar waters before heading out into the deeper water. Tim went and had breakfast and reported for duty. This morning that duty was cleaning officers' cabins and making beds. He was in Lieutenant Ambrose's cabin when they struck. It wasn't so much of an impact, as a slowing…and then a stop. And then a twang that reverberated through the boat. And then all was still. Then the engines fired again, and they pulled backwards briefly. Another twang, and they stopped again.

Tim could guess what that meant. Submarine fouling nets were laid in London's drowned streets too. Divers cut them, or made panels that could be opened.

Big Eddie and his mate Albert would have to go out in the cold dark water, in their waterproof canvas diving suits and helmets again, and cut them free.

Only, a few minutes later Tim found it wasn't them that would be doing that.

It was him.

And there would be no diving suit either.

He was called to the bridge. That was alarming enough. “Barnabas,” said Captain Malkis with no further finesse. “You're the smallest of the crew. The escape hatch is tangled in the net and can't open. We can see it with the periscope. There is a whole mass of net tangled over it. The hatch opens a crack, but the divers couldn't even get a hand out in their suits. It's a lot to ask of you, boy, but someone needs to go in there, in their skin, with small hands and some shears. There's a diver's breather pipe there. You'll have air, but you'll be underwater. If you
cut it clear enough you'll probably have to squeeze out and cut the tangle away, so the divers can get out properly.”

Tim swallowed. Looked around at all of them. That girl was standing looking at him from the doorway, eyes wide. Captain Malkis continued. “We've fouled the propellers too. If we try to pull free—we'll wind the propellers right off. If we don't pull free, we're only at ten feet down, and the tide is going out. By morning we'll be visible to the observation dirigibles.”

What could Tim do, except to nod?

A few minutes later Eddie was showing him how to breathe with the hookah mouthpiece. “We're lucky to have these mouthpieces. They dive without helmets in Westralia, and that's where the compressor comes from. The pipe usually screws onto the back of the helmet, see.”

The two air hoses were neatly coiled and still wet, as was the chamber. It must be very tight in here with two of them in their diving suits.

Standing, shivering slightly in his canvas knee-breeches and nothing else, Tim could see just how attractive the brass helmet with its windows, and the thick waterproof canvas suit could be too. But all he had was a knife and a set of wire-cutters. The netting out there had some strands cored with braided steel.

They closed the hatch on him. There was a waterproof light on the wall, but Tim still felt very alone and very scared. He took a deep breath, put the mouthpiece in his mouth, and cracked the outer hatch. They could do that from inside too—to launch tick-tocks and the escape pod, but now it was up to him.…The seawater came spraying in. It was like being in an icy shower. And then a chilly bath, the water in the narrow chamber climbing steadily around his thighs and then up his body. Tim forced himself to duck down. Breathe underwater, through the mouthpiece, while he could still stand up and breathe, just as Eddie had told him to. Then he stood up and opened the hatch some more. Eddie had said do it little by
little—it had a brass screw with a big butterfly nut letting you do so slowly.

Only it wouldn't open much. The water flooded in still. And soon the only air in the escape chamber was from the bubbles from the mouthpiece. Tim tried to force the hatch open more. Not with all his strength would it move. So he tried to get his hand out of the gap. He could. Just. Not holding the knife. He had to hand it through to himself and try to feel to cut. A thread snapped. And another two. But his arm just couldn't go any farther. His forearms were too thick. He tried the other hand. It was no better.

He had to close the hatch again and push and twist the purge knob, as Eddie had shown him.

They were waiting. Shivering, Tim had to shake his head as someone handed him a towel. “It's no good, sir. My arm is too thick…it needs to bend here. In the middle of my forearm.”

“My arms and hands are smaller,” said the girl, in the silence.

Clara never quite knew what made her say that. But it was true. She was a bit smaller than the boy was, and her forearms were nothing like as muscular.

“I can't ask you to do that, miss,” said the captain with finality. “Your mother would never permit it.”

“I cut some of the strands,” said the boy, shivering. “I'll try again, sir. Just…just let me warm up for a minute.”

“Get the boy something warm to drink from Cookie, Willis,” said the captain.

“If we don't get free of the net, they'll sink us and we'll drown and be killed anyway,” said Clara. “And I can swim.”

The captain took a deep breath. “Let us go and speak to your mother.”

So they did. And her mother said no just as firmly.

“Mother. I was the one who could fit through the ventilation shaft. This isn't any different,” said Clara.

“You could drown, dear,” said her mother.

“And if we're here by daylight, they could bomb us. Never mind could. Will. And then we'll all die.” She had a moment of an almost satisfyingly gloomy image of their bodies washing in the tide.

“You're too young,” said Mother.

“They let that boy who served us breakfast try. He's bigger than me, but I don't think he's much older. But he's a boy, right?” said Clara, knowing she was playing her mother's own sore points, but also knowing that it was true.

Her mother bit her lip. Nodded. “All right. How safe is it, Captain?”

The captain shrugged. “Not safe. But no worse risk than sitting here while they drop drop-mines onto us. It'll be cold and wet, but she can practice using the hookah before the chamber floods. We can close it when it is half-full, and she can check that she can do it.”

Her mother closed her eyes, briefly, then said, “Very well. Can we do a trial?”

The captain nodded. “I'll get the boy to talk her through it too, as well as the divers. She's a very brave lass, ma'am,” said the captain.

“She's her father's daughter,” said Mother, looking as if she might start crying.

Clara didn't know what to say. So she hugged her mother instead. “We'd better find you some clothes fit for getting wet in. I don't think you have a bathing costume. Could you arrange some boy's breeches for her?”

“Of course, ma'am,” said the captain.

The water was cold, so cold that it hurt and wanted to take her breath away, but at least it was really not that difficult to breathe
through the hookah. All the trial did was to get her wet and cold before the real thing started.

So they closed the hatch again, and she opened the outer one herself. The icy water filled the chamber again, and soon she had to breathe through the hookah. Having to do it was actually better than having a choice about putting your head underwater and breathing.

The gap between the hatch and the hull was very narrow, but with a bit of wiggling she managed to get her elbow out. It was tight and awkward. It was also so cold it was hard to think. Ah. The boy had said you had to pass the knife out. So she did. And cut. She tried to move the screw for opening the hatch with numb fingers. It turned, it was wider now—she pushed herself up and out towards it.

Tim watched as the girl's mother stood there, wringing her hands. Looking at her watch. And Captain Malkis surreptitiously looked at his timepiece, and obviously reached a decision. “Seal the outer hatch. We need to open the inner airlock.”

A submariner began turning the polished crank-wheel. Two turns…“It's not sealing, sir. Something in the way.”

“Lieutenant Willis. Go up to the bridge. Put the forward spotlight on, and see if you can see the hatch.”

Barely a minute later Willis came running, yelling, “Open the hatch! She's outside.”