Down to the Sea (24 page)

Jurak did not react. His mask was impenetrable.

“Don’t play the subtle envoy with me, boy. Whether I know anything or not I will never share such information with you.”

“I understand that. I understand what divides us as well.”

“I don’t think you fully do. In your eyes I am something strange, a remainder of an older day of glory. I fought your father, and it appeals to your sense of romance to now say that we could be friends.”

“It is not a sense of romance,” Abe replied heatedly. “What I’ve said to you is genuine.”

There was a moment of softness in Jurak’s eyes. “Yes, you are young enough that I believe you.” He shook his head. “Too much will forever divide us even though a few such as you will try to breech that wall. Do you know, Abraham Keane, that I have eaten human flesh?” Abraham stiffened. He could feel a cool shiver course down his back.

“Yes, I had assumed that,” Abe finally replied.

“That fear is primitive, instinctual. Enemies can kill each other and yet drink a cup with the sons of those whom they have slain, if the slaying is viewed as honorable. Over their cups they praise each other and speak of the glory of the old days, as you and I have done. But the eating of flesh, that is a dread beyond death. That, and the humiliation of slavery.”

He looked back at the cubs playing their game.

“They’re of age to be warriors. They were raised on the tales of their fathers, who fought your father, and of their grandsires, who still remember the old days of the everlasting ride to the east, the glory of the wars with the Merki and the Tugars and, yes, the harvesting of cattle.”

He looked at Abe, his gaze cool and penetrating.

“You don’t like that word, cattle. None of your race does.”

“It is a reminder of a time that is gone.”

“Gone to you who were born after it, but alive in the memory of many of my people, and still dreamed of by those cubs. If I whistled to them now, ordered them to drop their game and slay you, they would do it.”

“You are their Qar Qarth. Of course they would obey.”

“No, Keane, they would do it because they wanted to. And beyond that, they would devour you upon this very spot and do so with glee, do it while you are still alive and screaming, as they have heard their fathers describe it done.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Abe replied, voice edged with anger. “So that I can hate you? I was trained as a soldier of the Republic. I know of every battle, of all that happened before. I know that at Hispania and at Roum our men executed prisoners, tortured and mutilated some. Atrocities are committed in the heat and madness of battle.”

“But you never felt them,” Jurak said sharply. “You don’t know war. I do. I guess that’s always been the way of it. The generation that fought a war looks at its young, not imagining they too could do the barbarities required.

“Those cubs, look at them carefully, Keane. The next time you see them, they will be coming to kill you.”

“Is this what you truly want?” Abe asked.

“No, damn you,” Jurak snarled with a deep throaty growl. “I know where this will end, as do you.”

“Then stop it.”

“How?”

“Just stop it.”

Jurak laughed. “Perhaps your father will be a victim of the very sense of justice he is famous for. If you had slain us all twenty years back, this would not now be happening.”

“But we didn’t. Shouldn’t that sway your thinking now?”

“Blood. It is about blood and race. I wish it was different.” His voice trailed off, but the look in his eyes told Abe that there was nothing more to be said.

“Then this is where we part, Qar Qarth Jurak.”

He nodded. Reaching down to the side of his saddle, he pulled out a scimitar that was still in its scabbard and handed it over to Abe.

“A present in parting, Abraham Keane. It was forged for a cub and thus should fit your hand well.”

Abe took the present and unsheathed it. The fine wavery lines from the forging of the blade shimmered in the morning sunlight. He held it aloft, feeling its balance, then slowly resheathed it, nodding his thanks, unable to speak. “Strange as it sounds, I hope it protects you well.”

“I have no such gift to offer in reply.”

“Nor was one expected, young man. It’s a present to your father as well in a way, to protect that which he cares for. Call it a small repayment of the debt I owe to a human who was your father’s closest friend.”

Abe smiled sadly and then, on impulse, extended his right hand.

Jurak hesitated, then finally extended his own hand, taking Abe’s in his. “I hope we don’t meet again, Abraham Keane, for you know what that would mean.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Ride with the wind. I will let no one pursue you. That should give you fifteen leagues or more. Avoid the Gilwana Pass. That’s the grazing grounds of the Black Speckled Clan. They more than most have no love for you. Nearly all their warriors died in the Chin Rebellion.”

“And what shall I tell my father?”

Jurak smiled and shook his head. “Nothing. His message was clear enough.”

“Farewell, Qar Qarth Jurak.”

““Then farewell, Keane.”

The Qar Qarth picked up his reins and spurred his mount, which leapt forward with a start.

Abe held his own reins in tight, his mount shying as Jurak’s stallion surged forward. So it’s war, Abe thought coldly. Strange, I half want to see it, to understand it as my father did. And yet he found it difficult to hold back tears as he watched Jurak ride back to the Bantag encampment.

The train, pulling a single car, glided to a stop at the station, out of which descended a woman, followed by several of her assistants.

“Varinnia, how are you today?” Andrew asked, coming forward to take her hand.

Richard immediately recognized her. Varinnia Ferguson had often lectured at the academy to senior year cadets on applied engineering. She was, of course, yet another legend of the war, and that legend stilled any comments when she had first come into a classroom. Her face had been horribly burned, she was barely able to write with one wilted hand, but the flames, if they had touched her mind, had done so in a different way, making her seem as if she would burst into fire from sheer energy and passion for her subject. By the end of her first lecture all had forgotten how she looked, and there wasn’t a cadet who wouldn’t thrash anyone who dared to make a crude joke about her appearance.

She had another side as well, for as the wife of Chuck Ferguson, she had worked not only as an engineer and inventor but also as a political revolutionary, bringing about the amendment for women to vote and, at the same time, creating a tradition in the young Republic for women to go into medicine and engineering.

At her approach, Richard instinctively came to attention. She nodded to William Webster, secretary of the treasury, then turned to look appraisingly at Cromwell.

“Young Lieutenant Cromwell, I understand you are the reason for all this excitement.”

“Commander Cromwell as of this morning,” Andrew interjected with a smile.

Stunned, Richard turned to the President.

“Sir. I hardly think—”

“No self-deprecating comments, Commander. Admiral Bullfinch was an admiral at the age of twenty-two. Age doesn’t matter in this country. It’s wisdom, guts, and more than a little luck that counts.”

Cromwell was silent.

“Besides, you need the rank to do some of the things expected of you. Plus, it’s a statement on my part as well.”

“A statement, sir?”

“That he believes you,” Varinnia said. “When word of this becomes public, your promotion will make a statement.” She looked back at Andrew. “I assume Gates will be pulled in to do the proper articles on him, and on everything else.”

“I’ve already talked to him. That’s why you don’t see any newspaper scribblers following us down here this morning. He agreed to hold off on the story.”

“Oh, really?”

“Either that or I shut down his papers for a few days and he loses thousands. There’s a fine line between censorship and a nation’s security. I convinced Gates it was the latter rather than the former.”

She nodded approvingly. “Let’s get to work.”

She led the way from the station, which was empty on this Sunday morning, down to the naval dockyard on the Neiper, fifteen miles south of the city.

As the procession headed out, Cromwell noticed that Adam Rosovich was one of her assistants, and he fell in beside his old acquaintance from the academy. After offering a smiling salute, Adam extended his hand.

“On the train ride down here Ferguson told us a bit about what happened to you,” Adam whispered. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Is it true that the
Gettysburg
was lost with all hands?” Richard nodded.

“Damn, I had a couple of friends on her. Poor O’Donald, he was a good man.”

“Yes,” Richard sighed, “a good man.”

“You look like hell, Richard, like you took the worst end of a brawl at the Roaring Mouse.”

Richard smiled. “If only it had been that easy. So how is it with your plush and comfortable job at the ordnance design office?”

Adam sighed. “Boring. I wanted to fly, but I’ve been up exactly once, to test.” He fell silent and gave him a conspiratorial smile. “But that’s supposed to be a secret. Anyhow, even then I just rode in the backseat. There’s a lot of good ideas floating around. I’ve been trying to push that pet project we talked about at the academy.”

“The aerosteamer carrier?”

“Exactly, but you should hear the old admirals howl. I thought Admiral Petronius was going to have my head when I presented a paper on it a couple of weeks back. ‘It goes against all doctrine,’ he roared. ‘We need more guns, not buzzing gnats,’ were his exact words.”

Richard nodded. He’d seen the exact same type of ship Adam was dreaming about riding at anchor in the harbor of Kazan.

“I keep trying to tell them that with the new weapon we’re developing, aerosteamer carriers will become crucial. We’ll no longer just use them for scouting. But they’ll have none of it. I think Dr. Ferguson agrees, but the rest of the board moves like a snail in a snowstorm.”

The group slowed as they approached the main gate of the shipyard, and the two fell silent.

Nothing stirred in the early morning except for a few surprised sentries guarding the entry gate, through which hundreds of workers flowed during the regular work week. One of two guards accompanying Andrew went over to the sentries and quietly but forcefully began to impress upon them that the president had never been here. A nervous lieutenant, coming out of the guardhouse inside the gate was turned back and taken inside.

Andrew walked through the gate, Varinnia on one side, Webster on the other. Richard and Adam followed. Just inside the gate Richard recognized the stooped-shouldered form of Theodor Theodovich, head engineer of the Republic Aerosteamer Company, chief contractor for all airships built for the Republic. Beside him stood a tall gray-haired naval officer, still slender in spite of his obvious sixty years or more of age.

“Admiral Petronius,” Adam whispered.

The two offered their salutes, which Petronius answered without comment.

When Richard looked over at Theodor, he smiled.

“Old Jack Petracci told me you were a damn good pilot,” he said, extending his hand.

Richard, who normally fought at all times to contain any display of emotion, could not help but be impressed and gladly took the hand.

“Later today I want to sit down with you and go over every detail you can remember of their flying machines. I read the notes you jotted down. They show good technical judgment, Cromwell.”

“I just wish I could have brought the plane all the way in.”

“You’re lucky you made it as far as you did and spotted that ship. That was damn near good enough.”

“You once flew with General Petracci, didn’t you?”

Theodor grinned. “Scared the hell out of me. After the war I swore I’d never go up with him again, and I’ve kept that promise.”

Richard looked at him admiringly. He and Petracci were the only two flyers from the Great War who were still alive.

Clearing the gate, the small entourage maneuvered through the railyard, weaving around flatcars loaded with steel plates, keels, beams, masts, and all the thousand other ship parts cast in the foundries north of the city. All was silent, and a cool fog was drifting in from the river, heavy with the less than pleasant smells that drifted down from the teeming city to the north.

The naval yard had been constructed after the war, a massive project that had taken five years and required the movement of millions of tons of earth and rock to construct a dry dock, slips and ways, piers and workyards.

Tied off at the main piers were the almost complete cruisers
Shiloh
,
Perryville
, and
Wilderness
. The decks were still flush, since turrets, superstructures and masts had yet to be added. All three of the ships had been launched only within the last month and then tied off for final completion.

Along the next dock were five frigates in various stages of completion. Nothing new was in development, because the eight ships represented all of the budget allocations Andrew had run through at the start of his second term. Some of the southern members of Congress were arguing that all further ship building should take place at Constantine. It seemed a natural choice, being directly on the sea. Continuing the work at Suzdal was seen as a maneuver to keep money inside Rus and away from the shipbuilders of the southern states, who had far more experience. The only argument against it was the threat from cyclones.

“What’s the deepest draft we can get in here?” Varinnia asked, looking back at one of her assistants.

“Thirty-three feet in the main channel and from slip number one. The others are all at twenty-five feet.”

She led the group over to where
Shiloh
was tied off. She was one of the
Gettysburg
class, three hundred and fifty feet in length and drawing nearly five thousand tons.

“Compare that to what you saw, Cromwell,” she said, pointing at the ship.