Escapement (28 page)

Other sailors had gathered wild onions and half a dozen more varieties of shoots and herbs. These were chopped fine, along with carrots and peppers from the ship’s stores. She’d not seen the galley aboard
Five Lucky Winds
, so the opportunity to watch the cooking process was fascinating.

No English cook would cut her vegetables so fine. And Childress had never seen a pan like the big ones they brought over from the submarine—shallow shields without any flat base, that quivered on the rocks stacked within the fire. Woks.

But two little men, each wizened and folded as tightly as any monkey, were in complete command of their craft. They approached it with a mixture of parsimony and art that she found delightful. Oil was husbanded as shredded pork was mixed in. Some dark sauce sprinkled on as needed, and eventually the vegetables added to the mixture. Childress resolved that if she were able to spend time among the Chinese under ordinary circumstances, she would learn to cook as they did.

The result tasted divine. Their cooking aboard ship was excellent, miles above anything the Royal Navy could ever serve if rumor was to be believed. She would believe this food rivaled the best a duke’s yacht might offer. Here outdoors, served steaming hot over rice warmed in a clay pot by the fire, it surpassed any meal she’d eaten in her life.

Even with the leaping glare of the flames, the sky was vivid. Earth’s track rose high and bright. The moon’s crossed over it. Luna herself was approaching full, a gravid silvered presence along her gleaming track. Her silvered light pressed down upon the waters of the bay without masking the shine of the stars. Stepping away from the fire a moment with a bowl of hot, steaming pork in her hands, Childress traced Venus’ orbital track rising in the east. The stars were so bright, she thought she could make out the guttering of their individual lamps. If she knew where to look, she might find the tracks of Mars and maybe even Jupiter.

Was this how God saw the universe? Childress imagined Him looking at His Creation, His view from everywhere at once. What would it be like, having eyes in every ray of light? To even encompass such magnitude was beyond her understanding.

It was like falling into the sky, slipping beneath a pool of water she’d
never noticed hanging over her head. Childress had never supposed God listened to her personally, but she knew He listened to the world. How else could things be arrayed, in His Creation?

She began to pray.

“Our Father, who art in Heaven
“Craftsman be thy name
“Thy Kingdom come
“Thy plan be done
“On Earth as it is in Heaven
“Forgive us this day our errors
“As we forgive those who err against us
“Lead us not into imperfection
“And deliver us from chaos
“For thine is the power, and the precision
“For ever and ever, amen.”

When her voice trailed off, she stared at the heavens and wondered what was on the other side of the velvet wall of night. Was that where the dreaming mind of God lay?

“It is your religion,” said Leung, startling her.

Childress turned, letting a flash of surprised anger roll away from her. “It is not my religion. It is the world.”

“No, it is your
view
of the world.” He stared up, setting his arm on hers. “In China, we consider the way each person is connected to another to be the heart of who they are. So a son is a son to his father, and a soldier follows his general. Everything in the world is made to fit with everything else. His Celestial Majesty is at the center and head of the order of the world, as the sun is at the center and head of the universe.

“Look.” Leung pointed at the thread of Venus. “Everything in the sky relates to everything else. There is a position and an order to the world. In that, we see what is and what must be. A view of the world, much as you have your view.”

“Who made your world?” she asked softly.

“It exists. That is enough. People tell stories, but the world has no beginning and no end, any more than the track of its circle around the sun does.”

“But the universe is a made thing.” She hated the way her voice trembled with her insistence. “The gears are cut. You can see them through the simplest glass, and sometimes when the light is just exactly right.”

“So?” Childress could feel Leung’s shrug.
Such an English thing for him to do.
He continued: “We are made, as well. Every tree and rock and waterfall is made. It is not so hard to see the world as a garden. You Europeans are so concerned with first causes. It is the order of things which matters, not their origin nor direction.”

“Still, we live in the same world.” Holding her breath, she stepped closer into his arm.

Leung did not pull away.

When he spoke again, his breath puffed in the chilly air as if he, too, had been holding it in. “You are not the Mask Poinsard, are you?”

A cold stab of fear shivered her heart. Childress almost pulled away from him. She knew she stiffened, and she felt him stiffen in response. There was no point in lying after her body had betrayed the truth.

“No,” she said. “Poinsard died with
Mute Swan,
so far as I know.”

“Unfortunate.”

She wondered what he meant by that, but Leung did not elaborate. After a while, she asked the next question. “What will become of me?”

“That is up to you.” Leung hugged her even closer. “I can sail to Tainan with the Mask Poinsard aboard. I do not believe the Beiyang Navy would know any difference. There are some in Nanking who would, eventually, but you could play that face for some time.”

“My name is my passport to life and death, in this ocean, far from the protection of my country.”

“Yes. We have a school of thought which calls for the rectification of names. That a thing is not in its proper place until it is properly called.” He paused, perhaps for a smile. Childress was afraid to look at Leung’s face. “In the languages of China, a sound may carry different meanings. Tiger, or bravery, or lake, all in one sound and the tone of its speaking. This is a more careful question than it would be in your language, I think. Still, here is a chance to choose your name. Be who you will. The Mask Poinsard. Or some other woman of valor and thoughtful demeanor and careful wit.”

Childress puzzled through his words, trying to unravel both the criticism and the compliment she thought she found there.

“I think he knows,” she finally said. “Your political officer.”

“Choi?”

She laughed. “You have more than one?”

“No, no.” Leung pulled away, distracted. “He speaks English?”

“A little. And he knows something of the
avebianco.
I think he knows who I am. Or more to the point, who I am not.”

“I see.” Silence awhile, then: “His discretion will be difficult to assure.” Childress chose her next words with care. “Another man would arrange an accident.”

“I am not another man. Besides,” he admitted, “there would be consequences. He is the only sailor on the ship not under my direct command.”

“Practical as well, I see.”

“Indeed.” Leung hugged her again. “So what would another woman arrange?”

“The Mask Poinsard would cut his throat,” Childress said. “Or at least have someone do it for her. Li—Another woman . . .” She cleared her throat. “Another woman would find a way to convince him otherwise.”

“By cutting throats to demonstrate her resolve?”

It took Childress a moment to realize that Leung was gently mocking her. “Perhaps.” She noticed then that her pork had grown cold. “I think I need the fire.”

“All men need the light,” he told her. “If only to set borders on the darkness.”

Five Lucky Winds
sailed at first light. Childress understood they were going to cruise the surface while the weather held, for maintenance and cleaning. She seemed to have more freedom of movement, extending to being abovedeck herself. Shy sailors had shown her various rooms one at a time—bunks in one, a dispensary lined with jars of herbs and snakes, storerooms, big sweating tubes of obscure purpose, a kitchen not much larger than the dispensary, where the two old cooks fit together like monkeys in a puzzle.

Only the bridge and engines remained off-limits.

That was fine with her. She was no spy, trained to see the secrets by the arrangement of dials or the lights of a map table.

Childress spent some time above decks, but if there was any swell at all to the sea, she was distinctly uncomfortable. The submarine was not designed for the convenience of passengers in any case. Still, she craved the sunshine. Every time she saw Leung, there was inquiry in his eyes.

Who was she—the Mask Poinsard, or a woman of valor?

That was the sort of question any good person should ask of herself. The metaphor was usually not quite so literal, however.

When she saw Choi, her thoughts ran a different direction. It was neither in Childress’ nature nor within the reach of her arms to cut a
man’s throat, but she kept wondering what the political officer would say to his secret masters when they stepped off the boat in dock at Tainan.

Could she kill a man to save herself?

That she could even ask that question frightened Childress.

After two days, Paolina was bored. She wasn’t permitted to wander the camp unescorted, and not at all near the diggings or upon the stockade. The same restrictions applied to Boaz, but he seemed content to sit quietly in their quarters. Of course, she reminded herself, he had stood for years on the trail. Time seemed to flow differently for the Brass.

The men who worked here avoided her. In one sense, this was fine. She had her fill of men in Praia Nova, and didn’t have cause to think the workers in al-Wazir’s camp would be any more gentle toward women than the
fidalgos
had been. At the same time, they would be
interesting
to talk to.

Wizards or no, these Englishmen tended al-Wazir’s great machine clawing ever further into the Wall like some parasite intent on gnawing out the heart of a dog. In between that, they worked in little shops and forges, cared for smaller machines that still stood large as her mother’s house while still puffing and screeching, and got drunk. If she had been a boy, Paolina might have thought that a perfect life.

As it was, she wished very much to simply speak to someone. Only al-Wazir and Hornsby would talk to her. She’d tried to explain to the big Englishman about the cars inside the Wall, and what their tunnel would eventually encounter as it bored through, but he’d been too busy to pay proper attention.

No one else came near the tent. She suspected the men of the camp had been threatened with shooting or worse if they bothered her. So she begged for books and was given a set of
Punch
magazines from volumes 117 and 118, dated in the autumn of 1901 and spring of 1902. They apparently were intended to be humorous. The articles provided a window
into the life of England even more recent and expansive than that which Dickens had thrown open for her.

She also spent time listening to the chatter of the digging machine, timing how long it ran and paused, and working to deduce the depth of the tunnel from the minutes it took men to walk in and out. There was so much to measure here.

Paolina wondered what al-Wazir would do when his machine broke through to the whirling discs of brass that were set within
a Muralha
as counterweights to balance the spin of the world. Surely he had a plan. An Englishman always did. Dickens and Davies had taught her that. Al-Wazir had done nothing to disabuse her of the notion.

Around noon on her third day, partway through a particularly tendentious January issue, she heard a great shouting outside.

“Do not go without,” Boaz said. “You do not understand their ways.”

“It is
something,
” Paolina argued, though she knew he was right.

“I hold no command over you, but our purpose here was made clear to me.”

She settled back with a flash of anger, hating her own bad grace, to read more about some individual named Floyd Gorges, who was supposedly a Minister from Carnivaltown. Paolina hadn’t quite worked out how the clerical aspect fit in with the rest of it, but she presumed she’d learn.

More shouting outside tugged at her ear. She ignored it. Likewise she ignored steam whistling and the rattle of gunfire. It was not enough to have been an attack. But when the droning echoed from above, she tossed away the magazine from which she’d been reading the same sentence over and over and over and stormed out.

A great ship of the air was beating down over the camp.

Bassett,
she thought, then remembered that al-Wazir had told her the ship was lost. One of its sisters, surely, with the long, bloated bag suspending a boatlike hull beneath. Engines on each side spun propellers, while furled sails hung on spars tucked close in. The bag was covered with netting, with a great version of the British flag was worked into that.

England had come for her!

She raced back inside to tell Boaz.

Paolina spent the rest of the day under guard. The man outside her tent with a gun wouldn’t say anything, except to order her back inside. Boaz sat quietly, lost in so thoughtful a mood, he might almost have been stilled once more.