Escapement (34 page)

Five Lucky Winds
groaned again, and began to shiver like a dog. Childress grabbed the edge of her bunk and held on. She was seized by the sudden feeling that she might tip forward and fall downward to the bottom of the harbor. The submarine bucked as a fine shower of rust and dust leaked down from the ceiling and along the joins of the cabin’s construction.

When rivets started to pop from the walls like slow, fat bullets, she shrieked.

A moment later, it was done. A distant bell rang, some alarm on the bridge or in the engine room. The frost was gone and the ship rocked slightly, just as it usually did when moored on the surface.

The cook grinned, bowed, swept up his divinatory aids, and left the cabin.

Childress fought tears awhile, wondering what she had done to come to this place so alien.

“We sail soon,” Leung said from the doorway. He did not enter her cabin.

“Where is Choi?” The political officer’s fate was much on Childress’ conscience.

“Asleep in his bunk, I believe.”

“Then what was all . . .
that
? . . . Before, when you made me stay here under guard.” She brandished a loose rivet.

“A ghost does not touch lightly.”

“Choi is still here.” She had all but condemned the man to death, to save herself, racked with guilt, and now he was sleeping in his bunk?

Leung nodded. “Patience is the virtue of a gentleman. As well as a woman of valor.”

She gathered both her courage and her sense of irritation. “Where to next?”

“Tainan. And Admiral Shang.”

_______

The next day, when she saw him again over a breakfast of congealed rice and something she thought might be finely sliced squid, Childress asked once more after Choi.

“I told you, he is asleep in his bunk.”

“All the day long?”

“In fact, yes.”

“How . . .” She stopped. “The ghosts drew him down into his dreams?”

“Or theirs.” Leung picked out a long sliver. “So long as he is not part of ours.”

“I sold him to you,” she said miserably.

“No, he sold himself, when he chose to work for the Ministry of Correct Thought.”

“Are all political officers part of that ministry?”

“Yes.” Leung grimaced. “It is where they hold their commissions.”

Childress was fascinated. Though Leung talked about the Beiyang Navy, the Celestial Emperor, and the affairs of the Wall, he had said very little about life in the Chinese empire. “This correct thought is the will of your emperor?”

“It is our way. Not so different from what Confucius would have of us, if you consider it.”

“In the British Empire, we are at least permitted the luxury of our own thinking.”

He laughed softly. “Did you never know someone imprisoned for speaking out against your Queen?”

She turned that over a moment, testing her annoyance. Then: “You understand what I am saying. We do not set spies on ourselves to ferret out what is said and done at every moment in every corner.”

“Obedience is a cardinal virtue in China. You English seem to view it as an optional behavior.”

“We do not raise ghosts to bedevil our enemies,” she said. “Perhaps our need for obedience is less.”

His humor vanished into the stiffness of command. “This was all done at your wish. I have had my own accommodation with the political officer for quite some time. He sleeps now to protect you, Mask.”

Childress felt a rush of mingled shame and irritation. “I know. I must be stronger. More like the Mask Poinsard, who would have driven the knife home herself. In my heart, I would as soon pretend there was no knife at all, even if it was my word that set the blow in motion.”

“In that, you are both human and charming.” Despite his words, Leung’s eyes were still cold. He took his leave. Childress remained, staring
at the last of her squid and wondering how she might have better expressed herself so as not to lose his hard-won respect.

She just could not find easy acceptance in the thought that her words had least plunged Choi into an endless and likely very troubled sleep.

After breakfasting alone the next day, Childress sought out Leung. A sailor blocked her access to the bridge. She looked at him and repeated
“Leung zai nar?”
until he leaned through the hatch and began a lengthy conversation with someone unseen.

A few minutes later, Leung stepped out. “How may I be of service, Mask Childress?”

His tone was still formal and cold, she noted. “I have thought and prayed on this,” she said. “I desire that you awaken the political officer. I will not have his death on my conscience.”

Leung shook his head. “That is not possible.”

“I do not wish him to die.”

“He has been slain,” Leung said. “His body does not yet understand, but his spirit is gone to the dark country of dreams with little possibility of recall. In time, his breath will fail, or his heart will weaken, or he will simply slip away from starving in his bed.”

“I do not want it.”

Leung leaned close, almost touching her, his eyes locked on hers. “When I donned a uniform and made my oaths to the Dragon Throne and the Beiyang Admiralty, it meant that I might be called upon to kill, and kill again, in service of my Emperor. On my order your
Mute Swan
sank with all hands save one. The judges of the dead will see this in my tally, and balance their deaths against my oaths. It is what we do, who serve the will and logic of Empire.

“You, Mask Childress, are no different. If you would play this game, then know the price. Else you should have stayed home in New England and tended whatever garden was yours.”

He turned without bidding her farewell and pulled the bridge hatch shut behind him.

Back in her cabin, Childress wondered if she
could
have stayed in New England. She had not questioned Anneke’s summons at the library that day. A lifetime of obedience—to her mother, to her teachers, to God, to the deans of the university—had moved her. Her only real infraction was allowing herself to be drawn into the
avebianco
without permission.

That was the root of the issue, she realized. Permission. Childress sat on her bunk and stared at the metal wall, thinking on that.

God had not given humanity permission to live in the world. He had supplied instead free will, sending His children into Creation to find their own way. He trusted humanity to return to God on their own.
Some of us have,
Childress told herself,
some of us have not.

But everything she’d ever done fell within the bounds of permission. She was permitted not to marry, if she served the world of men in some other capacity—librarian, teacher, nurse. All words that meant “mother,” without the bother of procreation or parturition.

Permitted work for women. Permitted by the deans to serve their college. Permitted by the widow who ran her rooming house to stay on and on and on, though Childress had long since ceased being the sort of young woman expected to marry away in a year or three. Permitted by the white birds to serve in their loose corps of eyes and ears, writing occasional letters and sending them through the monthly meetings in the basements of fraternal lodges and the upper rooms of restaurants.

She’d had the choice of carrying on her deception or not. Choi held the power of permission over her through his reports to the Ministry of Correct Thought.

That made her angry again. Who was he to hold her fate over her head? But then, who was she to balance her life over his?

The Mask Poinsard would have, without a second thought.
The Feathered Masks had balanced their lives over hers, sending Childress to the Silent Order as a sacrifice to keep the peace.

The idea that struggled inside, gnawing at her conscience and attacking her sense of balance and goodwill both, was simple enough.

She was worth more than this.

She was worth more than permission, or the answer to prayer, or the winds of the world. She was her own woman, her own human being.

Silent tears ran down her cheeks as Childress wondered why this was so hard to say to herself. Permission or no, she set about praying for the dead aboard
Mute Swan,
and especially for the lost soul of Choi. God would forgive them their sins, whatever hers might be.

Leung joined her at dinner that night. The meal was stir-fried mushrooms with sliced peppers. She picked at it with her
kwai-tsze,
wishing for a roast chicken with mashed potatoes and corn. This Chinese food was good, even tasty, but lately it seemed to lend her no comfort, only nutrition.

After a little while, she looked up at the captain. “I have taken your words to heart, sir.”

“And how would that be?”

“Everything has a price. You made that clear, though I have known it long since. I regret the fate of Choi, but this is my price for continued freedom of action. I am not willing to lay down my life so he might do his job.”

He frowned. “I see.”

“I . . . I swore no oaths. No oaths of office or fealty, or commission, as you have done. My purposes are different. But they are
mine.
”

“Good.” Leung’s face relaxed a bit.

“And so I have something else to ask. When we reach Tainan, I want to accompany you to report to Admiral Shang. Do not tell my story for me, Captain Leung.”

“You would approach the admiral yourself?”

“He is expecting a Mask, bring him a Mask. I will explain what I am about.”

“Chersonesus Aurea.”

“Yes,” Childress replied. “The Golden Bridge. This project is wrong, and it will damage far more than it aids.”

“He is expecting a Mask who will speak for the project, bring aid from the Feathered Masks.”

“Oh, sir, I will bring him aid. I will aid him in recognizing the madness of opening the Wall. And I will set limits and extents on what the Feathered Masks shall do to assure China’s safety in the face of British tests.”

“I did not think you had a remit to speak on such things.”

She shrugged, smiling. “I do not require permission to speak. Who is to say how Masks succeed one another? I declare myself heir to the Mask Poinsard. She cannot say differently.”

Leung smiled back. “You are learning, I believe.”

“No, Captain, I already knew what could be. I merely lacked a sense of how to proceed. Something which you have provided to me.”

Leung bowed. “Very well. You will accompany me ashore when we make port in Tainan.”

“Will you take me to Strasbourg?” Paolina asked Captain Sayeed the next day when she met him walking on
Notus
’ main deck.

“This is not a passenger vessel, young lady,” the captain replied, but he smiled. “Why should I do such a thing?”

“Because you want me to go there.” Paolina kept her voice simple, not challenging. She could not storm this man, nor push him. Only ask politely and convince with what logic could be summoned. “Else you would not have told me of the Schwilgué Clock. You are neither a cruel nor a casual man, I believe.”

“Your faith stirs my heart. Walk with me.”

The two of them mounted the half flight of steps to the poop, then proceeded to the stern rail.

Africa this morning was sere. The jungles of a day or two before had vanished into pounding sunlight, which flooded the land below. Only the shadow of the gasbag and the continued wind of their passage kept the deck from being an oven as well.

“The Wall has already fallen below the horizon,” Sayeed said. “Though I imagine it is truly never far from your thoughts.”

“No, sir.” She stared into the blued south, though there was little enough weather aloft at the moment. “It forms the center and circle of the Earth, dividing the Northern and Southern extents, and defining all that is. Without the Wall, the world would fly free from its path around the sun. We would either die in the fires of daylight or freeze in the crystalline forests of night.”

“Well said. Now consider this: The Wall is one of the greatest parts of God’s magic. It holds air high above the earth, where elsewhere there is
only thin and starveling gas tending toward vacuum. It does as you have said, anchoring and defining our world. At the same time, the Wall is nothing but the stay and support for a giant ring gear that meshes us with the larger fields of Creation. You, my dear girl, carry a piece of clockwork in your pocket which is an echo of that vasty Divine magic. You can call spirits from the timing of the world.”

Paolina smiled. “Whether they come is another matter entire.”

Sayeed cleared his throat. It was obvious that he was reaching for something he found difficult to say. She stood quietly, wondering what could move the man so.

He finally spoke. “There are . . . schools of thought . . . among the various communities of faith and reason throughout the British Empire.” Sayeed stared south, avoiding her eye. “I find my sympathies lie with the Rational Humanists, as one such school is called. A very wise man named William of Ghent provided many of our writings for some years. He believed that the world could not continue to exist without sentient intervention. It is too orderly, too well settled, to have been pushed into motion by some absent God, then allowed to roll forward like a ball bounding down a hill.”