Airship Nation (Darkworld Chronicles Book 2)

by Tom DeMarco

  Edward came up to the dais during one of the songs and whispered to me. “You‘re monopolizing the best seat in the house, my friend. And I’ve had my eye on it. So off you go. I’ve got a Jubilee kiss for your lady and reminiscences and another glass of punch.” He had two goblets in his hands. I gave up my seat, passing my hand over Kelly’s cheek as I stepped down.

  I can’t remember everyone I spoke to or who entertained us after that. At one point there was a band and Melissa Klipstein danced me about the floor, lovely and cheerful, as always. As we danced, she said,

  “Well, this is not only a celebration of Kelly but of you, Loren Martine. What Victoria has become is a due to your vision as much as anything else.”

  “A particularly kind observation from someone who is always kind and who, just this evening, has probably had enough punch to make her even rosier than usual.”

  She laughed at my small joke. “But there is truth there too, if you want to hear it. We’ve come a long way…”

  “That’s certainly true.”

  “…and you have been in the middle of it, of every bit of it. Why I remember when I first set eyes on you.”

  “Oh yes. The day of the Stella Linda.”

  “I was sliding down that slanting line onto the bow of a tiny sailboat. And you were down there on that bow, waiting to catch me. I didn’t even know your name. And then part way down, my skirts began blowing up around my ears, and all I could think was Which undies do I have on? and I hope they’re the pretty ones.”

  “Threw off my concentration. That’s why I didn’t exactly ‘catch’ you, but just served as a cushion for you to land on. I almost went over.”

  “In the middle of it you were. Then and ever since.”

  Dean Porter cut in on Melissa, and I found myself dancing with Maria Sawyer.

  “It’s not the white hairs I’m looking at, Loren, but the young, the very young. Miss Stacey Hopkins, for one. Look at her, bright and sassy and intelligent and full of energy. What an unstoppable force she will become. We have been caretakers, that’s all. We took a few boat-loads of kids and helped them grow up and become what they had it in them to become. Hasn’t it been glorious?”

  I danced with Candace Hopkins. Of course I passed on Maria’s comment about Stacey. And I danced with my sister, Chlotide,and then Dolly Buxtehude. There was a interlude and then more entertainment, beginning, I think, with songs by an Indian group with a flute and bongos. Emile Jouvet had taken the seat beside Kelly, I noticed. She saw my glance and waved. Nino had the girls, one in either hand, going around saying their goodnights to the guests, on their way to bed soon. I sat down between Edward and Maria del Sol.

  On the floor below was a clown in harlequin interacting with an acrobat. I wasn’t watching, feeling saturated with entertainment for the moment. Kelly though was staring at the man in harlequin, I noticed, as though wondering if she had seen him before. He was an attractive fellow, with dark burning eyes. The joke was he was running after the acrobat clumsily, always eluded by the fellow who could turn and jump and somersault in ways that made the crowd murmur approval. The acrobat was in black tights and had on a kind of hooded mask covering his upper face and hair. I turned back to my conversation with MariSol. She was saying something about Veronica. But her eyes were following the act. I turned back to it as I listened.

  Now the man in black had a long pole in his hand and he drew the attention of the audience to its wickedly sharp point. He began chasing after the harlequin, poking at his posteriors as the man darted away. With a sudden leap, the acrobat jumped over his quarry entirely. The timing was perfect: The clown turned just at the moment that the acrobat was passing over his head and looked back for his pursuer. Of course there was nothing there. He stared exaggeratedly into the crowd, trying to find the acrobat, who was not a foot away, directly behind him. Kelly was laughing. The acrobat turned over backward in one graceful movement, still holding the long pole.

  Beside me, Maria del Sol said, “He has an almost feminine grace, this fellow” It took a moment to register, but eventually it did. I stood up, and pushed my way down to the edge of the stage, my eyes on the too-graceful acrobat.

  What happened next took only one second: the time to say one-one-thousand. It was the most obscene act my eyes have ever seen. The acrobat took two quick steps toward the dais and threw the pole as a spear, putting all the strength of his heavy shoulders into it. The spear flew across in front of me. I willed it to stop and it did seem to slow, but it was only my own perception that had shifted to a reduced speed. I was running, but with feet made of lead. The spear was moving through the air, sluggish, but not so sluggish as I. And then everything was at normal speed again. “NOOO…” I screamed. I watched, helpless, as the spear buried itself in Kelly’s breast.

  A splash of red and I was at her side. I couldn’t believe the amount of blood, I had never seen so much. Don’t turn away an automatic voice was saying from inside me, Don’t turn away. A-B-C: Airway, Breathing and Circulation, think of those things first. Stabilize the projectile. I reached out to grasp it where it had entered. Don’t turn away.

  I heard something then I hope never to hear again, the sound of her breath passing not through the throat but through the wound, a sucking chest wound. Kelly’s eyes were open, frightened and looking into mine. I leaned close to her. She said, “Oh, Loren…” And then she gave an odd sound, like a burp only what came up was not her breath but dark red blood, spilling out over her lips. Don’t turn your eyes away, the voice said, you can’t help if you turn away. But it was too much to bear and to my lasting shame I turned away.

  Chlotide was at my side. “Out,” she said. “Get him away.” She peeled my hand from the projectile and replaced it with her own. Then she slid her hips into me hard, sending me sprawling almost off the dais.

  “Plastic!” I heard her shout. “Sheets of plastic! Anything plastic, but fast. And oxygen, the two bottles from the nursery.” Of course, plastic for a sucking chest wound, I remembered. Plastic to form a seal around the wound to allow breathing. I rolled over to head for the kitchen, but saw, almost immediately, a girl racing out through the door with clear sheets of plastic wrap in her hand.

  A shout from behind me and I turned about. In front of me was the harlequin clown, his eyes burning. He had a sword in his hand, a sword of all things, an instrument not of war but of theater. I had my own sword in its scabbard at my side, a ceremonial thing that could be of no use in a fight, that would probably shatter. But I drew it out with my blood soaked hand. The sight of the blood brought on my blood lust and I advanced toward the man to kill him. He was protecting his partner, the black suited acrobat who was climbing hand over hand up the heavy drapes, headed for the upper window and its sill, twenty feet up. I lifted the point of my blade, remembering the Proctor’s instruction: The point is the one place you can be sure your adversary won’t move toward. But the fellow did exactly that. He came at me and leapt, casting his body directly onto the point of my sabre. We fell together in a tumble.

  When I disentangled myself, the acrobat was standing on the sill above, looking down at us. Not looking at me, but at the dying man at my feet. The hooded mask had become skewed during the climb. Now a quick gesture to wrench it off. A cascade of black hair. I looked up at her, still befuddled. She was staring into the eyes of the man at my feet. ”Nehemiah,” she said. She raised a hand to her lips and blew toward him a kiss. I looked down at the man and saw on his face a brief moment of ecstasy and then he died.

  Edward was dragging the guard up behind me. They had projectile launchers. “Fire!” he shouted. “What are you waiting for? Fire! Kill her.” They went down on their knees to aim.

  The sound of a crash and a loud scrape from outside the building and above. When I looked up again, there was part of a mast and flapping black sail visible behind her through the window. She turned and launched herself through the glass. The launchers went off at my side, too late.

  I raced to t
he lower window to see. The long whoosh of a pavilion diving, trading altitude for speed. I caught only a glimpse of its stern as it shot out over the walls and down toward the city.

  Elgar Klipstein was behind me. “I’ll have an interceptor on her. There are pavilions on the roof.” And he raced away, also too late.

  Veronica, I thought. She is the other target. I raced toward the door. “Where is Nino?” I shouted. Kelly’s maid was at the foot of the stair, her face full of terror. “Up,” she said, pointing toward the apartments on the top floor. I took the stairs three at a time all the way to the landing and then charged down the hall to Shimna’s rooms.

  When I burst through the door, the two little girls were sitting on their beds, staring at me wide-eyed.

  “But why did the party end so suddenly, Daddy?” Shimna asked.

  Nino was at my belt, whispering. “They didn’t see. I whisked them away.”

  I looked down at the genial little man. His always old and wrinkled face was suddenly ancient. He looked like a cadaver, disturbed after a long time. “Thank you, Nino. Thank you.”

  The Cuban guard had followed me. They were staring in through the open door. I pulled two of them in and across the room and out onto the stone terrace. “The girls are in terrible danger. Guard them, I beg you.”

  They had been our family guard for years, Jose and Alguin. Alguin said, “Our lives will protect them, Commodore.”

  The other two guards I placed in the corridor outside Shimna’s door. I gave them their instructions, in Spanish in case the girls should overhear. “They may come for Veronica, the men in black. You will be our protection. Don’t let anyone but Nino or the immediate family through this door. Any others that approach, turn them away. If they insist, kill them.”

  They nodded grimly, drawing their long combat knives.

  I was not admitted to the little nurse’s room that Dr. Bolen had chosen for his surgery. He had Chlotide with him and the emergency room nurse from the clinic. I was refused entrance. I stumbled back up the stairs, headed instinctively, like a wounded animal toward its burrow. There was no one there. I passed through the library and living room and into our bedroom.

  A sucking chest wound. It was Category 4 on the triage tables we’d had to memorize. That meant odds of survival of a third or less. In a multiple victim accident, you wouldn’t even try to save such a person unless you had extra medical personnel. If there was even one person in danger in a lower category, you had to treat him first, so little was the hope of saving the other.

  I looked around me at the room. It was so neat. Kelly hated clutter. She almost never left anything out, so the place had almost no mark of her that I could see. Almost none. I lowered myself, numb, onto the bed in the space where she slept. On the table beside the bed was her blue plastic harmonica.

  POSTSCRIPT

  The difference between a happy ending and a not so happy one is a function of when the story ends. Our nature is to get involved with the individuals, and the life of an individual, if you follow it far enough, is bound to end on a low note. The final events are sad, or at least, as in this case, troubling.

  The unfolding of a tale proceeds largely in the order of the events retold. But there are no strict rules on this. Among the artifices of the form is the flashback, a tinkering with the dictates of time. A flashback could be used as even the final word of a book, a postscript. It could serve to turn the reader for a brief look backward, away from whatever dilemma the chronology may have produced. It could thus focus at the end on a happier moment, for instance on a New Year’s Day party at the Layton home, during that last winter in Ithaca, before the world went dark:

  Kelly rang the bell at the Wyckoff Avenue house. She was hopping from one foot to another in the cold. The price of vanity: Her prettiest coat was none too warm for January. But it was white and shapely and even in the chill she was content with her choice. She could hear movement within.

  Edward threw open the door. “Hurrah! The party is compete! It’s Kelly, everyone.” This last shouted into the interior. He drew her inside and shut the door. “Well, Happy New Year, m’dear. I hope it’s a wonderful one for you.” He kissed her cheek as he took her white coat.

  “Beginning behind, as usual,” she laughed. “Am I terribly late?”

  “We’ve just been sitting here, glumly, waiting for your arrival. My, look at you!”

  “New dress, do you like it?”

  Edward led her into the brighter light of the living room to see. There were sounds from the kitchen where the party seemed to have congregated. “Kelly, just look at you. Where are the ever-present glasses that are supposed to be propped up on your nose?”

  “Gone! Lenses. What do you think?”

  “Well, I think…my god. I think I’ve been blind. And that dress.” She twirled around for him. “And your hair up like that, I’ve never seen it up. It’s positively regal. Kelly, you are just lovely. You are beautiful.”

  “Oh, Edward. You’ve got the Blarney in you.”

  “Blarney!? Blarney is Irish. I’m no Irisher, I am a Rooshian.”

  “Well what do the Rooshians have that’s like Blarney, then?”

  “Deep mysterious melancholy. And…lust.” He made an exaggerated grab for her waist with both hands.”

  Kelly danced away. “Look out for Barodin,” she called into the kitchen. “I think he’s gotten into the punch.”

  Claymore was at the range, whipping together potatoes and white turnips. “Happy New Year, Clay.” Kelly kissed his cheek. “Happy New Year, guys,” to Sonia and Loren working near the sink. Homer and Maria were on the window seat. They made room for her and she flounced down between them. “Baby-sitter disaster,” she told them. “She sent her boyfriend packing last light, and just had to tell me about it. Complete with tears. So Kelly starts her New Year twenty-two minutes behind and it will just get worse from here on. No wonder I’m always late. How are you folks?”

  Homer put an arm around her shoulder. “Behind too. Behinder than yesterday and not so behind as tomorrow. Look at these pink cheeks, Maria.”

  “And something else different, I believe. Contact lenses.”

  “A new look for a new year.”

  “Come see what Claymore’s got for us, Kelly,” Sonia called out over her shoulder.

  Kelly popped up. “Wow, Sonia in pink. Pretty.”

  “It’s the real me. Or maybe it is, I’m still deciding.”

  “I’m helping her wash the lettuce,” Loren said. He had his arms wrapped around Sonia’s waist from behind.

  “Well you’re just a wonderful help. It’s what every woman needs in the kitchen. That and a maid.”

  “Claymore has got us something you may never have seen before,” Sonia nodded toward the floor in the corner. “At least I never have.”

  “What on earth…?” There was a galvanized tub filled with ice and in the ice was an enormous black wine bottle.

  “It’s a Jeroboam,” Edward said, reaching down to twirl the bottle. “Champagne. A Veuve Cliquot three star. For us unsophisticated types that translates to Yummy.”

  “Wow.”

  “What do you think, Clay, is it time?”

  “Open her up.”

  Edward twisted off the top which yielded with a celebratory pop. Loren was waiting with a tray of glasses. Kelly helped Edward lift the huge bottle to pour. When enough glasses were filled they all stood together in the middle of the kitchen to clink. “To a wonderful New Year,” Homer said.

  After the first drink, Loren took Kelly’s arm. “But you still haven’t seen the best. Come see Homer’s letter.” He led her over to the cork bulletin board where a letter on ornate letterhead was stuck up beside a shopping list. “It arrived by courier this morning.”

  Kelly scanned the lines, her eyes widening. “Homer! This is wonderful! You’re famous.”

  Homer had come up behind them to look again. “Ah, famous. So that is what I am. People think very highly of famous, so I guess
it must be good. What would be better though, is young.”

  Kelly gave him a hug.

  Loren read out the text of the letter one more time: “The Nobel Awards Committee is pleased to inform you that your name has been placed into competition for the prize in physics.”

  “They didn’t select yet,” Homer said. “Just think of all the letters like this they sent out. And all of them received by old geezers like me. They will probably account for a hundred heart attacks over the next few months, brought on by the stress.”

  “But what an honor.”

  “I am a laureate candidate. And you four are assistant laureate candidates, while Maria and Claymore are associate assistant laureate candidates.”

  Edward raised his glass. “We’ll drink to that,”

  After the meal, Homer and Maria and Claymore retired to upstairs bedrooms for naps and the young people stayed on at the table, finishing the champagne.

  “We have been so fortunate,” Kelly said, “To have found Homer, or in Loren’s and my case, to have been found by him.”

  “It certainly changed my life,” Loren agreed.

  “All of ours.”

  Sonia held out her glass as Edward served. “I’ve worked with him for four years, you know, from even before Edward came along. He was my thesis advisor. And I’ve seen him come up with things that left me stunned. I could only wonder, how does this man’s mind work? Only, the most astonishing thing about Homer is not his intelligence. It’s his kindness. I think he is the kindest man I have ever met.”

  “He is lovely, and particularly lovely to us.”

  “We four are his children, in a way,” Edward offered.

  Kelly was nodding. “And he is our example. For now, we work for Homer and follow where he leads. But someday it will be up to us to lead. To show that we learned from his example.”