Mnemo's Memory

by David Versace

  Hollioak burned to restore his ship to order. Instead, he drew his pistol and followed, his thoughts grim. Trust was all very well but only action accomplished anything.

  #

  Having located the structural weak point of the floor, Elizabeth set aside her small mallet and held up a chemical lamp. She marked out a circumference with coloured chalk.

  She heard a crash of splintering timbers from the forward holds. It was followed by muffled shouts and smacks of pistol fire. Elizabeth stood back from the sealed door. Her confidence that the plan was working did not stop her closing a hand around the dirk sheathed at her back.

  Outside, cries became shrieks. Elizabeth spared a small measure of sympathy for any wretch trying to obstruct Mnemo. She had made no provisions for mercy in his instructions.

  Mnemo crashed through the wall like a fox with the hunt at its tail. Its flailing arms shredded the timbers, clearing a path for its clumsy legs.

  "Lady Gracemere," said Captain Hollioak with a fierce look, collapsing past Mnemo through the destroyed wall. A patch of bruised skin wept blood into his brows. On his stern, thoughtful features the injury was like an oil stain on fresh crinoline. "Are you unharmed? Thank God." He fell to one knee.

  The gesture startled her. Then she recognised he was overcome with pain. "Captain Hollioak was struck by Airman McCrea," Mnemo observed.

  "Damned turncoat," muttered Hollioak. Then his eyes widened. He said, "Forgive my language, Lady Gracemere. I am unaccustomed to guarding my tongue aboard my own ship."

  She smiled at his gallantry. "It's nothing I haven't said myself while struggling with an uncooperative repair." Kneeling as carefully as her restrictive layers allowed, Elizabeth retrieved a small nursing kit from an outer pocket. Holding the Captain's jaw with a steady hand, she turned his wound to the light. She dabbed it with cleaning alcohol. At the sting, Captain Hollioak's eyes snapped open. "Thank you. I believe I am clean enough now."

  She held the light closer, not replying. His eyes were flint at the rims, softening to azure bands about the pupils. Elizabeth removed the stained linen from his forehead and, after a moment, her hand from his face.

  "Can you stand?" she asked.

  "I can accomplish that much." Testing the contours of his head wound with hard, steady fingers, he said, "Lady Gracemere, is it bold of me to speculate that you are unsurprised by this mutiny?"

  "Oh. Yes, I rather expected Winter to undermine you." Elizabeth blinked away a sudden pinprick of tears. "I feared if I shared my intelligence with you, you would act to thwart him. All my hopes are pinned on his underestimation of me. Can you forgive my deceit?"

  He met this revelation with a raised eyebrow. "On two conditions."

  "Which are?"

  "The first is that when our business on Ross Island is complete, we compare profane vocabularies. As a sailing man, I collect obscenities the way you must collect compliments."

  It was Elizabeth's turn to widen her eyes in mischievous astonishment. "Imminent peril appears to have freed you from the shackles of decorum, Captain."

  "I never find it much use on the field of battle, Madam."

  "Then you have my wholehearted consent, Captain."

  Mnemo made a small mechanical grunt. "Several men approach, Madam. It is likely the mutineers have regrouped."

  Captain Hollioak nodded in agreement. "Any loyal man would be at his post."

  Elizabeth's mind raced. "We must hurry. Tell me, Captain, have we arrived at our destination?"

  "If we have not deviated from the original flight plan, then we are holding steady off the north-western slope."

  "Good enough." Elizabeth opened a panel in Mnemo's torso. Inside were additional necessities for her plan. The cable she uncoiled to the floor. She freed the breathing tube of her mask and clipped the oxygen tank to her coat.

  "Lady Gracemere, without a landing tower you cannot safely disembark. If I could get you to the foredeck we could belay your climbing cable but -"

  "We cannot risk further encounters with mutineers." She glanced at the frown of tactical assessment creasing his brow. The spirited bonhomie was gone again, carefully stowed in some secure compartment until the fighting was done. She hoped she would see it again.

  "Until I can secure control, you are safest here."

  She worked her mask's straps loose. "I have something other than safety in mind. Mnemo?"

  The automaton stretched its arms in a cruciform pose, gripping the wall struts until cracks showed beneath its thick digits. Its clawed feet centred on the chalk circle inscribed on the floor. Its legs drew up, receding partway into its abdomen. Lady Elizabeth placed a hand on Captain Hollioak's chest, easing him away from the automaton. Then with an ear-splitting crash Mnemo's legs pistoned out, rupturing the cabin floor.

  A yawing grey expanse was exposed through the hole. A blast of Antarctic air rushed in. The sweat on Captain Hollioak's brow, beard and eyelashes froze into a dusting of ice. To Elizabeth's eye, it enhanced his already formidable look of determination. If time were less pressing she would have given the expression deeper consideration. Alas.

  "Convey my sincere apologies to Mister Thackeray for the damage, Captain." Elizabeth lashed her rope to the carabiner on Mnemo's shoulder. Another section she threaded through reinforced slits in her coat to the harness about her waist. "I must take this route alone. The cold outside would kill you in a minute, I'm afraid."

  Captain Hollioak's regret was obvious. "I will do what I can to distract Winter."

  "Be careful, Captain. Winter did not insinuate traitors in your crew just to capture me. I believe he intends to take your ship. Expect heavy fire and light damage." She smiled ruefully at the gaping perforation at their feet. "Perhaps lighter than I have already inflicted."

  She could see the awful suspicion growing in his eyes. Guilt took fresh hold of her. "How do you come to know so much about Doctor Winter?"

  "Oh dear." She drew a deep breath. Unavoidable as the moment was, she felt flummoxed and ill-prepared.

  "It is because I know him better than anyone else. Because once my heart held nothing for him but passionate regard. Doctor Winter did not kill John Gracemere, Captain. Not in the way the world believes. My husband's obsessions became madness and in his madness he forsook one name for another. He abandoned his name, his title and his country."

  Captain Hollioak's jaw tightened. "He abandoned you."

  "He did."

  "Of all his crimes, that may be his most unforgivable." Captain Hollioak's throat was clenched with submerged emotion.

  Once, early in the voyage, when he still hoped to convince her to turn back, he recounted his last sight of the Marquess of Salisbury: flames casting long orange streaks across the Severn's black surface; men falling from the sky, screaming and afire; the ship's lift sacs swollen beyond their limits, snapping their restraining nets, splitting rents in its protective airframe and bursting in blinding phosphor glares. At the last its fat hull, slung beneath burning balloons and useless screeching engines, had dropped and burst. Its scattered bones blazed a forest. The fire burned for days and devoured all hope of survivors. She knew he was reliving the same moment now.

  "That was your second condition, was it not? To know what I know?"

  He closed his eyes and nodded. "I would kill him if he were standing here."

  "I know. You are at home in the heat of a raging battle, Captain. I crave method. Precision. One step after another, each piece in its place until the mechanism is flawless."

  "That's not my experience of most plans, Lady Gracemere."

  So that he could not read her face, she fitted her mask. Her voice sounded hollow through the gentle hiss of oxygen. "I have asked so much of you Captain. I think we must dispense with these awkward formalities. When we meet again, call me Elizabeth."

  "Then you must call me Edward."

  The wind whipped at his dark hair, flaring it like spray from an angry wave. His eyes were hard with the certainty that they looked
upon her for the last time. Perhaps he was fixing this final sight of her in his memory, as Elizabeth was.

  "Godspeed, Edward."

  She stepped into the hole and vanished into the grey darkness.

  #

  Edward's anxiety built as he watched the thrumming vibrations in the rope. Its tensile strength was unquestionable. Yet it strained against the anchoring automaton with the force of Elizabeth's descent and the relentless power of the biting wind. It whined with tension and slapped at Mnemo's metal frame.

  "Do not be concerned, Captain," said the automaton. Tiny puffs of sawdust escaped as its tightening grip crushed timber. "She is an accomplished climber."

  From outside came the sounds of cautious footsteps, whispered conferences and drawn knives. The mutineers were gathering themselves for a renewed assault. Time was short. Edward's curiosity bested his caution. "How much of him is in you?"

  "I am nothing of Lord Gracemere. I am a flawless reproduction of a widow's fond memory, Captain Hollioak." Gracemere himself would have been similarly disingenuous.

  "Did she even mourn her loss?"

  Mnemo's pause suggested an odd reluctance to answer.

  "She made me to supplant her grief, Captain. Mnemo is the receptacle into which she poured her sadness and fury and frustration. Any bereaved soul might weep in a favourite garden or whisper secrets to a portrait. I am no different."

  Edward said, "You are remarkable." He was unsure who he meant the compliment for.

  "I am the product of remarkable hands, Captain."

  "So you are."

  Edward tucked the pistol into his belt. "If I may, I will use the rope to gain access to the coffers. They will hesitate to pursue me there."

  He took hold of the rope, which bit frostily at his palms. He levered himself into the gap between the floor and the lower hull of the Bishop of Sarum. As soon as his feet found purchase, he clambered into the musty darkness.

  The rope slackened. Elizabeth had reached the ground and cast herself off. He released his breath in a muttered prayer of thanks.

  Above, there were shouts of dismay and a shot was fired. Two pounding footsteps from Mnemo's elephantine feet thundered directly overhead.

  More shots were fired, and a voice ordered, "Knock it down, boys!"

  A rumble of footsteps crossed above, closing on Mnemo. Thumps and curses. One last shot, which ended in a shattering sound.

  Mnemo said "Godspeed," as though to nobody in particular.

  A moment later the automaton, its arms wrapped about three screaming air sailors, plummeted through the thin scrape of light before Edward's eyes and disappeared into frozen space.

  Imprisoning an exclamation of horror behind pursed lips, he began a steady, silent crawl into the heart of his ship.

  #

  Smoked lenses protected Elizabeth's vision from the blinding effects of the snow glare. They made it difficult to pick details out at a distance. She saw the faint outline of the airship, swathed in cloud, and Mnemo's parachute, grey as a quarryman. When it became obvious what the figures falling away from Mnemo with animalistic cries and thrashing limbs were, she raised a hand to her throat. For months she had known she must harden her heart to the lives her revenge might endanger. No qualms for those who threw their lot in with Winter. As she watched the helpless figures tumble, it was for one soul alone that she feared.

  She closed her eyes as the dark shapes crashed to earth, bouncing and breaking upon the frozen scoria. The sound of their impact was thankfully swallowed by the wind. A moment later, the hissing whine of Mnemo's articulating motors broke through the emptiness.

  "Mnemo, is Captain Hollioak -?" She could not speak the words.

  "Captain Hollioak is still aboard the airship, Madam."

  "Thank God. I only hope he - Mnemo, there is a man attached to you."

  The air sailor, a young midshipman whose name Elizabeth could not recall, was dead, stuck in place with his arms wrapped about Mnemo's shoulders and back. The deadly chill must have sucked the life from him in an instant, though sheer terror could not be discounted.

  "Kindly avert your gaze, Madam," said Mnemo. Elizabeth turned away. The heavy layers of her mask and hood could not protect her a noise like the splitting of a green branch as Mnemo detached his doomed passenger. The crunch of the corpse dropped onto loose stones signalled the grisly business was done.

  "We must hurry," she said, looking up the sloping outer wall of the Erebus volcano. It was bare, lifeless rock, broken into flaking scree, steaming black soil and a few obstinate patches of glistening snow resisting the radiant heat. "The cold is unbearable."

  Mnemo fell forward onto its hands, absurdly resembling a calisthenics enthusiast. Its powerful fingers punched into the loose rock. Curved metal prongs emerged from its feet like dull talons.

  "Clip on, Madam."

  Elizabeth fixed a short cable between herself and Mnemo.

  "Begin." At her instruction, Mnemo detached a hand and reached up. One leg elongated while the other dug in. The cable went taut as Mnemo pulled itself upslope. Upon its next movement, Elizabeth was dragged two steps forward. She leaned away at a comfortable angle and walked behind Mnemo, letting it drag her toward the summit.

  Their destination was a crenelated wall built along the rim of the volcano's caldera A bulky artillery emplacement jutted from it. At their current rate of ascent, it was no more than eight or nine minutes away.

  Elizabeth turned her face skyward, seeking the airship in the gloom.

  "Mnemo, did Edw- did Captain Hollioak say anything about me?"

  "He complimented your engineering skills, madam."

  "Humph. As well he might."

  But then, why should Edward have shared his thoughts with the hollow reconstruction of a dead man? She knew well enough that he recoiled from Mnemo.

  Still, she hoped that he might understand. Perhaps one day he might even find it possible to forgive her shameless manipulations. She pictured him twenty years on, a deep-lined face surrounding sharp grey eyes, hair of distinguished silver, recounting this day at some London club. She imagined him speaking of her, not unkindly and with perhaps a dash of the daring to pepper the tale.

  Elizabeth smiled beneath her mask as her clockwork butler dragged her up the face of an active volcano to confront a killer.

  #

  Edward made slow progress in the stifling confines of the coffers. The space was cramped and the angles awkward, not intended for protracted periods of habitation. The thin radium glow of his pocket watch provided just enough light to make out the carpenter's scratches on the hull timbers, by which he was able to navigate his way fore and aloft.

  With his freedom of movement constrained, his thoughts took flight. His best efforts of will were not enough to keep them from Elizabeth. What sort of man was he, to have stood silent as she threw herself overboard and into deadly peril? And yet such confidence shone from her eyes, like chips of emerald. What course did he have but to make way in the face of such determination? Certainly she was bound on a dangerous path but he could scarcely guarantee her safety aboard The Bishop of Sarum, not while it remained in the hands of turncoats. Better that she see to her own duties and he to his.

  The memory of her eyes carried him through the veins of his ship, until at last he arrived beneath its heart.

  "I say again, Ensign, you are relieved. Stand down from the helm or I will seize it by force."

  The dense planks of the bridge decking muffled the voices from above. Edward recognised the speaker with a sinking heart. Commander Dempsey had served under him for six years. What inducement to mutiny had Winter offered? Little less than the Bishop herself, he suspected.

  Edward eased himself around the armoured casing of the gear assembly, which sat beneath the helmcastle and conveyed its directions to the Bishop's array of engines, ailerons and propellors. An inspection hatch beyond opened onto the bridge's aft deck.

  He took a breath to steady his aching extremities, drew his
service revolver and shoved the hatch open.

  Edward pressed the muzzle of his pistol against the back of Dempsey's head, just below the brim of his bicorne hat. "Stand down, sir," he said, "or you shall despoil Ensign Farmer's uniform with your brains."

  Dempsey stiffened. His sword clattered to the floor. His pistol followed a moment later. Beyond him, the helmsman stood pale and shaking, backed up against the helmcastle: a brass wall decorated with dials, grills and the dozen mahogany wheels that determined the Bishop's orientation and altitudes.

  "Captain Hollioak." Dempsey's first word was tinged with bitterness, the second dripped venom. "How did you get free?"

  "Perhaps you underestimate my resources, Commander."

  "I could have ordered your death."

  "I almost wish you had done so," said Edward. "It will give me no pleasure to see you on the gallows for this day's work."

  Dempsey scoffed. "You speak like you're not already in Winter's grasp, Hollioak. You may have the bridge, but my men have the run of the ship."

  Ensign Farmer found his voice. "He may be right sir. I've heard shots from all over."

  "They'll surrender on your order, Dempsey. If not then I-"

  The floor shifted violently beneath them.

  Edward's air legs bent to compensate. Stiffness from the cold climb seized his right knee. He collapsed.

  Dempsey's foot lashed out and caught Edward beneath the chin. Blinding pain overwhelmed him. A scuffle of movement ended with Farmer's groan.

  Dempsey's head dipped low as he snatched up his sword. Edward raised his pistol and fired it.

  Dempsey fell back, clutching at his shoulder. Edward squinted along his sights. Dempsey looked down the wavering barrel and cursed again. He threw himself bodily through the door to the foredeck. Edward's shot chopped a hole in the timbers where Dempsey's head had been.

  Edward flung himself against the door and threw its bolts, breathing hard. "Ensign, are you harmed?"

  The shaky junior officer rubbed at his jaw and gave Edward a cautious shake. "Rattled, sir. In one piece, thanks to you."