The Inexplicables (Clockwork Century)

by Cherie Priest

  “Like I said. Birds. Rats. Dogs. Whatever. We don’t need ’em here. Don’t want ’em.”

  Rector knew a white lie when he heard one, and he almost asked about the “inexplicable.” But Swakhammer didn’t intend to share anything further, that much was clear.

  Before too long, they were in the tiny antechamber with the ladder that led up to the fort, and Swakhammer bid Rector good-bye, telling him to stay out of trouble. Rector wondered why everyone always told him that, since it never did a bit of good. Maybe they were all just optimists.

  Up the ladder he went, and back into the smoky, swirling atmosphere.

  One of the airships from his previous visit was gone, but the one called Naamah Darling remained, though no one was anywhere around it that he could see. In fact, he appeared to be utterly alone inside the fort, which unnerved him. The place was beyond spooky with its uniform walls, all vertical, unforgiving lines from the ramrod tree trunks. It was a difficult place to see or to navigate—never mind that it was mostly empty space that went unoccupied by buildings or ships. Foggy air pooled in the corners and misted back and forth, hiding and showing things at its capricious whim. Rector’s breathing was loud inside his mask. It tickled his ears, and he scratched at them, remembering as he did so that he hadn’t found any gloves yet and immediately putting that back near the top of his to-do list.

  Hesitantly, he called out, “Hello?” The word came back to him, bouncing off the trunks and echoing around in the moist, dark corners. He tried it again, somewhat louder. “Hello? Anybody up here?”

  Nobody answered, not even the groan of a rotter or the chitter of rats. He thought he heard something overhead—the other dirigible?—no, it was the flutter of wings. So there were birds here after all, just like Swakhammer had said. He looked up and saw disturbances in the Blight, tiny eddies and whirlpools of air tangling with feathers. The birds themselves eluded him.

  He gave it another shot. “Hello? Hey, anybody?”

  A harsh caw replied, startling him out of his skin. It was very close—practically right behind him.

  “No,” he whispered to himself. “It’s just the walls. The sound moves funny, in here.”

  As he listened for the uncanny birdcall to ring again, he heard something else—something softer, and more reassuring. It was the sound of tools and then, in one quick bark, the sound of swearing. Rector didn’t catch it clearly enough to note the exact word used, but he knew that tone—even if he couldn’t tell the voice.

  It came from the Naamah Darling, docked against the wall’s edge, still clasping the soggy, wet mess of the rotting totem pole. The craft leaned slightly, or so Rector thought; then he noticed it had been drawn up by a cable so that its bottom and rear plates were angled toward the ground. One of those plates was off, and although no one stood beneath it, faint sounds of humanity came from within the ship.

  Rector loped toward it, moving swiftly but stopping short of an outright run. Running wouldn’t be dignified, and it would admit by deed that he was scared to be alone in this amazing, ridiculous, unknown place that held so many questions and horrors.

  He reached the Naamah Darling’s underside and poked around until he found the main hatch. He was about to yank it down, but then hesitated, and knocked on it like he’d knock on an ordinary door. Something about the captain’s size made Rector unwilling to barge in unannounced.

  “Anybody in there?” he asked, directing his question at the smooth hull and feeling silly about it.

  A few seconds later, the hatch seam released with the sound of a seal giving way, and Houjin’s mask-covered head appeared. “Rector!” he said. “You’re up again. You want to come inside?”

  “Sure, I guess.”

  He stood aside as the hatch opened and a set of steps toppled out. He climbed them as invited, and Houjin pulled the stairs up in his wake, sealing the hatch with a yank of his arm and a shove against a lever.

  The craft’s interior was larger than Rector had expected. It had a wide open bridge and two secondary areas, plus a closed door with some kind of prohibitive warning on it. The bridge had several seats bolted into the floor, one of which was quite a bit larger than the others.

  He cocked a thumb at it. “Captain’s chair?”

  Houjin said, “He had it made special, in San Francisco. A long time ago.”

  “Where’s Zeke?”

  “Miss Mercy sent him errand running, but he’ll be back any minute.”

  “You by yourself in here?”

  He nodded. “One of the thrusters has been sticky, and we’re having trouble with our sharp lefts. I thought I’d fiddle with it while Zeke was gone.”

  “No luck, huh?”

  “No. I think the steam injector’s gone bad. We’ll need a new one pretty soon. Don’t want to fly this thing for long if the steering isn’t great.” He stared off into space for a moment and said, “I bet we could order one in Tacoma.”

  Rector couldn’t have cared less about the ship’s steering, but he cared a lot about his itching hands, so he brought the subject around without any preamble. “Hey, is there any chance anybody on this ship has a pair of gloves I could borrow? My hands are all et up with this Blight stuff. They itch like hell.”

  Houjin looked around him, saw nothing immediately promising, and then said, “Wait here—let me see if there’s anything left in the lockers.”

  He disappeared through the door that strictly prohibited entry and reappeared with a floppy set of thin leather gloves. “Will these work?”

  “Beautifully,” Rector said before he even got them on. “Thanks. You’re all right.”

  “They’re Fang’s extra set. You can put them back when we’re finished for the day, and then we’ll ask around in the Vaults.”

  “That sounds good.” He worked them over his fingers and found that they were almost too snug, but far better than nothing. “So, let me ask: You’re not on any official business?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re not under captain’s orders, or anything? There’s nothing keeping you here?” Rector prodded, looking around and making a show of being unimpressed, even though he’d never been inside an airship before and was pretty impressed.

  “No, not really. What about you?”

  “Me? I plan to get to work.”

  “For Yaozu?”

  “That’s right,” he confirmed. He stepped up into the bridge and strolled over to the large windscreen, leaning forward to see out into the dirty air that filled the foggy courtyard area within the fort. “He thinks there’s a breach in the wall someplace, and he wants me to find it.”

  Houjin cocked his head to the side. “A breach? Is that where he thinks all the rotters are going?”

  “Yeah, he said they’re getting outside. People are starting to talk.”

  “They are?”

  “I think so. I think that Swakhammer fellow knows, but he got all squirrelly on me when I asked him about it. Anyhow, Huey, you think there’s a chance the captain would give us a lift? It’d be faster hunting if we did it from the air.” He lifted his eyebrows optimistically as he looked back at Houjin, but with the mask on, Houjin didn’t see it.

  “No way. Especially not with the steering gone iffy. And don’t even think about it.”

  Now one eyebrow was held aloft with virtuousness. “Think about what?”

  “We’re not going to take the ship without permission, even if we could. Captain Cly and Fang would kill us both. Kill us all, since you probably mean to get Zeke involved.”

  “Oh ye of little faith,” he murmured, quoting Father Harris.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you don’t trust me, do you?”

  Huey shook his head. “If I thought you knew anything about flying, I’d be worried. But you don’t. And I won’t help you do it.”

  “You think you’re real smart, don’t you? All sorts of brains, you’ve got—you think you know damn well everything,” Rector sai
d crossly.

  He might’ve added more, but the hatch hissed and popped—and this time, from inside the ship, Rector felt his ears pop with it. He abandoned his position beside the oversized captain’s chair.

  “Hey, Zeke!”

  “Rector, you’re back! I thought you were going to sleep for a week,” Zeke said, hopping up into the ship’s belly and waving at Houjin.

  “Well, I didn’t. I hear you were off chasing nurses.”

  “Wasn’t doing no such thing,” Zeke insisted. Because he was wearing a gas mask, Rector couldn’t tell if he was blushing, but it was an easy guess.

  “It’s a shame you didn’t bring her with you. I wanted to ask her something.”

  “Something ’bout what?” Zeke asked.

  “Something her daddy said that made me wonder. He said she’d tell me all about people disappearing, and now I’m halfway worried about it.”

  Houjin and Zeke looked quickly at each other, and Zeke cleared his throat. “Oh, that. Mr. Swakhammer didn’t mean that people were disappearing from around here. He’s talking about the train.”

  “What train?”

  “The Dreadnought, the train Miss Mercy rode out west. It was a big mess, and a bunch of people died. Miss Mercy was one of the survivors, but now she can’t find any of the other folks who got out alive. Ask her about it sometime … or maybe don’t. She gets this look on her face like she’s scareder than she’d tell you.”

  Rector chewed on this new information and decided it might not be pertinent to his task after all, so he let it go. “Fine, then. I can let sleeping dogs lie. So what about you? We’ve got the afternoon to kill, don’t we?”

  Houjin interrupted before Rector could lay out his plan. “He wants to steal the Naamah Darling and use it to scout along the wall.”

  “I never said that!” he protested. “I never even wondered it out loud. Your friend here thinks he’s a goddamn mind reader, don’t he?”

  Zeke laughed. “You were thinking about it, weren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Liar. And if you think you can fly it by yourself, you’re welcome to give it a shot. It’d be a real shame, though. Here you just got into town, and we’d have to dig you a grave right away.”

  Houjin laughed that time, but Rector scowled. “Fine, you two have your fun. And to think I was going to invite you all to come with me, hunting around the wall.”

  “Hunting for what?” Zeke asked. He sat on the open hatch’s edge and let his feet dangle down.

  “Monsters.”

  Houjin grunted. “You said you were hunting for holes in the wall.”

  “Holes, monsters, same thing. How else would monsters get inside?” he cajoled.

  Zeke said, “They’ve had monsters inside for years. They built a wall around ’em, remember?”

  “That’s not what I mean, and you know it. I’m talking about the monster that came after me. If nobody ever saw it before, maybe it’s new. People have been talking about something killing the rotters. They’re calling it an inexplicable. That must be what jumped me. It was definitely big enough to kill rotters.”

  Zeke looked at Houjin as if for approval or confirmation. For the space of a moment, Rector quietly loathed them both.

  Zeke said, “What does that word even mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Houjin knew. “It means something you can’t explain. But it’s bad grammar in English.”

  Impatient to get back to the point at hand, Rector asked, “Are you in, or not?”

  Zeke replied for both of them. “Where do you want to start?”

  Ah, that was more like it. Rector sniffed, folded his arms thoughtfully, and suggested, “Why don’t we get as far from the Station as possible, and work our way back around? Yaozu’s fellows have probably been all over King Street.”

  The Chinese boy nodded approvingly. “Not a bad idea. We can take the underground tracks about halfway to the north end of the wall, then climb up and go by bridge the rest of the way.”

  Rector liked the sound of riding for a ways rather than walking or climbing, so he gave the plan his stamp of approval on the spot. “All right! How about you two show me where we’re going, and I’ll lead the way!”

  Zeke flashed a thumbs-up and Houjin sighed.

  All three of them exited the Naamah Darling and Houjin sealed it behind them, saying, “Before we go too crazy with this plan, we should stop for more filters.”

  “Filters?”

  “For your mask, Rector. I don’t know how long you’ve been wearing that one, but I haven’t seen you change it. There’s a stash in the lean-to, along with some lanterns. Let’s stock up before we rush into trouble.”

  “Sure, we can plan out the day, minute by minute. If you want to suck all the fun right out of it.”

  Houjin said, “Fine. I’ll get extra filters and lights for me and Zeke, and you can have fun without any.”

  “Don’t be a jerk about it.”

  Houjin already had his back to Rector, and was disappearing into the fog. “Don’t be a dead man.”

  Thirteen

  Once the boys were ready, they headed back under the city where they were surrounded by faint, fizzing lamps that lit the underground paths like tiny beacons. They held their own lanterns close, but did not spark them yet for fear of wasting fuel. Fuel was the heaviest thing they toted, and you could never have too much—at least, that’s what Zeke said, with all the fervor of a convert.

  This time they walked beyond the spot where the strung lamps hung. As full darkness encroached from within the tunnels ahead, Houjin nudged Rector with his elbow. “You’re tallest, so you should light your lamp and carry it up high. It’ll be brighter that way.”

  Rector fumbled with his satchel, readied his lamp, and lit it.

  “You just don’t want to carry one yourself,” Zeke said to Houjin.

  “One of us has to steer the cart,” Houjin replied. He doesn’t know where he’s going, and you don’t know how to hold us on the track.”

  “I could figure it out.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You old hens quit chattering, and tell me which way we’re heading,” Rector commanded.

  Houjin pointed. “Down this split over here.”

  It was very, very dark down that split over there. Rector couldn’t see anything beyond the golden bubble of light that radiated from the lantern held just above his head. The light wobbled as he shifted his grip to hold the heavy old thing more comfortably. Anything at all could’ve waited beyond the illumination’s razor-sharp edge.

  He stumbled and the light shook harder, but he caught himself.

  Houjin casually outpaced him, and Zeke trotted to catch up. “Come on, Rector!” he called.

  “I’m coming, you. I’m wearing somebody else’s shoes, all right?” He gulped, steadied his feet, and jogged stiffly forward. “You’ve got to remember, I’ve been laid up. I’m not back to myself yet.”

  “There ain’t nothing wrong with you ’cept you’re scared,” Zeke argued.

  “You take that back.”

  “I won’t, because I was scared when I got here, too. Everybody is at first. Everybody who’s got a lick of sense, anyway.” The younger boy practically danced down the corridor, tripping along the narrow edge between the light and the dark.

  Houjin added, “You’ll get used to it.”

  “Like you did?”

  “Me?” He shrugged. “I don’t remember. I told you, I’ve been here since I was little.”

  Rector struggled to keep up to the pair of them, leaning and stretching his arm to hold the lantern out farther in advance of his own steps. He lunged with it, trying to keep them corralled inside the shimmering globe. “This must’ve been a weird place to grow up.”

  Houjin shrugged again. “I don’t know. Every place must be.”

  “You should get out more.”

  “I do get out. I’ve been to Portland, and Tacoma, and San Francisco. And I went to New Or
leans a few months ago. I’ve been all over.”

  “Ain’t you special, then.”

  “I didn’t say that; I only said I’ve been places, and all those places were weird in their own way. You’re the one who should get out more.” Houjin scooted forward, just outside the light—and for a moment, he was lost. “I bet you’ve never been farther than Bainbridge.”

  Rector had never even been that far, but he kept it to himself.

  The lantern caught up to Houjin and brought him into clear, sharp focus. He’d stopped at the edge of a long rail, a rail that was soon revealed to be one side of a track—the sort used by miners and loggers.

  “Where’s the cart?” Rector asked. Surely it must have one.

  “Over here,” Zeke called. He gestured for Rector to follow him, so he did, around a hidden corner to where the cart awaited. Zeke kicked a lever with his foot and the cart creaked. He gave it a shove with his shoulder and it rolled forward. A dozen feet down the sideline, it clicked onto the main pathway.

  The cart was long and flat, barely as deep as an oversized bucket and not quite as long as a wagon. In the middle a handle reared up, and waved gently like a seesaw as the cart clattered forward.

  Houjin swatted at the handle and it bobbed heartily up and down. “It’s no Pullman, but it’ll get us where we’re going.”

  “We pump that thing?”

  Zeke nodded. “We pump that thing. It’s not that hard, and it’s a lot faster than walking. Climb in! You can put the lantern on that hook up front.”

  “That way you can help,” Houjin added, climbing inside and assuming a ready position.

  Rector relinquished the lantern and crawled up inside, testing the boards with his feet. “Doesn’t seem like there’s much room in here for moving things around.”

  “There are wagons, empty ones. You hook them up to the back, see?” Zeke indicated a set of knobs for hitching additional wheeled vehicles. “But they’re heavy, and we don’t need one right now. So get in, and let’s go.”

  They shuffled their spots, and then leaned their weight into the lever—Houjin on one side with the brake, and Rector and Zeke on the other, at Rector’s insistence. Still under the weather, he said. Not up to his full strength, he insisted.