The Perilous In-Between

by Cortney Pearson

  “I’m not sure,” he finally said.

  “You don’t know how you got here?”

  He glanced behind him before leaning in. “It’s a little . . . far-fetched. Even for me.”

  Victoria pursed her lips, keeping them closed. She didn’t want to pry.

  Contradiction: she longed to pry. But prying would be impolite. He had shared as much as he was obviously comfortable sharing, and she would have to wait for answers.

  “My uncle will be back soon,” she said, giving him a smile. “I believe he’s making inquiries about your friend.”

  “My friend,” Graham said as if affirming it. “Yep. Your uncle still hasn’t heard anything?”

  “Not that I know of,” she said, tucking her lip beneath her teeth.

  “Neither has anyone else in this town,” he said.

  “Are you sure he’s here?” Victoria asked.

  His brows rose. “I saw him come,” he said adamantly. “I followed him here for Pete’s sake.”

  “You followed him here, but . . . you said it was ‘far-fetched.’ What does that mean, exactly?”

  He shook his head. “Never mind that. What are you doing in here, anyway? I assume it’s not the flowers reeking of that awful smell.”

  She narrowed her eyes at his change of topic. “Experimenting,” she finally said.

  “Here?” He glanced around.

  “I found what I believe to be a piece of the monster we encountered the other evening and have been trying to decipher a way to destroy it.”

  His brows lifted, impressed. “Any luck?”

  “None at all. As you can see.” She gestured to the beaker behind him.

  He bent for a closer look. “Have you tried heating whatever it is you’ve got in there?”

  Heating it? “I—no. I haven’t.”

  “It’s worth a shot,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “We did that kind of thing in chemistry.”

  “You are a scientist? Is that how you arrived here?”

  He grinned, stopping her pulse. “Nah. I’m a skateboarder.”

  “Another term I’m not familiar with. Honestly, Mr. Birkley, do you spend your time spinning tales? Is that why you arrived here in your ‘far-fetched’ manner with nothing but the clothes on your back?”

  His eyes dimmed. She had meant to come off as playful, but perhaps the unwanted déjà vu, rejecting Charles, and failing with the nultric acid had left her a tad on edge.

  “I apologize,” she said. “That was too forceful.”

  “You’re fine. I just didn’t know what to say.” He stood, took a few steps, and then turned back. “I could tell you, I guess, but I wouldn’t want you to think I was spinning tales.”

  His smile was hurt rather than genuine, and he gestured to her beaker. “Add heat,” he said before leaving her alone in the sunroom.

  Eighteen

  Either she was crazy or he was.

  How could Victoria not have heard of the United States? Of Chicago? If that was the case, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know where this place he’d ended up was. What were they feeding these people?

  He wanted to go home, to the traffic rushing along Michigan Avenue, the music, the bridges, the towering buildings looming around him.

  He missed the skate park with his friends. He missed his track and swim team. And what about his parents? They were probably worried sick. They’d probably called the police when he’d gone missing.

  Graham had wandered around Chuzzlewit that morning, seeing the destruction near the beach, the men patrolling like some kind of army. With that freak beast in the ocean, with how backward these people all were, he wanted nothing more than to get away, no matter how cool their hovering taxis were.

  He wanted to go home.

  “No luck today, Mr. Graham,” Victoria’s uncle said, entering their fancy sitting room and breaking through Graham’s thoughts. “Pardon me—Mr. Birkley. I’m afraid no one has seen hide nor hair of your A.C. Starkey. Perhaps if we knew what the abbreviation stood for?”

  Graham jerked to reality. It took a few seconds for Chicago’s towering buildings, its bridges and blue skies to be pushed aside. He adjusted to the tea room in Gingham Range with its purple walls and decadent fixtures.

  His heart sank lower in his chest. He should never have followed Starkey into that light. He should have left the old man alone, like he’d been asked to.

  “Uh, sorry,” Graham said, trying to remember what Jarvis had asked him. Something about an abbreviation. These people spoke so formally, he had a hard time understanding them sometimes. It was like trying to read Shakespeare during English. He felt put on the spot, as if it was his teacher asking the question, and he hadn’t studied.

  “I’m not really sure what the A.C. part stands for,” Graham finally answered, trying to keep his irritation down. He fidgeted in the fitted suit they got for him. It was comfortable enough, but he couldn’t remember when he’d worn this much at one time. How many seventeen-year-old guys wore scarf things like this? Or vests, for that matter. The style was cool—very Tim Burton-esque—but still. It was too much.

  “Pity,” said Jarvis, taking off his glasses and polishing them on a handkerchief.

  “Would he really change it, though?” Graham asked. “To the long version, I mean. The full, uh, thing?” Ugh, he kept second-guessing his words around this guy. He didn’t have this problem with Jarvis’s niece, Victoria. Something about her put him at ease. The fact that the girl was hot didn’t hurt, either. He glanced around, wondering where she’d disappeared to.

  “You knew him well, I presume, so only you would know the answer to that. Perhaps he’s taken on another identity entirely. Chuzzlewit is not a large town. If he were here, his whereabouts would be known.”

  “Why would he do that?” Graham asked, mostly to himself. Starkey wouldn’t change his name, would he?

  “You say he disappeared. Did you ever consider it was an intentional occurrence, and maybe he does not wish to be found?”

  The disappearance itself was intentional. Starkey had been working on that machine for years. Graham had just never known what it was until a few days ago.

  “He knew I’d be coming in that afternoon,” Graham said. “If he was dodging town, he would have told me not to come, or he would have left sooner or something.” Gone into that purple light sooner.

  It’d been good money, sweeping and straightening up the old man’s studio apartment. Graham had been doing it every week since he was fourteen. Since he’d gotten nabbed for stealing Starkey’s wallet on a dare.

  Dad had found the wallet in Graham’s backpack the next day and insisted Graham call A.C. Starkey to apologize and to offer to work for the architect to pay him back for the anguish he must have caused him.

  “I don’t need an assistant or anything,” Starkey had said. “But you could clean my house. An old man like me doesn’t have time to clean.”

  And that was that. Graham didn’t mind the work. He knew what he’d done was wrong.

  Starkey’s one-room studio was a wreck. Clothes lumped in piles on the floor, huge papers with drafts of homes and buildings scattered all over, rolled like scrolls and collecting dust in the corners. There were crusted-over dishes and garbage collecting along the banister of the single staircase leading to the landing where the bed lay. The smell alone was enough to make him regret stealing the stupid wallet.

  Graham used to wonder if Starkey was ever embarrassed by the mess, but if he was he never showed it. That phrase about geniuses being slobs definitely applied to Starkey.

  “I’ll start payin’ ya, you know,” said Starkey one day after Graham had been cleaning once a week for several months.

  “You want me to keep cleaning up after you?” Graham was stunned. He was sure Starkey wouldn’t want him around once his end of the bargain w
as done.

  The old man shrugged. “It was weird at first. I liked my mess. Now I’m not sure I could work with the clutter.”

  Graham had looked around the room, at the massive amounts of blueprints he’d rolled up and piled in stand-up boxes, at the books no longer in cluttered piles, but on shelves, the clothes he’d washed and put away, the dishes he’d scrubbed until the room showed some semblance of organization. Starkey had trusted Graham, and that meant a lot.

  So when Graham walked into the room two days ago just in time to blink against the onslaught of hazy, purplish light in the room’s center, and Starkey had looked back at him with a solid glance before stepping into that light, Graham broke for it to follow him and ended up on a street in a completely different world.

  Starkey always was one to defy the norm. But Graham had no idea this was even possible. And if he wanted to find out what was going on in this town and who all these people were—not to mention getting back home—he needed to find Starkey.

  Nineteen

  The Aviatory Assembly Center was a gigantic room, as large as a field. It was broken up by metal collected at several stages, mostly hovercraft in various points of construction. Men worked in shirtsleeves and suspenders over their oil-stained trousers. Some stooped at their desks, others worked with metal, and one man examined something under a microscope.

  Oscar adjusted his telescope and notebook and scurried toward the metal staircase leading up to the landing. The Kreak attack yesterday afternoon had detained him. He’d meant to come the moment he’d seen the Kreak bubbling at the surface. He wished now that he’d spoken with Harry Fenstermaker. Had Harry not seen the Kreak?

  Several doors lined the top of the landing, and Oscar stopped at the one labeled, Jarvis Digby, Commander.

  Oscar had gone over several calculations, but he still hadn’t figured out why it had come during the day. But the fact that the clockwork monster’s patterns were changing made his meeting with Commander Digby that much more urgent. He knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” a voice barked, and Oscar scrambled into the room.

  “Mr. Radley,” Jarvis said in surprise, looking Oscar over with distaste.

  “Good morning, Mr. Digby.” Oscar gripped the strap of his pack. “I know it’s early, but I wondered if I might have a word?”

  “Not now, Oscar. I’m training a new employee this morning, and the young man is slightly . . . peculiar.”

  Jarvis stood and brushed past Oscar without a second glance. Oscar ignored the rage billowing at Jarvis’s dismissal and followed him down the metal corridor and back down the stairs. The peculiar young man, as Jarvis had referred to him, stood awkwardly near an almost-finished plane lacking only its engine and hatch above.

  Jarvis glanced back. “Still here are you?”

  Oscar nodded.

  Jarvis sighed and held a hand in the new young man’s direction. “Oscar, this is Graham Birkley. He’ll be staying with us for a short period of time.”

  A soft gale of laughter tittered from behind. Jarvis and Oscar both glanced back. Cordelia and Jane Baldwin, one thin with red hair and the other shorter with dark skin and curls, stared at a picture hanging near the commander’s office. Jarvis cursed under his breath. “I forgot they’d be coming this morning to observe our Exodus Nauts in training. Excuse me.”

  He began to stalk away. Panic flooded Oscar’s chest. Would he never get the chance to speak to this man? “Sir, it will only take a moment. Please.”

  Jarvis inhaled, but did not face Oscar. Instead, he spoke over his shoulder. “Mr. Radley, if you want any of my time you will have to join Mr. Birkley this morning. My time must be devoted to him. I have none left to listen to your proposals.”

  Oscar adjusted his jacket and watched Commander Digby make his way to the two young ladies above. The three of them chatted for a few moments before Jarvis directed them toward the Naut training wing of the Aviatory. Oscar’s gaze then slid to the newcomer’s. Mr. Birkley’s eyebrows lifted in feigned boredom.

  Fine, Oscar thought. If Jarvis wouldn’t see him, then he would have to slip his ideas in between whatever training the commander has for this other gentleman.

  “I take it you’re not here to build planes,” Graham said, looking over Oscar’s attire. Graham was in shirtsleeves, suspenders, and trousers like the other workers.

  Oscar shook his head. “I’ve a proposal for Mr. Digby, if he’d ever take the time to hear it.”

  “He seems like a busy guy.” Graham’s hands were stuffed into his trouser pockets. He kicked a silver nut around the concrete floor. Other workers looked over at them amid the noises of grinding metal and whirring machinery.

  “How long have you been in Chuzzlewit?” Oscar asked, removing his pack and placing it on a nearby chair.

  “About two days,” Graham said.

  “Where did you come from? Wolverton?’

  “Chicago,” said Graham.

  The name ticked a familiar region in Oscar’s mind, but he couldn’t place it. Not wanting to be rude, he went on. “I’ve only been back a short time myself. I was away at school. I’m to be a teacher of astronomy and geography.”

  “Whoa, hold me back,” Graham said.

  Oscar’s brow pinched. “Are you about to fall? Or have you . . .” Oscar glanced around at the floor surrounding them. “Have you dropped something?”

  “It’s an expression,” said Graham with a grin. “Like playing on how, uh—” He paused, seeming to look for the right words, but Oscar grasped his meaning.

  “Perhaps you are right. Rosalind’s—I mean, Miss Baxter’s father does not think much of the profession either. But it is sensible. Honorable. To impart education to others and help them improve, especially with something as fascinating as the framework of our world. The sky, the land, the stars, they are each a part of us in ways we can never fully comprehend without further study.”

  “Sure, sure,” Graham said. “Gotta have teachers.”

  Oscar fiddled with a button on his sleeve. “I suppose some might think it is beneath me.” Since meeting with Rosalind in the garden the previous evening and finding out her feelings had remained constant, he wondered if he shouldn’t seek some other ambition, something more impressive and fitting of a lady of her station. Not for her sake, but for her father’s.

  Graham rested an arm on the wing he’d been examining. A smear of grease streaked across his sleeve. “You like teaching, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re doing it because you want to. Not like, your dad pressuring you or anything?”

  Oscar paused for a few ticks of the clock. He loved the land, the mysteries of the sky; there was so much more behind the science of it all. It gripped him, and he longed to help others who shared his feelings. “Yes. This is what I want.”

  Graham turned his attention back to the wing and reached for a screw, positioning it into a vacant space. “Then what more do you need to hear?”

  A smile crept across Oscar’s face. He bent down to hold the form in place so Graham could work faster.

  “Already at it, are you?” Jarvis Digby called through the noise of machinery. He approached from the opposite direction of where he had left. He carried a thick, metal tube with a flat piece on one end.

  “It didn’t look that hard.”

  Oscar smiled at Graham’s shrug and casual admission.

  “Put that down, Mr. Birkley,” Jarvis demanded. “Come. You’re to learn landing gear first. Fuselages, engineering, and construction will come later, if you choose, but for now you’ll start with landing gear assembly.”

  “Landing gear?”

  “Tires, to be precise.” Jarvis rammed the metal tube at Graham’s chest. The boy glowered at him.

  “Sir, if I may,” Oscar said, not wasting a moment, reaching for his knapsack. He’d put together a few pam
phlets outlining his ideas. He was no military strategist, but surely after hearing of his discovery that the Kreak remained dormant in the ocean, after seeing the drawing and his ideas for watercraft, Jarvis could have his crew help with the design and construction.

  Jarvis glared at him. “You want my attention, Radley? Build me a tire.” And without another word, Jarvis Digby stalked off.

  Oscar’s posture stiffened, and he ground his teeth as he watched the other man walk away. What an oaf that Digby was, in charge of something that affected so many and unwilling to hear any kind of suggestions of improvement.

  “How can he be so obstinate?” Oscar growled. “So ignorant?”

  Graham sifted through metal pieces and eyed the diagram pinned to a board at their right. “Why do you want to meet with him so badly anyway?”

  Eager at the opportunity to share his ideas with someone, Oscar pulled the notebook from his pack.

  “I’ve been tracking the Kreak since I returned home. Its patterns are irregular—no one has been able to pinpoint when it would attack. We rely on the shore watcher to alert us, but by then it’s nearly too late. However, I’ve caught it bubbling up from the same location in the ocean every morning. Do you see what that means?”

  Graham’s pinched brow suggested he did not.

  Oscar pointed to the map he’d drawn in his notebook. “It stays in one place! It would be easy to find! We could assemble a crew; we could arm watercraft with weapons; we could take it out where it lies before it ever got the chance to attack again!”

  He showed Graham the diagrams of the watercraft he’d devised. Nothing at all more difficult than what the men of the Aviatory were already building.

  Graham lowered the metal piece he was holding. “That’s kinda . . . brilliant, actually.”

  Oscar closed his notebook. “Unfortunately, as you’ve seen, Commander Digby refuses to speak with me.”

  “Maybe Victoria can help,” Graham suggested, eyeing the diagram and snapping two metal pieces together.