by Dave Freer
And then came the next problem. Getting out of the hole backward. She eventually found it easier to go back past, and then forward and out. “Well?” asked her mother, quietly.
“I think,” said Clara, taking a tasselled cushion from the window seat, and pushing it into the ventilation hole. “If we do this we could have a party in here and they would never know.”
Mother smiled for the first time, Clara thought, in days. “We'll let them have the party.”
“They are. They're drinking and smoking in there. Smoking, Mother. On an airship!?”
Mother nodded. “The smell carries. I wouldn't be surprised if the purser comes along to ask them to douse the butts. It's not quite as dangerous as it seems, as we're below the hydrogen and that is in sealed cells. It would take a leak to mix oxygen with it, and ignition in the main envelope for it to catch fire. But it gives me an idea. Let's see. I know I've got some potassium chlorate in here, and the trick will be to mix some bromine and some acetophenone without us being affected.”
“What?” asked Clara.
And now her mother's smile was more like that of a fox dreaming it had found a new way into a chicken farm. “The reason why they should not have picked on a chemist, and left her with a supply of chemicals. I'll give them an experience with lachrymals and a smoke candle that they won't forget in a hurry. And hopefully we'll be able to get off the airship in all the panic. We were heading for London anyway. But we were going via Mull-bridge and Glasgow. This is quicker and more comfortable.”
It sounded…fun. Not like her mother at all. But a voice of caution sounded in Clara. Those were killers out there. She'd seen them do it. “Um. I could just crawl along and get help.”
“Unfortunately, help would just arrest us. And not arrest the Russian ambassador's military attaché,” said her mother. “I suspect we are now wanted persons. And they enjoy diplomatic immunity. And I certainly don't want to be caught by the British any more than the Russians.”
That was puzzling. Clara had always thought she was British. Even when Imperial security had arrested her father.
So her mother had set about mixing her potions. Very witchy business, thought Clara. Mother even looked like a witch when she was muttering formulas. A little later Clara had to squirm down the ventilator channel with the potions and their fuse and the little igniter.
Clara had to change her clothes, as the dress was a dusty wreck. Then they settled down in the bay window of the cabin to watch the coastline come closer, and then the countryside pass below. They could still see the drowned buildings, roofs and chimneys sticking up out of the water, or still visible through it.
And then, when London came in sight, with weak sunlight gleaming on the murky canals, the count's henchmen knocked on their door, with a steward accompanying him. “Take yer bags, ma'am?” asked the disinterested steward, unaware of the gun at his back. “We'll be landing in ten minutes.”
So the trunk and the valises were taken from them. And there they sat, a prim young lady and her mother dear, Clara thought, keeping as straight a face as if she was in Algebra and the teacher had just sat on an ink-bomb and was not aware of it. Mother had a thin thread of silk tied to her wrist…leading up into the ventilator.
Count Alexander came in as soon as the steward had gone. “I have spoken with our man on the ground by coded heliograph. They are searching Dublin and the roads for you, Dr. Calland. We're still ahead. Now, we'll be landing shortly. You and your daughter will remain here. Viktor and his brother will remain here as well. We will come and fetch you one at a time, once we're certain that it's all clear.”
Mother nodded stiffly. She wasn't very good at hiding her feelings, but fortunately the count wasn't very good at observing either.
The door closed and was locked again from the outside. That could be awkward, but not as awkward as Viktor and his brother getting into this side. As Clara crammed the seat cushion from the bay window back into the ventilator with the remains of her dress, Mother shoved the door wedge home and slid the bolt. She jammed the antimacassars from the chairs into the door crack.
Outside the thick hawser-laid hemp rope of the airship's bow line was snagged by the ground team down on the new levels of the raised part of Hyde Park. The ship was slowly hauled in to anchor it to the mooring mast. In their cabin-prison Clara and her mother wrestled the two heavy armchairs across and wedged them between the door and the bed, and then they tied makeshift masks over their eyes and noses. They couldn't see very well through the varnish, but the greasy stuff from Mother's vanity case did keep the masks stuck tightly to their faces. They tied wet rags over their mouths.
Mother used her shoe to break a windowpane.
Clara thought that was a bit feeble. She used both her shoes. They were twenty feet above the ground by now, and the winch platform was already lowering the bags onto the trolleys. The rolling-stairs were just about to be attached to the gondola.
And then there came the part they hadn't expected. The hooting, rising howl of Klaxon horns.
“Do you think it's the police?” asked Clara looking out.
“I think it's probably the fire alarms.” The door lock opened and there was some shouting on the other side. Some heavy thumps.
Mother pulled Clara down on the far side of the bed. Just in time—because the men on the other side of the door had stopped kicking and began shooting. But that too didn't last long. Peering around the end of the bed Clara could see wisps of smoky stuff trickling through the holes in the door. Even through the wet rag—which had been torn from the dress they were abandoning—she could taste the acridity of it. Mother got up and plugged the holes. “We'll give it another two minutes and then run.”
Clara risked a peep out of the window. “I think we could just go now. Everyone is running away and we're higher off the ground, I think.”
“Oh. They hadn't finished tethering. Then we'd better go fast.”
They hauled the chair out of the way and pulled open the door. The air in the stateroom was just about solid smoke and acrid stuff, and they ran as fast as they could, out and down the empty corridor to the first-class gangway. And that was fifteen feet above the stair…and rising. “Grab the edge and drop,” said Mother. “NOW!”
There are times to argue. This wasn't one of them, and so Clara did it and dropped. She hit the top of the roll-stair and nearly got knocked off it by her mother landing, petticoats and skirts billowing. They were caught and hauled upright by a gentleman with a handlebar moustache. “Anyone else on board?” he asked hastily.
“Don't know,” said Mother. “And we must run. If it burns…”
So they ran, tearing the masks off and joining in the throng that blue-uniformed bobbies were already trying to hold back.
The crowds wanted to watch.
Clara and her mother merely wanted to leave. They made their way to the Broadwalk Canal edge and found a boatman.
“Hit's going to burn up, hinnit,” said the boatman cheerfully, peering at the airship, slowly rising. “Did you come orf it, then?”
“No. But I'll give you five pounds to take us to Fleet Street. Well, Somerset House.”
“You one of them newspaper-reporter ladies? Not going to see an hairship burn again in a hurry, marm,” said the boatman, plainly tempted by the money, but wanting to watch.
“It's not going to burn. It's not on fire. That's the story. I'll make it ten pounds.”
“‘Cor Blimey. Ten quid! Right you are,” said the boatman. “Will yer mention me name in the story? I'm Ted Wilkins. I seen the smoke and people runnin’.”
“Can't promise what my editor will do. But the sooner I get there the more likely it would be,” said Mother.
The boatie nodded. “’op in then,” and he busied himself with his boiler.
So they did. The boat was narrow and rocked, but they sat down together on the holystoned slat-bench as the boatie fiddled with his steam levers and eyed the gauge, and shovelled on some more coal.
They paid off the boatie, who made sure—for the fifth time—that they knew his name (Clara felt bad about that—and maybe Mother did too, because she gave him a tip on top of the vast sum of ten pounds), and took to the duckboards and then the pavements. It was busy, dirty, and very crowded, to a girl from Fermoy, County Cork, Ireland. There were probably as many people on this one street as there had been in all of Fermoy before the flood.
Mother made it as hard as possible for anyone to follow them, by ducking into shops and going off down several alleys that really didn't smell too good. Eventually they made their way down a side alley off one of these, and back onto duckboards, and then along a raised walkway on piles. There were far fewer people here, and the houses showed more of signs of water, soot, and neglect. At last, when Clara's feet were killing her—she was still wearing her patent leather school shoes—Mother stopped and knocked at a black door. Number 14.
It seemed to take forever before someone opened the door a crack. “We don't want any,” said the little gray-haired woman from inside. “Can't you read? It says no pedlars on the door. Or Jehovah's Witnesses. Or even,” she said, looking them up and down, “missionaries.”
“I'm looking for Clara Immerwahr,” said Mother, in what was barely a whisper.
The little woman's eyes opened wide. “Goodness. After all these years. Come in,” she said. “Quickly. Did anyone follow you?”
“I don't know,” said Mother tiredly as they entered the spartan little hallway with portraits of King Ernest at his coronation hung above the little scalloped half-moon table. “I think we had a tail, but lost them.”
“Well, I'd best to get you underground as soon as possible,” said the gray-haired woman.
That sounded threatening, especially after people had been shooting at them. But one couldn't get underground here. Underwater maybe.
The woman led them along her dark little hallway and into the kitchen. “Who are you, by the way?” she asked, waving them in. “I haven't heard the old lady mentioned in many years.”
“She was my mother,” said Mother, tiredly. “She said to come here if matters ever got out of hand.…Well, they are.”
The little old woman's eyes twinkled. “Now that you say it, I can see the likeness. I met her when I was just a little girl. She was quite a woman.”
“I never really knew what my mother was up to,” said Mother.
That, thought Clara, as she watched the little woman reveal a dark opening by swinging a seemingly solid flagstone aside, made two of them. Maybe it ran in the family. If she ever had daughters, she'd tell them all about what she was doing. Maybe.
And, on that thought, she began her climb down the rusty iron staples into the dank-smelling blackness.
Once, before the sea levels started their rise, the tunnels of the Underpeople had been the London Underground railway. Well, that and everything from sewers to drains. Under London had been layer on layer of tunnels and crawl-ways, going back centuries.
Like the streets, most of them had flooded, and been closed. But of course not all of the tunnels had become flooded. The higher ones had just been closed-off holes. They'd made a good hiding place for people who really didn't want to be found. And over time, the flooded network had been pumped out and opened up by those hiding. They'd even added tunnels, linking the underways. There were airlocks, pressure doors, and dangerous areas, of course. It was dark, smoky, and perpetually damp. But to Tim Barnabas it had been his world. It was where he'd been born and where he'd lived.
In some ways the submarine wasn't that different. It was all of those things, but it was also like the tunnels, most of the time—relatively safe from those who hunted the Underpeople. For the tunnel dwellers, that was the police, the army, and, most feared of all, Imperial Security. The tunnels were the home territory of the Underpeople, and down there, they had the advantage. Their enemies knew that, and didn't try too hard. Likewise, the submarines generally had the edge on the Royal Navy, and as long as they kept out of sight, they weren't hunted relentlessly.
It was not like that right now. It was almost as if once those two women had boarded, the old rules had been suspended. The navy was hunting the submarine hard, and into places that were outside its normal run. Still, they'd bought time with the tick-tock. The sub had crept through the Canningtown Shallows on the electric motors. The big battery banks weren't going to last that long, but they were quiet. The Royal Navy ships were busy pounding the area of the tick-tock, and the explosions were at least some way off.
“New boy. You,” said the chief engineer, pointing, after every last one of the now-still pistons were carefully greased, and the new-washed coal-dust hoppers filled.
“Tim Barnabas, sir.”
“Barnabas. Leg it to the galley. See if Cookie has some food for us. We might as well give the lads a feed now, while things are quiet. Might not get a chance, later,” said the chief.
“Sir!” Tim turned to go.
“And don't run and make a racket, and put yer shirt on. We've got ladies on board,” said the chief with a half-smile.
Tim scowled in reply to that. Women had no place on a submarine. Except that these two were here already.
He made his way up to the galley. Cookie and his assistant were already hard at work in what was not enough space to swing a tunnel rat in, let alone a cat. Cookie had obviously anticipated the crew needing food. Heaped plates of sandwiches, and mugs of strong Himalaya tea were ready on pewter trays at the hatch. The cook looked Tim up and down, took in the grease on his face. “Engine room. That one. The chief's mug's the one with the teaspoon in. He don't take sugar,” Cookie said in his odd, slightly nasal accent.
Tim could barely imagine the idea of not wanting to take sugar in your tea. It was such a treat! But he grabbed the tray.
“Thanks!”
Cookie waved at him with a butcher's knife. “No worries, mate. And if the chief can spare you, this tray needs to go to the bridge.”
Tim nodded and sped off. His mam was right. They ate well on the submarines. And real tea too! Mind you, he could have stopped and eaten the whole lot right there, himself. And the chief could spare him, he soon found. Worse, could spare him before he'd got a sandwich.
The bridge got tea in a huge pot. Cups, not mugs, and thinner-cut sandwiches.
Huh! thought Tim, looking at it. Not everything was better about being on the bridge.
Captain Malkis was busy with his charts, while one of the submariners clicked the periscope through the quadrants. “One vessel, south-southeast, seventeen. She's under way, sir. I can see sparks. She's heading up-channel towards Greenwich. About six knots, I'd say, Captain,” said the man on the periscope.
You could still feel the tension up here on the bridge. In the engine room there were a few jokes starting to be made. Not here. It was still deadly serious, and they were all intent on their tasks.
No one noticed Tim, standing holding the tray. The periscope clicked round one more sector. The submariner peered intently into the eyepiece. Tim cleared his throat. He felt quite guilty doing that, but the tray was heavy. He'd drop it any minute.
“Ah. Food.” The captain smiled wryly. “Cookie thinks we're out of the worst, and he's got more experience than most submarine captains. Put it here, boy. Fergal has one more sector to do with the scope, and then you can relieve him on the periscope while he has a cup of tea and a bite.”
So Tim got to peer through their only wi
ndow on the upper world. The submarine was running, neutrally buoyant, and near silent on her electric motors, using the tide to carry them away from the half-drowned city of London. Tim looked back at the gaslights of the city. He looked for running lights on other vessels, while the others ate. He tried hard not to think about his home, under the city's waters. He also tried hard not to think of his stomach. It wasn't listening to him. The captain must have heard the gurgles.
“Back to work, Fergal,” he said. “And Barnabas, we've eaten all of this. Take the cups back and tell Cookie I said to feed you, and use you. Unless we have more action we'll have breakfast at oh six hundred. We'll need him to send a message to our passengers. My compliments, if they would care to eat with us. Dr. Calland may not.”
So Tim got to eat. And then to wash dishes. And to feel the coal-dust-fired engines begin their slow thumping vibration. They must be far enough from any Royal Navy ship for that to be considered safe. They were running north but still keeping below the waterline, using some of their precious stocks of washed and desulphured coal dust, instead of getting the gossamer sails up.
Hunger, added to fear, kept Clara awake. She hadn't realised how well water carried sound. And she'd always imagined that a submarine would have portholes, through which she could watch the fish swim past. Why didn't anyone come and tell them what was happening? The answer to that of course was “why should they?” but that didn't stop her wanting to know. Ever since they'd climbed down into the darkness under the little house in Brunel Close, her life seemed even more confined and confused. The staple ladder in the wall of the hole under the floor had led into a large, dark, reeking tunnel, wet underfoot.
