Cuttlefish

by Dave Freer

  “Up sails,” yelled Lieutenant Ambrose, ignoring the lookout. “Haul men! Haul!”

  The first gossamer sail rose and billowed, as they pulled desperately on the ropes.

  A waterspout exploded some three hundred yards away, as, ever so slowly, the Cuttlefish began to move forward. Clara hauled at the next rope along with the others, sending the big gossamer sail belling upwards.

  They could hear the echo of the heavy ships' guns in the distance.

  And a shell blew right through the sail. Ripping it from one side to the other,

  “Well,” said Tim, standing next to her. She hadn't even known he was there, but he was, and that was how it ought to be. “It's been good knowing you.” He put his arm around her shoulders.

  She turned to face him, held on to him, pulled him closer. “If we're going to die…I just want you to know that…”

  He nodded. “Me too.”

  And then, as they stood there, the sky itself seemed to catch fire.

  Roaring like a thousand lions.

  A sheet of fire and smoke leapt up off the sea a mile beyond the Cuttlefish.

  Smoke billowed and wreathed up around the Royal Navy vessels.

  Something exploded out there. Something loud enough to shiver the air and send a plume of steam above the smoke haze.

  The crew stood staring.

  “Shore rockets!” yelled Lieutenant Willis, his moustache nearly lost in his beaming smile. “The Westralians can and do shoot back! Get to it, you lazy scuts. Come on. Move! Move! Move! Let's get some more sail up! That means you too, you two!” he said, pointing at Tim and Clara hugging. “You're not going to die, so stop fraternizing, or I'll toss you both in the brig!”

  “We've beaten them,” yelled Clara, smiling into Tim's face, ignoring the lieutenant. There were times to think of the future, to worry about distances and parting. But those were for tomorrow, if there was one. “And I love you,” she said so quietly that only he could hear it.

  “Somehow, the Cuttlefish has done it, dears,” said her mother, standing next to them, smiling too, looking at the shoreline. “Australia is close enough now. They'll not stop us.”

  And another wave of rockets sped overhead as the Cuttlefish crew cheered and hauled sails, and the sweet breeze took them inshore, toward safety. Already several small craft were setting out to help them, under the cover of a third massive flight of shore rockets.

  There were no more shells exploding near them. The noise in Tim's head was just his heart, beating like a drum.

  GLOSSARY OF TERMS

  Bridge: The control room of the submarine, where the periscope is, and where the officer in charge of the bridge (usually the captain or mate or senior lieutenant) controls the course and speed of the boat. This is where the instruments measuring pressure, speed, and other variables have their gauges, where navigation is done, and where the Marconi wireless and hydrophones are.

  Catfish-feelers: The submarine has to travel in the dark through very murky water. It can push out long thin metal “feelers” with pressure sensors on the ends that can tell the bridge they're about to hit something.

  Companionway: A steep metal stair between decks inside the submarine.

  Cowling: A streamlined, somewhat raised covering over the main hatch.

  Crow's nest: A wicker “basket” at the top of the mainmast—the highest lookout point on the Cuttlefish.

  Deck watch: Lookouts posted fore and aft and in the crow's nest.

  Draught: The depth of water that a boat needs to float. So a vessel with a shallow draught can operate in shallower water.

  Electromagnetic grapple: A powerful electromagnet on the end of a cable. These enable the Cuttlefish to behave like a leech under a steel-hulled vessel.

  Gangway: A narrow passage inside the submarine.

  Hydrofoil: A “wing” (like an aerofoil) designed to lift the Cuttlefish so that most of the vessel is above the water, thereby increasing her speed, as there is less drag.

  Hydrophone: Underwater sound receiver.

  Marconi wireless: A radio transmitter and receiver.

  Monkey's fist: A round knot tied around a small weight on the line thrown to the shore for docking.

  Outriggers: Stabilizing extra hulls, making the Cuttlefish—under sail and hydroplaning—effectively a trimaran.

  Periscope: A tubular device that uses prisms and mirrors to allow the observer on the bridge to see up out of the water, even when the submarine is just below the surface.

  Ratlines: The horizontal ropes on the shrouds (ropes holding the mast up), that make a kind of rope-ladder up the mast.

  Shrouds: The ropes that keep the mast up.

  Two…six pull: From the days of whale boats, where the coxswain would call the stroke. Like the “left, right, left, left, left” of calling step for marching, the call “Oarsmen two to six, pull” gradually got shortened. So, no, it's not that sailors can't count.

  Snuiver: A Dutch word for snorkel (which was a German word), which was used at one time to describe the pipe that drew air for engines from the surface.

  Stirling engine: An external combustion engine. It is much more efficient than a steam engine, and merely needs a cooling area and a place for applying heat. It's been around since 1816, and has been used in submarines.

  ON THE WAY THE CUTTLEFISH WORKS

  I've always preferred science fiction that could possibly work. The science of the Cuttlefish universe is supposed to be just that—science that took a different turning. The problem with coal-burning steam-powered submarines is that burning coal (or diesel, or gasoline, or sticks) consumes oxygen. This was a real problem for all submarines, up until the nuclear era. Submarines ran on the surface on diesel, and used their batteries to run on electrical power when fully submerged. There really have been Stirling-engine-powered submarines; they just didn't burn coal. They're very efficient and very silent.

  Submarines got around the problem of needing to run on the surface—and thus being visible—by using snorkels or snuivers. The downside of this is that the fuel burn actually uses a lot of oxygen, to the extent that if a wave (or sudden dive) cuts off the outside air, the change in pressure (from the oxygen consumption by the motors) could burst eardrums. The Cuttlefish has a complex system allowing the Stirlings to run (briefly) off compressed air, or to run the air through a compressor buffer, or to draw directly from the surface, risking those eardrums. She has large banks of batteries allowing her to run off those, when submerged. (Lead/acid batteries are actually old technology.)

  There are two problems that nonnuclear submarines face: First, the best shape for running on the surface (with a V-shaped hull) is not the strongest shape for diving. They must be as strong as possible, because diving is the most dangerous part of what a submarine does. And vice versa—the best shape for diving (shaped like a torpedo) is not good for surface running. And surface running is actually what a submarine does most of.

  The second problem that submarines have always faced is that they are relatively small. They simply can't carry fuel for very long journeys, which means secret fuel supply depots and refuelling vessels are needed. This is an even worse problem with coal. (You need more coal for the same amount of power.)

  What the Cuttlefish and her sister submarines do to deal with both of these problems is to take the same solution as diesel submarines in our timeline did, and take it further. They have a double hull: a thin outer one, to shape the submarine to travel on the surface; and an inner, torpedo-shaped hull, designed to resist pressure. But, as they have to travel farther with less fuel than our submarines, they are also intended to be able to travel under sail. To do this effectively, the outer hull is extended on rails, becoming outriggers (for stability), which then push out “wings” to make a hydrofoil, which allows the vessel to lift up in the water so that much less of her hull is submerged. (Water keeps the boat afloat, but it also provides drag.)

  A wider “deck” is provided with nets and spars, making the
submarine a hydrosailer.

  A hydrosailer can achieve far higher speeds because the boat is effectively “flying” above the water, with just the hydroplane fins in the water. At low speeds, on its Stirling engines, the Cuttlefish would sail just like an ordinary ship.

  The one piece of “impossiblium” used in the book is the gossamer sails. We of course have transparent sails, so it's not that impossible, but ours are the product of the plastics industry, and the plastics of the Cuttlefish world are not as advanced. Still, there are natural fibres that would do a good job.

  Cuttlefish is a vessel, in other words, that can operate as a submarine, a surface coal-powered ship, and a hydrofoil under sail.

  A SHORT-SHORT HISTORY OF THE ALTERNATE TIMELINE FOR CUTTLEFISH.

  Most alternate-history stories revolve around a battle coming out differently or a famous general dying—about military events changing the world. However, wars are not the only things that have changed or can change our world. Scientific discovery has done so far more often than wars. One chemical discovery in the early 1900s changed our world in so many ways it is almost unrecognisable. That invention was the synthesis of ammonia. Almost all modern industry and commerce rests on this: from computers to farming, from explosives to the paint on fishing boats. These days the Haber-Bosch process is as ordinary as a coffeepot, but when the method was developed it involved working at pressures that had never been achieved by several orders of magnitude. And the leading expert of the day said it was impossible. This discovery changed wars forever, changed who controlled the world, prevented more than half the world's population from starving to death. No war, no general, no president ever had this much effect.

  Cuttlefish's history branches not with a general changing his mind or being killed, or a battle going differently, but with a simple premarital argument in 1898.

  Dr. Clara Immerwahr (a brilliant chemist and a very unusual woman for her time; she was the first female doctorate from the University of Breslau) had an argument about the purpose of science with her intended, Dr. Fritz Haber (something that would happen in the marriage and result in her untimely death in our timeline). As a result, she broke off the engagement. In this alternate history, her family, one of the leading Jewish families in Breslau, felt this a disgrace and sent her off to visit relations in England. In our timeline, Clara Immerwahr married Fritz Haber, remained in Germany, and her contribution to the synthesis of ammonia is unknown, although we do know she translated her husband's papers into English. We know it was an unhappy marriage, as Fritz expected this brilliant woman just to stay home and be a housewife, and the two of them disagreed about science and what it should be used for. Clara believed strongly that the purpose of science was to make the world a better place, and not for war. Fritz was a German nationalist and wanted science to help Germany, the Kaiser, and the German military might. In the end, during World War One, Fritz was the driving force behind German poison-gas warfare. His wife found this abhorrent, and they argued. Her death was recorded as suicide, with his service revolver. It is notable that Fritz's chemistry thereafter did not show the genius displayed in the synthesis of ammonia. In the Cuttlefish timeline, Clara Immerwahr never returned to Germany, married happily in Cambridge, had a daughter in 1907, and took a different direction within chemistry, working on fabric dyes. (Cloth dyeing, then, was an enormously important part of British industry, with huge fabric mills exporting across the world. Many dyes, like indigo, were very expensive, and had to be collected from natural sources.)

  Fritz Haber never recovered from this blow. He began drinking too much, and changed his direction from working on the synthesis of ammonia to the extraction of gold from seawater (a direction he took anyway, after the apparent suicide—well, death—of Clara). While other continental scientists were working on ammonia synthesis, they were somewhat behind Haber, and whereas the Haber-Bosch process was up and running by 1911, and able to supply the German war machine with feedstock for the manufacture of nitrates, this was not true in this timeline. The British Empire controlled access to the main natural supply of nitrates in the world (the Chilean caliche deposits), and World War One was a very short damp squib (as it would have been without artificial ammonia synthesis). Despite their use of the Birkeland-Eyde process (a way of making artificial nitrates), the Central Powers, having badly hurt Russia, began to run out of munitions after four months—at which point it became a race between the Austria-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and Germans to see who could reach a peace treaty first, knowing that would be to their advantage. In our timeline World War One dragged on until 1918 with terrible loss of life and much hatred. The cost of reparations for it—a huge bill handed to the losers, especially Germany—planted the seeds for the rise of Adolf Hitler and World War Two.

  In Cuttlefish's timeline Austria-Hungary won that race, and suffered a minor breakup of their territory. The Turks found the cave-in fraught with uprisings and lost much of their empire to the French and English, or to the rise of independent states.

  Germany…The British Empire was determined to see it did not threaten them again. This meant breaking it up into states again, and getting rid of Kaiser Wilhelm II. The “agreement” was to allow him to have a mental breakdown, which would allow him to “retire” gracefully. However, his abdication would have made his sons rulers, and the British Empire was having no more of that. So the remaining German states were placed under the regency of Adolf Schaumburg-Lippe. This minor German prince, with his vivacious very pro-British wife Viktoria (a granddaughter of Queen Victoria) were so adroit at reconciliation and in dealing with the German High Command that a Royalist uprising by Wilhelm II's sons was successfully put down. France, however, seized the moment to invade a small German principality.

  Thanks to Prince Adolf—and especially to his wife—the British Empire intervened on the side of their historic ally, Germany, in the process mending many fences. The result of this was an arranged marriage between Edward VIII of the United Kingdom (who in our timeline married Wallis Simpson in 1937, and had to abdicate to do so) and the daughter of Prince Adolf and Princess Viktoria (in our timeline their only child was stillborn), Princess Alexandria, in 1916. And thus a new Imperial line was founded, in which the German Empire and British Empire largely became one. Russia still had something of a revolution—but the Mensheviks won. France, having alienated Britain, found itself mired in colonial wars.

  And the world had no synthetic ammonia, and the British Empire, dominant in coal, saw to it that coal, not these newfangled oil-derived fuels, stayed dominant. The Windsor-Schaumburg-Lippe family controlled vast coalfields—and had the means to slap punitive taxes on oil and control and tax the shipping of it.

  Coal ran the Empire.

  But coal is a very dirty burning fuel, and as Europe had neither World War One nor the Spanish flu, it had many people and much use. Emigration, particularly to Africa and Australia, went full steam ahead. Colonialism and racism flourished. So did the massive infrastructure of a steam-driven world.

  By 1935, things began to go wrong environmentally, just as the British Empire began cracking under the strain of too many people and too little food, as synthetic ammonia was the basis of much of the fertilizer used in our timeline. The coal-based society was pouring out massive amounts of soot (particulate carbon), causing substantial ice melting in the Arctic, particularly in Russia.

  And that led to a methane burst (where methane locked in by ice or pressure reaches a point where a lot of it is released) in the tundra.

  Methane is a short-lived (breaking down in the atmosphere) but very effective (around seventy-two times as effective as carbon dioxide) greenhouse gas.

  This caused real environmental catastrophe. Massive melting of ice, more outgassing methane, a warmer world. Over seven years average temperatures rose seven degrees.

  It proved a disaster for Earth, but the saving of the Empire. Governments failed to cope as heat waves ruined agriculture and their coastal cities
and plains were flooded. World weather conditions were very erratic, causing the collapse of already-overstretched agriculture, widespread starvation, wars, mass migration.

  Elected governments in many countries failed. Government was suspended, martial law imposed, in the British Empire with authority returning to the royal family. Military intervention was largely brutal and self-serving—except that the British Empire, with more military might and infrastructure than any rival, did a generally better job of restoring order and seeing people at least got some help. More if you were white and British, of course. In India the suffering was terrible. But Commonwealth countries who tried to go it alone—Australia, Canada, South Africa—rapidly became chaotic, soon begging the Crown to intervene and restore direct rule. Which it did, and managed to stabilize things over the next few years (as the weather was resettling, at hotter levels). The Empire had its finest hour—along with some colossal failures, but these were lesser than the disaster's impact elsewhere.

  Slowly (by about 1942) things began to return to a new form of normal. A normal where London is largely flooded, but not abandoned. Like Venice, her streets have become canals.

  The British Imperial House was not ready to hand back the power it had been given or taken. The Canadian Dominions, with vast new arable lands and new settlements in Newfoundland and Greenland, was a major engine for the Empire. The restive factories of India provided goods for the Empire. In Australia, the western settlements had suffered withering drought and had been abandoned by the Empire, with forced resettlement to the east coast and Tasmania.

  At home Ireland seethed. And coal, the driver of the Empire, began becoming more difficult to source and more expensive. In the tunnels and tubes under the drowned city, anti-imperialist republicans and Irish rebels, part of the Liberty—the people who would see a return to older values and free elections—eke out a strange existence. They are served by a fleet of Stirling-engined submarines. After the 1914–1915 War, submarines were outlawed by the Treaty of Lausanne, as the Kaiserliche Marine submarines had inflicted considerable damage on the Royal Navy, and were thus hated. But the revolutionaries, the Underpeople, operate a small clandestine fleet smuggling illegal goods—chocolate, teak, quinine.