Leviathans in the Clouds

by David Parish-Whittaker

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  “LEVIATHANS IN THE CLOUDS”

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  I Knew a Real Victorian Adventurer

  Space: 1889 & Beyond—Leviathans in the Clouds

  By David Parish-Whittaker & Steven Savile

  Copyright 2013 by David Parish-Whittaker & Steven Savile

  Space: 1889 © & ™ Frank Chadwick 1988, 2013

  Cover Design & Art © Lukas Thelin and

  Untreed Reads Publishing, 2013

  Space: 1889 & Beyond developed by Andy Frankham-Allen

  The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Other Titles in the Space: 1889 & Beyond Series

  Journey to the Heart of Luna

  Vandals on Venus

  The Ghosts of Mercury

  A Prince of Mars

  Abattoir in the Aether

  Dark Side of Luna

  Conspiracy of Silence

  Mundus Cerialis

  The Forever Journey

  A Handful of Dust

  Horizons of Deceit

  http://www.untreedreads.com

  “LEVIATHANS IN THE CLOUDS”

  By David Parish-Whittaker

  & Steven Savile

  Chapter One

  1.

  It’s hard to sleep, listening to a friend being sick. Nathanial had tried to ignore the gargling sound of Arnaud’s fluid-filled lungs, but stuffing cotton into his ears did little for sleep. While Arnaud would have been the first to protest that he was far from leaving calling cards on death’s doorstep, Nathanial knew the Frenchman was suffering. So he’d fled to the engine room to find peace in smoothly operating machinery and technical discussions with Jack Fenn.

  Would that the world outside that microcosm were so easily understood, or as readily dealt with provided one had the proper tools and schematics. A good hour after Fenn had apologised and headed off to sleep, Nathanial found he’d run out of things to adjust. He sat there, watching the Heaviside radiation pulse rhythmically across the main aether manifold that led to the propeller. Twelve seconds for each cycle, repeating.

  Near hypnotised, Nathanial imagined he could sense the universe around the propeller, each pulse rippling its way through the aether, like the dots and dashes of a telegraph, singing its existence to eternity. But was eternity listening?

  Nathanial stood up, wondering where that foolish notion had burbled up from. Born of fatigue, of course. Time to brave sleep again.

  Inside the lab, a single Edison bulb threw crazed shadows across the chaos; in many ways it was really Arnaud’s lab these days. The fellow had a way of moving in and putting his mark on things. Despite the necessity of securing everything in zero-gravity, the geologist had managed to attain what was no doubt to him a comfortable state of clutter. It was as if when they’d left dock, he’d simply thrown restraint nets over assorted piles of notes and apparatus.

  Perhaps he had done just that, come to think of it. Despite himself, Nathanial smiled. As for the man himself, Arnaud was wearing nothing but pants, his well-fed frame damp with sweat from the inexplicable heat of the cabin. Had he snuck a stove aboard? But there was no scent of fire, just a sharp metallic tang to the air.

  Arnaud cleared his throat, discretely spitting the mess into a spittoon on his workbench. “So hard to take a quiet midnight stroll with shoe magnets clicking away on the floor, n’est ce pas? But I am not thinking that you are out and about simply to stretch your legs.”

  “No,” Nathanial said. “I suppose, well, I am concerned about your health.”

  Arnaud shrugged elegantly. “This is two of us, then.”

  “That, and your damnable coughing was keeping me awake.”

  Arnaud chuckled. “Ah, the truth, it hurts. And here I thought you had come to pay your respects to an old comrade in arms in his final hours. But mother always told me to prize honesty in all things. Save love, of course.”

  “Love?”

  “The mystery is important en l’amour, she would say to me. Makes a child wonder about his parentage, I must admit. Quels que soit. I have something for you to see and congratulate me on.”

  “A perfumed letter from a young lady waylaid by your deceptive wiles?”

  Arnaud looked amused. “Certainly not. No, someone must tend to my health, given the indifference of my travelling companions.”

  “Here now, I was simply being—”

  “Humorous, I know.” Arnaud winked. “Stay the course, as les anglais say. Don’t apologise for your wit. I never do.”

  “I’ve noticed this, yes.”

  Arnaud floated over to a massive armoire and opened it. Inside there were assorted flasks and a wild mass of tubing, all leading from a central alembic. A large Bunsen burner was opened to full bore beneath it, the heat from its flame noticeable even from where Nathanial stood.

  “Rather thought I smelled something burning. Can’t be good for your cough, though.”

  “Ah, but it will be. Regard!” Arnaud pulled a flask off the top rack. Inside, a floating mass of what looked like quicksilver flattened and expanded with clockwork rhythm.

  “Mercury treatment?” Nathanial flushed. “I thought it was good for, well, other illnesses.”

  “No worries in that sense, mon ami. You are correct, my malady is more akin to consumption—without the fashionable paleness, alas. But you are in error about what I hold in my hands. This is made from my smelting of some ore I brought back from Hygeia.”

  “You’ve been smelting onboard?” Nathanial sniffed the air again. Definitely a metallic scent, but oddly enervating.

  “Our illustrious captain doesn’t know, so it is no matter.” Arnaud waved a dismissive hand. “But tell me what you notice about it.”

  Nathanial watched the metal as it floated in the middle of its flask. It flattened itself into a lozenge, first lengthwise, then sidewise. The orientation of the pulsation was constant, even when Arnaud rotated the flask.

  “It’s responding to something,” Nathanial said.

  “Vraiment. Four deformations along as many axes per cycle, with each cycle measuring twelve seconds.”

  “The propeller!”

  Arnaud nodded happily. “Indeed. Much as iron responding to the magnetism, it is responding to the fluctuations in the luminous aether that cunning device is creating.”

  Arnaud was still talking, but Nathanial couldn’t hear him for all the thoughts running through his mind. The implications for future propeller research were astounding, to say the least. Or for g
eneral aetheric observation. It wouldn’t take much to sense an aether storm arriving. Lives could be saved. Lives like all those lost on the Peregrine.

  That thought brought a pang of guilt that returned him to Arnaud’s words.

  “…just as electrical fluid can stimulate the dead leg of a frog, I think.”

  “I’m sorry?” Nathanial said. “You have frog legs here?”

  Arnaud shook his head sadly. “You were not attending at all, were you? I am not speaking of déjeuner. The vapours of the metal, they have healed my lungs. What isn’t permanently damaged, of course.” He shrugged. “But the coughing is less now, for all that it interrupted your dreams. So I should imagine I have at least half a lung left. Enough for the day to day use, eh?”

  “What has this to do with frogs?”

  “Frog’s legs. You do remember those experiments? Apply a touch of electricity to them, and they regain the liveliness they had in life, jerking about as if a starved crane were nipping away at their tasty heels. But too much electrical fluid and poom! One very burnt recipient of a lightning bolt. One must have moderation in all things. Or so I am told.”

  “And you were burnt on Ceres.”

  “Exactement. I flew too close to that sun, and nearly drowned for my efforts. As with magnets and electricity, so is this and…something else. The life force, perhaps?”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Invent a less dramatic name if it suits better. But how else to explain its healing? Enough, and perhaps even what I believe to be dead tissue might heal. For that matter, how to explain the prolific life we saw on Ceres, by all account what should be a near lifeless rock?”

  “People said that about Luna.” Nathanial considered this. “But perhaps Luna has such ore in it as well. Iron can be found across the Solar System, after all. Why not this?”

  “Mais oui. But so far, only on Hygeia. A pity, as I think our reunion with the Bubalus would be less than joyful, should we return. Would have liked to have that other lung of mine back. I am certain I could find use for it. But la. Allow me to take some more vapours. I would like to cough less tonight, and to judge by those circles underneath your eyes, I suspect you desire more sleep.”

  With that, Arnaud turned a petcock on the distillation apparatus. It fed a long tube that resembled nothing so much as the end of a hookah. Curling his legs underneath him as he floated in zero gravity, he looked rather like a patron of an opium den. Or perhaps the Caterpillar from that Alice book that the captain liked to read so much, Nathanial decided. It wouldn’t surprise Nathanial at all if Arnaud were to metamorphose into a butterfly, given enough of those vapours. Things had been that odd of late. If anything, their current circumstances were more fantastical than any mythic Wonderland.

  Once fastened in the cot, a rare occurrence since he more oft slept on the floor while Arnaud made use of the cot to help his ailment, Nathanial’s thoughts wandered as he began to nod off. He wondered if Arnaud was right about tissue regeneration. It was hardly out of the question, after all. Arnaud had brought up the subject of frogs, and it was well known that tadpoles could regenerate tissue. While no biologist, Nathanial had a vague memory of a monograph on leg regeneration in salamanders. Given the proper stimulation, no doubt it could be induced in other animals, even higher level ones such as humans.

  Leg regeneration.

  Chapter Two

  1.

  In space, Annabelle could waltz.

  One two three, turn two three, down the passageway. The magnets in her shoes clicked in time to a half-remembered tune she hummed without any real enthusiasm. Dancing should have made her feel better, but all it was doing was reminding her of limitations.

  Her mechanical leg was as artful as dear Nathanial could make it, built with that strangely light metal from the ancient cities of Luna, inlaid with brass and teak. It as was lovely as it was ingenious.

  And it wasn’t a real leg. She could hear it ticking as it moved with her, storing the energy of her dance steps in its clockwork and spending it with the next twirl. But for all that, it was a dead thing strapped to what remained of her leg. Were she back on Earth, she’d be stumbling through the steps as she tried to maintain her balance. Perhaps with time she’d learn to dance, perhaps even in time to turn around the floor at her wedding. She’d like that. But she still wouldn’t be able to feel the floor.

  It was difficult admitting that one had weaknesses. Annabelle had always prided herself on a lack of vanity, as contradictory as that might sound. She had never understood the bustle wearing masses of fluttering femininity she’d see fanning themselves at the society functions she’d occasionally find herself at. Unlike them, she was capable of striding about on her own two feet without the need to cling to anyone’s arm, thank you very much. But now she no longer had both of those feet to stride with. She might find herself quite literally in need of that arm.

  Annabelle stopped at the entrance to the greenhouse and stared at the unblinking stars in the perpetual night of space. Crippled or not, she was a long way from simpering and worrying about the latest gossip. She was a long way from anywhere, come to think of it. And she might do well to remember that it wasn’t in a fit of pity that George had agreed to marry her. That particular look in his eyes wasn’t one easily faked. No, at least one man didn’t think of her as damaged goods. Her cheeks flushed with the memory.

  She was still the girl who could steer a flyer by herself, who’d taken down dinosaurs with bow and arrow, who had ridden barely tamed mustangs bareback with nothing more than twine for a bridle. She could still do those things, she told herself. Perhaps she’d even ride again, although these days she was as likely to find herself astride a gashant as a horse. Or aside, she reminded herself. Her new leg hadn’t the sensitivity to command a horse, but there was no reason she couldn’t ride sidesaddle. She’d once met a gentleman friend of her uncle’s who rode that way, thanks to an unfortunate incident with a Confederate cannon ball.

  If that fellow could soldier on, so could she. She decided she believed that. Curtseying to an imaginary gentleman, she resumed the dance. For now, at least, she led. The thought made her laugh, perhaps excessively.

  “Good to see that your spirits have improved,” Nathanial said from the depths of a wing-back chair facing the view.

  Annabelle stopped her twirl, her skirts sagging downward with the aid of their hem magnets. “I didn’t see you there.”

  “And if you had, you would have stifled yourself?” Nathanial uncurled himself from the chair and perched on the edge of a planter, an oversized tome tucked jauntily underneath his arm. “Hardly sounds like the Miss Somerset I know.”

  “Miss Somerset? When did we stand on such formality?”

  “Thought I might use the name while it’s still yours. I’m having a touch of difficulty imagining you as an officer’s wife. I hear the etiquette is…demanding.”

  “Pfft. I’m marrying Commander Bedford, not the service. I like to think he knows what he’s getting. And I’m sure I’ll get on just fine. There’ll be other wives to show me the proverbial ropes and all that.”

  “Oh, no doubt they’ll all be perfectly nice,” Nathanial said. He stared out at the vacuum. “But you? I admit, I’ve harboured hopes that perhaps you’d stop charging into the mouth of danger at every opportunity.”

  “I don’t charge into danger, it just seems to find us.”

  “Trust me, I know. I truly wish that danger didn’t seem to have your postal address. A month back on Hygeia, I would have happily have bundled you on the next steamer back to Earth. Anything to keep you safe. But now…” He trailed off, fiddling with a cufflink.

  “Come now, Nathanial. How long have we known each other? After all we’ve been through I think I can ask for openness from you.”

  “As I said, I’ve had time to think. To observe. It’s what we scientists do, you know.”

  “And what has the esteemed professor observed?”

  “A young woman who se
ems born for space and adventure. And I have to ask myself if a world of tea parties and formals is all she wants? Or does she expect to be able to hire an aether flyer when the itch to do some damn fool thing on some damn fool planet overtakes her? As it seems to do every other week, I might add.”

  Nathanial would be one to bring up the very concerns gnawing at her. Annabelle sat down on a bench under a potted gumme tree. Its scent reminded her of the Blackjack chews Uncle Cyrus had given her when she had first arrived at his ranch. It had been the first time that she remembered being comfortable. Being safe. That feeling had hardly been unwelcome back then.

  “Perhaps,” she said, toying with her skirt hem, “my adventuring days are over.”

  “Oh? Shall we stop by Earth and drop you off at the nearest Home for Bored Young Girls?”

  “Stop it.” She found herself gritting her teeth. “You truly are a brother to me. Only a brother could prick my hide so.”

  Nathanial winced. “I’m just trying to say, I don’t see you being content with such a life.”

  “What? Are you trying to warn me off? I love George! I’m more than willing to entertain at a few functions for him. What, you think me some sort of feral child who…” A vague memory flitted at the back of her mind, stopping her. She remembered something about running barefoot across dried mud under the sun. Her feet were blistered, but she’d needed to run. She’d forgotten why, though.

  Nathanial didn’t seem to notice. “I’ve nothing but the highest regard for your young man. Why, for someone who once threw me in chains and charged me with treason, he’s agreeable enough. Not so dull as to think you’re anyone but whom you are.”

  “Oh? And what, pray tell, am I?”

  “Bold to the point of impetuous, brilliant to the point of madness, with enough verve and energy to run our aether propeller, if I could just discover how to harness it.” He attempted a smile. “Perhaps we could hook a generator up to that leg of yours.”

  “The crippled girl might still be useful, then?”

  Nathanial’s eyes widened. “Oh, here now, that isn’t what I—”