by Sarina Dorie
The passage around me was lit by the robotic maid’s glowing red eye. I could see well enough to notice it try to get away. The contraption whirled and I punched it again. I would have liked to kick it, but there wasn’t room in the cramped shaft.
I struck it hard enough that it toppled over. I managed to jam it in the eye with enough force that the light went out. Now I was in darkness. I shimmied my attush from its snatches. I might have gone back to my room, but I heard voices echo from ahead. I squeezed around the soulless metal monster and crawled down the hallway, dragging my robe along with me. I scooted through the twists and turns in the passage until I found where the voices came from. I pushed on the wall. It soundlessly swung open.
Meriwether and the Captain Ford spoke in Meriwether’s room. I couldn’t see anything but their feet and slowly closed the hatch. It was hard to understand what they were talking about. Their accents were so much more difficult to understand than Faith’s, especially when they talked fast. It was British talk, she called it, or at least Meriwether’s was. Plus, they spoke about automatons and used many words I didn’t understand. It was almost as bad as French.
“Are you certain this ship was built after 1867?” Meriwether asked. “If it is, it should be safe for me to refit the cylinder body without losing compression from the steam chamber, but if this is a model—”
“I told you, I bought it in sixty-eight. And I had the entire engine refitted and updated in seventy-nine.”
“Hmm,” Meriwether said. “Have the fabrication machine make me a new tension spring, weight shaft and radius rod to these specifications. Also, look up the size in the manual and order a bell crank in one size larger.”
“Do I look like a footman you can order about? I’m the captain here.”
“Indeed, sir. And you’re about to be fodder for the French if we don’t hurry up with these modifications. Let’s see, there’s something I was going to say about the vacuum chamber, but I can’t recall. Blast!”
My interest was spiked hearing him mention the French. The rest of the conversation was about as understandable as a tanuki mating dance. I crawled backward, pressing on the walls every so often to see if any pushed outward. Eventually I found one that did. It opened to an empty room that had once been a man’s quarters.
I exited and shook out the dust from my attush before wrapping it around myself and tying it closed. I made my way down the hallway, catching a glimpse of a gray, dusty woman moving alongside me. I jumped back in fear. I’d been followed by the ship’s kamuy, who was about to eat me up. I raised my hands into a defensive stance. The gray woman in the metal wall mimicked me. It was then I remembered how polished the metal was in some areas of the ship. It was like a reflection in still water, but this version of myself was distorted and elongated. I peered closer. My hair was a mess and my robe rumpled. I was dusty and in need of a good washing.
Only later did I learn the robotic maids came out at night and picked up our clothes to wash them.
Captain Ford was too busy piloting the ship to play poker with me. At dinner, his eyes were baggy and blue as if he hadn’t gotten enough sleep the night before. The spicy perfume of memory moss wafted from him. I realized then what he wanted with the moss. He didn’t know the Jomon secret of the chiramantep stones. He was using it on himself medicinally. Or perhaps not medicinally, but for his own pleasure. Such an idea made me laugh out loud, drawing stares from everyone eating their dinner.
Faith elbowed me under the table and shook her head at me. Meriwether looked to me questioningly. I intended to tell her in Jomon, so the captain wouldn’t know I knew his secret, but then an alarm rang. Captain Ford and Meriwether ran off. A couple minutes later the ship tilted to the side and shuddered. Out the window a distant star grew closer. I pointed it out to Faith.
“That isn’t a star. It’s a ship,” she said.
During the next few hours a storm gusted, invisible to my eyes, but there nonetheless. Our ship quaked and shuddered as the other ship closed on us. Meriwether insisted on memory exchange with Faith, something he had formerly declined. Just when I thought we were safe and we had gotten away from the ship following us, the Absinthe broke down and the pirates caught up to us.
As soon as I saw Jacques, I knew we were in real trouble.
Chapter Fifteen
You have nothing I want. I don’t bargain with terrorists or brigands.
—hyperspeed message from Lord Klark
I would gladly have taken two Meriwether Klark’s over one Commander Jacques Bleu. When he separated us for the second time, I knew he intended to have his way with Faith. I had to save her. He would use her and break her heart all over again.
After Jacques locked me up in my room, I crawled through the robotic maid shaft until I exited into an empty room. I dashed out into the hallway, not expecting the two guards standing so close. Likely they were guarding the room I had escaped from. They stood between me and Faith’s room. I ran in the opposite direction. One managed to catch the hem of my attush as I hurried up the stairs.
I kicked him in the jaw, sending him toppling into the other man. I ran to the next floor and tried to gain entry to a room, but it was locked. I tried another, but it was locked as well. Feet thudded up the stairs. I ran onward, wracking my brain for some detail about the ship’s layout that might help me. The bridge was on this deck, but I didn’t know how to fly a ship, nor did Faith if I managed to rescue her. If I could get to Meriwether, he would be able to fly the ship. If he was able to fix the engines and if he could get our ship out from the inside of the pirate ship’s belly first. It was a lot of ifs to overcome, but it was our greatest chance for survival. I didn’t like relying on Meriwether to save us when his own intentions were still a mystery to me, but he was still better than Jacques.
Meriwether was in the brig, but that was the lowest level, which meant I had traveled in the opposite of that direction.
Iya! I hated this maze. I darted through the only door that wasn’t locked, dove for the floor, and pushed against the wall. Low in the wall a door opened and I crawled through. This shaft was smaller than the other and made of a rougher metal. It was too dark to see, so I wiggled my way through this tunnel until there was a turn to the left. A moment later I found myself sliding down a steep incline. Descending headfirst and blind, I stuck out my arms and legs to slow myself. I shimmied the rest of the way down, my limbs growing fatigued and my head light. When the tunnel leveled out, I decided I must have made it to the bottom of the ship. I knew I hadn’t gone far enough down when I exited from the room, though, because there wasn’t a door at the end of the hallway where I remembered the brig to be.
A man shouted behind me and I rushed through the nearest door without turning to see who was coming or how close he was. I was just glad the first door I tried allowed me entrance.
Immediately I saw I was within the engine room. In the center of the room was a large machine looking like a tangle of arms hugging itself and reaching out to gather more into its embrace. It was silent in its slumber, none of the various gears or belts whirring as they had when Meriwether had taken Faith and me on the tour of the ship.
I ducked under an outstretched arm of the engine to hide myself farther from the door, only to trip on a box of tools and stumble into a panel of levers.
“Oi! Watch it!” someone shouted.
I backed away, trying to place where the voice had come from. It sounded like it came from the machine itself. That was a frightening thought. As much as I had insisted to Faith that this ship was a cold and soulless place, if it did have a kamuy, it would surely be here.
Floating across the floor like a spirit, a figure glided out of the machine on his back. He sat up, a scowl on his dark face. “What business do you have here?”
I stared with my mouth agape. Never had I seen a person with skin so black. His face was old enough for him to be considered a man, but was as smooth as a woman’s. He wore clothes s
imilar to Meriwether’s work clothes with an apron covering his shirt. He yanked a pair of gloves off his hands and sat up. I could now see he had been lying on some kind of disk with wheels, so he hadn’t actually been floating. Still, I suspected he might be magic.
I bowed deeply and kept my eyes trained on the floor out of respect. “Excuse my ignorance, but what kind of kamuy are you?” I spoke first in Jomon, though seeing the young man’s puzzled expression, I repeated myself in English.
“What in bloody hell is a kamoooey?”
The door swished open on the other side of the machine. I was caught now. I had to find a way out. I rushed past the kamuy and dove behind a line of barrels. I pushed against the floor in the hope of finding a panel that would open.
I didn’t.
“In here!” a man said.
“Oi, put that weapon away!” the kamuy shouted. “Do you know what kind of danger you’ll put us all in if you shoot that thing in here? The electromagnetics in this room will disrupt a laser pistol’s functions and blow us all to smithereens. Is that what you want, you bumrag?”
I crawled along the floor, pushing and pulling at the lowest panels of the wall, but none gave. I peeked through a crack between two barrels. Two men stood on the other side of the machine. Through one of the loops of the engine’s arm, I saw a pistol drawn.
“What do you think you’re doing in my engine room anyway?” the kamuy asked.
The man who responded spoke in English, but with his French accent, I could barely understand him. “A prisoner escaped. One of the guards thought she came in here.”
“Is that so? You think I wouldn’t notice if someone waltzed in here, mucking up my engine? Just wait until the commander hears about the mischief your lot is causing me.”
The kamuy had a strange voice, not quite deep enough to be a man’s, but not as high as a woman’s either. His accent was strange, neither the American dialect of Faith’s, nor the British of Meriwether’s, though there were moments I thought he sounded like one more than the other. The kamuy waved his hands about in agitation, reminding me of how Faith talked with her whole body. He was smaller than the burly men in blue uniforms, and I wondered if all kamuy were this size.
I also saw his skin wasn’t actually black, though he did have black smears of grease across his neck and arms. His skin was such a warm, rich shade of dark brown that it reminded me of the earth of Aynu-Mosir. He had to be a kamuy of the soil, yet why did he live inside an engine? He had even admitted to the men this was his engine.
If I lived through this experience to ever go home, I would boast to the elders I had met a true spirit and spoken with a gaijin ship’s kamuy.
“We’ll just take a quick look around,” one of the men said. As he stepped around the engine and under an arm, he stumbled over the jumble of tools I had knocked over.
“Oi! Now look what you’ve done. Out with the lot of you! Out, you nasty buggers!” The kamuy waved his little hands around and stomped his feet in anger. The promise of a storm built in his rising voice.
The men withdrew and left. A moment later the kamuy peered around the barrel. “Safe to come out now, miss.” He extended a hand toward me.
Shaking hands was a gaijin gesture. I reluctantly took it, wondering if my hand would go through him. He was a kamuy after all. Instead of shaking it like I’d seen other off-worlders do, he pulled me to my feet.
He wasn’t much taller than I.
“Now what kind of creature are you?” He looked me up and down.
“What am I?” I snorted. “What are you?”
He flashed a brilliant smile full of the whitest teeth I’d ever seen. They weren’t sharpened to points, so I expected he was a friendly kamuy who didn’t eat people.
He bowed in a grandiose manner that looked more flamboyant than respectful. “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Elijah Harris, chief mechanic, head engineer and constant tinkerer onboard the Percheron. Or I was chief mechanic until I was forcibly detained by those nasty French bootlickers and brought to work here.”
There were many words I didn’t understand, in part because of his unusual accent and in part because I had never heard Faith use the words “bootlicker,” “percheron,” or “mechanic.” I knew what an engine was and puzzled together an engineer must have something to do with the engine. He did seem to live inside it, so it made sense. In any case, none of what he said sounded very spirit-like.
I must have looked confused because he went on. “You can call me Eli for short.”
I gave a quick and simple bow to show my respect. “It is nice to meet you, Eli. I am Sumiko of the Tanukijin tribe, sister of the emperor of the Jomon empire.” That was a slight exaggeration, but Faith had said it sounded better than saying the sister of the chief of what might be the last tribe left on the planet. She had such a way with gaijin words.
“Golly! You’re a native, then? Aren’t you?”
I hesitated. Meriwether hadn’t wanted anyone to know who I was. But I’d already told Eli my name, tribe and people. And it was bad manners to lie to spirits. Meriwether had proven his heart to be in the right place on more than one occasion, even if I had doubted him at first. Still, that didn’t mean I liked him. He wasn’t my leader. In the few minutes since I’d met this kamuy, I trusted him more than I did Meriwether.
I dipped my head in acquiescence. “I am descended from people who came from your planet long ago. I have been told to be careful with whom I share this information.”
“Blimey, that’s why they was after you! They don’t want you telling no one you’re a native colonist. Those alien suffragists would have a field day with you if they got word the French had kidnapped an alien princess. That would give the government something to really fight about, and you know how those blokes are, always ready to get in a tussle with those French.” Eli took my hands in his rough, calloused ones. He was so boyish and eager it was hard not to smile along with his enthusiasm even if he spoke too fast for me to understand. “I’ve always wanted to meet an alien. Golly, this is the best day of my life.”
“An alien?” I repeated. Another word I’d overheard Meriwether once say but didn’t understand.
“You know, someone from a planet other than Earth. Only, a native who was born there like you. This is so exciting!”
“Ah, a gaiyojin.” My people had always known about people from other worlds. We had never wanted to meet people who weren’t of our planet. Faith and her sister Felicity had both been treated with suspicion. I alone had loved Faith on my world. Heat flushed to my cheeks when I thought of her beauty and grace. She was so talented and different from anyone else I had ever known. It was no wonder Meriwether loved her. Only, I couldn’t see what she found so attractive about him. Then again, I never could understand her taste in men.
Eli lowered his voice, concern touching the depths of his dark eyes. “Does Commander Bleu know about you?”
I frowned. “Jacques? That devil, yes. He locked me in my room and kept me from my friend. I need to help her before he comes back for her.”
He chewed his lip. “Unfortunately, he’s one of the nicer blokes in that lot of buggers, and that’s not saying much.”
“Will you help me?” I asked.
“In for a penny, in for a pound.” He shook his head and I thought that meant no, but he went on. “What do you need, love?”
“Can you direct me to the brig?”
I crawled through the robotic maid shaft, a piece of jagged metal tucked into my belt to defend myself. Eli had been kind enough to give me that since I no longer had my knife and Jacques had taken Meriwether’s laser pistol.
I liked Eli and hoped Jacques wouldn’t find out about him helping me. There was something unusual about Eli, and it wasn’t just the foreignness of his accent and his dark skin. He was the kasha kamuy of the ship, a benevolent protector who rode in the belly of the tatsu like in the stories I have been told as a child.
I p
aused at the next fork to adjust the knife in my belt before continuing on to the left and then down a sloping passage. I had memorized the twists and turns Eli had drawn for me. It was hard to believe he’d been so willing to aid me in my mission after all we had been through already. But then, Eli wasn’t a pirate. He was onboard as much against his will as I was.
“If ever there was a bloke out there who understands what it’s like to fight oppression, it would bloody well be me,” he’d said.
I liked it when he said blimey and barmy and other silly words I’d never heard before. I tested them out in my mouth as I crawled down the tunnels for lack of anything better to do. When at last I neared the brig, I slowed. I’d passed voices here or there, but these I recognized.
A nasally man’s voice said in the stuffiest of all the British accents I’d had the displeasure of hearing, “Master Meriwether, why not tell him what he wants to know? Your identity has been compromised. You can thank him for not telling the captain, so far, eh? Commander Bleu won’t turn you over to the French.” It was Charbonneau who spoke, Meriwether’s supposedly trusty servant. So well-trusted no one had suspected he would bring disease to my world under the orders of Lord Klark. Death by plague was one way to erase the evidence of Lord Klark’s wrongdoings. Fortunately, Meriwether had put a stop to that—he wasn’t all bad.
I listened with rapt attention.
“They will kill innocent people. I can’t be the cause. I will not stand for it.” Meriwether’s voice sounded tired, like each word was a labor to draw out. No doubt it would be if they had tortured him.
Charbonneau tsked. “There’s a time and a place to play the part of the hero. Now is neither. Wouldn’t it be best to cut your losses before the captain loses patience?”
I felt along the metal for a loose spot in the paneling until I felt a place give. Slowly I opened it just enough I could peek out. I only saw feet. Two men stood nearby. They faced the other direction, at least. Farther past them was the enclosed cage in the brig. A man was tied to a chair within those confines. I could only see him up to his waist.
