Mainspring

by Jay Lake

  STRUGGLING ACROSS the rope bridge on his way back to Bassett with his parachute pack weighing on his back, Hethor found himself torn between fear of the abyss yawning for thousands of feet below him and concern for the tablet cutting into his groin. Somehow, he was again crossing with the loblolly boy. This time the lad was in front of him instead of following with complaints about his slow progress.

  One foot, other foot, Hethor thought. Don’t stop, don’t think, don’t look. One foot, other foot.

  The ropes jumped. The line in his left hand dropped away slack. Hethor shrieked, grabbing the right-side line with both hands, which threw him off balance. He realized that not all of the shrieking was coming from him.

  He looked down. The loblolly boy fell into the towering pit of wooden city and cold stone, hands slapping at his chest. Was he trying to fly?

  Then the parachute blossomed, a square of silk tied at the corners and sewn to a harness of lightweight lines. That upward tug was a feeling Hethor well remembered from his jump at Bermuda. The loblolly boy disappeared beneath that puffed blanket of silk, though he did not stop screaming.

  Hethor stood with both fists wrapped around the remaining hand rope, shivering in the wind, during the minute it took the loblolly boy’s voice to fade and the longer minutes that it took for his parachute to vanish from sight in the distant, misty shadows far below.

  He finally realized people were shouting at him, both from the ship and from the shore. Hethor tore his gaze from the abyss beneath his feet to see Wollers at the rail. The second mate waved his hands as if he could reel Hethor in by main force.

  I cannot do it, Hethor thought. No more steps. Unless I grow wings, I’m never moving again.

  “Bring it in, sailor,” Wollers called. His face showed profound relief that he’d managed to catch Hethor’s attention.

  Both hands still clutched tight on the remaining rope. Hethor shook his head. The motion caused his body to twitch. The golden tablet dug into his groin.

  Wings rushed in Hethor’s memory, the smell of savages overlaying the image of angels. He had to get the tablet to Malgus’ cabin.

  “Left foot,” Hethor whispered, sliding that foot along.

  “Right.” It moved a few inches.

  “Left hand.” If he didn’t open his fist, he could keep his grip.

  Wollers shouted more encouragement.

  When they finally pried Hethor off the rope to get him onto the ship, al-Wazir handed him a flask of brandy while Lombardo pounded him on the back. “Good work, son,” the decks chief whispered.

  “What about the boy?” Hethor asked, imagining himself plunging into cold shadow, twisting beneath the silk of the parachute.

  Al-Wazir shook his head sadly. “Naught Cap’n’ll do for ’im. We’re serving ’neath the Articles of War out here. Cain’t spare the time to drive her down and look.”

  “Besides,” Lombardo added, “he’s most likely dead already.”

  Hethor felt sick. Falling, only to be abandoned. He sat down and shivered.

  A few minutes later the second mate sought him out. “I need to go to Malgus’ cabin,” Hethor told Wollers. “I want to look at the maps. I … I need to concentrate.”

  Which certainly wasn’t a lie.

  “Very well,” said Wollers after a long, careful look. “Proceed.”

  Hethor limped off, cramped from panic, muscle strain, and the attentions of the golden tablet. He still couldn’t remember the loblolly boy’s name. He figured he would hear it at services.

  STILL SHIVERING, Hethor studied the lettering on the tablet. He would have taken a rubbing but did not possess any charcoal. He would have to beg some from Cook later. So he was reduced to handling the gold itself. The metal was velvety, almost warm.

  The lettering resembled handscript, but not of the Roman or Greek alphabets. It was more like someone hastily had written Chinese or some other language where the words were little houses folded over their ideas instead of built from honest letters and sounds.

  Or not.

  This tablet was a gift, to him. God had spared Hethor’s life in crossing the abyss, taking the loblolly boy in his place. An angel had come to him in that little room in the vertical city. It must have been Gabriel or one of his angelic servants, Hethor reasoned, because any of the winged savages would have killed him where he stood. Those great feathers were too large to have found their way into that chamber by any other agency.

  Hethor traced his fingers over the script on the tablet. There were six lines, with some repetition of the symbols between them. Like a bit of verse.

  But this was a gift.

  A message from God.

  Could it be God’s name on the tablet? The Tetragrammaton was both the name of God and the name of God’s name. The word simply meant “four letters,” after all. “YHWH,” the four letters of the Hebrew word for He whom the Jews would not name.

  Hebrew. What if it were not Chinese, but Hebrew? Hethor knew a little bit about Chinese script, but he had also seen written Hebrew at New Haven Latin, in biblical studies and discussions of the Roman occupation of Judea.

  The Hebrew word for the Tetragrammaton began with a letter that looked like an apostrophe followed by one that looked a little like the Greek letter “π.” Or maybe a lowercase English “n.” Hethor scanned the tablet’s strange, looping, sloppily crafted script. It did not follow the forms of the Hebrew alphabet, not as he understood them.

  Lines one, four, and five had similar symbols that might have been the name of God. As that thought occurred to him, Hethor for a moment heard the clattering of the world, as if midnight had come upon him in the navigator’s rest.

  He slipped the tablet into a drawer in Malgus’ tiny map table, covering it with charts of the Orleans and Texian coastlines. Then despite his orders he lay down on Malgus’ bunk and thought about Gabriel, God, and the Key Perilous. Eventually Dr. Firkin startled him awake by banging open the door and saying, “Best get on deck, son.”

  IT WAS near sundown, judging from the view to the north off the port rail. The bay of the vertical city was already deep in shadow. Between the obscuring gasbag and the rising walls of the cliff city, Hethor could not see the heavenly brass in the eastern and western skies. Still, he could almost feel it.

  Absent a body, there was no funeral for the loblolly boy. Captain Smallwood had elected to have a crew muster nevertheless. Hethor scuttled out of the hatch from officers’ country and slunk to the back of the assembled divisions, praying Smallwood did not take note of his tardiness.

  “ … and so we hope that young Mister Davies found a safe landing and path to the Atlantic shore, that he might someday make his way home,” Smallwood said. “May God grant us all that grace.” The captain stared around at his ship’s company. “Dismissed.”

  Hethor started to turn away with the rush of sailors eager for the mess, or perhaps their bunks, only to have Dr. Firkin grab his arm. “Wait.”

  A few moments later Smallwood was surrounded by his remaining officers: Wollers; Lieutenant Prine, the third mate; Lieutenant Commander Cocini, the aeronautical engineer who commanded the gasbag division and oversaw the engines; Ensign Mayhew, the pilot and master of the tillermen; and Marine Lieutenant San Lorenzo. Only the middies were missing, standing watch on the poop or elsewhere, and Dr. Firkin himself, still to one side of the group with his hand on Hethor’s elbow.

  “Let’s go,” Firkin said in a low voice. “Officer or no, you’re the navigator. You need to hear this.” He steered Hethor into the officers’ conference.

  “There you are,” said Smallwood, noticing Hethor. The captain stared him up and down. “Are you fully recovered, Seaman Jacques?”

  Hethor almost blurted, “From what?” Instead he simply nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Very well.” Smallwood marched to the midmast, removed his buckled shoes and belt, dropped his dagger, and climbed to the trapdoor set in the gasbag. The other officers likewise began divesting themselves of their accum
ulated metal.

  Hethor was astonished. It had never occurred to him that the captain might be willing or able to climb where the tars went.

  Then Smallwood was through, crawling up into the gasbag. Wollers followed the captain with a backward glance at Hethor. The rest of his officers climbed after.

  Hethor went last, waved on by Dr. Firkin. “With all respect to Captain Smallwood,” Firkin said, “I’m not cut of the right stuff to stride the catwalk.” Hethor nodded, not sure what to say. He climbed into the hot, billowing darkness of the gas cells. The worn heels of Lieutenant San Lorenzo’s stockings bobbed above him.

  When Hethor arrived at the navigator’s rest, Smallwood had walked perhaps twenty paces forward along the catwalk. There the captain stood with his hands folded behind him to stare up at the Wall, as unconcerned for the exposed height as though he were in his own cabin. The canvas surface of the gasbag sloped gently away to both sides to form the predatory curves that Hethor had admired from a distance. Up here, he felt far too close to the edge and the fate of the loblolly boy.

  They had not even parachutes to break their fall. Though that might actually be a blessing, Hethor supposed.

  The other officers were strung out behind the captain. Cocini was as unconcerned as Smallwood. The rest displayed varying degrees of nervousness. Hethor was just as happy to stay in the navigator’s rest with its useless railings. They at least kept his mind calm and defined the space on which he stood.

  Smallwood pointed up at the Wall. Hethor followed the line of his hand. It was like looking across at a horizon, except this horizon was straight up. Through some trick of the light, the distance glowed, a sort of sunrise from the south. This made Hethor think of the brass gear teeth sparkling atop the Equatorial Wall. The gleaming horns of Earth’s orbital track were clearly visible directly overhead, extending to the east and west. Though they stood in deep shadow, there was still sufficient sunlight to make out features on the Wall in the many miles it towered above them.

  Between here and the upward horizon, Hethor saw more forests, meadows, scree fields, the pale glow of ice or snow, what might be cities sparkling in the distance, drifting banks of cloud or mist—a world’s worth of land hung over his head, all clinging to the near-vertical.

  “Gordon’s notes indicate that he was trying for the Diamond Palace,” said Smallwood. “At one time Emperor Hadrianus caused a fort to be built there for the Fourth Massalia Legion. Gordon hopes to establish his command therein for a long-term occupation of this portion of the Wall.”

  You could no more occupy the Wall, Hethor thought, than you could occupy the Atlantic Ocean.

  “General Gordon’s notes further indicate he hopes to find some sign of the Roman presence yet lingering in the fort.”

  After all the many centuries since the Empire’s collapse? Hethor could hear the smile in Smallwood’s voice.

  “Our best interpretation of what we have discovered thus far is that Gordon’s forces decamped about two weeks past. With great reluctance, I am detaching Lieutenant San Lorenzo and half his force to follow the general’s line of march to search for more direction from him, and perhaps catch his rearguard. San Lorenzo will also take a party of seamen to be chosen by Lieutenant Wollers subject to my approval. Bassett will rise to the Diamond Palace with the expectation of arriving prior to Gordon’s force. There we will perform an aerial reconnaissance, then rendezvous with the good general if that is at all possible. Do I hear any discussion?”

  By no means was Hethor going to say anything here, where he really had no business being. Still, he was certain that Smallwood’s plan was foolhardy. The entire company of Bassett’s marines had barely sufficed to drive off the winged savages in their last attack. He dreaded a reprise.

  Ensign Mayhew spoke up. “My pardon, sir. I know we are short of officers to stand watch, so it might be difficult for one of us to volunteer and still keep the ship in good order. Perhaps you could send a division chief, al-Wazir or Lombardo, to keep the tars in line.” He added hastily, “Sir!”

  Smallwood nodded. “I will take that under advisement. Now, before it falls fully dark, look at that great col there.” He pointed upward toward a bare cliff of rock amid the endless wooden buildings. “See how it rises out of a split in this vertical city? According to Gordon, a trail rises there that cuts east beneath the galleries of the city before heading upward. Lieutenant San Lorenzo, does that seem to you a reasonable path? Should Bassett rise to discharge you there? Or would you prefer to set out from our current moorage?”

  The discussion spun off into a lengthy argument about routes, supplies, and support. All of what was said had only the basis of pure opinion, since as far as Hethor could see, none of the officers knew any more than he did about the rigors of marching up the Wall. He remained silent, watching the stars come out. He spotted the thin tracery of the orbital track of Venus. It was the faintest counterpoint to the moon’s circumterran thread, a sight rarely seen from New Haven, which filled its sky with constant smokes and fogs of industry as well as electrick glares overwhelming the lamps of night. He also saw faint ghostly colors that seemed to pass back and forth high above him on the Wall. Like faerie fires in a swamp, save that they might be miles wide for all he could determine.

  Then it was time to go down. As last man up Hethor led the way back to the deck.

  SOMEHOW SAN Lorenzo’s party was organized and ready to cross the rope bridge at dawn. Hethor had slept in Malgus’ cabin, improper as that was, because he was afraid to be too far away from the gold tablet. The fact that he’d held in his hand something that might carry God’s very words made his skin crawl and prickled the hairs on his head. Though the tablet had seemed almost ordinary the day before, separated by a night’s memory and the wearing of time, the event seemed a miracle. Much as with his original encounter with Gabriel.

  He was on deck, standing uneasily with his division to watch the proceedings. The Welshman stood to one side of Hethor while Dairy sat on the other, resting his wounded ankles. The two dug their elbows into him and ribbed him about his “promotion” to officer country.

  The marines went across one by one. As they landed, they secured the gallery once more. After them a mixed group of sailors from ropes and deck, along with a few from gunnery, followed. Hethor wondered if they were volunteers. Lombardo followed, favoring Hethor with a final glare as he wiggled out onto the rope bridge.

  After the men were landed, the rigging of the rope bridge was changed and supplies were sent over—mostly ammunition and tools, along with some canvas. Apparently the party would be expected to forage on its way up. As there was little to eat in the vertical city except the bamboo and wicker of its walls, Hethor hoped their march would be quick and successful.

  The bosun piped them away, followed by a salute from Smallwood. With a casting off of the mooring and bridge ropes, the shore party was gone, so many flickering shadows among the galleries and balconies. Under al-Wazir, sailors from both the ropes division and the deck division reeled in the bridge lines and broke down the winches. At the same time Bassett’s engines beat her away from the wood-encased cliff face and back to the comparative safety of the open air at the center of the bay.

  Hethor set to working with his division at the stowage of the ropes and reshifting the deck cargo and equipment that had been disrupted by the staging of the shore party’s departure. A shake of the head from al-Wazir quickly warned him off. He returned to Malgus’ cabin instead, deep in contemplation of the gold tablet.

  Though the writing was not Hebrew, Hethor was increasingly convinced that the four letters he saw were in fact the Tetragrammaton, God’s name, inserted in the text just as a scholar at Yale might insert a word or passage of Greek in an English text.

  Which left the rest of the language to be deciphered. He had some Latin from his studies at school, but this was a different order of problem entirely. One he was clearly not competent to solve. Simply staring at the tablet did nothing. He only cram
ped his hand attempting a precise copy of the shaky loops and swirls of the writing.

  Chinese didn’t loop, did it?

  Somehow Hethor had trouble believing that God would speak Chinese, at least to him. Or maybe at all. So surely if this was a message from God, Hethor was meant to be able to read it.

  There were other repeated symbols. One appeared in both the first and second lines. Another one in the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth lines. A devotional term? But God wouldn’t pray to Himself.

  He thought about the Eastern alphabet that the Constantine heretics used. That didn’t make sense as an explanation—as he understood it, the Eastern lettering resembled both the Latin and Greek. This decidedly did not.

  Hethor returned to considering Hebrew. Bassett carried no chaplain, and as far as he knew, none of the officers or crew were secret Jews. Would anyone else on the ship have a Hebrew dictionary or grammar? Dr. Firkin, perhaps.

  Concealing the golden tablet in the map chest once more, Hethor went up on deck. Firkin was unlikely to be in his cabin now. Since the loss of the loblolly boy the doctor spent most of his time in his surgery under the fo’c’sle or out on the deck, though he assiduously avoided the rail. As Hethor stepped out the hatch, he noted Bassett was rising, still within the vertical city.

  Walking across the deck, Hethor wondered how he would explain his request for a Hebrew text. Then he heard the faint bell of the sky watch and looked around in panic as the swivel gun popped again. The noise echoed faintly from the front of the gasbag.

  This time, Bassett was better prepared. Marines poured onto the deck. Each soldier carried two carbines, which they shared out to eager sailors. Within moments the rails were lined with excited marksmen of varying skill.

  Winged savages fell past the ship, flying through a storm of fire that sent the smoke and reek of powder across the deck like a fog bank. Hethor didn’t see any of them tumble from the sky. They would be back in moments, all of the fliers, to stalk the decks in their hideous glory.