Goliath

EIGHT

Alek awoke to a thunderclap, a buzzing sound, and then a monstrous roar.

He sat up and blinked his eyes, convinced for a moment that some awful dream had shaken him from sleep. But the sounds kept coming—shouting, the creak of ropes, and beastly growls. The air smelled of lightning.

Alek swung his boots to the floor and ran to his stateroom window. He’d only meant to doze for an hour, but the sun was high and the Leviathan had arrived at its destination. Dozens of mooring lines stretched to the earth below. The figures manning them were dressed in furs instead of airmen’s uniforms, all of them shouting in… Russian?

The ground was littered with fallen trees—hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Chimney smoke rose from a distant cluster of buildings. Was this some sort of logging camp?

Then Alek heard another roar, and saw fighting bears among the fallen trees. They had no riders, not even harnesses, and their matted fur looked wild. He took an involuntary step back from the window. The ship was low enough for the giant beasts to reach it!

But they seemed to be running away.

Alek remembered the thunderclap that had woken him. The ship’s crew must have scared the creatures off somehow.

He leaned out the window as the Leviathan settled to the ground. Gangways were dropped, and the Russians, at least two dozen of them, climbed aboard. Soon a wailing siren swept through the ship, warning of a fast ascent.

Alek pulled himself back inside just in time. The air crackled with the sound of ropes being cut, and the airship shot straight up, rising as fast as the steam elevators he’d ridden in Istanbul.

What was this place? The jumble of fallen trees stretched as far as the horizon, the area far more vast than any logging camp could be. Even as the Leviathan climbed into the sky, no end to the destruction came into sight.

Alek turned toward his cabin door, wondering where to go for answers. The Darwinists might involve him when they needed his Clanker expertise, but they wouldn’t be calling for him now.

Where would Dylan be at a time like this? In the cargo bay?

At the thought of the boy, Alek remembered the newspaper lying by his bed. The questions he’d fallen asleep asking welled up again. But this was hardly the time to wonder about the mysterious Dylan Sharp.

The corridors of the ship were teaming with the Russians who’d come aboard. They were unshaven and haggard, half starved beneath their thick furs. The Leviathan’s crew was trying to relieve them of their heavy packs, but the men were resisting, English and Russian colliding with little effect.

Alek looked about, wondering how the ship could lift them all. The crew must have dumped every last bit of spare supplies.

A gloved hand landed on his shoulder. “It’s you, Alek. Perfect!”

He turned to find Dylan before him. The boy was wearing a flight suit, his boots muddy.

“You were out there?” Alek asked. “With those bears?”

“Aye, but they’re not so bad. Can you speak any Russian?”

“All the Russians I’ve met have spoken French.” Alek looked at the starving, unkempt men around him and shrugged. “And I think they were a different class of Russian.”

“Well, ask them anyway, you ninny!”

“Of course.” Alek began to push his way through the corridor, repeating, “Parlez-vous français?”

A moment later Dylan was imitating him, calling out the phrase with a distinctly Scottish lilt. One of the Russians looked up with a spark of recognition, and led them both to a small man wearing pince-nez glasses and a blue uniform beneath his furs.

Alek bowed. “Je suis Aleksandar, Prince de Hohenberg.”

The man bowed in return and said in perfect French, “I am Viktor Yegorov, captain of the Czar’s Airship Empress Maria. Are you in charge here?”

“No, sir. I’m only a guest on this ship. You’re the captain of these men?”

“The captain of a dead airship, you mean!” The man glared over Alek’s shoulder. “That fool is in charge.”

Among the crowd was a tall man dressed in civilian clothes, being led away by two of the ship’s officers.

Alek turned to Dylan. “This man is Yegorov, an airship captain.” He pointed. “But he says that fellow is in charge.”

Dylan snorted. “Aye, him I’ve met already. That’s Mr. Tesla, the Clanker boffin, and he’s barking mad!”

“Tesla the inventor?” Alek asked. “You must be mistaken.”

Captain Yegorov heard the name and spat on the floor. “He cost me my ship, and almost got us all killed! An utter fool, with the czar’s men behind him.”

Alek said in careful French. “It isn’t Nikola Tesla, is it? I thought he was working for the Clankers.”

“Of course he was!” the captain said. “The Germans funded his experiments when no one else would, and he designed plenty of weapons for them. But now that war is here, he’s seen what they’ve done to his motherland! He’s a Serb.”

“Ah,” Alek said softly. “Of course.”

This Great War might have stretched across the world, but it had all started with the invasion of Serbia, for which Alek’s family was to blame. His father—heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne—and mother had been killed by a group of Serbian revolutionaries, or so everyone thought. In reality the murders had been plotted by Alek’s own granduncle and the Germans. But tiny Serbia had been the first victim of Austria’s revenge.

Captain Yegorov’s eyes narrowed. “Wait. Is that… an Austrian uniform?”

Alek looked down at himself, and realized he was wearing his piloting jacket thrown over grease-stained mechanik’s overalls.

“Yes. Hapsburg Guards, to be precise.”

“And you’re the prince of Hohenberg, you said?” Captain Yegorov shook his head. “The archduke’s son, on a British airship? So the newspapers were telling the truth.”

Alek wondered how Eddie Malone’s ridiculous articles had made it to Siberia. “Some measure of it, anyway. I am Aleksandar.”

The man let out a dry laugh. “Well, I suppose if a Clanker inventor can switch sides, why not an Austrian prince?”

Alek nodded, the words finally sinking in. Nikola Tesla—inventor of wireless transmission, the Tesla cannon, and countless other devices—had joined the Darwinists. Count Volger would be fascinated to hear this bit of news.

“What are you two blethering about?” Dylan asked. “Has he told you yet why that Clanker boffin is here?”

“Mr. Tesla appears to have joined the Darwinists,” Alek said in English. He turned to the captain again. “But why are you all in Siberia? Mr. Tesla is an inventor, not an explorer.”

“He was searching for something in that fallen forest.” Captain Yegorov shook his head. “I have no idea what.”

Alek remembered the strange device in the ship’s belly. “Something metal?”

The man shrugged. “It could be. A few days ago his soldiers excavated a huge hole, and he was quite excited. After that we retreated inside the wire to wait for rescue.”

Alek turned to Dylan, roughly translating. “Tesla was looking for something here, something secret. He may have found it a few days ago, whatever it was.”

“Blisters. That means it’s come aboard.” Dylan looked down the crowded corridor, full of men with heavy packs but no Tesla. “They’ve taken him forward to speak with the officers.”

“Do you suppose they’d want to meet Captain Yegorov?” Alek asked.

“Aye, they would.” Dylan smiled. “And they might need a translator as well.”

A marine guard stood at the entrance to the forward corridor, keeping back the Russians. But he saluted when Dylan approached, and listened as the boy explained who Captain Yegorov was, and how he spoke no English. A few minutes later Alek found himself and the captain being taken forward.

“Watch out for that bum-rag!” Dylan called, then turned away to face the throng.

In the navigation room were Captain Hobbes, Dr. Barlow, Dr. Busk, and the famous Mr. Tesla. The inventor was elegantly dressed, considering he’d just been rescued from the middle of Siberia, but he had a wild gleam in his eye. He clutched a walking stick that looked as though it had been thrust tip-first into a fire.

“I see no reason for this man to be here,” Tesla said, giving Captain Yegorov a cold stare. The man said something short and sharp in Russian back at him.

Dr. Barlow spoke in a calming voice. “This is a difficult moment for us all, gentlemen. Our ship is full of men and empty of supplies. The expertise of another airship captain is welcome here.”

Tesla gave a snort, which the lady boffin politely ignored.

“If you please,” she added to Alek. “My French is a bit rusty.”

As he translated her welcome for Yegorov, Alek heard a murmuring overhead, and glanced up to see both Bovril and Dr. Barlow’s loris hanging from the message lizard tubes. They were repeating everything, relishing the sounds of a new language.

Captain Yegorov bowed. “You have my thanks for rescuing us, and I appreciate the dire situation you are in. But it’s no fault of mine. That madman ordered his soldiers to kill my airship. Food for the bears!”

Alek translated the last part into English haltingly, not quite believing what he was saying. The Leviathan’s officers looked horrified as well.

After a moment’s silence Dr. Busk cleared his throat. “It is not our place to pass judgment on what has happened here. We are on a rescue mission, nothing more. Perhaps we should all introduce ourselves.” He turned to Captain Yegorov and said in slow, untidy French, “I am Dr. Busk, head science officer aboard His Majesty’s Airship Leviathan.”

As Dr. Barlow introduced herself and the captain, Alek noticed that her French was flawless. He wondered why she really wanted him here.

Mr. Tesla looked bored and irritable, tapping his cane and grimacing as pleasantries went around the table. But when Alek introduced himself, the inventor’s eyes lit up.

“The famous prince!” he said in English. “I’ve been reading about you.”

“Ah, you, too,” Alek sighed. “I had no idea the New York World was so popular in Siberia.”

Mr. Tesla laughed at this. “My laboratory is in New York City, and you were the talk of the town when I left. And by the time I passed through Saint Petersburg, the czar’s court was also buzzing about you!”

An unpleasant feeling came over Alek, as always when he thought of thousands of strangers discussing the details of his life. “Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers, Mr. Tesla.”

“Indeed. They claim you’re pulling strings in the Ottoman Republic, and yet here you are aboard the Leviathan. Are you concealing the fact that you’ve become a Darwinist?”

“A Darwinist?” Alek dropped his eyes to the table, suddenly aware of the Leviathan’s officers in the room. “I don’t know if you could say that. But if you’ve read about me, you know that the Clanker Powers plotted my parents’ death. The Germans and my granduncle, the Austrian emperor, are to blame for this war. I only want to end it.”

Mr. Tesla nodded slowly. “We are both servants of peace, then.”

“A noble sentiment, gentlemen,” Captain Hobbes said. “But at the moment we are at war. We have twenty-eight extra mouths to feed, and we have dropped most of our supplies onto the tundra to make room for them.”

“Airships certainly have their limitations,” Mr. Tesla said.

Alek ignored the man, quickly translating Captain Hobbes’s words into French.

“If we head straight toward the airfield at Vladivostok, we’ll all survive,” Captain Yegorov said. “It’s two days away. We won’t starve, and for water we can scoop up snow without landing, as Russian airships have done for years.”

Alek translated, and Captain Hobbes gave a firm nod.

“We’re grateful that you have joined our side in this conflict, Mr. Tesla, and the czar has asked us to offer any assistance we can. But I’m afraid Captain Yegorov is right. We can’t take you back to Saint Petersburg just yet. We’ll have to keep heading east.”

The inventor waved his hand. “It doesn’t matter. I haven’t decided yet where I wish to go.”

“Thank heaven for small favors,” Dr. Barlow said quietly.

“After we resupply in Vladivostok, we may have to complete our mission in Japan,” Captain Hobbes said. “But I won’t be sure until the Admiralty’s orders reach us from London.”

“If you only had wireless,” Tesla muttered. “Instead of those ridiculous birds.”

Captain Hobbes ignored this. “In the meantime we shall have to ration our food carefully.” He looked at Captain Yegorov, and Alek repeated his words in French.

“We are airmen. Of course we understand,” Yegorov said. “We’ve all missed a few meals since arriving in Tunguska.”

“Tunguska,” said Bovril from the ceiling.

Dr. Barlow glanced up at the beast, then asked in French, “Is that the name of this place?”

Captain Yegorov shrugged. “The Tunguska River passes through this forest, but it hardly has a name.”

“Not yet,” Tesla muttered. “But soon everyone will know what happened here.”

Dr. Barlow turned to him, switching to English. “If I may ask, Mr. Tesla, what did happen here?”

“To put it simply, the greatest explosion in our planet’s history,” the man said softly. “The sound broke windows hundreds of miles away. It flattened the forest in all directions, and threw such dust into the air that the skies went red for months around the world.”

“Around the world?” Dr. Barlow asked. “When was this exactly?”

“The early morning of June 30, 1908. Back in the civilized world the atmospheric effects were barely noticed. But if it had happened anywhere except Siberia, the event would have filled all mankind with astonishment.”

“Astonishment,” Bovril whispered softly, and Tesla paused to give the beast an irritated stare. Alek glanced out the navigation room’s slanted windows. Even at this height, he could see that the fallen trees stretched out endlessly.

“I came here to study what happened, and soon I shall report my results.” As the inventor continued, he placed a heavy hand on Alek’s shoulder and turned his gaze to him. “When I do, the world will shudder, and perhaps at last find peace.”

“Peace? Because of an explosion?” Alek asked. “But what caused it, sir?”

Mr. Tesla smiled, and tapped his walking stick three times upon the floor.

“Goliath did.”