Ichor Well Page 8

  “Twenty minutes,” Captain Mack repeated. “Bring your questions, concerns, and other such thoughts, because one way or another we’ll be setting our course by the time we bed down.”

  #

  The rest of the crew filed off to prepare for the forthcoming discussion, leaving Lil and Nita alone in the gig room.

  “That was sure something, wasn’t it?” Lil said.

  “It certainly was. That was as near to magic as I’m willing to admit exists,” Nita said. “I know a few people back home who would dearly love to be able to conjure such an effect on stage for the delight of the audience.”

  She picked up the bowl and wafted the air above it for a sniff. “Oh my…” She coughed. “That stinks terribly of the fug.”

  “He had that paper strip in there.”

  “There’s no sign of it. And I swear the smell is stronger now than when he first revealed it. I wonder what that’s about.”

  “I suppose you can ask him, if we go through with it,” Lil said. She glanced over to Nita’s hammock. “I see you got that book I bought by your bed there.”

  “Of course! It’s a delightful collection of stories. And some fine and colorful prints as well.”

  “I really liked lookin’ at them when I was little. Ma and Pa weren’t much for readin’, so I only know about half the stories.” She took a breath and whistled between her teeth. “Twenty minutes. Seems like that’s about as long as we’ve had to ourselves except for eating and sleeping since they sprung us from Skykeep.”

  “Captain Mack has been pushing us rather hard,” Nita said, picking up the tongs and using them to stir at the shards of glass and crystal in the pot. “Until this moment I’ve only had a passing interest in chemistry. But seeing the great force of that reaction and its small size, I almost wonder if it might do a better job than steam at pushing pistons.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” Lil said, scuffing the floor with the toe of her boot. “Like I was saying, we haven’t had too much time to chat and such, so much work to be done. But I know you’ve been fixing up the workings of the ship so they’re easier to keep up and such, right?”

  “That’s right. I’m nearly through, too.”

  “And after that, you’ll finish teaching us how to keep it up?”

  “Yes. It should be much simpler. If Captain Mack gives us the time, I don’t imagine it will take more than a few weeks.”

  Lil nodded. “And then?”

  “And then you’ll be able to look after yourselves.”

  “And what’ll be next for you?”

  “I hadn’t put much thought into it yet. I suppose that’s one of my faults, not looking more than a few steps ahead.”

  Lil nodded again, a hopeful smile coming to her face. “Aw heck, Nita. That ain’t no kind of fault. Most folk can’t see more than a few steps ahead anyway. Seems to me trying to think ahead further than that is a waste of time, since the place you’re planning to set your next step might not look anything like what you were expecting. I say focus on what’s right in front of you and don’t worry about what’s ahead unless you have to. You never know what sort of happy things will come along that’d make those plans seem foolish anyway.”

  “I don’t know. Planning for one’s future is something most of my teachers tried to hammer into me back in school. Captain Mack has been putting a lot of thought into his future.”

  “Has he?” Lil said.

  Nita looked to her. “Oh, come now, Lil. The captain has been having us ferry all our goods back and forth to Laylow Island from where we’d stashed it near Caldera. And you know our business in Lock was about its purchase, right?”

  Lil furrowed her brow. “I’d not, uh, paid that much mind. But I suppose I remember some talk about that, on account of the amount of money involved. What’s that got to do with his future, though? I reckon that’s just because he ain’t ever been one for squatting. The only reason he felt comfortable stowing our things on that island near you is most folk don’t even dare head out that far, from hereabouts or Caldera. I figured Laylow was just a place we could moor up and unload from time to time without feeling like we’re stepping on toes.”

  “I imagine you haven’t paid much mind to this either, since it is mostly on display in his office and I’m called in there far more often than you, but he’s spent a great deal of time working on figures and finance lately. He’s got a buying list up on his wall. There’s all sorts of lumber and other items on it.”

  “We’ve traded in that stuff before…”

  “Lil, he bought the island, and now I’d say he’s planning to build a home on it. Captain Mack is getting ready to retire. I’m sure he is going to share his plans with the rest of us once he gets closer to the goal.”

  Nita continued to stir through the pot and thus missed Lil’s face dropping at the brief feeling of relief crushed by near panic.

  “You, uh… you need me for anything right now?” Lil asked.

  “Not at the moment. Why?” Nita asked, turning toward her.

  Lil turned away and headed for the door before Nita could look her in the eye. “I just got some things I need to see to before we have our big meeting about what we’re fixin’ to do,” she said quickly.

  She didn’t wait for Nita to reply, hurrying instead to the stairs that would lead her most directly to her room, or what passed for it. She reached the closet-size recess in a hallway that she shared with her brother and threw the curtain aside, plopping down onto her hammock and fixing her eyes on the wooden ceiling. Pinned to it was a photograph Nita had taken the time to make during one of their trips to Caldera, a grainy black-and-white representation of the whole crew. It was a rare occasion when they’d even managed to get Captain Mack and Butch to step off the Wind Breaker and onto the mainland.

  Lil gritted her teeth and turned to the wall. “Dang it, Lil, how simple are you? You’re spending all this time worrying Nita’s going to leave and you don’t take the time to notice that everyone’s fixin’ to move on.”

  A bit of motion caught her attention. A lump under the blanket on Coop’s bed was moving. The edge of it toward the door lifted up slightly, then dropped quickly again. Lil’s mouth curled a bit in a grin, and she reached out to slide the curtain shut. As soon as they had what passed for privacy on the Wind Breaker, the blanket slipped up to reveal Nikita. The little creature turned its large red eyes to Lil and hopped to the hammock beside her.

  “Well aren’t you the good little inspector,” she said, lifting the creature onto her lap and stroking her under the chin. “Sneaking and spying just like you been taught to. The stranger ain’t about right now, so you don’t have to hide no more for a bit.”

  Nikita reached over and drummed her long finger on Lil’s hand. Both Wink and Nikita were more than capable of communicating by tapping out the code the other members of the crew had learned. Only Nikita seemed to have picked up the quirk of tapping her message directly on the person she wished to talk to when it wasn’t meant for everyone. The little inspector had developed a taste for private conversation.

  Lil was sad, Nikita tapped.

  “Now, now. What’ve we been trying to teach you?”

  Lil is sad.

  “That’s better. And I don’t know if sad’s quite right, but I sure ain’t happy.”

  Lil told Nikita… Nikita paused. Why is Lil sad?

  “Now you’re learning!” Lil said, giving Nikita another scratch. “Now, as for what you asked… you remember what it was you did before you joined us on the crew?”

  Nikita remembered. Nikita wished Nikita forgot.

  “It wasn’t a good time, was it? And when Coop scooped you up, all hurt like you were, and brought you on the Wind Breaker for Butch to patch up, he wasn’t just saving you from your injuries, was he? He was saving you from the dead end of a life you were heading down. Well, Cap’n Mack did the same for me and Coop. We were goatherds. Not too good at it, neither. But as lousy as we were at that, it was a fair bit
better than we were at anything else we put our minds to. Then a bad storm came and caused the fug to spill over our land. Took the whole herd. Almost took us with them. But the cap’n scooped us up. And like you, he wasn’t just scooping us up out of our peril. He was giving us something better. I never done nothing in my life as well as I done this job. And I never had anyone stick around with me as long as I stuck around with these folks. You know Nita, right?”

  Nita gave… gives Nikita good food. Very good food.

  “That’s her. You critters sure do love them macaroons she gets. Anyhow, she was never supposed to be part of this crew. Sort of wormed her way on, rather than gettin’ plucked up like Coop and me. And that meant she wasn’t meant to stay on this crew, but because she got us on the bad side of the fuggers, she agreed to stick around until we could handle ourselves without her and without them. We’re just about there now. And that means she’d be within her rights to take her leave and head back home. You ain’t seen much of her home, Nikita, but it’s a wonderful place. No one in their right mind with the means to live there would live anywhere else.

  “The thing is, I got used to having the folks I like best being all around me. And she’s most definitely one of the folks I like best. I was all in a tizzy wondering what I would do if she left. Now I find out the cap’n might be hanging it up. The one dang thing in my life that I’ve been any good at is about to dry up, and I ain’t had mind enough to take notice.” She sighed. “Anyhow, that’s what’s got me wearing this sour face.”

  It is all right, Lil. Lil is smart and Coop is smart. Nikita will stay with Coop and Lil.

  Lil reached up and loosened a belt on the wall that held some of her effects and pulled free a small box. From inside she pulled out a bit of breadfruit.

  “You’re a sweet little thing, Nicky,” she said, giving the creature the treat. “And you’re learning to talk real good. Now same rules with this as any other thing you hear on this ship. Don’t go telling nobody what I said.”

  Nikita nodded.

  “There’s a good girl,” Lil said, lying back on the hammock.

  Nikita curled atop her. Lil stroked the little creature and put her mind to work.

  #

  The twenty minutes passed and the group found itself once more in the galley. Butch boiled up some coffee.

  “I trust we all put these last few minutes to good use mulling over what we saw and what it means for our future?” Captain Mack said.

  His crew nodded in response.

  “Good. Gunner, I’ll hear from you first,” he said.

  “I still don’t trust the fellow has anyone’s best interests at heart but his own—” Gunner began.

  “I wouldn’t begrudge him that, because I’d say that’s so of us all.”

  “—but it is clear there is at least some truth to his claims.”

  “Some truth?” Lil said. “Did you see the phlogiston that gunk spat out? That was a half a canister, easy, and all he had to do was heat it up!”

  “He suggested there were even more efficient ways to produce the stuff, and therefore even greater potential yields,” Nita added.

  “But just because he has proved where phlogiston comes from, it doesn’t mean this well he described is real. And even if it is, there’s still the chance it exists merely as an admittedly tantalizing lure to a trap we have all already been expecting.”

  “A trap we’re all expecting is just about the best trap we can hope for,” Lil said. “And if we’re quick, we can probably snatch the bait before it springs. And if it ain’t a trap, same result, except we don’t have to be so quick.”

  “The fella seems a decent sort, as fug folk go,” Coop said. “Heck, he seems the decent sort as regular folk go. A little too smart for easy conversation, maybe. And scared out of his britches about having to deal with us, but that’s just sensible. Knowing what he knows about us and what we done, I’d be a mite nervous dealing with us, too. This could be a double cross sure. But I don’t reckon he’s the one who’ll do it. Even if he is an Ebonwhite.”

  “I’m still not fond of that. We’ve encountered three Ebonwhites thus far. We robbed one after he saw fit to milk us dry of all of our money and condemn Nita’s mother to a slow death because there wasn’t enough money in curing her. The other two got themselves killed in prison trying to do the same to Lil and Nita. It sets a poor precedent to dealings with the family, wouldn’t you agree?” said Gunner.

  “The best way to make determinations about a man’s character is to spend some time with the fella,” Lil said.

  Gunner crossed his arms. “And the best way to avoid the machinations of a man of poor character is to avoid him entirely and be mindful of where to find him. The fug folk in general and the Ebonwhites in particular are too dangerous to be taken lightly. And I am speaking as a man who willfully handles unstable ordnance during his leisure hours.”

  “Nita? Care to give your impression on the situation?” Captain Mack asked.

  “To be perfectly frank, Captain, after that display, I’d be willing to dive into the fug knowing full well it was a trap, just to learn a bit more about this stuff and what other wonders it can work. Both Gunner and I have pored over the pages we unearthed during the heist of the storehouse, and while we’ve learned a great deal about the workings of their technology, not a scrap of information anywhere in the volumes we stole even suggested anything like this. If there are wonders like that to be uncovered, those alone would be worth the risk.”

  “Admirable though it is to pursue something for the joy of learning alone, that’s not what we’re after in this.”

  “If you wouldn’t call it too much of an overstep, Cap’n, I think I know how we should handle this,” Lil said.

  “I’m all ears, Lil.”

  “We agree to the plan. We meet him where we said we would, and we follow through like we’re all dedicated and such. We keep our eyes open, but as bad as things might look, we stick with them at least as long as it takes to find out where this ichor well is. By then we should have a pretty good read on the situation. If things look good, we go through with the plan, no one the wiser about what we might have been planning otherwise. If we decide it stinks, then we make our own trip to the ichor well, pump up a couple barrels of the stuff, and hightail it back to Laylow or that place near Caldera and set down until Nita and Gunner here can work out how to make our own phlogiston.

  “No matter how things turn out, we got enough to keep our envelope nice and full for years, and that means we can keep the crew together and in the air for a long time to come.”

  Lil looked to the rest of the crew. Mack did the same.

  “Its source notwithstanding, the plan is sound,” Gunner allowed.

  Coop gave Lil a slap to the back. “That’s my sister doing some world-class figuring. Next thing you know she’ll be takin’ the wheel while the cap’n sleeps.”

  “I agree. I think it is a very sound approach,” Nita said. “I might amend, if it is our plan to attempt to do our own preparation of phlogiston, it might be helpful to have a word with this chemist they are after. As while we’ve seen the creation of the gas, we’ve not seen what it takes to make burn-slow. And the warnings of the danger of ichor are reason enough to investigate the substance carefully before we begin working with it.”

  “Agreed. So we’ll take this enterprise as far as its midpoint. Bend the ear of the chemist, make our way to the well, and start preparations for a defense and harvest of the stuff. At that time, if we suspect they are meaning to do us dirty, we’ll do them dirty first, and it won’t be anything they didn’t earn. And if they earn better, then we’ll have partners in a place we never expected to have them. As Digger suggested, the next two days had best be spent preparing. We need to be ready for a lengthy stay in the fug, or at the very least several shorter ones. We’ll need to be armed, not just for fighting men but for fighting whatever manner of beasts we might find, and other airships in the worst case. We’ll need to be read
y to spring someone from a prison, or something like it. And we’ll need room in our hold for ferrying supplies and bringing back one hell of a load of phlogiston and burn-slow, because if things go as well as they might, you’d better believe we are going to make our first taste of their hospitality enough to fill our bellies, just in case we don’t get another taste.

  “If we overstoke, and the wind is with us, we can get to Keystone and back again before the time comes for our meeting. That’s where we’re headed.”

  “We might have some difficulties there,” Gunner said. “That’s right outside Fugtown and thus well within the influence of the most worrisome of the Ebonwhites.”

  “It can’t be helped. That’s the only place local that will fill all our needs for sale and purchase. Do I need to hand out individual orders, or do we all know our piece?”

  “I think we can manage,” Lil said.

  “Then get to them. Gunner, you’re on the wheel. I need to close my eyes for a few hours.”

  #

  After watching the Wind Breaker depart, and giving his nerves time to settle, Digger locked up his rented room and paced into the mines. Within a shaft that was no longer being worked stood a wire-caged elevator, and though the rest of the tunnel was neglected and ignored, its machinery was well oiled. He gave a good hard tug to a line beside the elevator, then stepped inside. A few moments later a distant grind rang out below him and the elevator began to descend. A minute into the descent it plunged down into a purple cloud of mist that was the reason for the abandonment of the mine. The crew had punched through to natural caves that were saturated with the fug.

  A chemical coldness spread across his skin, easing his anxiety in the same way the shade of a familiar tree can provide respite from the summer’s heat. Though a fug person was able to breathe and interact above its surface and the same could not be said of a surface dweller below it, Digger had never once felt comfortable or at ease when out from beneath the sheltering blanket of fug.

  The rails and workings of the elevator were fresher beneath the fug and built with more precision. This was because they were the work of the fug folk themselves. Springcrest was one of only a handful of places where the miners had been imprudent enough to open a path to the fug, Lock being another. As such they offered the only means aside from an airship for fug folk to access the surface dwellers without climbing gear. Though the fug folk seldom had reason to have discreet dealings with the surface, maintaining the means to do so was valuable.