“Mr. Silva, I find it difficult to believe even you would bring Her Highness to such an iniquitous place. Filthy, sweaty men and Lemurians often gather here and exchange ribald, obscene tales. There is foul speech, and on several occasions one of the Dutch… nannies… we rescued from Talaud has actually performed a striptease! There have been fights, and contrary to regulations, there’s often drunkenness. I won’t go into your personal life and speculate upon what a poor example you set as a man, but bringing that child with you here is an act of irresponsible depravity!”
Silva leered at him across the counter, and in his best Charles Laughton impression-which wasn’t very good-he uttered a single word: “Flatterer!”
Bradford took a breath, preparing to launch another salvo.
“Then what does that say about you, Mr. Bradford, and your bringing Midshipman Cook,” Princess Rebecca said, glancing at Abel and offering a small smile. Now that his eyes had adjusted, Bradford clearly saw the blush coloring the boy’s face.
“Well,” Courtney sputtered defensively, “but that is different, of course! He is young, but he’s a warrior and needs male example. Perhaps not as… sharply defined an example as Mr. Silva, but.. .”
“Mr. Bradford,” Rebecca continued, “I know Mr. Cook and consider him something of a friend.” The boy’s blush deepened, if that were possible. “You should remember we spent the better part of a year as castaways together. I also know he is barely older than I, and through no fault of his, I expect I have seen considerably more combat. Lawrence and I were aboard Walker during the final fight with Amagi, if you will recall.”
Speechless, Bradford glanced about. Only then did he see Lawrence himself, coiled in the sand like a cat where the sun could still reach him, staring back with what could only have been an amused expression. He was panting lightly, and immediately Bradford’s mind shifted gears, wondering why Lawrence would lie in the sun… and pant… so close to shade. He shook his head.
“Besides,” Rebecca said, ending the argument with her tone, “Mr. Silva did not bring me here; I brought him. He is still in some considerable pain from his wounds, you know, and a measured amount of seep helps alleviate that.”
“Right,” Silva said, resuming his search behind the counter as if he’d lost something. “I’m here for a medical treatment prescribed by medical treaters! I’m on limited, excyooged-excused duty.” He vanished again entirely, groping on the floor.
“He’s also quite incredibly bored,” whispered Rebecca. “Captain Reddy said he must remain here when the expedition to Aryaal departs. He was not pleased. He understands, with Mr. O’Casey forced to remain in hiding and Billingsly’s spies on the loose, that someone suitably menacing must watch out for me. But… he was not pleased.”
“Where the devil did it go?” came Silva’s muted mumble.
“Say, what is he looking for down there?” Bradford asked quietly.
Rebecca shrugged sadly. “It could be anything, but usually it’s his eye.” She shook her head at Bradford’s expression. “He has not lost his mind, but he is in danger of losing direction.” She spoke louder. “And he has clearly had quite enough seep!”
They needed a break from the daily rains, Gilbert Yeager thought. The sun rode overhead, but it wouldn’t do much about the humidity. Make it worse, maybe. Didn’t matter. The pyres had long since ceased, but black smoke piled into the hazy sky, and the industrial smoke they were making now, combined with the humidity, made every breath an effort. He coughed. Damn, he wished he had a cigarette.
He sighed and took a pouch out of his pocket, stuffing some of the yellow leaves within into his mouth. Chewing vigorously, he tried to get through the waxy, resinlike coating to the genuine tobacco flavor within as quickly as he could. “Gotta be a way to clean this stuff off,” he muttered. So far, everything they’d tried to remove the coating so the leaves could be smoked had failed. The native tobacco could be chewed, but it was practically toxic when lit.
The nearest sources of the choking smoke were a pair of crude, but functional locally made boilers. They’d been leveled atop layer upon layer of good firebrick on the once damp shore, but they’d long since cooked all the moisture from the ground around them. They roared and trembled with power in the red light of their own fires that seemed to diffuse upward around them. Dozens of ’Cat tenders tightened or adjusted valves, checked gauges, or scampered off on errands at the monosyllabic commands of another scrawny human, Isak Rueben.
The boilers powered several contraptions-none exactly alike, since each was virtually a handmade prototype-that chuffed along amiably enough, their twin pistons moving methodically up and down. Gouts of steam added even more humidity to the air with every revolution, but at least it was honest steam-not the useless, invisible kind the sun cooked out of the ground. The end use of each machine was a series of shafts, or in one case, a piston-pitman combination. One was a small, prototype ship’s engine they were testing for durability. The others spun large generators in crudely cast casings that supplied ship-standard 120 DC electricity to various points.
More engines were under construction that would eventually supply electrical or mechanical power to the pumps that would drain the nearby basin. The mechanical pumps were of a remarkably sophisticated Lemurian design. The electric ones were, like everything else electrical, experimental models Riggs, Letts, Rodriguez, and Brister had conjured up. If Gilbert had any money and if anyone would accept it, he’d lay every dime that the electric pumps would croak the first time they tried them.
Tabby, the gray-furred ’Cat apprentice to the two original Mice, ran lightly up behind him and playfully tagged him on the shoulder, then scampered to where Isak was standing. Hands in his pockets, Gilbert sauntered over to join them. “How they doin’?” he asked, when he was near enough to be heard over the noise.
“Fair,” Isak replied skeptically. “Fair to middlin’. They ain’t turbines,” he accused no one in particular, “but they’re engines. Least we got a real job again.”
Gilbert nodded. They’d finally trained enough ’Cat roughnecks to take their places in the oilfields, both near Baalkpan and on Tarakan Island. The relief was palpable to them both. They hated the oilfields. Their time in the oilfields back home was what drove them into the Navy in the first place. They’d become firemen, and that was all they really wanted to do. Everyone called them the White Mice, because before the event that brought them here, they never went anywhere but the fireroom and they’d developed an unhealthy pallor as a result. They actually resembled rodents, too, with their narrow faces and thin, questing noses. Nobody ever liked them before, but now everyone treated them like heroes-which they were-Tabby included. First, they’d designed the rig that found oil when the ship was completely out. Then they’d managed to maintain enough steam pressure to get Walker to the shipyard after the fight. They were remarkably valuable men, but all their popularity hadn’t changed them much. Everyone liked them now, but they still didn’t like anybody, it seemed. Except for Tabby.
They’d originally treated the ’Cat like a pet, even though she’d proven herself in the fireroom. She’d even saved both of their lives at the end, by pulling them out of the escape trunk as the ship settled beneath them. Now she was one of them, another Mouse, even if she didn’t look anything like one.
“I think they swell,” Tabby said, referring to the engines in a passable copy of their lazy drawl.
“Yah, sure… for a myoo-zeeum. They’re a hunnerd years outta date.”
“Buildin’ a pair of ’em with three cylinders, triple-expansion jobs-ten times as big-for Big Sal, I hear,” Isak said.
Tabby’s eyes blinked amazement. “Be somethin’, to be chief of that.”
“You expectin’ a promotion?” Gilbert asked accusingly. “Hell, they’ve made gen’rals an’ ad’mrals outta ever’body else, why not you?”