The loader started to haul them up the ladder to the baggage compartment, then stopped and looked back at Bushell. “You’re the chap trying to get The Two Georges back, ain’t you, sir?” he asked.
“So I am,” Bushell said. He was glad no reporters had got wind of his imminent departure.
“Hope you find it, sir, and catch the ones what took it, too,” the loader said. “Right bunch o’ bastards they are, you ask me.” His large, knobby-knuckled hands curled into fists. Bushell sent him a grateful smile; he was always delighted when such an obvious Irishman showed his loyalty to King-Emperor and country.
The Negro clerk, however, sniffed and said, “Please don’t vex the passengers with conversation, O’Leary.” The loader brushed a forefinger to the bill of his cap to show he’d understood and would obey.
“I wasn’t vexed,” Bushell said. The clerk looked through him as if he hadn’t spoken. Plainly, the fixed policy of Sunset Airships, Ltd., took precedence over the whim of any one traveler. The brief delay let Felix Crooke come up to join Bushell. He was carrying his bags himself. “Bloody fog!” he said. “The cabby I hired lost his way twice. I was afraid you’d have to depart without me. This isn’t the weather for which New Liverpool is famous, you know.” He looked at Bushell as if holding him personally responsible.
“It’s often like this in June,” Bushell answered. “By the way, Sam Stanley, whom you will have met, is accompanying us on our flight north.” He turned to the clerk, who was droning through the formalities of Crooke’s finding his stateroom. “Could you tell me if Samuel Stanley is abroad the airship yet?”
The Negro made a point of finishing his business with Felix Crooke before deigning to consult the passenger list for Stanley’s name. At last he said, “Yes, sir, that gentleman has checked in.” He made it sound as if the admission had been forced from him by a clever barrister in a court of law. One after the other, Bushell and Crooke climbed the detachable stairway to the passenger gondola. A Nuevespañolan steward in a morning coat stood at the entrance to make sure they did not stumble.
“I’m going to my room,” Crooke said. “How about you, sir?”
“I like to watch takeoffs from the lounge,” Bushell answered. “Probably won’t be much to see today, what with this mist, but you never can tell.”
Signs led him to the lounge; as on the Upper California Limited, it lay on the starboard side of the gondola, though some airship lines preferred to put it to port. As he’d expected, Bushell found himself alone in the hall that led to the lounge entrance. Watching gray tendrils of fog swirl around the Empire Builder as it rose was not a pastime which held mass appeal. But he would not be alone in the lounge: he realized that as he neared the door. Someone was playing the piano in there - quite well, too. Bushell set his jaw before he went in; “I Remember Your Name,” a sentimental favorite from two decades before, had been the song he and Irene always thought of as theirs. Whenever he heard it now, it was a dash of salt in the wound that never quite seemed to close.
“I Remember Your Name” came to a sudden, jangling halt when Bushell walked into the lounge. Samuel Stanley sprang up from the piano bench, guilt and worry on his face. “I’m sorry, Chief,” he said quickly.
“Been too long since we’ve flown together, dammit. I forgot you’ve got the lounge habit, too.”
“It’s all right,” Bushell said. “Go ahead and play it, Sam. You might as well take it all the way through to the end. I know how it goes.”
“But - ” Stanley bit his lip. Now he was wrong whether he finished the song or he didn’t. At last, unhappily, he sat back down and hurried through the last part of it. His mind wasn’t on his playing; he made more fluffs in those few bars than he usually did in a week, and finished with obvious relief. Bushell sat down on a rattan chair. In keeping with its name, the lounge of the Empire Builder had an East Indian theme. The furniture was of rattan and teak, with bright, intricately patterned cushions. Carpets from Armritsar and Bangalore covered the floor, some with elaborate Urdu calligraphy. On the walls, British soldiers in pith helmets and red uniforms of bygone days rode to battle atop war elephants. A middle-aged man, an elderly woman in the black dress and veil of mourning, and a young man in checked trousers came into the lounge one by one. Politely reserved, they sat well apart from one another and from Bushell and Stanley. The young man asked the woman whether she minded him smoking. When she waved permission, he lit up a meerschaum.
Bushell drew out his pocket watch. At seven minutes of eight, the pumps began draining the airship’s ballast chambers. Less than a minute later, the middle-aged man hastily left the lounge. Sam Stanley caught Bushell’s eye. Neither of them laughed or even smiled, but each enjoyed the other’s amusement. At two minutes of eight, the airship’s motors started up. The low roar filled the lounge. The overhead speaker crackled to life: “This is your captain, ladies and gentlemen. We will be taking off momentarily, and I advise you to find a seat if you’d be so kind. The nose of the airship will rise a bit, which means the floor will tilt until we reach our cruising height of fifteen hundred feet. Thank you, and I hope you’ll all have a pleasant flight with us today aboard the Empire Builder.”
A snap Bushell felt as much as he heard announced the release from the mooring tower. For a moment, the dirigible simply floated in the air. The motors began to work harder. Mist swirled away as the Empire Builder began moving through it. As the captain had warned, the floor did tilt, but not to any great degree. Soon Bushell could see only gray all around; the airship might have been packed in dirty cotton batting.
After a few minutes, the rate of climb leveled off. A steward came around with tea and coffee. Bushell chose Darjeeling, Stanley Irish Breakfast. The steward said, “We shall be serving breakfast in the dining area beginning at a quarter of nine, gentlemen.”
“Nothing but fog today, I’m afraid,” Stanley said, waving at the gloomy prospect outside the observation windows. “You might as well have gone to your stateroom.” By his tone, he wished Bushell had gone to the stateroom. Then he could have played “I Remember Your Name” without embarrassment.
“It doesn’t matter, Sam,” Bushell answered. He didn’t know himself whether he meant the mist or the song. After a moment, he lowered his voice and went on, “For the rest of this trip, I think I’d best be just Tom and Lieutenant-Colonel Crooke Felix. Too many people have heard my rank and surname, and maybe yours and his, too.”
“Incognito we shall be - Tom,” Stanley agreed, and laughed at the hitch he’d put in what should have been a smooth sentence. “I’ll have to work to remember that,” he added seriously, his face full of concentration. “The habit of subordination is hard to break.”
“True enough,” Bushell said, taking out a cigar. “I’ve known Lieutenant General Sir Horace Bragg what seems like a thousand years now, and I count him a good friend even if you don’t. But whenever we talk, on duty or off, he’s always sir, and whenever I talk about him he’s Sir Horace or Lieutenant General Bragg, not plain old Horace.”
Whatever Stanley thought about Bushell’s friendship with Sir Horace, he kept it to himself, saying, “Ah, but you have it easiest here - Tom.” He paused again, and ruefully shook his head at the blunder before continuing. “Superiors can call inferiors by their Christian names, but not the other way round. You’re used to going Sam and Felix, but we aren’t used to Tom.”