1889: Journey To The Moon (The Far Journey Chronicles) (4 page)

Jude tried once more to take a nibble from the biscuit Ekka had fixed for their breakfast, but it was like biting a piece of rawhide. He put it on the table beside Tesla’s uneaten one. “What do we know about this Billy fellow, Lady Gagarin? Sounds like a vagabond.” Merkam sat at his large desk, the robot designs unrolled on it and creased beneath his arm.

“I don’t know,” Nikola Tesla said. “Maybe we’ll need him. He must be a survivor. And you claim there are aliens on Earth’s Moon.”

Merkam looked at Tesla. “The only news I should like to hear from you, Mr. Tesla, is that your lawyers have dropped that suit against me. I’ve yet to receive a wire stating so.”

“And you shall not, Mr. Merkam, until I am safely returned to the Earth. It is—how shall I put it?—my insurance policy.”

Merkam laughed.

“What about Mr. Gostman?” Ekka prompted. “I say he is hired, so he is hired. I will have your final word on this, and then no more will I hear.”

“Fine. Fine. Whatever you say. By the way, does he cook?” Ekka shook her head No. Merkam waved a dismissive hand.

Ekka turned to go, and Judah Merkam said, “but he’s the last one. Denys should be arriving shortly. He’s our military and artillery expert, if we should have trouble with the natives. Your Billy will be no more than a tinker to us. He’ll likely be in the way, and depleting much-needed oxygen. When we begin to asphyxiate, don’t look at me, Ekka.”

Ekka Gagarin nodded and walked out.

Tesla looked over at Merkam. His eye twitched ever so slightly.

“What?”

“I can see the need to bring your steam engineer along, Jude. I can even see bringing Denys Jay-Patten, if—that is, if—there are hostiles on the moon. We don’t need Mr. Koothrappally, however. You and I can quickly make any calculation required to correct our flight path. We don’t need Dr. Conklin. I mean, really. And we certainly don’t need two women and two roustabouts. Do you realize, sir, that including ourselves we have a complement of nine! Nine!”

Judah Merkam nodded and lit a cheroot, giving it a hard puff. “The Arcadia has room for twice that.”

“Not with twenty robots on board.”

“The robots don’t require seating, they use no oxygen, and the robots are mine. Besides that, I’m bringing twenty-five of them. If they make you nervous, Nik, I’ll keep them in the hold until we arrive.”

“About that. Arrival, that is. All I have seen is your little scout ship lift ten feet into the air and settle down again, before you dismantled it. I have seen no proof other than your sketches, that the Arcadia will travel one foot. It is fifty times the size of your little teacup and saucer scout ship.”

Merkam laughed. “That’s what I like about you, Nikola.”

“What?”

“Your sense of humor. Your sense of reality. For all your caution-to-the-wind bravado and heuristic inventiveness, you’re a great deal like Marconi and Maxwell. Physics. Always back to the laws of physics. Well, let me tell you something. It is those laws that bind us in chains. To hell with the laws. This is the West. We make our own laws out here, and then we break ‘em.”

There was a knock at the workshop door.

“Come in,” Merkam said.

The door opened to the scarred face of Jack Ross. Every time Tesla saw the man he wanted to wince. Ross was prone to fits of red rage followed by bouts of drinking and endless days of torpor that were legendary. He was, however, the best steam engineer on the continent. Ross’s light boiler invention had made it practical to employ steam power aboard dirigible craft. All lighter-than-air travel had been enhanced by the invention, which employed smaller—and therefore lighter—amounts of water, turned the water to steam, employed the force of the steam to power turbines, and permitted the collection of the residue in the form of condensed moisture which was fed back into the system. The engine was one nearly hundred percent efficient. Jack Ross was now a millionaire, but not by his own doing. The credit for good business sense went to his unfailing wife, Abigail, who would also be along for the voyage.

“Will you please,” Ross began, “do something about that monstrosity in the engine room!”

“Has it done anything, Jack? Or does its existence bother you?” Merkam asked.

“Both, dammit. Out of nowhere it turns itself on, looks around, grates something in that machine voice it has, then shuts down. The damned thing is haunted, I tell you.”

“Hmph!” Tesla snorted. “Any Scotsman would say you have gremlins in those robots, Jude. But I know you. You’ve got some kind of new patent there that you won’t release to the world. However did you make them talk?”

“You’ll get the whole tour, Nik. Jack, I’ll move the lead robot to the bridge if that’ll satisfy you.”

“I was thinking more like the hold. Or maybe the scrap pile out back.” Jack Ross held Judah Merkam’s gaze and dared not blink.

No, Merkam thought to himself, this is no joke. Jack hates the robots. Passionately.  “Seriously, Jack. Would you please come in and sit down. We’ll talk about the robots and everything else. Care for a nip of whiskey?”

“I’ll pass,” Ross stated, but he lumbered into Judah Merkam’s study anyway, rolled up a set of drawings on the extra chair and sat himself.

It’s Abby, Merkam thought. She won’t let him do anything. She rules him, body and soul. True, if it had not been for her, Ross would be dead. Still, better dead than half a man run by a woman.

The steel skullcap covering half of Ross’s face from just above his hairline down to his chin winked in the warm glow of the study lamplight. Ross raised his left hand—the one that was not a robotic prosthesis—and gave Tesla a wave.

Nikola Tesla liked Jack Ross. For his part, Ross was every inch more the man than Merkam. By his reckoning, any man who could work with steel, water, steam, electricity and that great intricate mechanism that he termed an “ethership engine” was on a par with one of the gods. A Norse god, perhaps.

“Tell me,” Tesla said. “What is it about Jude’s monstrosity that bothers you, friend Jack?”

Jack Ross felt more at ease talking to Tesla than to Merkam. Possibly it was the fact that there was not a woman between them. A woman such as Abigail Stoff Ross. “I’ll tell you, Mr. Tesla. It’s not the fact that it mimics a man, and is yet not one, or that it reminds me that I am part machine.” Ross held up his right arm for emphasis. “It’s that it is too much of both. There is something...unnatural about them. It is against the natural order of things, I mean. Jude, there will come a day when such things are outlawed in the land. There will be troubles over them. Mark what I tell you. On one hand you can replace the slave and the worker with a...a automaton. So then one day there will be no workers. And the day following that, there will be robots giving orders to men. When that day comes...it makes me shudder to think about it. I’ll have that sip of whiskey after all, if you don’t mind.”

Merkam poured Ross a drink and handed it to him. Ross reached for it across his body with his right hand, even though retrieving it with his left would have been simpler. Possibly, it would have proven the other side of his argument, if he had. Ross tossed off the drink and sat the glass down.

“Jack,” Merkam said, “I want a test flight. We’ll not leave for the Moon from Colorado. We’ll depart from San Antonio, Texas.”

“San Antonio? What the hell for?”

“We have something there we’ll need to retrieve. Something that cannot be transported overland because of its size. Also, it’s so large we’ll have to attach it to the outer hull. I know this will throw off the calculations, but I have the exact figures on tonnage—”

“Tonnage?” Tesla piped in. “You mean to say, you intend to take on more than an additional two thousand pounds of ballast and attach it to the aircraft?”

“Spacecraft,” Merkam replied. “And it’s not ballast. It’s...what you might call armaments.”

Tesla laughed. “Are you going to war, Judah, or have you been drinking too much of that whiskey?”

“I hope not to go to war, but if we must, I want to be ready.”

Ross raised his mechanical left arm and the other two men immediately became quiet. “I will want those figures, before you give them to Koothrappally. I will want to know exactly what we are taking on. I will want to see the plans for it, and know its nature from stem to stern.”

Merkam reached up to the top of his desk and lifted a rolled up tube and handed it to Ross.

“It’s called an armored buggy. But this, my friend, will not be used for the Sunday picnic.”

“Have you named it?” Ross asked. “I know your affinity for naming mechanical things.”

“I have. It is named Ares.”

Jack unrolled the paper and pinned the edges. The colored drawing of the Ares carried a sense of its danger, and for some reason, reminded Jack of a sleek, black leopard. “So now we will be sailing to the moon with the God of War. Jude, are there things you aren’t telling me?”

Merkam didn’t answer.

[ 4 ]

Ekka said, “Billy, if you have any belongings, go get them now and bring them on board. We will leave tomorrow, and we will both be too busy to manage our own affairs after tonight.” She didn’t wait for an answer and walked to the closed gates where there was someone talking loudly on the outside.

Billy leaned against the side of the open cargo hatch. He watched Ekka tell the two enormous guards to open the gate and when they drew them open, four men entered, two walking and two driving a wagon filled with two steamer trunks and several tubular canvas bags.

Of the two walkers, one was large and barrel-chested, with a walrus moustache. He wore a brown suit of fine weave. He was crying. The other man was strikingly handsome, clean shaven, and as lean as a leopard. He was average height and wore a brown, flat-brimmed hat canted at a rakish angle over one eye. A white silk scarf wrapped once around his neck and the loose ends reached to his belt. As he walked into the compound, the unbuttoned black, knee length frock coat flowed behind him like a cape. Polished boots reached his knees. Billy also noted that he wore a slender sword in an ornate black scabbard laced with bright brass filigree and wave-like swirls.

Ekka returned to Billy, “Inform Jude that Denys is here.”

“He’s not the cry-baby is he?”

“The large man is Sir Cecil Rhodes, hero and founder of Rhodesia, and a friend of Denys, here to see him on his journey.”

“Uh-huh.” He watched the two men embrace. “I believe I’ll go get Merkam.” As Billy left he muttered, “I hope this dandy has some kitchen skills.” No one on the Arcadia could cook, or even boil water properly. He thought, And we sure won’t make it to Luna without starving, even if once we get there the whole thing is made of cheese. Come on, Jay-Patten, have a pan and some bacon. His mouth watered at the thought.

Denys broke the embrace and held Cecil at arms length. “It will be all right, my dear Cecil. I will be returned to this terra firma before you realize.”

Rhodes composed himself and straightened his suit coat. “Yes, yes, of course.” He reached inside his coat and removed a fat, fist-sized leather pouch covered in intricate paintings of gazelles. “This was given to me by the Zulu chief, Shaka, many years ago. I wish you to have it.”

Denys was touched. He took the pouch and opened the top. Uncut diamonds the size of bird eggs filled the inside. They caught the sunlight and glittered. Some were clear, others canary yellow, and still others were a deep, rich indigo. Denys was stunned. He said, “This is too great a gift. I can’t accept it.”

He tried to give it back but Cecil insisted. Rhodes said, “It’s a way for me to be with you. They are a part of Rhodesia, the heart of it, and so they are a part of me. Do with them as you choose.” Cecil teared up again, but caught himself. “I hope to see you again, Denys, so that we might see Africa together. Now, I have to depart before I make a fool of myself.” He turned, crying, and walked through the gate without a backward glance.

Denys looked at the diamonds again, then closed the pouch and turned toward the Moon ship, regarding it with an appraising stare. Judah Merkam emerged from the hatch to greet him, with Billy slightly behind. Merkam indicated the wagon to Billy, “Show them where to store Denys’s luggage.

“Yes sir,” Billy said. As he went by Denys, he smelled perfume. Billy wrinkled his nose, and hailed the wagon drivers as he trotted to them.

Merkam stepped forward, extending his hand to Africa’s Great White Hunter, “Denys, I am so glad you’re joining us.”

“I look forward to our adventure, Jude.”

Merkam said, “Come, let me show you the Arcadia.” Merkam, Dr. Conklin and the African hunter went inside as Billy helped the two wagon men cart the trunks and canvas tubes through the cargo hatch. Billy felt the outline of what was in the tubes and knew they were rifles and shotguns, with one being noticeably lighter than the others, and with odd bumps and extensions on it. They used the ladders to enter the close-fitting sleeping quarters and Billy had the men place the steamer trunks beside the center bed. He arranged the canvas tubes longwise on the bed, with the odd rifle on the outside for easy reach, in case he had a chance to peek at it later. “Let’s go, boys,” he said and led them out of the Arcadia.

Billy watched the men depart through the compound gate just as Dr. Conklin was entered. The man made Billy uneasy. Conklin had a faint, smug smile on his face like he knew a secret no one else knew. As he passed, he nodded at Billy, and Billy did the same.