Skybreaker (25 page)

“It hurts!” Nadira cried out. “Get it off me!”

Hal stopped laughing and ran over to lend a hand. None of us really knew what we were doing, but suddenly Nadira came flying off the seat. The mechanical arms jerked to and fro resentfully, the calipers jabbing the air, searching for their victim.

“I can’t see this catching on in a big way,” I said. “Are you all right?”

Nadira was rubbing her head, touching her ears, making sure everything was still there. She turned and kicked the machine. There was a busy clicking sound from somewhere inside, and a ribbon of ticker tape shot out and landed at Kate’s feet. She picked it up.

“It’s your personality assessment,” she said, eyes flicking over the scroll.

Nadira snatched it from Kate’s hand and examined it. “It looks like you get a score out of ten in different categories. Vitativeness: nine. What’s vitativeness?”

“Love of life and power to resist illness, I believe,” said Kate. “That’s a very good score.”

“Benevolence: seven.”

“Who does better than that?” said Hal, amused.

“Self-esteem: eight. Tune, ten. I never knew I was musical!” said Nadira, pleased. “Secretiveness …” She trailed off.

“Ten,” said Hal, peering over her shoulder. “No surprise there.”

Nadira took a step away and kept reading. “Individuality: ten. Cautiousness: three. Combativeness: nine.” She looked over and gave me a wink. “Well, what did you expect from a pirate’s daughter? Hope: eight. Amativeness. What’s that?”

Kate actually blushed. “I think it has something to do with your attractiveness to the opposite sex.”

“Ten,” said Nadira, smiling modestly.

“Gosh,” said Kate, “I’d say you scored awfully well.”

“It’s just a silly machine,” said Nadira, folding away her piece of paper. “Are you going to have your go?”

“Absolutely not,” I insisted. “The thing’s murderous.”

Kate looked crestfallen. “I really did want to see my scores.”

“I suppose Matt’s right,” said Nadira. “What a shame.”

“Load of nonsense,” said Hal. “Cruse, there’s a bucket over there, perfect for water. Grunel’s machine is making me thirsty.”

And me as well, for within its vast metal innards the contraption made a faint but constant gurgle. The bucket Hal pointed out was full of sand. I suppose this was what Grunel had used as a fire extinguisher before he invented his own. I banged out the sand in a solid block.

“Someone needs to go with you,” Hal said, as I headed for the door.

“I’m fine.”

“No one goes alone. Kate, go with him. I’d send Nadira, but with all that amativeness, she and Cruse might get up to mischief.”

Hal chuckled at his own joke, but Kate could not have looked less amused. She grabbed her torch from her rucksack and walked over, staring past me. I felt very glum. The engineerium’s vaultlike door opened easily, and I left it ajar as we ventured out onto the catwalk.

After the lighted room, the darkness and cold were even more oppressive. In silence we walked towards the water tanks. I used the sharp end of my pry bar to chisel at the ice. Kate picked up the pieces and put them in the bucket.

All around us the
Hyperion
was alive with sounds I did not recognize. I hurried. I felt as if the storm had awoken the ship and ghostly crew. My hair raised at the sound of an odd clanking.

“What was that?” Kate asked, trying to sound merely interested.

“Just a loose elevator chain,” I said.

“What about that wheezing noise?”

“Air blowing against an intake vent,” I replied.

“Are you lying to me?”

“As best I can, yes.”

“You don’t need to lie to me,” she said testily, “I’m not a child.”

“Fine. I have no idea what these sounds are. That thumping noise? For all I know it might be the dead, marching towards us.”

The ship heeled over, righted herself sharply, and somewhere a door slammed shut with the force of an explosion.

Kate clutched my arm. I clutched back.

“The wind,” I told her.

“It sounded like it came from Grunel’s apartment.”

“He’s just trying to stay fit.”

She did not laugh.

“Don’t be scared,” I said, touching her shoulder. “I’d never let any harm come to you.”

She turned away from me. “You’re a liar,” she said tightly.

“What do you mean?”

For a moment she said nothing. “I saw you. Kissing her.”

I was glad she had her back to me, for the face I wore must have been the stupidest, gape-mouthed thing in the world.

“But … I asked if you were angry with me, and you never said anything!”

She turned to me, eyes flashing. “Of course I saw you kissing her. I was halfway up the ladder! How could I have missed it?”

“I didn’t hear you!”

“I’m not surprised. You seemed thoroughly engrossed.”

“And what about you and Hal?” I said, starting to feel some indignation of my own. “The dancing, all the compliments and cozy little chats!”

“Why not? I could see the way you looked at Nadira. Even before you kissed her.”

“She kissed me, actually.”

“Perhaps I should’ve let Hal kiss me.”

“You wanted him to?”

“He’s very appealing.”

“Maybe you should marry him then,” I said recklessly. “Or has he already proposed? He means to take you for his wife.”

“Take me for his wife?” Kate said with a laugh, which I hoped was disdainful. “He said that?”

I nodded miserably.

“As if I had no say in the matter?” she exclaimed.

“And what would you say?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.

The ship lurched and groaned around us. I waited for her answer.

“I’d say no,” she said.

I started to smile.

“I have no intention of marrying anyone just now,” she added. “Least of all a wretch like you.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s not your fault you’re attracted to her. She’s very beautiful.”

I shook my head. “It’s you I crave.”

“Then why’ve you been avoiding me?”

“I’ve just been busy. And you’ve been so unfriendly. I thought you’d lost interest in me.”

“You’re such an idiot. I was just trying to make you jealous.”

“It worked.”

Her face lit up. “Did it? I was never sure. Were you utterly miserable?”

“Utterly.”

“So was I.”

I took her hand. “If my heart were a compass, you’d be North.”

“That,” she said, “is a very romantic thing to say. But it seems the needle swings a bit to Nadira too.”

“A little magnetic disturbance,” I said. “Nothing more.”

“She scored a perfect ten, Matt.”

“You’d have scored eleven. Anyway, what about you and Hal?”

“I do hope he proposes!”

“Kate!”

“Only so I could say someone’s proposed to me. You know the answer’s no.”

“Just for now?”

“Just for ever. He’s a bit of a bully at heart.”

“Old Hal’s not so bad,” I said, feeling incredibly generous.

“He’s a natural leader,” she said. “They’re all arrogant. They need to be.”

I was suddenly so happy I put my arms around her and pulled her fur-clad body against mine. “I’ve really missed you,” I said.

“Likewise.”

It was not the most satisfying kiss. Our faces were numb with cold, our lips chapped, but it did not matter. I was just so glad to have her close and breathe her in. Better than oxygen she was.

“We should get back,” I said reluctantly.

The ice made surprisingly little water once it was all melted. But it was enough for each of us to slake our thirst. Now that I knew Kate and I were all right again, nothing seemed so bad—not the ship’s violent rocking, not the fact that our treasure hunt had so far brought us next to nothing. As soon as the wind died down, the
Saga
would be back and take us off—and what happened after that, I did not care to think about.

Hal set us all to work, searching different areas of the engineerium. He looked a bit weary and did not seem as big as before. As the room warmed up, everyone was pulling off their hoods and gloves and unbuttoning their sky suits a bit. My toes were starting to thaw. It felt almost balmy. I was busy checking through some crates when a hissing sound pulled my gaze to the aerozoan’s vivarium. Inside, water was spraying against the glass, running down in rivulets that melted the frost. Kate had noticed it too. Together we ventured to the door and cautiously pulled it open. We peered inside. The ceiling here was dotted with small sprinklers, now vigorously spinning and sending a dense mist through the chamber.

“That makes sense,” said Kate. “Every living thing needs water. He’d have to water them in captivity.”

The sprinklers turned off. They must have been on some kind of clockwork mechanism.

“How do you think they got their water in the wild?” she asked.

“Probably rain clouds,” I replied. “Do you suppose they froze to death, trapped up here?”

Kate was shaking her head. “Remember those bugs I collected? They weren’t frozen. The aerozoans must produce the same kind of anti-freezing chemical.”

“They’d keep getting food through the vents,” I said.

Kate nodded. “But if the sprinklers didn’t work, they’d eventually dehydrate and die.”

It was good to be talking with her like this again, puzzling over things, just like old times. She was so curious and full of wonder. Making sure no one was watching, I took her hand in mine, and felt her fingers squeeze back. And I thought: home. It took me completely by surprise. But I suppose that once you bid farewell to your first home, you’re always looking for another—that place where you can feel happy and strong and at your best. For three years I’d called the
Aurora
home. But now that I lived in Paris, it was not the city itself that was home. It was Kate.

Grunel’s machine gave us light and heat, but it could not make the air any less thin. We’d been aboard the
Hyperion
more than eight hours now, and night was coming on. As the temperature outside plunged, the heaters struggled just to keep the engineerium at freezing. We were all exhausted.

A few hours earlier, Kate had asked Hal if she could go to the dead zoo to itemize Grunel’s collection. Grudgingly he’d given her half an hour. I’d accompanied her and held the torch as she hurriedly scribbled details about the creatures in the display cases. Her portable camera, it turned out, was
useless in the intense cold. When she tried to take a photograph of the yeti, the shutter wouldn’t even open. Though Kate had complained bitterly that it wasn’t nearly enough time, when the half hour was up we were both shivering violently, and Kate could barely hold her pencil. We’d retreated to the comparative warmth of the engineerium.

Now, huddled under blankets with the others, I noticed that both Kate and Nadira were taking more frequent sips of their tanked air. Hal had not touched his oxygen, nor had I mine. I worried we might run out before we were rescued. We all had dry coughs by now, though Nadira’s was the worst.

We needed sleep desperately. I volunteered to take the first two-hour watch. Kate and Nadira put their masks on and slept. Hal slept too, without oxygen, coughing and mumbling in his dreams. The sprinklers in the vivarium came on every half hour, melting the frost that was constantly reforming on the glass. I had a clear view of the dead aerozoans, drifting listlessly. The storm slackened some, but still the ship moaned and muttered. I was glad for the lights.

I wished I’d brought Grunel’s diary with me. I would’ve liked to look at his sketches of the floating city. His giant machine made an ominous creak, and I glanced over at it, still worried it might rip free from its moorings and squish us as we slept.

If Hal hadn’t bundled away those blueprints so quickly, we might have known how this machine actually worked. I got up to examine its lights and instruments, and listened to the
constant burble of water through the pipes. It seemed to be circulating the water to and from the great tank mounted on the wall. The generator gave off heat too, like the side of a pot-bellied stove.

The hydrium smell I’d noticed earlier was stronger now. I didn’t think it was coming from the vivarium. Sniffing, I tracked it to the back of Grunel’s machine. A thick hose ran from the machine to a vent in the ship’s hull. Some water had frozen against the coupling and cracked the rubber. I heard the hiss of escaping gas and put my nose closer. The smell of ripe mangoes wafted over me. The fissure was a small one, and I didn’t think there was much risk of hydrium filling up the entire room and suffocating us. But there was precious little air as it was, and I wasn’t taking any chances. I ferreted around the worktables until I found some sealing tape and wrapped it three times around the crack. The hissing stopped; the smell faded.

This machine produced hydrium, I realized in wonder.

I’d never heard of such a thing. Hydrium came from deep fissures in the earth and was refined before its use as a lifting gas. Somehow Grunel had figured out a way to make his own. What else this generator of his did, I could not imagine.

When I woke Hal later for his watch, I told him about it.

“I’d be happier if it made gold,” he said. “Get some sleep.”

Lying down, I felt the thin air more acutely than before. I was tempted to use some of my tanked oxygen but wanted to save it for Kate or Nadira if they needed it. It took me quite a while to fall asleep.

I dreamed we were all sleeping in the engineerium and were woken by a dreadful honking sound. It came from the enormous coffin. I was frozen with terror, but Kate and Nadira and Hal seemed calm enough, and said someone must be inside. They told me to go and let the poor fellow out. I did not want to go, but without even moving my feet, I found myself upright and skimming over the floor to the coffin. The honks had become more and more frequent and urgent, like the sounds of a giant and demented goose. I knew what I would find.

I heaved up the lid, and there he was again, the same malformed creature I’d seen behind the door. He was half encased in ice and trying to speak, but his throat and mouth were frozen and he could not make any words. I wrenched myself from the dream and woke up with a shout bottled in my throat.