Cuttlefish (11 page)

“Ah, but my engines don't need the wind to be blowing,” said the engineer, cheerfully, leading two of his men out on a swinging plank-seat to check the thin metal of the false hull for damage.

“And the wind replenishes itself, not like your coal dust,” said the sail-master, going forward to check on the stunsails. It was plainly a well-exercised argument between two old friends.

Clara spotted Tim, nearby, leaning against the cowling, nose in a book, forehead wrinkled in concentration.

“You've got books!” she exclaimed. She'd missed reading so badly that it hurt.

He looked up. Blinked. “Borrowed it. It's navigation. There is quite a lot maths in it, and I never learned that much.”

“I was quite good at maths at school,” said Clara, carefully not saying “top of the class.” She'd learned that being good at maths came a close second to having a divorced mother and a father in prison, for making you unpopular with people who weren't.

“There's not that much formal schooling in the tunnels,” he admitted. “I mean…um. Anyway. Could you show me how to do this equation? I don't understand it at all. And I need to be able to do it if I'm to pass my junior submariner's ticket. And I want to.”

“Surely,” said Clara. It was rather a novelty to be asked to explain maths. It was a novelty too to have someone who wanted to understand. “So: what's a submariner's ticket?” she asked, once she'd explained how to do the equation. He was quick enough to learn, even if he didn't know all the basics; but more importantly than being quick, he was trying hard. He desperately wanted to understand, and she could see it in the intense concentration on his face. “Like tram tickets, but only for underwater stations? Do you have conductors waiting to come and clip our tickets?”

He grinned. “Well, we use underwater stations in London Town.” And that thought plainly stirred up worries. “Wish I knew about my mam.”

“You haven't heard anything?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Not really easy to find out. Sparky says they're getting radio messages from the Underpeople again. But that's official stuff. I'd love to hear her voice.”

She was silent for a bit, not knowing quite what to say. “Same with my dad,” she said, eventually. “I…I haven't spoken to him for nearly a year.” She felt as if she might burst into tears again.

“Let's talk about the ticket instead,” he said, his voice a little gruff. “See, it's a certificate. You have to get them to stay on the boat, and to move up. I'm only a cabin boy now. And…and if I want to go on, um, you know, to be something more than just an ordinary ranker or submariner…I have to pass these.”

“Oh. Really?”

“It's not like the top-side, where you get born to your situation,” he said with an edge to his voice, and she realized that this too was dangerous ground for some reason. “Or that's what my mam told me. In the submarines, if you can learn, you can be anything. Mr. Amos says I have a chance to go for diver or bridge-hand. If I work hard.”

Clara felt slightly guilty. “I didn't know. I thought you sort of learned it on the job,” she said. She'd always known that she'd go to university. Not that everyone did. Lots of girls just grew up and got married. But her mother and her grandmother had. She was expected to, too. “But of course you can. You could do anything,” she said, trying the smile that worked so well on Lieutenant Willis.

It was wasted on him, though. He was obviously seeing something else in his mind's eye, not her. He didn't even seem to notice. Instead, he answered, “I couldn't be a soldier. I thought…I might join one of the rebel companies and well, pay the Imperials back for blowing up my home,” he said fiercely, as if his home hadn't been a pumped-out damp hole under London's canals. “But when I shot that man up that hill…” He shuddered.

“You shot someone? I heard the bang. But the mate said he didn't think it was a shot,” said Clara.

Tim managed a bit of a smile. “Let's rather say I tried to shoot him. I had to. And I missed. He couldn't have been ten feet away. And then I tried to hit him with the cutlass. Only I messed that up too. But it all came out all right. Only the one Hussar that Smitty hit with a rock really got hurt. I didn't like the blood much. So I've thought about it and decided that I'd…I'd try and get my ticket, as a bridge-hand. See, we all have to study, and I had thought that
I'd try for something easier. Just get my basic submariner's ticket. But now I'm going to try for the bridge. If I can.”

Clara blinked and realised that she hadn't really quite judged him right. She'd thought he was just not scared of anything. Brave. Now…she suddenly realised that he was scared. He really was alone too, far more so than she was. When she'd thought he was some kind of brave hero…he'd just been doing what he thought had to be done, even though he was terrified. And that was braver still than not being scared of anything. She'd have liked to hug him…but, well. No. Not right now. Encouragement and support though, yes. “Indeed, you're going to! Mr. Amos is quite right. Uh. Who is he?”

He seemed to find that funny. “The quartermaster. He's also the armourer. He's a good 'un. He gives some lessons, and he also is part of the examining board. They say he's very strict, though. Doesn't play favourites.”

She placed the man he was talking about now. Except for the two divers, whose work took a lot of very heavy lifting, most of the submariners were not large, and Mr. Amos was smaller than most. He had a shiny bald head and sharp little blue eyes. “He gave me my deck kit. So when does he teach you?”

“There's a roster next to the mess door. He really was a teacher once, like my mam. But she taught little children, and he taught sixth form. Long ago. He got into trouble for teaching a part of history he wasn't supposed to…and well, he ended up underground, and he's been on the submarines for years. He's been everywhere. America. Japan. Australia.”

Clara had not really realised just how far and wide the submarines travelled and traded. She said so.

“Oh yes,” said Tim. “Mr. Amos says the British Empire would probably fall without them.”

“What? I mean they're trying to sink and kill us,” said Clara.

“Yes. I didn't understand it either. But he says all sorts of goods that come from countries the British Empire is at war with, but can't
do without stuff from, arrive through us. He says we're keeping alive something we want to kill. But if we don't keep the Empire supplied we'll starve the Underpeople. He talks like that. I never really understand half of it. He says it's the real history we ought to learn. He likes history.”

The quartermaster sounded just the person to ask about all the parts of her own life she couldn't really ask her mother about. Like just what her dad had been doing. And why.

So: later she looked at the roster, and…went to talk to the captain. She overheard what the other two cabin boys said about her looking at it. And she'd overheard the first mate earlier. That was life on the submarine. It was a small and crowded place. You couldn't help overhearing things.…

“Captain,” she said, seriously. “I may be being a disruptive influence on the discipline of the crew.”

Captain Malkis looked at her from under lowered brows, with a small smile hiding itself under his moustache. “Now who are you quoting at me, Miss Calland?”

“It'd be just something I heard,” she said airily. The captain was rather like her dad had been. You could tease him. The mate was much more serious. “The younger men are not working towards their qualifying examinations. And I am missing my schooling.”

“Ah.” The captain nodded. “I see where this is leading. Mr. Amos is complaining about the lack of attendance again. Don't worry.…”

This was going in the opposite direction from which Clara had intended. “Oh no. It wasn't Mr. Amos. Never. I was thinking, though, would it be a good thing if you were to order that I attend the classes for the junior ratings? As an example.”

Captain Malkis laughed and shook his head. “It would probably distract them even more. And make the mate even more sour about having women aboard. He'll get used to it. He's an old-style submariner. From Holland. They're very traditional over there.”

Clara gave up on being tricky. The mate was always very polite to her. She'd thought at first he didn't like her, but he seemed to be going out of his way to be nice to her now. It showed you just never knew what people said behind your back. Or maybe it was the captain remembering an early part of the voyage. “Well, actually, Captain Malkis, I'd like to do it. I'm bored too. And we've at least a week before we get to America. That's a long time for me, but not long enough to disrupt anyone's studies. Please?”

Honesty obviously helped. “True. I can't really order you to do it, though. Those sort of orders need to come from your mother,” said the captain.

“She's so busy, she won't notice,” said Clara. “And I might learn something useful.”

The captain shrugged. “It's barely another eight days. You may as well.”

She gave him her best curtsey. It was a ladylike thing to do, and so her mother had insisted that she'd learn to do it gracefully. She'd been shocked to find that her mother, having made her learn, didn't actually approve of it. Parents were so hard to understand. “A woman can be anything she wants to be, but in this world you sometimes have to curtsey to get there. One day that'll change too.” What was that supposed to mean?

They'd all thought it was a bit of a joke when the girl joined the class. Well, Tim had been less sure it was going to be as funny as they thought. She'd showed him how to calculate that angle. But he laughed with the others. He didn't want to stick out too much. It was hard enough with Banks and Standard picking on him all the time.

They didn't laugh for long. She was pretty smart. And she'd done things at school that they hadn't. “So if your current is running at 3.3 knots southeast, and the wind-speed is 4 knots northerly, at
what minimum speed and on what heading do you have to travel to move due south?” said Mr. Amos. “Write it up on your slates.”

Clara drew the vectors while the others were still scratching their heads. Mr. Amos stalked about. After a few minutes he took her slate. “It appears, Miss Calland, that you do not know what the minimum speed for steerage is.”

The other juniors and cabin boys laughed.

“She does, however, know more than the rest of you. A submarine does need to be moving faster than a certain speed for its rudders to work effectively. Add the fact that the
Cuttlefish
needs to move at at least two knots to have reliable steerage and explain your method to the class.”

It got quite competitive after that.

No one liked being beaten by a mere girl.

“No classes today. We're running silent in an hour,” said Mr. Amos.

“What's happening?” asked Clara, ever curious.

“Just a migrant fleet heading for Greenland that's been sighted. But there might be ships with hydrophones.”

So that day was a silent, still one. It was still very much better than the early days. Clara spent much of it reading a text on navigation, which, seeing as she was catching up and determined to be better at it than all of the rest of them were…was actually rather interesting. It was odd; they were only five days off the Boston Shoals. They'd be going ashore there. She and her mother would be out of the smelly narrow confines of the submarine and safe and comfortable again.

She wasn't looking forward to it.