Arachnodactyl (20 page)

“It suits me.” Rose replaced the lid with a clank.

“And that’s good enough? Is that all you want in life?”

Rose stepped up to the oven. Hinges squealed as she opened the door. The scent of bread exploded through the room and Ikey’s mouth watered.

The door shut with a squeal and clang. A pan was dropped onto a wooden surface.

“That may be the first time anyone has ever asked me what I wanted,” Rose said.

“Then what do you want?”

“Honesty,” Rose said, then added, “and respect. Though I suppose there isn’t much of a difference between the two.”

“Cross doesn’t respect you.”

“I thought you had asked what I wanted, not for an account of what I had.”

Ikey hung his head. Talking to Rose took great effort. He wanted to be in the sitting room with her, planted on the ottoman and listening to the solid and reliable chatter of knitting needles between them. That was easy to understand.

“I respect you,” Ikey said.

“Then why aren’t you honest with me?” she shot back.

Ikey lifted his head to the dark. “I am. I am honest with you.”

“Are you? Then why are you here? Why are you sitting on the steps and speaking to me?”

Ikey buried his fingers in his hair again and tugged.

Rose approached. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to set the table. Will you be eating with us tonight?”

Ikey stood and stepped aside. “Cross told me to be gone before he got back.”

“And so that is it?”

“What else is there?”

“What do you want?”

Ikey sucked in a breath. What he wanted welled up inside him, larger than himself, larger than his body. It was larger than his ability to understand or process it, to reduce it into units of meaning that got attached to words and articulated like confetti spewed from the mouth. It was all pointless and ridiculous.

“I can’t wait for you to figure it out, Ikey.” The stairs creaked as Rose ascended.

Ikey resisted the urge to reach out and touch her, feel her pass. If he touched her, if the satin of her dress passed under the tip of his fingers, he’d be snared. Stuck. Hooked to her and dragged along like an animal on a leash. And what good was he to her? Unable to navigate this unpredictable world in the dark, equipped with wits that responded to the simple logic of mechanics and little else. People. Holy hell.

Ikey stood with his back to the wall and listened as Rose ascended the stairs and crossed the room to the china hutch. The door clicked as she pulled it open. Porcelain murmured under her touch as she selected plates. The floor creaked beneath the heels of her boots as she carried the plates to the table, as she went on with life and left Ikey downstairs, alone with his thoughts, inert and free to do with himself whatever he wanted.

She didn’t need him. And that was the truth. Whatever arrangement existed between herself and Cross, it suited her. She didn’t need to be saved, rescued, or pitied.

And as his words caught up to him and he recounted what he had said to Rose, telling her what he had never told another soul, he realized she would have nothing at all to do with pity—neither the receiving nor the giving of it.

Ikey climbed the stairs, lifting the weight of his boots and planting them onto the wood one after the other until he reached the top. As Rose rifled through utensils, Ikey walked around to the next flight of stairs and climbed to the hall. In the spare room, he felt around the dresser with his toe until it nudged his satchel. After he slung it over his shoulder, he descended the stairs.

“I won’t be staying for dinner,” Ikey announced as he hitched the strap over his shoulder. He wished the tools inside would have clanked together, rang out like a solid period to punctuate his statement. Nothing doing.

“Suit yourself. If you ever need a warm meal, you know how to let yourself in.”

“Thank you,” Ikey said. He stood a moment more and waited for her to say something more, or he waited for something worth saying to appear in his head.

Rose approached. Ikey straightened his back.

She brushed past him and descended the stairs.

Ikey let himself out the backdoor.

T
he clerk
at the hotel raised an eyebrow and took half a step back as Ikey approached the front desk.

“Admiral Daughton reserved a room for me.”

“Ah,” the clerk said as studied his ledger. “Would you like a chance to freshen up before I notify Admiral Daughton of your arrival?”

“Excuse me?”

The clerk’s finger stopped several rows from the bottom of a column of figures. “Oh.” His face flushed and he looked back at Ikey. A wide smile creased his face, but it did not reach his eyes. “Please excuse me. I mistook you for another guest. I’ll have someone show you to your room immediately.” The clerk rang a small bell. A bellhop appeared and tried to take Ikey’s satchel. Ikey’s grip tightened around the strap as he shifted away from the bellhop’s reaching hand.

Once the bellhop opened the door to Ikey’s room, Ikey stepped inside and allowed his eyes to wander the contents. Ostentation crowded the room. The abundance of furniture and seascape paintings crossed its arms and refused to budge as Ikey peered through the light and airy atmosphere for a single dark corner or a heavy drape of which to push out the afternoon light.

“Will this do?” the bellhop asked.

“Can I get heavier curtains?” Ikey asked.

“Heavier? How so?”

“Thick. Heavy. I want curtains that blot out the light.”

The bellhop rocked back on his heels. “I’ll ask into it, sir. Is there anything else I can do?”

“No.”

The bellhop lingered a few seconds longer. As Ikey turned to ask what he wanted, he slipped out the door and closed it behind him with a soft click. The carpeted hallway absorbed the man’s footfalls. He floated away like a ghost.

Ikey dropped his satchel by the door, stumbled to the bed, and then collapsed onto it. Weariness sifted off his bones like dust. He closed his eyes and listened. A conversation bubbled in the next room. A woman laughed. Her laugh ended in a quick, startled yelp.

Ikey went to each window and pulled the drapes across, but they were nothing more than hideous layers of muslin and lace designed to offer a compromise between privacy and the illusion of open airiness. Once drawn tight across the windows, the light in the room decreased only a fraction.

Ikey dropped to his knees beside the bed and brushed aside the skirt. In the darkness underneath, he made out the familiar and solid shape of a chamber pot. Ikey crawled under the bed. He closed his eyes, but the feeling of being adrift did not come on him. The nearness of the bed’s box springs pressed against him. The scratchy softness of the carpet grounded him. The woman’s laughter started up again, escalated in pitch, and faded away.

There would be no pretending here. There would be no way to mask this world and pretend it was Rose’s. Ikey was exiled.

He shimmied out from under the bed and stood. A vile longing filled his stomach, and then drained away like a plug had been yanked from the bottom of him and what remained swirled out to a dark recess hidden in the earth below. The carpet absorbed his footfalls. Nothing sang of his departure from the bedside, or his approach of the window. Nothing moved. Nothing stirred except another swell of laughter in another room. Again, it cut off in a yelp.

Ikey slipped the curtain back and watched people mill around below. A team of horses pulled a carriage up Khyber Pass. Their heads bobbed as they strained against their yokes and their load.

Ikey pushed the curtains back and opened the window. Noise fell into the room. The chirps of house sparrows. The screeching of gulls. The drone of a distant horn. The clap and clatter of hooves and wheels over stones. Chugging steam carriages. The world murmured out there, full and present, dropped into place like a huge pile of horse dung, and now the flies worked over it, swarming, busy with their gift of offal.

It hardly seemed better than life on the farm. His dad was predictable. Ikey read his moods like the sky. He knew when storms approached, could gauge how bad they might be. He knew when to run for shelter, when to stick it out, when to hunker down for a drenching and grit his teeth as he waited for it to pass.

Outside of the farm, the world was both dark and crazily illuminated. It sat around him and brimmed with ridiculous complications and needless embellishments. The whole world rose up around him like one of Cross’s music boxes. It made little sense. It made noise when he moved, when he interacted with it. And it was exceptionally difficult to understand.

Ikey took a deep breath and rubbed his hands over his face. His beard bristled under his palms. He turned around. A vanity gave back his reflection. He stepped up to the vanity and saw the deep bruise around his eye and the yellowing along the edges. A beard darkened his face. A riot of mussed hair crowned his head. He rubbed his fingers across his beard, up until the tips of them teased the edge of his bruise.

The clerk’s look of shock made more sense.

Ikey sat at the vanity. He smirked at his reflection. What if Rose could see how hellish and unkempt he looked, bedraggled and dragged backwards through a knothole? It hadn’t mattered with Rose. And since it hadn’t mattered with her, it took no time until it ceased to matter at all. The body became an extension of will.

That was how Rose wanted to be viewed. An extension of will. Disembodied. Not connected in the least to her form.

Ikey shook his head and thought of the grace of her hands, the willowiness of her arms and long spout of her neck. How anyone could find her disturbing or ugly mystified him. But he hadn’t seen her face, what lay beneath the veil.

Ikey slumped into his chair. Not that it mattered anymore. At this point, there was nothing left to do but finish Admiral Daughton’s ship. Collect his pay. Strike out. If he went back to the farm with money, and it was clear that he chose to go back, what would his dad do then? He wasn’t crawling back. He was returning to the place he belonged.

First, he’d need to finish the ship, and that required the plans Admiral Daughton had asked for. Ikey pushed himself up from the vanity and drifted over to an oak writing desk. Inside he found pencils and stationery. He tapped a pencil on the desk and ran his hand through his hair. He closed his eyes and thought of the lanterns under the converter. How could they be enclosed? How could the flames be covered while still given air to burn? Or how could he transfer heat from the exhaust to the tanks?

He leaned back in his chair. A glass shattered and a woman shrieked, and then she burst into a fit of laughter that spiked in pitch several times before it crumbled away.

Ikey gritted his teeth. The light was too much. The people. Peace and quiet would be a great help. He stuffed the pencil and several sheafs of paper into his satchel, then shouldered the strap and left the room.

T
he following morning
, Ikey stumbled into the hangar, hungry and momentarily surprised to see the
Kittiwake
on the ground again. He hitched the strap of his satchel over his shoulder and climbed aboard, bringing his own tools with him this time.

He made his way to the engine room. Most of the lanterns remained where he and Wendy had left them the previous day. The tanks held diminished quantities of brine, thick and clouded with precipitate. They would need to be emptied and scrubbed and refilled before the next run.

Ikey slipped several sheets of paper from his pocket and shuffled through them. They held improvised plans for the new hydrolysis converter. Exhaust from the boiler would be fed through a series of wide-gauge copper pipes running under the tanks. It wasn’t quite what Cross had envisioned, but Ikey hoped it would suffice. If it didn’t, it’d at least buy him time to develop another idea.

The plans would have to do, and they would, as Admiral Daughton had no alternatives. Ikey folded up the papers and returned them to his pocket. After selecting a spanner and screwdriver from his satchel, he went to work on the bolts that fastened the converter tanks to the rack.

Wendy breezed in close to an hour later. He took a look at Ikey and asked if Cross was around.

Ikey set another bolt and nut down and lifted the tank from the rack. Half-empty, they were much easier to handle. He set it beside the five other ones he had removed.

“I don’t know where Cross is.”

“So he’s off the crew altogether?” Wendy asked.

“I guess.”

“You guess? Isn’t it your crew now?”

Ikey returned to the rack and began to loosen the bolts on another tank. “Does it matter?”

“Nothing gets done if someone isn’t in charge.”

Ikey looked up from the tank. “Help me take these last few off the rack.”

Wendy stood a moment more, hands on his hips before he plucked what he needed from his waistcoat.

“Did you get plans drawn up?” Wendy asked.

Ikey nodded. “I did.”

“What’s the plan, then?”

“We’ll pipe the boiler’s exhaust up here. Into a series of pipes under the converter tanks.”

“Can I see them? The plans.”

Ikey straightened up and looked at Wendy in his festooned waistcoat.

“Let’s wait until Admiral Daughton approves them.”

“I might be able to offer feedback. Give you a couple ideas before Admiral Daughton arrives.”

“Later. Let’s get these tanks off first. They need scrubbed.”

Wendy regarded Ikey, then returned to work.

“You’re going to need my help,” Wendy said.

“You can start by removing the other tank.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Wendy said. “You don’t know this crew. I do. I can handle them. I can keep them in line.”

Ikey moved on to the next bolt. “Cross never said anything about having any problems.”

Wendy snorted. “That’s because he never had any problems. He was always at the pub. He left me in charge. I’m the one who had to get things done. I had to deal with the crew. I know how to keep them in line. You need me.”

It hadn’t occurred to Ikey to find a replacement for Wendy until that moment. If he truly was in charge, then he had such freedom. He could put Wendy out.

“You married?” Ikey asked.

“You asking?” Wendy replied.

“Just curious.”

Wendy slipped his spanner back into a pocket of his waistcoat and unthreaded the nut with his fingers. “What do you care? Worried that I have a family to support?”

Ikey didn’t reply.

Wendy slung an arm over the top of the tank and glared at Ikey. “I haven’t got a wife or children of my own. My dad died in a boating accident. My mom died of cholera. I have a brother and a couple sisters, but they have families of their own. I can take care of myself. Your pity isn’t needed. But you need me. Without me, this crew will fall apart.”

Ikey stood and lifted a tank from the rack. He sat it next to the others. A smile crossed his face and he broke into a chuckle.

“What’s so funny?” Wendy asked.

“This,” Ikey said and waved at the space between them. “All of this.” He twirled his hand to indicate everything around them. “It’s rubbish. I mean, think about it. Are you in the military? I’m not. I don’t think Cross is. I haven’t seen a single uniform on anyone since I got here, including Admiral Daughton. Yet Admiral Daughton is hiring the lot of us to put together a prototype ship for the Royal Navy? Why not have proper jacks in charge of it?”

Wendy looked up from his work and shrugged. “This isn’t strictly a military thing. We work for the admiral. A
retired
admiral. Besides, the jacks are all off at war, obviously. Can’t blow Germans out of the water and build ships at the same time, can they?”

It was a good point. Ikey nodded.

Wendy shrugged again. “We don’t call it the Great War for nothing, I suppose.”

Ikey shook his head. “Something is wrong here.”

Wendy furrowed his brow and turned the corners of his lips down in an expression that would be a mockery of concern if he wasn’t trying so hard to look genuine. “Then maybe you should consider refusing the position?”

Ikey snorted. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Wendy’s face snapped into a convincing expression of indignation. “In all fairness, this position should have been mine. I’ve been Cross’s right-hand man from the beginning. I know this ship as well as he does, and certainly twenty times better than you. And you don’t know bloody square one about electricity, which is the goddamn heart of this thing.” Wendy slammed his fist into his palm. “So hell
yes
I think I should be the chief engineer and not some buggering chicken farmer picked up off the side of the road a few days ago.”

Ikey took a step back and held his hands out in a placating manner. “I’m not disagreeing with you.”

“Then step aside. Let me have the position.”

Ikey’s fingertips flitted across his thumbs. “This doesn’t make sense. Both Cross and Admiral Daughton put me in charge even though they both know I have no experience at all. Both of them pass over you, the one who is the next obvious choice. Do they not like you?”

Wendy looked away and shook his head. “Look,” he said, chopping the air before him the side of his palm, “it’s this bloody simple. Do you want the position or not?”

Ikey shook his head. “It’s not that simple. Admiral Daughton threatened to send me to the front lines if I didn’t go along with what he wanted. The deal was that if I spent the summer working for him, then I would be forgiven my call-up.”

The expression drained from Wendy’s face. “Me too. I was told that I’d get my call-up, and I could either do this, or fight in the trenches. And I’m not afraid of the trenches, but if I could help build a weapon to trounce the Germans…”

Cross had expected Ikey to fail when placed in charge, and in return, he’d receive a dose of humility and Cross would have gotten a hearty laugh. What did Admiral Daughton have to gain by placing him in charge? If he expected to rattle Cross, to send him crawling to the admiral, groveling on his knees, he would be sorely disappointed.

If it was all about Cross, however, then why place Ikey in charge? Why not Wendy? Ikey may have lifted the ship, but only after taking a foolhardy risk.

Admiral Daughton had planned on him replacing Cross from the beginning. From the moment he saw Ikey fix Smith’s arm.

Ikey twiddled his fingers over his thumbs as he recalled the exchange in crew quarters. Cross had something on Admiral Daughton. A secret. Why would Cross not use that same leverage to keep his job?

He was walking away by choice. That was why he wouldn’t take Ikey’s offer. Cross wanted off the crew. But why not quit?

“Speaking of which,” Wendy said, “you want to take care of these now?”

Ikey snapped to. “Speaking of what?”

Wendy rolled his eyes. “Trouncing Germans. We got a ship to finish, a war to win. You want these tanks taken out to Rob’s cart now, chief?”

“Yeah,” Ikey said with a nod. “Do that.” He grabbed one of the tanks and lifted.

Rose didn’t seem concerned that Cross had lost his job. Almost as if she knew it was coming. What did she know?

Ikey trundled across the room and out into the hall. Sweat appeared on his palms and made the tank more difficult to grasp as he tromped down the stairs and on to the loading doors.

A weapon. Ikey shook his head. He was in charge of a weapon. For the Ministry of Defense. The whole idea of it was dodgy as could be. Did the ministry have a clue? Surely not. But why would they care who was in charge if it wasn’t a military operation?

Admiral Daughton had threatened him with the front lines if he didn’t agree to work for him. Then he tried to fire Ikey, but Cross wouldn’t let him. Now the admiral had handed him Cross’s position and Cross couldn’t care less.

Something was going on, and Ikey was being set up again. And Cross and Admiral Daughton both had to be involved.

Ikey glanced over his shoulder. Wendy followed, a tank hugged to his chest.

Ikey thought of hogs and the day he and his dad led them to slaughter. His dad held the axe, and Ikey led the hog along on a rope, feeling worse for the fact that the hog had no idea of what was coming. If it had known, and it had fought and struggled as he led it to a small pile of scraps, Ikey would have felt like the hog’s death had been earned. Instead, it felt like a deception. He tricked it.

It might be time to be stubborn. Push back and see what happened. Disrupt one of the gears and see where the system broke down, how it would try and compensate, where the motion would go.

Admiral Daughton expected working engine plans. If Ikey gave him rubbish instead, what would the admiral do? Would he put Cross back? Would he give the position to Wendy? If Admiral Daughton busted him back down to his previous position, then he could at least finish it out. The ship had lifted. A few weeks later, he could collect his money and his service exemption, then head back to the farm. Go back to the way things were before Admiral Daughton and Smith stopped by.

And if Admiral Daughton tried to fire him again? A brief grin flickered over his face. There was more going on than what he saw. Entire parts of the machine remained obscured from his vision. If he could see the whole thing, then he’d have insurance against the admiral. He’d be able to force the admiral to stick to his original deal.

As each set their tanks in the back of Rob’s cart, Ikey announced that he needed paper and a pencil.

“Writing a resignation letter?” Wendy asked.

“Surely there’s paper and pencil around here somewhere?”

Wendy dusted his palms together. “Lift out the top tray of the toolbox in the engine room. It’s where Cross kept his notes.”

When they returned to the engine room, Ikey did as suggested and found numerous sheets of paper underneath, along with several stubs of pencil. All but a few sheets were covered in cryptic drawings and designs for a variety of the ship’s components.

Ikey gathered up the few relatively blank pages, a stub of pencil, and left the room with a mumbled, “Carry on,” tossed in Wendy’s direction.

Out in the hangar, Ikey sat at a table and arranged the blank pages before himself. Beside them, he spread out the sheets of hotel stationery. After a moment of study and thought, he drew a new set of plans for a new engine that could not possibly exist in reality. It looked plausible on paper, the object of a lot of thought and attention. But anyone who knew anything about mechanics could see that it would never work.

Once finished, he returned the stationery to one pocket, and then folded up his new plans and slipped them into another pocket.

Ikey’s stomach grumbled and his mind raced. He needed more of the complete picture. And considering Rose’s lack of concern over the situation, she appeared to know more than she let on. Ikey would start with her.

Ikey glanced at the windows overhead. Clouds blotted out the sky and offered no real clue as to the time of day. How much longer would it be before Admiral Daughton arrived to discuss his salary? To hell with it. Ikey popped back in the engine room and told Wendy he was taking an early lunch. As Wendy commented on Ikey’s work ethic, he slammed the door and hurried on to Cross’s house.