Skybreaker (21 page)

“I’m wondering if that’s all they ate,” I said, glancing at the corpses underfoot. “Some of these look like they’ve been gnawed at.”

“Possibly,” said Kate. “Cannibalism is amazingly common. Even humans have been known to have a bash at it.”

We stopped and stared up at the floating cluster of eggs.

The ends of our poles were curved, like a hoe. Kate raised hers high and tried to catch one of the eggs, but she couldn’t quite reach. She persisted.

“I’ll have a try,” I said.

“I’m not tall enough,” she grumbled.

I managed to claw one of the eggs down through the air. The shell glinted with frost. Inside was a baby aerozoan, frozen forever in sleep. With her gloved hands, Kate gently guided the egg into her specimen jar and screwed on the lid.

“There you are,” she whispered. She stared at the egg, enraptured. I would have liked to receive such a look.

There was a sharp knock on the glass, and I looked up to see Hal, gesturing for us to hurry up. I was eager to leave. The sound of my boots treading on all these frozen aerozoan corpses made my skin crawl. We closed the door of the vivarium firmly behind us.

Hal checked his timepiece. “We’ll be heading back to the
Saga
in an hour. Dorje, can you assist Kate with hauling her taxidermy up onto the ship’s back? Nadira, you’ll lend a hand with that. Cruse, you’re coming with me.” He was already walking towards the exit.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To pay a visit to old man Grunel.”

W
E HEADED FORWARD
along the keel catwalk to the passenger quarters, climbed the stairs, and stopped at an ornate oak door.

“I’m thinking,” said Hal, “that maybe Grunel kept his goodies a bit closer at hand.”

The doorknob would not turn. Hal put his pistol against the keyhole and fired. The door opened. It was terribly dark. Our two torch beams united to form one giant spotlight. We stepped inside and it was like entering the lobby of a grand house, except that it had no sweeping staircase. But everything else spoke of painstaking craftsmanship, luxury, and, above all, the money to buy it. Persian carpets glittered on the hardwood floor, oil paintings in gilt frames hung from the high corniced walls. Grand archways led to lounges on both port and starboard sides of the ship, and I could see the faint glimmer of light filtered through frosted windows and drawn curtains. Our torches picked out elegant wing-back armchairs and a pianola. I remembered Kate saying the
Hyperion
had been custom built for Grunel, and since he was the only passenger, these elegant apartments must have been for his use alone.

Hal led us down one corridor, with several doors opening off it. One led to a serving pantry, with a dumbwaiter that carried Grunel’s meals up from the kitchen directly below.
Through another door was an enormous linen cupboard and laundry room. A third room, much smaller than the linen cupboard, was obviously the bedroom of Grunel’s manservant. The bed was neatly made, and there was no sign of the fellow. I wondered glumly where he’d turn up. Perhaps we could look forward to his lurching frozen from a closet.

We retraced our steps to the lobby and set off down the second corridor. A single closed door stood at the end, with a lion’s-head knocker so imposing I felt as though I should consult it before entering.

“Getting tired?” Hal asked me.

“No, I feel fine.”

“You sure?” He shone the light in my face to examine me, and I turned away, squinting.

“Yes, I’m sure.” I was not lying.

“Take some oxygen if you need it.”

“I don’t, thanks.”

Hal pushed the door wide and entered Theodore Grunel’s bedroom. My torch beam skittered over the silk-covered walls, the chairs and settees upholstered in leather and velvet. I saw a grand four-poster bed, the sheets thrown back. The sight of that empty bed did give me a shiver. It meant Grunel was elsewhere. But where? One side of the room was given over to huge bookshelves, their frozen leather spines sparkling. Along the starboard wall, the curtains were drawn. Then my torch beam glanced off a hand. I stopped and prodded the darkness with my beam.

Dressed in red silk pyjamas, and wrapped in a burgundy dressing gown, Theodore Grunel reclined on his chaise longue. His feet were slippered. His chin rested against his chest. His eyes were open, though one eyelid drooped. He appeared to be looking over the room rather disapprovingly. He was not a tall man, but stocky and powerfully built. He had a great block of a head, with long, flared sideburns and a high forehead. His nose was broad and squashed-looking. Unlike the lookout in the crow’s nest, his skin had not been discoloured by the sun. Instead it was sallow and waxy, stubbled with frost, and only slightly shrunken. He looked pugnacious, even in death. I felt he might get up and shake a fist at us.

“There he is, the old toad,” Hal muttered.

He walked across to the curtains and pulled them wide, allowing pale sunlight to flood the room. It was spacious, with an adjoining dressing room. Through the open doorway I could see it was lined with closets and drawers and shelves for top hats, of which he seemed to have many.

“Let’s get to work,” said Hal. “Look behind and under things. I’m after a safe or a vault.”

He started on the book shelf, sweeping row after row of leather-bound volumes to the floor. It shocked me to see books treated so, but I dared not say anything, for I could see in Hal’s high good cheer a fierce impatience and simmering anger.

I started on a cabinet on the other side of the room, delicately pulling out drawers, trying to disturb as little as possible,
probing at the back for hidden compartments. Finding nothing, I began putting the drawers back. All the time I felt Grunel’s half-closed eye staring at me.

“This isn’t maid service,” Hal said, coming over. “Even Howard Carter had to break some walls to get at Tut’s tomb! And we don’t have all the time in the world. Get behind the other side. Now, push!”

Together we heaved over the entire cabinet. It crashed to the floor. There was no vault hidden behind it.

“It feels like thieving,” I couldn’t help saying.

“You should have left your fine conscience behind in Paris,” he said. “But let me tell you something. This ship doesn’t even exist. It was declared lost at sea forty years ago, after it went missing. Know what that means? Grunel’s family was paid off handsomely by the insurers, and at that moment they surrendered all further claim to the ship. The
Hyperion
belongs to no one but us. Take it, Cruse. Anything here is ours. It can’t do anything for the dead. But it might do a lot for the living.”

He had pull, I could not deny. He was like a bright shining sun and I was a little planet, whirling around and around him, half wanting to break away and be free, half liking the ride. From across the room, Grunel stared at me balefully.

“Frozen Oldie over there’s not helping,” I said.

Hal gave a laugh. He ripped a sheet off the bed and made to throw it over the rigid body.

“What’s this?” he said, squinting at Grunel’s right hand.

Between the dead man’s clenched fingers I saw the dull flash of gold.

Hal tried to open Grunel’s fist, but the fingers were like tongs of steel. There was something indecent about it, seeing him struggle with the dead man.

“Leave it, Hal,” I said.

From his rucksack he took his pry bar and brought it down sharply on Grunel’s fist. I winced as ice and frozen bone shattered. Grunel was left with a jagged stub. A gold pocket watch fell into his lap. Hal snatched it up and gave it a cursory look. He pried it open.

Inside the cover was a photograph, spider-webbed with wrinkles, of a young woman.

“Looks like old Grunel had a sweetheart,” said Hal with a coarse laugh. “I was hoping for something a bit more helpful, but this is a nice enough bauble.” He dug out the photograph with his fingers and let it fall to the frosted carpet.

I picked up the photograph and slid it into my rucksack. It didn’t seem right to leave it lying around on the floor. I didn’t like to look at Grunel’s shattered hand. Hal picked up the bedsheet and threw it over him.

“Better?” he said.

I nodded.

“Our first spoils, Cruse. There’s more to come. Let’s get to work.”

Side by side Hal and I searched the stateroom. Plumes of steam rose from our mouths. I went through more chests of drawers and cabinets, pulled back carpets, yanked paintings from the walls. Hal’s words had stirred me, and for the first time I felt the excitement of being on an abandoned ship,
knowing that somewhere on it was enough gold to make me rich. My mother would have her house, and I might buy my own apartment on a nice Paris street. And an airship, one that was just a little bigger than Hal’s. I would no longer be a boy, but a man.

A faint whisper reached my ears, and I stopped working. Hal and I looked at each other. It grew louder. It became the sound of someone hissing, finger pointed, spittle flying from his mouth. My neck hair lifted in terror. Hal fumbled for his pistol, and I whirled about, seeking out this banshee, wishing my torch beam were a blade. The hissing grew louder until I found myself shouting as if to keep it at bay. Abruptly it stopped with a loud thud.

The sound came from within the wall, and our torch beams jostled frantically as we sought out the place.

“There!” I said.

Protruding from the plaster was a pair of copper pneumatic message tubes that I’d not noticed before. The ends of both were sealed with ornamented hinged hatches. From one of them a little green flag had sprung up, and was still vibrating slightly.

“Good Lord,” said Hal, “it’s just a message capsule.”

Most airships, especially passenger liners, had a complicated network of pneumatic tubes for shuttling messages. I was so relieved there was no shrieking ghoul afoot that it was several seconds before the dreadful question occurred to me.

Who exactly had sent us a message?

My heart suddenly was pounding so hard I could barely breathe. I wanted some tanked oxygen, but wouldn’t take any unless Hal did.

“Must’ve been one of the others,” Hal said.

“Right,” I agreed. “Amazing it still works.”

“There’s probably an air turbine outside powering it,” Hal said. “As long as the ship moves, it works.”

We nodded appreciatively at this feat of engineering.

“I suppose we should read it,” I said.

Neither of us, I noticed, seemed to be in any hurry. I took a deep breath and unclasped the hatch. A streamlined rubber capsule slid out of the tube into my hand. I unscrewed the top.

“Empty,” I said.

“It’s all bunged up, I reckon,” Hal commented. “The pneumatics and so forth.”

I nodded. “Probably shooting things around all over the ship.”

“Back to work.”

I wondered if Hal was as unshaken as he seemed, but if he could work, so could I. It wasn’t five minutes before I heard his whoop of glee from the dressing room. Inside one of the closets, behind a false wall, he’d discovered a safe. It was the size of a pot-bellied stove, a solid cube of metal, resting on four squat legs. The door looked to be a good inch thick.

“Suddenly I feel quite fond of old Grunel,” said Hal with a grin.

“Can you open it?”

“Didn’t know I was a lock picker, did you?” Hal gave me a wink.

“You’re a man of many talents,” I replied.

“It’s all a question of having the right tools,” said Hal, and from his pack he took not a clever set of picks but a big brick of some kind of grey putty and a fat nest of wire.

“Oh, sure,” he said, pinching off a bit of the putty, “you can mess about with files and picks, but in the end, the important thing is to get at what you want.”

He rolled a bit of the putty into a cigarette shape, jabbed two wires into it, then shoved the whole lot into the safe’s lock.

“Let’s move off a ways.” Hal fed out the wires as we retreated from the dressing room. We crouched behind the ottoman sofa in the bedroom. From his rucksack he produced a small box with a plunger and attached the ends of the wires to the terminals.

“You won’t blow up the ship?” I asked.

“No, it’s quite precise. Go ahead,” he said, gesturing to the handle. “Give it a push.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely. It’s quite a thrill.”

His enthusiasm was contagious, and I grasped the plunger and pushed down hard. There was a flash of light and a surprisingly muffled bang. A wave of chemical vapours washed through the room.

“Good, wasn’t it?” said Hal.

“I can’t lie,” I replied with a smile.

Then we were up and hurrying into the dressing room.

The door of the safe was still perfectly intact; the only difference was that it was now slightly ajar, as if it had just been opened by the owner.

“Almost too easy, ain’t it?” said Hal. “Let’s get the goodies, shall we?”

I noticed when it was just the two of us alone, most of his gentlemanly speech and niceties disappeared and he became what he really was: a street-smart entrepreneur, a self-made man. I liked him better this way than when he was sweettalking Kate, Miss Simpkins, and Nadira, or holding forth in the lounge like an elder statesman.

Hal threw wide the door of the safe.

Nestled inside was another metal door.

“He’s a cautious man, our Mr. Grunel,” I said.

“Hats off to him,” said Hal, already preparing more explosive putty. “You can never be too cautious. You and I, Cruse, are about to be very rich, very soon.”

“What’ll you do with your share?” I asked, giddy with excitement.

“Well, I reckon a man in my position should take a wife.”

“Is that right?” I said, my smile fading.

Hal inserted the putty in the lock. “I rather fancy an intelligent, spirited young woman who enjoys travel and adventure.”

“Mmm,” I said.

“Rich is also no bad thing.”

I looked at him in surprise. “I thought you were rich enough already.”

He faltered a mere second. “Well, more never goes amiss, does it? And what about you?” He was backing away from the vault now, feeding out wire. “Your thoughts ever turn to marriage?”

“I’m only sixteen years old.”

“At your age, would’ve been the last thing on my mind too. The young don’t need that kind of responsibility.”

“Well, I was actually thinking of proposing,” I lied.

“That right?” Hal said, hooking the wires to the plunger.

“Why not? An engagement can go on for years.”

“True, but usually before you propose to a lady, it’s customary to have some wealth or form of livelihood.”

“Just hurry up and push that plunger,” I said. “I’m going to be very rich, very soon.”

Hal grinned. “But not as rich as me.”

He pushed the plunger, and the explosion blew the second door right off.

I walked over to the safe with Hal. I did not feel very buoyant anymore.

“Icy old fart,” Hal muttered, for there, behind the second door, was a third.

“Harder to crack than you thought,” I said.

After the third door was blasted off there was a fourth. By this time, Hal had stopped speaking altogether, except to
have a little cursing spree when his cold fingers had trouble squeezing his brimstone putty into the ever tinier locks.

“There’s not going to be much room left for anything,” I remarked, after we blew the fifth door off and saw there was a sixth.

“There’s barely room in there for a pair of slippers,” Hal said darkly.

“A child’s slippers,” I added.

“I’ll have it open,” said Hal doggedly. He blew the door open.

“What’s inside?” I asked, my eyes smarting from the fumes.