Steemjammer: Through the Verltgaat (28 page)

“If it kills me,” he thought, “that would be good. Then I couldn’t help them. Is that deeper truth?”

No answer came back. He thought about giving his tormentor partial answers, as long as they were technically true. He could say he was a Müller. That was his original name, but would it work?

If he told a lie for a good reason, he thought, wouldn’t that make the lie a good thing? Couldn’t lies become truth?

His feet almost slipped out from under him. It wasn’t real, he knew, because he wasn’t standing, but he had a vision of trying to walk on a sheet of slick ice in winter. It tilted downhill, and the more he tried to balance himself, the more he sensed his feet slipping and sliding. Soon he was flat on his back, sliding down steep ice towards a cliff edge.

“I can’t lie,” he thought, and the image vanished. “I just can’t.”

Don’t lie to yourself
.

A sense of clarity came to him. He had no idea if it was deeper truth or if it made any sense at all, but at last he felt he could see the situation as it really was. He’d been forced into a choice between two evils. Nothing would make it otherwise.

He thought of his family and knew what he had to do. He had to knowingly tell a direct falsehood, even though it was wrong, whatever the consequences.

If it made him lose his goot steem or killed him, he thought, then he couldn’t be used by his enemies, and many people would be saved.

“I know who you are,” his tormentor’s voice startled him.

This time, instead of seeing a skull with parched skin, he knew and imagined the exact identity of the man: Clyve Harrow.

“Do you?” Will thought but didn’t say, feeling his heart race with fear.

“You’re the son of Hendrelmus,” Clyve’s hideous, disembodied face accused with scorn. “Aren’t you?”

The sensation of pressure came down but, to Will’s surprise, suddenly evaporated. He saw through the trap. It was all just Rasmussen trickery, hallucinations.

Still, he couldn’t answer.

“You are Will Steemjammer,” the twisted face charged. “Admit it!”

Will found the fear of denying his name was even greater than the jaws. Somehow he had to force himself to do it, but the harder he tried, the more his voice clamped shut. At last he gave up. To his surprise, in relaxing he felt his voice free itself.

“No.”

The word came out of him like some foreign presence that had a physical identity. He waited for death to take him, but instead felt a great stillness.

“It’s over,” he thought. “I did it.”

A curtain seemed to lift inside him, and even if he was losing his goot steem, he finally felt there was a chance, however slim, that he might escape this horror. He might have to keep lying, but now he knew he could. He just had to keep off the slippery ice and somehow trust that the right words would come out of him.

Chapter
27

obvious signs

Taken aback by the boy’s denial, Clyve glanced at his assistant. Listening to the stethoscope, she signaled with her fingers “one,” “two,” and “zero,” which meant 120 beats per minute. Elevated but not showing severe stress, he thought. Was it true, then?

“No,” he accused, bending over Will and putting a nasty edge to his voice. “You’re Will Steemjammer.”

“Will Stevens,” the boy answered calmly, his unseeing eyes staring into space. “That was a dumb joke.”

Clyve recoiled in shock. Hadn’t Bram told him that maybe the kid had just been joking?

“You had a drawing in your pocket,” he charged, “proving you’ve seen a verltgaat machine!”

“Just a broken panel,” Will murmured, “I saw in the Museum.”

Clyve repressed the urge to hit something. How could he have been so stupid to get his hopes up? Why hadn’t he noticed the obvious signs: the clothes, the shoes, and the lack of an onion bulb nose?

“Loygenaar,” Clyve hissed.
Liar
.

Taken aback, he realized the young man hadn’t understood him.

“You don’t speak Dutch?” Clyve asked.

“Not very well,” Will said.

With growing frustration, Clyve wondered how a Steemjammer could possibly not be fluent in Dutch.

“You’re really Will Stevens?” he asked.

“Yes,” the boy said.

“Your mother and father abandoned you, so you became a thief? You volunteered so you could sneak around the Steem Museum and find valuables to take?”

“Yes.”

The boy answered with such firmness that Clyve believed him. Glancing at Dahlia, she signaled “seven” and “five” with her fingers. That meant a completely normal pulse of 75 beats per minute. He was too calm to be deceitful, Clyve knew, and further, it was impossible for the boy to lie with a near double-dose of Glass Dragon in his bloodstream.

“Where is this hidden room you found?” he growled.

“Underground,” the boy replied weakly, eyes seeming to stare blanking into space.

“But
where
?”

There was a pause while the boy seemed to put up a last show of resistance, which quickly broke.

“Hidden stairs,” he sighed.

Clyve’s eyes opened wide with surprise. That had to be the thing that the young man was hiding. Hadn’t Bram told him he thought the Steemjammers had secret stashes of valuables in the Museum?

“Did you see a broken Shadovecht?” he pressed. “You stumbled against it and got cut?”

“Yes,” Will mumbled weakly.

“Where? How do we find it?”

The boy’s eyes lost focus. Concerned, Clyve turned to his assistant, who signaled that the pulse was 65 beats per minute and dropping.

“Dark.” Eyes dilating, Will’s voice dropped to a faint whisper. “Lost. Not sure ….”

Will’s whole body went slack.

Snatching the stethoscope, Clyve pressed it to his chest and anxiously counted heartbeats.

“He’s gone,” he sighed. “This often happens. It wears them out.”

“He died?” Dahlia said with alarm.

“No, the pulse is 50 and stable. He’s simply passed out.”

“Thank the Provider,” she said, not using the word “Maker,” as Protectorate members had been instructed.

Clyve turned his attention to the sleeping boy, whom he now believed was Will Stevens. His hope of becoming a hero of the Protectorate was still alive. He would find this Steemjammer cache, and if it helped advance the family’s goals, he’d be greatly rewarded.

Dahlia had heard too much. He considered killing her on the spot. It would be safer that way and too easy to achieve. He’d tell her to get a certain unmarked bottle and syringe. She’d assume it was for the boy and would only feel a moment of shock as he stabbed the cold needle into her soft, white neck.

No, he decided, he’d need her for the next session, and then he could tie up loose ends. He’d keep her busy and isolated to prevent her from telling anyone.

“We’ll try again,” he said, “in the morning.”

“I’m not an expert like you,” she spoke tactfully, “so forgive me if I’m wrong. But if we don’t wait longer for a second session of Glass Dragon, won’t it kill him?”

A look of pitiless scorn spread across Clyve’s skeletal face. “So?”

Chapter
28

De pekoerde

“I’m not sleepy, Tante Klazee,” Angelica said late that Sunday night.

In truth her body was exhausted, but her mind would not shut off. Her brother had been gone two days now with no word or sign if Tante Stefana had been right, that somehow he might be able to elude detection. The stress was horrible. Her imagination was often drawn to the Rasmussen fort on Texel Island, thinking of ways to break in.

If only she were magic, she thought. If only she could reach out with her mind and crush the walls. What if she could shout with a giant, terrifying voice and make the Rasmussens all run away?

She could find her brother and get him out of there. But she wasn’t magic, she knew. It was very late, and poor Tante Klazee, tired and rubbing her eyes, was not going to bed herself until Angelica was asleep. She’d told her that.

“Tell me about your mother,” Klazee said gently.

“Do you know her?” Angelica asked.

“Yes. I met Muriel before she and your father married. I remember thinking how flink she was, very smart and clever, and so pretty. Like you. I thought how she’d make a good wife for one of our young men.”

The little girl smiled. “She would teach me how to spin our wool into yarn, how to sew, and how to do basic math, like finding integrals and solving differential equations.”

In the middle of a sip of chamomile tea, Klazee almost gagged from surprise. “
Basic
? You’re talking about advanced calculus, leef!”

“I know,” Angelica said agreeably. “I couldn’t really get it until I turned six, when Mom got me to see patterns in the numbers and how they repeat. Well, learning to solve an equation when the variables are other equations, that was a little tricky.”

“A little tricky? Kint, I still struggle with such things!”

“Incalculus is actually hard. It might seem easy because nothing can be equal, but it’s the way they aren’t equal that’s important. Dad was just starting to explain.”

Klazee set down her cup. “I’ll see if I can find a tutor, then. One we can vertroowen.”
Trust
. “Talk about sewing, kint, so I don’t get a headache. I bet you’re as good as your moyder.”

The little girl smiled. “Not even! We made plaid cloth with the steam powered loom. She said the pattern was her family’s special sign, so others would recognize them by sight. There’s a big room upstairs where she made all our clothes, but I only hemmed or just watched.”

Klazee smiled. “I still have a scarf and some mittens she made for my birthday, years ago. They’re very warm.”

“Will doesn’t like making clothes. He helped making shoes, though. Why doesn’t he like making clothes?”

“Not everyone’s good at it.”

“But he’s good at everything – well, except shoes. The ones he makes fit but are very ugly.”

They shared a laugh. Angelica told how Will had tried to make his trousers longer. Instead, they’d ended up becoming shorts. With her father’s help, she created a new pair of long pants for him.

“Maybe he isn’t good at clothes,” she admitted. “Is it because he’s a boy?”

“Some boys make wonderful tailors,” Klazee said. “Sometimes people have to do what they’re good at and let others do the same. If everyone was bad at making clothing and blankets, we’d be naked and shivering.”

Angelica smiled, but a bothersome issue came to mind.

“My friend, Brie, said there was something wrong with our clothes, and my mom - because she didn’t have a job. She told me her mom worked in an office, and that was how people had to do it.”

“Your mother has a job, kint,” Klazee said. “She runs the household and keeps you clothed and fed, and what about her studies and experiments? I remember how determined she was to solve some of the great problems, like what really holds up the sky? What causes the wind? And how did Beverkenverlt even get made?”

Angelica experienced a moment of confusion, because if her mother really did all that, she’d kept it hidden.

“If we’d been here instead of Ohio,” she asked, “would my mom have had a job like Tante Stefana’s? At the Steem Museum?”

“Perhaps. Or a college. I used to work, in another city, and I had children. We were happy.”

“Brie says we’re poor. She says it’s because my dad never had a ‘real job’ and my mom stayed at home.”

“Were you poor?”

“No. But why did she say that?”

Klazee sat back, deep in thought. She realized that her little grand-niece had been deeply bothered by this for some time.

“I don’t know this Brie person,” she said, “but it seems to me that she was more interested in telling you how she thought things should be, rather than learning what made you and your family happy.”

Angelica thought this over and nodded.

“Is she bad?” she asked.

Klazee laughed. “Hemel noyn!”
Heavens, no!
“She’s a typical little girl. She ran into someone who’s different, and she decided to try holding herself over you.”

“But why?”

“Surely you’ve seen chickens fighting over de pekoerde.”

“Huh?”

“The ‘pecking order.’ They ruffle their feathers and make a terrible noise, pecking at each other until one backs down. Then, another squabble starts, and another. That’s how they find which is the number one bird, and number two, and so on.”

“But we’re not birds. Do you mean Brie’s no smarter than a chicken?”

Klazee guffawed.

“No, leef,” the old lady said, still chuckling, “though it may seem so.”

“What if it hurts my feelings?” Angelica said.

“Some don’t care.”

“Like Rasmussens?”

Klazee nodded. “But in this girl’s case, I bet she’s just insecure. Let’s hope she learns better soon. Here, take a look at this.”

She walked Angelica into her sewing room and showed her a stitching machine powered by a belt drive that came down from a hole in the ceiling, along with an automatic spinner and loom. Stacks of cloth lay everywhere, and a shelf held dozens of books with clothing patterns. Klazee also had a favorite chair by a window, where she liked to sew by hand.

“Ever make a quilt?” she asked. “A lot of little squares sewn into a big, comfy blanket?”

“Mom was going to show me,” Angelica said, fighting back sadness because she’d said that the day she’d vanished.

“Let’s get started. See all these squares I’ve saved? How should we make it? What pattern? What colors?”

She began laying out squares of cloth from a box onto a table, so Angelica could study them and move them around. The little girl’s eyes lit up as wild colors and strange patterns were arranged before her, each brighter and more dazzling than the one before.

“The red and blue?” Klazee asked. “What about these oranges? Oh, I love this bright purple, but it’s so difficult to match.”

Interested, Angelica began lining up squares, and in a few minutes she had a nicely balanced pattern laid out, dominated by blue, her favorite color. Klazee told her it looked lovely and handed her a needle to thread while she demonstrated how to stuff the sections with soft, puffy feathers called goose down.

It didn’t take long for Angelica’s head to start nodding. After doing her first little square, she could barely keep her eyes open. Klazee took her by the hand and led her down the hall to the bedroom she was using.

Giselle slept in the bed by the window. Angelica petted Velocitus, the baby tortoise her cousin had accidentally brought here in her pocket, which now lived in a dirt-bottomed glass bowl on a shelf. She got into her bed, under a beautiful green and silver quilt Klazee had made many years earlier, and in moments fell fast asleep.

“Moyna zweenking wel,” Klazee said to herself softly.
My turn now
.

But she feared, as tired as she was, it would be some time before she’d get to sleep. She knew what the Rasmussens had done to people, especially recently, when they hadn’t had to fear Steemjammer scrutiny. Why, she wondered, had Gerardus ever allowed that horrible, venomous family to come here?

“De molen gaat neet om met wind dee voorbe is,” she spoke softly, an Old Earth quote she’d learned as a little girl:
The windmill doesn’t worry about the breeze that’s gone by.

What was done is done. She put on a nightgown, blew out her lamp, and climbed into her puffy, four-poster bed.

“Somehow let Wilhelmus be all right,” she prayed. “Please, let him come back to us unharmed.”

***

Late that night in the high tower on Texel Island, keys crunched, and a polished wooden door swung open. Clyve Harrow stepped inside his well-furnished office but froze as he heard the soft crack of a lighting match.

“Who’s there?” he challenged.

An oil lamp was lit on his desk, and the first thing his eyes caught was a thick, bone-white forelock: Bram, sitting in
his
chair. Before he could react he heard a thump. The boy’s muscular bodyguard shut the door behind him and blocked it.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Clyve growled.

“My exact question for you, Cousin Clyve,” Bram said nastily. “What do you mean interrogating my captive without me?”

“How dare you break into my office!” He glared at the bodyguard. “What’s he doing here?”

Bram took his time before answering. “Lockwood has many talents.” The big man smiled, and the young Rasmussen decided not to add that he was good at opening things. Let Clyve wonder how they’d broken in. “My father trusts him completely. Shouldn’t you?”

Unsettled, Clyve took a few nervous steps away from the hulking man.

“It’s very late,” he chided. “Your father would want you in bed.”

“Don’t think you can take that tone with me,” Bram countered. “I know you discovered that he isn’t Will Steemjammer. Why didn’t you tell me immediately?”

Clyve’s eyes lit up with alarm, but he maintained self-control. “You’re just guessing.”

Bram beamed triumphantly. “Really? Glass Dragon always works. If it was Hendrelmus’ son, you’d have rushed to ask me how to present the ‘wonderful news’ to my father. Your real motivation would have been to steal as much credit as possible for yourself.”

It unnerved Clyve that the boy could read him so well. A nasty chuckle came from Lockwood, who hovered at his back. Did they plan on murdering him?

“I only mean to serve,” he stammered, “your father and the good of the family.”

“Whatever,” Bram said dismissively. “So, he’s some random sleeb, Will Stevens. You killed him?”

Clyve stiffened slightly but otherwise remained in control. “Yes. His brain is put with the next shipment, to be conditioned and placed in a Shadovecht.”

“Liar. I spoke with the medical staff, and no one’s been told to harvest a brain tonight.”

“Let’s see you jaw your way out of that,” Lockwood said menacingly.

“I’m in charge of this facility-” Clyve started.

“I found him,” Bram interrupted, “and I ordered my man to bring him in at great personal risk. I’m the one who knew it was poison, and I pushed you into saving him for interrogation when you wanted to let him die.”

Clyve stammered, unable to reply.

“Well?” Bram pressed. “Do you deny it?”

“No,” Clyve surrendered. “You’re quite right, Master Bram. You saw the situation correctly. All credit goes to you, of course.”

“From now on, I make decisions on this matter.”

The young man glared with an unyielding intensity, as if to dare Clyve to challenge him. He didn’t.

“Tell me everything,” Bram continued. “I’m questioning your assistant next, so you’d better be completely truthful. Disappoint me again, Clyve, and a letter goes to my father accusing you of treason.”