Steemjammer: Through the Verltgaat (30 page)

“There you are!” a haughty voice accused as he entered the corridor. “Trying to run away?”

***

“Any luck?” a familiar voice asked.

Angelica saw her new friend, Rachel Spinoza, coming around a corner. It was Tuesday morning, and not only was there no news about Will, they’d been ordered by Donell to search the Steem Museum. She knew it was a ruse, to keep the Rasmussens guessing, but she didn’t like it.

“No,” she admitted. “He isn’t here.”

“I can see that,” Rachel said.

“I didn’t mean this area. He’s not in the Museum.”

“How can you know? My brother got lost here.”

Angelica wanted to say how she knew, but Tante Stefana had specifically told her not to. It irked her, because Cobee’d said they could trust the Spinozas, so why not actually trust them? Still, it was as hard for her to disobey an order as it was to lie. Why hadn’t Will obeyed, she thought, and not gotten out of the steemwagon?

“Never mind,” Rachel said sympathetically, sensing her unrest. “Let’s stick together. No sense in us getting lost, too.”

“I’ve often wondered if that can happen, if a person’s not alone. We’d know where each other is, and doesn’t being lost mean that no one knows where you are?”

Rachel squinted. “I never thought of that. He can’t have starved, by the way. Your brother. That takes weeks, in case you were worried. Water is a problem. You can only go a few days without that, but Sully says there are plenty of ways to get clean water here, that when you’re really thirsty, it comes to you how to find some.”

“Thanks.”

They walked along, not really sure where to go.

“I missed you on Saturday,” Angelica said.

“Most of us stay home on weekends,” Rachel explained, “but my brother and I go to Saturday school.”

“School? I thought Sully was an apprentice.”

“This is different. It’s – well, one thing we learn is a very old language with no vowels.”

“No vowels?”

“You say them, but none are written. And it goes backwards, right to left. It makes our parents happy, to keep the tradition going, and we have friends there.”

“That’s nice. I didn’t have a lot of friends where I used to live. I hope it’s okay for me to tell you.”

“‘Okay?’ What’s that?”

“A word from Ohio. It means all right.”

“‘Ohio?’”

Angelica flinched. “It’s where I lived.”

“Oh, look. It’s your sister.”

They’d entered a library, one of several in the Steem Museum, with a large open area going up several floors to skylights. Giselle and Kate stood by a balcony a level above them, talking quietly.

“They aren’t searching very hard, are they?” Rachel said, and the thought interrupted Angelica, who was about to say they were cousins.

“Maybe Giselle told her Will isn’t here,” Angelica replied.

“Really? You know where he is?”

She’d heard the name. Texas? No, that was on Old Earth. Even if she could remember, Tante Stefana had ordered her not to tell anyone.

“I guess I don’t,” Angelica said honestly.

“So if you don’t know where he is,” Rachel inquired, “how can you know where he’s not? Sorry, they say we’re related to a famous philosopher, that asking annoying questions runs in our blood. Let’s check that side. If we don’t find Will, maybe we’ll stumble over a good book.”

Angelica followed, happy to have met someone her age who seemed to understand her. Why, she asked herself for the hundredth time, hadn’t Will obeyed? If only he’d stayed on the steemwagon, none of this would be happening.

***

Will froze in mid-stride. Bram Rasmussen stood nearby, blocking the corridor.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he pressed.

Play dumb, Will told himself, and hope for the best.

“Away from the fear,” he said earnestly. “What on B’verlt was that?”

The young Rasmussen scowled. “Nothing, Stevens. Something you imagined. You’ve made me waste enough time. This way, and do keep up.”

Bram led him at a fast walk down the hallway. As they hurried through the mazelike complex, other people they met either got out of the young Rasmussen’s way or offered forced greetings, which went ignored. Clearly Bram had some purpose, Will thought, but what? With no good option, he just followed.

“How was breakfast?” Bram said, grinning snidely.

“Awful,” Will admitted.

“Drink any tea?”

Will shook his head.

“Smart,” Bram said appreciatively. “I put you through that for a reason, so you’d know what it’s like being a Gray. Want to spend your whole life eating swamp rat?”

“Swamp rat?”

“Rodent, horse meat. Who knows what’s in Gray-food? There’s that, or this.”

Bram cracked open a door and let Will peer into a lavishly appointed dining room. The walls were paneled with dark, fine grained wood and adorned with paintings. People in elegantly tailored clothing sat at brightly lit tables and leisurely finished late breakfasts. The men wore dark frock coats with silk cravats at their necks, while the women required help from servants to sit or stand because of their elaborate hooped skirts.

Silver platters were filled with poached eggs in cream sauce, crispy bacon, grilled steaks and smoked fish. The delicious smelling fresh bread came in rolls, muffins, and small cakes. A brass and wood wind-up phonograph played chamber music.

“That’s where the privileged eat,” Bram said, shutting the door and leading Will down the hall. “They’re either sleebs who’ve risen from the ranks or minor relations.”

Will realized the scattering of forelocks he’d seen in the room were small and thin, nothing like Bram’s.

“What about your family tree?” Bram continued. “Can you claim a Rasmussen ancestor?”

Will shrugged. He hoped not but said nothing.

“I doubt it,” Bram said, “but don’t despair. With great talent and extreme loyalty, you can earn your way out of overalls and into that room.” He paused for effect. “Do something truly spectacular and maybe, just maybe you can dine with me.”

“You got my drawing,” Will said bitterly. “Isn’t that enough?”

“Watch it, Stevens. That’s why you’re still alive, and it’s a start. But we need more.”

Seeming to accept, Will nodded.

“You don’t eat there?” he asked.

“Are you kidding? Hasn’t it sunk in who my father is?”

Will wasn’t sure what to say.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Bram continued. “If I’m such hot steam, what am I doing in this slag heap? Some even think I was sent here to be punished. But in truth, I’m here for the same reason as you, to search the Steem Museum inside and out.”

“For treasure?” Will said.

Bram glanced up and down the corridor before continuing with hushed enthusiasm.

“Of a sort,” he said. “About that secret basement, what exactly did you see?”

Will hesitated, hoping he could remember what he’d told his interrogator. “Machinery and broken Shadovecht.”

This was true, except he knew he was talking about the sub-basement in Beverkenhaas, while Bram referred to a room that he and Clyve assumed to exist in the Steem Museum. The deception irked Will but no longer caused him anguish.

“What else?” Bram demanded.

“Pipes, gears,” Will said, “and lots of junk.”

“Any valuables? Keep in mind, some extremely rare elements look like ordinary metal or rock.”

Will had to calm himself as he realized he was asking about the Tracium. “Maybe. Like I said, it was dark.”

“Anything related to Steemball?”

“Steemball?”

Bram seemed irritated by the question, Will thought, and changed the subject.

“We need to get in that room, Stevens,” Bram said firmly. “Push yourself.
Remember
.”

Will felt a surge of hope as he realized he might have something to bargain with. If they needed information from him, he wondered, could he somehow talk them into letting him live?

“I’ll try,” he said lamely, wishing a good idea would come to him.

Bram scowled. “I don’t get you, Stevens. You stumble onto a secret cache of Steemjammer treasures, but you don’t even fix in your head where it is!”

Careful, Will thought. As easily as lying now came to him, he knew the consequences of saying the wrong thing.

“I got cut,” he said. “It scared me.”

“So you ran,” Bram asked, “in a panic?”

Will looked down and nodded. Again, it felt wrong, but he knew he had no other choice. Misreading the look of shame on his face, Bram assumed Will felt bad because he couldn’t remember and lightened his tone.

“Roughly where in the Museum is it?” Bram said.

Will’s gut clenched. Somehow he knew this was it, that the right answer might save him. The wrong one would prove his doom.

He couldn’t tell Bram where it was because it didn’t exist! Also, if he told them what he knew, he wouldn’t be useful to them anymore, and then what? Would they make him the subject of ghastly experiment?

“In the lower levels,” he stammered, hoping he had the right idea, “sort of in the middle but closer to the front. That is, if I wasn’t completely turned around.”

Bram’s eyebrows knitted tightly. “That could be anywhere.”

“It was dark.”

Bram sighed. “You said as much to Clyve, who, by the way, was preparing to turn you inside out before I stopped him. I’m taking a terrible gamble, Stevens. I thought we’d get better results motivating you with a reward than confusing you with more drugs, so you must prove me right. You have to remember.”

Unsure what to say, Will stammered.

“
Where
?” Bram growled. “You owe me!”

Bram’s face twisted into a frightening mask, and Will stumbled over words, genuinely flustered until at last it came to him: “I could find it.”

“What?”

“If I could look around, I know I’d find it.”

The young Rasmussen scowled.

“Let’s go to the Museum,” Will urged, taking a huge risk but knowing this might be his only chance. “Once I see the area, I’ll recognize it. I’m sure.”

Bram’s mistrust showed in his deeply furrowed brow. He made Will sweat a moment before coming to a decision.

“I can’t believe you operate so sloppily,” he said with disgust, “but I’ll never understand you sleebs. Do you get so used to failure that when the chance for greatness comes, you panic and throw it away?”

Will shrugged. Bram shoved him to indicate they should get moving down the hallway.

“Faster,” he commanded. “We’ll soon get to the bottom of this.”

***

For Will, the next few minutes were sheer terror. As Bram led him down a poorly lit corridor, he felt like a prisoner being marched to the chopping block. Each step, he feared, took him closer to some hideous end.

Amazingly, the bodyguard had been nowhere to be seen all this time. He considered trying to overpower Bram and run, but where would he go? How could he escape?

Soon, they stopped in front of a large metal door set in a heavy stone wall. After Bram said a password into a speaking tube, it slowly opened with a grinding sound.

Fully expecting some awful laboratory filled with grizzly chopping machines and jars of smelly fluid, Will gasped as he was greeted by bright sunshine and a gust of moist, fresh air. Seagulls cried, and he realized he was staring at a river. On the other side, perhaps a quarter mile away, towered the city walls of New Amsterdam.

So close, he thought.
Should I make a break for it and try to swim to freedom?

A hand shoved him in the back, but it was only Bram, forcing him to walk towards a wooden dock.

He said, “Here’s your mission: find that hidden room. Go back to your sisters and Cobee Ren-stink’s pigsty of a house, and act like none of this happened. Do not say you came here or saw me, got it?”

Will nodded.

“Make up a story how you got lost,” Bram advised, “and keep it simple. That’s the secret to a good lie. The important thing is that you get back to the Steem Museum as soon as possible and
find that secret basement
.”

“Right,” Will said, trying to stay low-key and hide his utter joy at realizing he was going to live.

“When you see me, say something weak and sleebish. Don’t let the others know that you’re on my side. If you play this wrong, they’ll tell Donell. That knee-high piece of intestinal blockage is a Steemjammer spy for certain.”

Will felt a flash of anger but said nothing.

“Stevens, pay attention,” Bram commanded. “Find that room, and if it has even remotely useful things, you’ll be rewarded. That means fine food and silk sheets every day.

“If there’s more – if this truly is a major cache of Steemjammer secrets – we’ll promote you to the family level. You’ll be better than rich. You’ll be a
Rasmussen
, for life.”