This very claim had been his story since I arrived at the estate. His wife was at her sister’s home, visiting relatives instead of remaining home to deal with the noisy construction. “She won’t be traveling with us, then?”
“Not as such. She prefers the burden of visiting family to the excitement of the journey. And with her being such a delicate flower, I can hardly fault her.”
“But surely she wishes to see you off? I mean, you say six months, but there could be complications. You might not see her again for quite a while.”
Lightbridge’s smile faltered, turning at the edges ever so slightly. “See her again …” He let the word trail off as if unsure what I was asking.
I suspected I was causing discomfort, but at the time I had no idea why. “Maybe she—”
“Gideon,” Geraldine interjected. “Tell us again how you rescued your regiment from certain doom.”
Lightbridge returned to his jovial self at the sound of her question. “Which time?” Then he burst into another round of uproarious laughter.
The uneasy tension between Geraldine and Albert was not lost on me. There was something afoot behind those furtive glances, but I knew not what. Later, after dinner was finished and I excused myself to the solitude of my room, Geraldine caught up with me in the hallway. By some conspiring whim of fate, her room in the oversized dwelling was just across from mine.
“Are you nervous about tomorrow?” she asked as we walked to our respective rooms.
“Yes,” I answered. “It’s been some time since I’ve traveled such a distance.”
“You get used to it. Travel, I mean.”
I bristled at her implication. “Did you and the world-famous Elijah travel that much?”
She flinched at my verbal jab. “Yes. But nothing quite this spectacular.” We fell quiet as we mounted the broad staircase together. After a few steps she asked, “Did you ever marry?”
“No,” I said. “I was too busy with work.”
“You shouldn’t let that stop you.”
“Such is life.” I shrugged. “Love is not meant for everyone, else it wouldn’t be special.”
She smiled, and once again it was as beautiful as I remembered. “Sometimes I think only the very foolish and the very mad are blessed with requited love.”
I snorted a small laugh. “That’s very astute of you.”
“Lightbridge is a bit of both, you know.”
“The idea had occurred to me, yes.”
We came to rest in the hallway, just outside of our doors, when Geraldine took me by the elbow. She drew me close, lowering her voice to a whisper. “His wife is gone.”
I stared into her eyes, unsure of what she was driving at. “So he said. She is visiting her—”
She shushed me with a shake of her head. “She’s
gone
. Has been for some time.”
The way she stressed the word ‘gone’ explained it to me. “You mean she’s … passed on?”
“Yes. But for heaven’s sake don’t let on that you know.”
I was horrified. I may not have been a psychologist or even an armchair philosopher, but it seemed a very bad idea to me for the entire crew to play into one man’s delusions about his dead spouse. I said as much, only to be reprimanded.
“It’s not our place to judge,” she snapped. After a few deep breaths to center herself, she continued. “From what I understand, her death crushed the man, swallowed his soul, nearly killed him along with her.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.
“Not as sorry as I,” Albert said, joining us in the hallway. The man moved on cat feet when the notion took him. “I’d known the pair of them for years, and had never seen two souls more in love. When she took sick, there was nothing we could do to console him. He tended to her every waking moment. Then when she finally breathed her last …” Albert’s look was desperate, a pained soul worried about his friend. “I was sure he would never recover.”
“And now?” I asked.
“Now he’s stable.” Albert lost the pained look in favor of his silly, wide grin. “Well, he is more stable than he was. At the time he was two shakes of a lamb’s tail away from an asylum. But then one day he started to pretend she was still alive. Suddenly, everything was all better. Bessy was visiting relatives, away to a garden party, or even just out back in the greenhouse. We went along with it at first, wondering how long he could keep it up. When he didn’t stop, neither did we.”
“But … surely he knows.”
“Of course he knows. He just doesn’t want to deal with it. And after having such a deep love ripped away from him, can you blame the man?”
No, I could not. As one who also had my love ripped away, I was all too sympathetic to his plight. “I see.”
“Then you understand?” Geraldine asked.
“I suppose so.”
“What’s all this then?” Lightbridge asked as he crested the steps behind us. “Powwowing in the darkness? Aren’t considering a mutiny already, are we?”
“You should know better than that,” Geraldine said. “We were just discussing tomorrow’s flight.”
Albert slapped me on the back. “Seems our friend here has a touch of the nerves.”
I grinned sheepishly at the idea. What seemed just a cover story also happened to be true. I was very nervous about the flight, still unconvinced that such travel was safe, or prudent. “I suppose I just can’t get used to the idea of man taking to the heavens.”
“You will soon enough,” Lightbridge declared. He clapped, rubbing his hands together in excitement. “The whole world will travel by air one day. You just wait and see.”
We all nodded in agreement, though I still worried. After bidding everyone goodnight, we slipped into our separate rooms and prepared for bed, though it was almost impossible to get any sleep that entire week. How could I sleep when such a fantastic journey lay ahead of us? And that night, there was even less sleep in the light of my recent discovery.
I was traveling in the company of a certifiable madman.
****
****
Liftoff
I suppose I should describe in full the wonder that was the Northern Fancy. I am not sure in what state you shall find her, how much more decay will occur before our remains are discovered, so allow me to illustrate how she looked upon our departure. Then perhaps you will appreciate how beautiful Lightbridge’s vision really was.
Again she looked just like a sailing vessel, but the similarity stopped at the outside. Inside, she was built in two levels, with no ‘upper deck’ as a normal maritime ship would have. Instead she had an observation port that doubled as a mess hall built onto her aft. It sported a beautiful oval window at least six feet across, from which one could see every little thing that rolled along under us. The bridge also sported a decent-sized window, as did either side of the top deck. There were also a series of small portholes that ran the length of the ship, one for each room.
As for other openings, there was a main bay door on the lower half of the ship, through which supplies were loaded. There was also a ramp that led to the second deck, where sat a proper entrance bearing an elegant archway and finely carved door. Lightbridge insisted that it was all for show, but I suspected he and his men modeled the idea after existing ocean vessels; one entrance for staff and cargo, another for passengers. Personally I was pleased not to be restricted to the lower entrance like some common servant or workman. At the time, I supposed if our trip was successful, and air travel indeed became a common thing, then such an entrance wouldn’t be for show at all.
After I spoke with Lightbridge about my reservations regarding traveling on the ship with Geraldine, I was assigned to a small room on the aft end of the ship, just across from the mess hall cum observation room. Geraldine’s quarters, as well as her medical lab, were stationed at the bow of the ship, beside the bridge. That put a full length of ship between us, but it never felt like enough, considering I still had to visit her students weekly.
The bulk between us was made up of the small berths for the rest of the crew, the kitchen, and a row of small but adequate water closets fitted with functional showers including a steady stream of heated water via the ever-boiling boilers. Given Lightbridge’s military background, it was almost inevitable that there was a simple brig on the lower deck, beside the engine room. Other than the engine room, the lower deck mostly consisted of coal bins and cargo bays. A six-month nonstop journey with a forty-man crew required an awful lot of supplies, which in turn took up an awful lot of space. The ship was also equipped with some modern surprises: electrical lighting, running water, individual heating units for each room, and even garbage compactors and a mechanical cooling unit in the well-equipped kitchen.
But the real beauty of the ship was her heart.
Her engine.
From the moment I was first invited to inspect the engine, I was enthralled. It was something to behold, a gorgeous marriage of steam and manual power. While coal kept the large boilers running, which in turn drove the props that provided partial lift, there was also a steady rotation of manual power that helped to fuel the rest of the ship’s needs. This came in the form of strange machines that lined the hallway along the length of the ship. Each looked like a skeletal metal horse, but where the saddle would rest, there was instead a padded seat, and instead of stirrups there were square pedals attached to a large flywheel. This gear was looped with a pulley that disappeared into the floor beyond.
I remember staring at them in disbelief, wondering aloud what they were.
“Pedometric generators,” Albert explained. “Something the boss and I worked up to lighten our fuel load.”
“You’re too kind, Albert,” Lightbridge said with a modest dip of his head. “It was all his idea. I merely requested an activity for the men to pass the time.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” I admitted, though I was sure I did. I could see the obvious applications of the contraptions right away, but refused to believe they would attempt such a thing.
“It’s all very simple,” Albert said, taking great pleasure in schooling me. “When one sits here,” he paused to pat the padded seat, “and works the pedals, the flywheel spins, directing the resulting kinetic energy to a secondary engine beneath the floor.”
“The boilers fuel the ship’s primary needs,” Lightbridge added. “The props, the lifts, the navicom and so forth. The manual engine fuels the simplest of ship needs, such as the kitchen appliances, the lighting, and the ventilation for the heating.”
“Heating is secondary?” I asked. “We are headed to the North Pole, and you consider heating a secondary need?”
“Yes,” Lightbridge said. “Considering we will be flying a few miles above the Earth, I do believe heating is the least of our worries. One can put on a parka, but one cannot sprout wings.”
I eyed the metal contraptions with worry. “It seems a bit crude, though. I mean, relying on manual power like this.”
Albert waved away my concern. “Crude it might be, but effective. These beasts give off a fraction of the power the boilers produce, but ‘tis enough to allow us to drop a full ton of coal from our cargo.”
My eyes widened at the news. That was a considerable amount of weight. But again my concern outweighed my awe. “How will you keep the things going? Surely the men will grow weary of such an experimental exercise.”
“Exercise is just the right word for it,” Albert said in a hushed voice.
“They won’t grow weary of it,” Lightbridge said. “And neither will you.”
“Me?” I asked, my eyes returning to their wide state.
“Time with a pedometric is compulsory. Part of the Regimen.”
There it was again. The Regimen. I hung my head, knowing I had lost the argument long before it even began.
“Don’t be so disappointed,” Lightbridge teased. “I dare say it will do you some good.”
I sighed, knowing he was right but still not liking it. “I would never have signed on had I known you intended to work me like an ox.”
“Then in the future, I suggest that you read before you sign.”
And that was that.
True to his requirements, the machines remained manned almost every hour of the day, some men preferring to pedal deep into the night. I must admit, after a fashion, I grew fond of the activity myself. It was lonesome and distracting, two things I craved more the longer I maintained a proximity to the beautiful Geraldine. But I’m getting ahead of myself again.
Despite Lightbridge’s military background, he refused to allow the men to bring firearms aboard the Fancy. Some of the men voiced the need for weapons as a concern for safety, sighting possible run-ins with the wild Northern natives while we spent our month at our destination, while others just wanted to bring their weapons to hunt the unusual game that thrived in the Arctic. But Lightbridge was steadfast. His concern that a stray bullet might puncture the balloon was not unfounded. So each man promised by oath to leave his weapons behind, though I noticed Lightbridge didn’t bother to search the luggage as we loaded our things.
He was trusting of his crew.
I was not.