The Steam Mole (12 page)

Mary was shocked and felt enormously guilty at the same time. The
Cuttlefish
and her crew had risked so much and had only been that badly damaged because of her. “You should have. I must do something about this.”

“Westralia's a very commercial place, ma'am. Government ran away and tried to force us to leave when we were in trouble. There is a balance to be reached, of course, but at the moment the men making money out of minerals are more influential than the politicians. We're trying to restore that balance.”

Mary Calland peered over the top of her glasses. “If the magnates who are making money here hand over fist can't let a man go and look for a young girl, then it's time to stop trying, and succeed.”

He smiled properly. “We need you in government, ma'am.”

“I need to find my daughter.”

He nodded. “I'll get onto arranging the meeting, and I'll have the remaining bag and trunk sent to you, along with the letter. In the meanwhile I suggest trying to get your strength up, ma'am. I'd suggest a little food—”

She scowled. “When I can think of a way of making sure it hasn't been poisoned.”

Linda found this a very difficult tryst. She wanted some advice. Nicky wanted some petting. She pushed him away. “Not now, Nick. Please.”

“Don't you love me anymore?”

He was very elegant, but he smelled a bit of brandy just then. “Yes, but I am so worried about Clara. I think I ought to tell my father.”

“He'll lock you in. And then you wouldn't be able to see me.”

“I know. But…but she's my friend. And I
ought
to tell them. No, Nicky. Stop. I'm…going now.”

“Don't go blabbing, Linda,” he said as she got up.

He sounded very unlike his normal self. Not caressing, but cross. Grown-up. Well, not grown-up. She was that. But
old
.

Clara hadn't been prepared for the wind and the dust. She'd assumed that when she got going it would be relatively easy to work out where to go. That assumption had vanished into a red haze. There was a compass, but while that could tell her which direction she was going, it did nothing to tell her what way she
should
be going. And in this…well, she could pass Tim ten yards off and not see him.

She moved the big machine slowly and steadily. That would give her, and him, the best chance of spotting each other. For a little while she indulged in a daydream of finding Tim. But in the dust and dying light, she knew that it was only a daydream. And it was going to be night soon. How could she find anyone in the dark? She didn't even really know where she was. She started to fiddle. The shriek of the steam horn nearly made her jump through the roof. Surely he must have heard that.

Clara opened the window in one of her accidental proddings and testings. It told her two things: First, it was blowing half a gale out there. And second, no one would hear anything.

If Tim was out in this, he'd be sitting down, waiting it out. No one with any common sense would walk in it. No one would be out looking for her or their missing steam mole either. Her next button got her a forward light. That was good. She kept going, slowly. She had no way of measuring how far she'd gone or precisely what ground she'd covered. But by now she'd surely done a lot more than eight miles. She turned and tried a track back the other way, going as slowly as the scout mole would go, avoiding occasional rocks, and sounding the horn in the darkness.

And then she did it all again. And again. She worked out how
to feed steam-biscuits into the machine, and pressed on. The wind dropped and the night sky cleared sometime before morning.

Dawn found her in the middle of nowhere, not knowing where to go. She decided on looking for the highest point, a range of hills she could see…but as she got closer, they seemed to be floating…and then broke up and vanished with the sun.

And the steam mole stuttered and…stopped.

Mary studied the letter from Jack Calland with tears in her eyes. The writing, if it was his, showed a distinct tremor. And the code pattern telling her it was true and trustable…was not there. But the way of expressing things was very like Jack's. He was an insane, dangerous hooligan. But he used to make her laugh.

She could believe that Clara would have been taken in, though. And Duke Malcolm just might have done that—transported Jack to Australia, where he could be a useful lever.

She was still looking at the letter, lost in reverie, when someone knocked on the door of the guest house. She was under guard there, and it was, after the attempt on her life, for her own safety. She didn't like it, but it did mean there should be no unwelcome surprises. She still took steps to be ready in case, somehow, they'd got past the guards.

“Captain Malkis!” she exclaimed upon seeing the bearded, reliable, shrewd submariner who'd safely transported them all the way from London to Westralia. “Oh, I cannot say how glad I am to see you. Come in!”

A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “I'm glad to see you up, Dr. Calland. The letter I had from your daughter was less than hopeful. I went to the hospital first, even before going to see Darlington. Perhaps you would like to put down the carving knife?”

Mary Calland was enormously embarrassed. “I am so sorry. It's proved to be a lot less safe here than on the
Cuttlefish
, Captain. I was poisoned. Forgive me for the knife.”

The captain dismissed it with smile and a wave. “I would prefer it to be a pistol, and I would prefer the guard to be some men I know I could trust to the end of the Earth, ma'am.”

“I've always been rather nervous about guns, sir. But you are right, as usual,” she admitted as the captain came into the withdrawing room.

“Believing that remark is likely to get me killed by a Royal Navy drop-mine,” he said, smiling ruefully. “I've come about your daughter, ma'am. I had a letter from her.”

“Dear heavens, I hope it's got some more clues for us. I know you've been told about her being missing.”

The captain nodded. “Maxwell Darlington, to give the man credit, seems to have been trying hard to find her. I'm sorry it has taken me so long to get here, though, and I hope I've not taken too much of a liberty coming to search for her, but the crew would not have forgiven me if I hadn't, and I wouldn't have forgiven myself.”

“Oh, Captain, of course not. I'm so glad to have you. But Mr. Darlington said you were having some trouble with…with your employers in this Roxby place. That's just wrong, Captain.”

He gave a short laugh. “I've left them with more trouble than they were giving me, and they are glad to see me gone. These Westralian mine owners think they're a law unto themselves, but the men working for them have just about had enough. They're going to find it's a changing world, and oddly enough, it is largely thanks to your daughter. We organized and had a strike. The men on the mine weren't impressed with management, and thanks to Darlington, their government isn't backing the mine owners. The owners demanded the army move in to support them, and didn't get a very good reception. So the owners were very glad to give me a leave of absence to get rid of me, which got rid of their strike. But I don't think that the genie is going back into the bottle. Now, what can I do to help find Clara?”

“Well, if you don't mind, let me see her letter? And then, well,
try to find out what has been done so far. If I succeed with the Westralian government, I am going to need you to buy up the contracts of the
Cuttlefish
crew, pay for her repairs, and direct your crew in a search for my daughter.”

“Bravo, ma'am. I can think of nothing I'd rather do. But it is only fair to point out that the repairs are expensive. They could run as high as fifty thousand gold Australian pounds. Even the contracts are worth hundreds.”

Mary Calland gave the captain a tight smile. “They could have had my grandmother and Fritz's work for nothing, but it's worth millions. So now they will be paying.”

He nodded. “But first, ma'am, I think you need to sit down. Have some tea. And, by the looks of you, something to eat. We looked after you better on
Cuttlefish
, ma'am. You look ready to fall over.”

She grimaced. “I've been cautious about eating. For a start, I was poisoned by eating what I was given, and for a second thing my stomach is quite delicate as a result.”

He nodded. “I think I'd better give you Clara's letter. It's…worded quite oddly. And then I will go and get some suitable food for you. I think one of our most pressing needs is Cookie.”

Dr. Calland thought of Cookie's solid submariner food, cooked in his tiny kitchen, with something of a nostalgic laugh. “I don't think he does hospital food.”

The captain acknowledged this with a wry smile. “Perhaps not. But he's never allowed any of my crew to be poisoned, either. Unfortunately, he's out in the Gibson Desert, but some of the crew have managed to come to assist us. Lieutenant Ambrose was working with his future father-in-law's company in Port Lincoln, and they've given him leave immediately. They're mineral smugglers transporting ores across the Spencer Gulf. All legal this side, but disliked by the Empire.”

Linda had taken herself quietly out of her home and found a jarvey to take her to the diplomatic bungalow overlooking Murat Bay. There were some advantages to having a well-known father. The soldiers on guard there let her in to wait. And having got that far…she had plenty of second, and third, and fourth thoughts while she waited.

Mary Calland faced the assembled group of government dignitaries and scientists with steely determination. Some of them, by the comments she'd overheard, did not believe anything of value could come from a woman scientist. She kept her voice as level as possible. The British Empire was less retrogressive about women and their place than this frontier republic. That would have to change.

“Gentlemen…the method of ammonia synthesis was yours for the asking. But since you've put a financial cost on finding my daughter, and keeping the crew of the submarine that carried us here at incredible risk, as too high for you to bother with, I'm putting my own price up,” said Dr. Calland grimly. “I have no interest in being wealthy, but I can see myself spending the money more wisely than you have.”

It was plain no one spoke to the prime minister like this normally. But he was a gentleman and tried to paper over the cracks. “We're embarrassed by this, ma'am. We have the Westralian Mounted Police searching. We can assure you that every kind of help—”

“The process will cost you three hundred thousand pounds. And point one percent thereafter of the sale price of the ammonia. Westralia is flush with wealth from the mines. You have the money. And the synthesis process will be worth many hundred of millions, far more than your mining wealth, besides feeding the starving and making mining and chemical work much cheaper. Choose, gentlemen. Westralia is a commercial place. I can find backers who will pay me much more and give you much less.”

They gaped at her, unused to being dictated to. She felt it necessary to explain…a little. “I need to pay for the repairs to the
Cuttlefish
and hire people to search for my daughter. I want people I know I can rely on, and to me that means the crew of the
Cuttlefish
. Their contracts will need to be bought out.”

“But…”

“We need to accept it, Thaddeus,” said Maxwell Darlington to the prime minister. “We know the Imperials are desperate. Next time they may succeed in killing Dr. Calland. And we've got the gold, but they've got the military might. We need to be able to stand on our own feet.”

“We're buying a pig in a poke,” said Professor Henderson loftily. “It's a waste of money. How do we know you can produce the goods, Dr. Calland? I've looked at the formulae, and I am convinced the great Walther Nernst was right. You can't produce ammonia, ma'am, no matter what the Imperials think.”

Dr. Calland looked at the self-satisfied face of the Westralian scientist. “I believe I do have the essential ingredients for a tabletop demonstration. It's not ready for commercial production, but that too can be solved. Give me twenty-four hours to set up and test. If it works, the Westralian government will pay me three hundred and fifty thousand pounds and point five percent of the sale price of the product.”

“I thought you said three hundred…” said the finance minister, warily.

“
He
just put the price up,” said Mary Calland, pointing at Professor Henderson.

The Westralian prime minister tugged his moustache and nodded. “Accepted—if you can prove you can do it, and on the condition that you stay on to head the team of scientists who make it work on a commercial scale.”

“Once I have found my daughter.” Mary did not say “dead or alive.” She would not allow herself to go there. “And now I have
things to prepare. I need to collect my equipment and test some of it. And a few assistants would be of value.” That would put a stop to any suspicion of fakery, and besides, she could use their labor.

The little pressure chamber she needed was carved out of a single huge quartz crystal in an iron jacket, and it was heavy. It had to be to sustain the pressure of two hundred atmospheres, many times higher than that thought possible when her mother had worked on the device with Fritz and Robert Le Rossignol. The sequence of pumps and heating and cooling units she'd need were just as heavy, and Mary was still desperately weak and tired from the aftereffects of the poison. Weak, tired, and afraid. But she dared not fail now. Her daughter needed her. Maybe Jack did, too.

Mary Calland walked unsteadily and tiredly into the guarded bungalow on the outer edge of Ceduna's sand berm. “You got a visitor,” said the guard, cheerfully.

That was the last thing she felt she needed right now. “Who is it?”

“Young lady,” said the guard. “Said she had to talk to you. She's got no weapons and I reckon she's not a poisoner,” he said with a grin.

“I reckon” wasn't what Mary wanted from a guard. “Why didn't you keep her outside at least?” she snapped.