1889: Journey To The Moon (The Far Journey Chronicles) (18 page)

Two Hats realized it was Teach, although he had no idea how the pirate came to be there. He patted Teach’s arm and said, “Heap good, Teach, heap good.”

Two Hats turned his gaze earthward and watched George Armstrong Custer crash to rest at the gates of the Alamo mission. The flaming quarterdeck hit and scattered embers across the Long Barracks building beside the mission proper, reminding open-mouthed witnesses of a funeral pyre.

Billy and the others tried to help each other out of their bindings, but the knots were too tight. Billy saw a movement at the hatch and watched as Teach, smoke rising off his black coat like he was some demon spawn, crawled into the hatchway, dragging Two Hats with him. Billy stopped struggling and said, “I hope you two enjoyed your vacation.”

Two Hats said, “Vacation over now.”

Garret, who had regained consciousness, said, “Like I told you, Billy, that Injun don’t say much, but when he does…”

Teach pulled his knife and cut their restraints. As they stood and restored circulation to their hands and feet, the pirate said, “This sloop has been done much mischief. We cannot be bound for luna until repairs are done, that is a certainty. Our skirmish with the United States military left us no port in a thousand miles that will give us quarter. It is a bitter pickle we are in, me hearties, a bitter pickle indeed.”

[ 40 ]

The
Arcadia
hung high in the atmosphere above the planet as if anchored in a calm sea. To an onlooker her outer hull would have appeared charred from the fires of hell and dimpled from the hammer-blows of Hephaestus. But she floated in the calm.

Inside there was a surgery in progress.

Under the watchful gaze of Ekka Gagarin, Dr. Conklin removed the remainder of Jack Ross’s right arm six inches below the shoulder joint. He expertly tied off the major arteries as he did so, and cauterized the lesser bleeding vessels with the tip of a heated iron rod. He carefully positioned the disembodied metal arm of the great robot and began grafting Ross’s musculature onto the sheaths of the porcelain control armatures inside the robotic arm.

The smell of burned flesh was pungent, and Ekka tried breathing through her mouth. Billy had gone up to the bridge to see to Merkam, whose head injury was less pressing than the imminent danger of losing Jack Ross. The last Ekka had seen of Merkam, his speech was slurred and he wasn’t making much sense.

“Miss Gagarin,” Conklin said, “please detach the robot’s power supply. I believe that with practice, Mr. Ross may be able to control the arm with his own muscles now.”

“Is there any way to test it?”

“Not while he is knocked out. Once he regains consciousness, we will see. There may be other surgeries, if his body rejects this appendage,” Conklin gestured to the arm.

Ekka looked at Ross’ original mechanical arm, now strapped to the wall and said, “Could you not use that one?”

Conklin glanced at it, “The upper region is far too damaged.  I could never repair it to the point where the arm would benefit Mr. Ross.”  He touched the over-large metal arm now attached to Jack’s stump. “I’m afraid this is the best we can do under such austere circumstances.”

In the anteroom off the bridge, Billy Gostman pressed a cool rag to Judah Merkam’s forehead. The man’s skin was hot to the touch. There was a raging fever inside him, and his head was swollen. At the moment, he was unconscious, and that was a blessing. When he was conscious he thrashed about and had to be restrained. His words were a jumble, and often one half of a sentence did not connect well with the other half, as if his thoughts were steam lines disconnected from their engine and somehow sliced together randomly.

“Will he live, do you think?” Nikola Tesla asked.

“I don’t know. As soon as Conklin is through with Jack Ross, I’ll fetch him up here to attend to Mr. Merkam. Do you know how to fly this thing?”

“No. I have a rudimentary understanding of the controls, but Jude is the pilot.”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought. How about Koothrappally?”

“He’s sitting at the helm now, but he dare not touch anything. I thought the man was afraid of nothing, until I asked him to sit in Jude’s seat. Fortunately we are at rest here, seemingly at equilibrium. If asked, Koothrappally will refuse.”

“I think that leaves Ekka, me or Jay-Patten.”

“I think it leaves you, Mr. Gostman.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. All right, I’m going to give him another dose of laudanum, so maybe we won’t have to watch him every minute. Then, maybe, you can show me the controls of this ship. If he doesn’t come out of this, it’ll be up to me to land us.”

“You don’t understand, Mr. Gostman,” Tesla said. “We’re going to the Moon. With or without Judah Merkam at the helm.”

“Who says?” Billy asked.

“I do,” the voice stated from the doorway. Both men turned to see Abigail Ross standing there. “Obviously, we are going nowhere until our pilot and our engineer are back to battery. But I am now in charge until Judah regains his senses.”

“That’s
if
he regains his senses,” Billy replied.

“All right, if. My own personal resources and those of my husband have made this ship possible. She goes where I say she goes...until Jude is whole. Until then, Mr. Gostman, you are to learn the controls in case you are needed. I never understood Jude’s secrecy on the matter. This discussion is closed.” The woman turned and disappeared back into the belly of the ship.

Billy and Tesla regarded each other.

“Well then,” Tesla said.

[ 41 ]

The
Arcadia
touched earth one more time near Leon Springs, so Pat Garrett could depart. He said to Billy, “I don’t have enough sand to travel into an airless void. I’ll see you again when you return to terra firma. If you return.”

The ship rose again and stayed afloat for seven days while her crew mended. Judah Merkam emerged from his fever and gradually regained his faculties during that time. Jack Ross awoke from the effects of his surgery, took one look at his right arm and requested a drink, which was denied him. Billy learned the controls of the ship first from Tesla, then, toward the end of that week, from Merkam himself. Ekka, with the help of Billy, Jay-Patten, and Teach, swarmed over the surfaces of the ship, inspecting each rivet, each seam. The air was thin and the cloud layer was far below them, and they could see the curvature of the Earth on the horizon. The feeling was disconcerting, yet each managed their assigned tasks with the aid of Merkam’s pressure suits, which both provided oxygen with which to breathe at such great height, and at the same time kept them from freezing to death. The hull itself felt ice cold through their bulky magnetic boots, which kept them attenuated to the ship. The same inspection was repeated on the interior of the craft: inlaid wood panels were unscrewed and the seams and rivets beneath were inspected, replaced or sealed as needed, and re-bolted. Smoke was used on the interior to test for leaks of the internal atmosphere. When it was all done, and the appropriate logs were made of the repairs, the attention turned to the robots, particularly the great robot, who was now missing an arm. Jay-Patten made a show of replacing the robotic arm with one of his rifles, which the robot, upon test, could fire into the sky. He voiced an idea whereby one of his rubies might be employed to focus the light of the robot’s eye, and perhaps turn it into some kind of weapon, and with Tesla’s assistance, a few tests were made, which mostly came to nothing.

Merkam worked on one of his light torches in secret until he had it the way he wanted. The long, slender brass tube now had a rotating red lens to go over the clear glass, and the tube had buttons on it similar to those on a trumpet. He worked the buttons with three fingers and the torch sent staccato bursts of light on the wall. When he rotated the red lens over it and did the same thing, no light was visible. Jude smiled and slipped the torch under his jacket and later that night when everyone else was asleep, descended to the room holding the robots.

He made minor mechanical adjustments on the heads, then stepped back and used the torch with the red lens to flash long-short codes at them. The robots responded to every command. The giant robot seemed especially attuned to it and responded almost instantly. Merkam nodded, turned off the torch, slipped it under his jacket and hid it when he returned to his room.  

For seven days the crew mended and prepared for the next stage of their strange expedition—their journey to the Moon.

PART III:

THE ETHER

[ 42 ]

The
Arcadia
slipped the surly bonds of Earth as easily as a feather is borne on the winds. The light faded from the sky to be replaced by a deep purple hue with blackness farther on.

Nikola Tesla peered through the side window of the bridge and watched as the Earth faded behind them.

“You insane bastard,” Tesla said to Judah Merkam. “You’ve done it.”

Merkam nodded and peered forward.

Koothrappally was up from his desk and drifting in front of one of the windows, peering rearward along the
Arcadia
to the fleeting planet.

“My goodness,” he said.

Likewise, throughout the ship, the faces of the crew began to fog the windows.

“I never seen anything like this,” Billy Gostman said under his breath. “Thank you for not shooting me, Pat.”

Two faces down from him Ekka was breathless. Her feet had drifted up from the deck beneath her and her stomach muscles bunched and tightened, fighting the weird weightlessness.
Still,
she wondered to herself,
now I know who Pat is but I don’t know why he didn’t shoot my Billy when he had the chance.

“My word,” Abigail Ross gasped under her breath. She was between Ekka and Billy, almost touching Billy—his cheek mere inches from her own—although he seemed acutely unaware of her presence. She dared not touch him for fear she would catch fire.

“Yes,” Ekka said. “It’s something.”

Edward Teach and Denys Jay-Patten stood by the large loading bay window when their feet came free of the platform—the same platform where the two had fought each other with hardened steel mere days before.

“My God,” Teach whispered. “The son of a bitch has done it.”

“Yes,” Denys replied. “But what has he done?”

“Come again?”

“In my mind and spirit I feel more free than I have ever felt before. But my stomach says differently. I shouldn’t have taken breakfast this morning.”

“Do you need the burlap?” Teach asked.

Denys belched. “I’m hoping not. We’ll...see.”

At one of the lesser port windows, Two Hats and Dr. Conklin looked down upon the whole Earth as it slowly dropped away from them.

“Me Spirit Hats now,” Two Hats stated. “We fly again. This time we fly to Happy Hunting Grounds.”

“I think maybe not,” Conklin said. “Although it is doubtful that all of us will survive this trip.”

Two Hats studied the little man beside him. He sniffed. Outwardly the man appeared weak, as if a small wind could topple him. Inwardly, though, there was something about the man—one of the powers of the Spirit World, perhaps. He wondered what the man’s totem could be. When Conklin’s eyes turned to meet his own, Two Hats knew the man’s totem.
A snake
, he thought.
The Spirit of the Snake
.

Jonathan Conklin’s mind hummed and buzzed with the opportunity here. He would be the first—the first to puncture a body in the ether and watch the blood flow out and float in the heavens
. But who would be the first subject? Ah. That is the question. Perhaps this native fellow.
But then he saw the eyes appraising him.
No,
he thought
. I shall stay far from this man in the future.

In the engine room, Jack Ross floated before the transmogrifier.
May as well take a look
, he thought. He propelled himself with one hand and fell upwards to the hatch. He caught it in time to avoid flying straight on through. He could have easily ended up floating all the way to the bridge, three stories above his head. The only thing to grasp along that space was the central spike that held the incredible electric energies of the Tesla coil, and if he touched those, he would likely fry. He glanced around the large chamber and saw Teach and Jay-Patten at the cargo hatch window. Turning around he saw his wife floating beside Billy Gostman, almost touching him. Ekka was there as well.

The new joint ached where his muscles met the bulky robotic arm. He’d taken a double-dose of the white willow bark ampules before departure, as Conklin had prescribed. Along with this, however, he’d also taken a pull from his flask. The flask was now secreted in the base of the transmogrifier. The pain in his arm, he knew, would never go away completely, despite Conklin’s admonition to the contrary. He knew his own arm and he knew the healing powers of his own body, and they were not ample to this particular task. Besides that, the damned new extremity was so...ugly.

Instead of going to his wife, Ross drifted between Teach and Jay-Patten. The Earth, surrounded by an ethereal glow, slowly faded from view. He could see a sliver of the day side and a terribly bright spear from the edge of the sun. It was the coming terminator as Merkam had described—the line where day pushed back the night.

A voice whispered throughout the ship over the speakers: “While the windows should be sufficiently shielded from the sun, please refrain from looking directly at it.” It was Merkam’s voice—Merkam, the man who knew
everything
. “It can blind you, likely permanently.”

Slowly the clusters of people began backing away from the windows.

“Anyone requiring gravity, please return to your staterooms. Liquids may not be unstoppered outside of the living quarters, and only then when they are under spin. We are about to go into fourth gear. Jack, are you ready?”

“A moment,” Ross shouted.

“You have one minute,” Merkam’s voice stated. “After that, we will have to re-calculate.”

Ross pushed off from the bulkhead and toward the hatch. As he did he saw Abby drifting in space away from the window, her eyes steadily meeting his own. A communication of sorts passed between them. Ross snorted in disgust, turned his eyes from her, grasped the hatch railing and lobbed himself into the engine room.

“All I know is,” Denys said to Teach, “I need a drink. A big one.”

“Yes. Same here.”

“I brought a bottle of single-malt Scotch. Care to join me?”

“I think I might at that,” Teach replied.

[ 43 ]

Edward Teach had been given one of the berths in the sleeping ring, which was now under spin, in the same compartment as John Koothrappally, the mathematician. While Koothrappally appeared to busy himself with securing his bits of baggage in the space beneath his bunk, Teach watched the man, his head still swimming from all of the sights he’d seen and all of Jay-Patten’s scotch he’d imbibed.

“Oh no,” Koothrappally said.

“What’s the matter?” Teach asked.

“In my hurriedness of my most hasty departure, I am indeed forgotten to including my books on the languages.”

“Why do you do that?”

Koothrappally turned to him. “What is it you are asking of me?”

“Why do you talk like that when you can speak English as well as anybody on this ship?”

Koothrappally stared at Teach for a moment. His eyes narrowed.

“How could you tell?” Koothrappally asked.

“Ah ha! There, that’s better. I could tell because I myself have been using the pirate speech for twenty years. I have found it puts fear into people’s hearts when I bandy it about, particularly when I’m boarding a vessel and cut loose with the swearing.”

“Then you are a linguist, like myself,” Koothrappally replied.

“I know English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, a little Italian and a smattering of German, Dutch and Swedish. I thought you were a mathematician, not a linguist.”

“I am a mathematician,” Koothrappally sighed and slumped down on his bunk. “I ferreted out all the secrets to math many years ago. It’s boring to me now. But language, now. That’s the amazing subject. Do you know that it’s constantly changing, and that it’s never the same from region to region within its own country of origin?”

“I did know that, now that you mention it. How many languages can you speak?”

“Almost all of them,” Koothrappally replied. “I can read in most of them as well.”

“Hell, you can talk to that Gagarin lady in her own language.”

“I can talk it as well as she can, yes. You should hear what she says about people behind their backs. In Cossack, that is.” He laughed.

“I’ll bet. You still haven’t told me why the charade.”

“Oh. That.” Koothrappally propped his head up with his hand beneath his jaw. “People come to expect you to talk a certain way. It’s a...I suppose ‘prejudice’ is the proper word.”

“You got that right. I couldn’t hardly talk to my own men without staying in character. It’s odd how much other people own us, even when they’re supposedly subordinate to us.”

“That, my friend, is the truth,” Koothrappally replied, struck by the odd singularity that he should have something in common with the feared cutthroat. He liked the man, liked the way his eyes glittered with a vast intelligence. He glanced down at the man’s mechanical hand, which Conklin had re-attached. Teach also had something in common with Jack Ross.

“What is it you do up on the bridge? No one ever told me.”

“It’s quite simple,” Koothrappally said. His English was perfect, without a hint of the Punjabi accent he paraded out before everyone. “At any given moment the
Arcadia
is hanging somewhere in space. The objects that could influence it have different magnitudes. It’s all very scientific.”

“I’m following you so far,” Teach said. “Pray, continue.”

“Very well. Because we’re in motion, and the Earth and the Moon are also in motion, then they are assigned different numerical values, which have to do with their relative mass and relative size.”

“Relative,” Teach intoned. Perhaps he understood all but that one most important thing.

“You might say, for the sake of argument, that there is no such thing as distance. Put your hand up to your face. Go ahead, do it.” Teach decided to humor the man and complied. “There. It appears rather large, doesn’t it?”

“Of course.”

“Now hold it away from yourself.”

“Yeah. Smaller, of course.”

“Exactly. We treat the Moon and the Earth in the same manner. We must because distance must be removed from the computation. If you had to factor in distance, why, you would have to factor in the rate of change of distance, which is another factor of calculus altogether. But we short-change the calculus. Instead, we take a reading from the transmogrifier and it tells us exactly the Moon’s relative mass and size at any given point, and we adjust differential between the Moon’s pulling force and the pulling force of the Earth. In this manner the
Arcadia
appears
from the Moon’s point of view
as if it’s a large object on an intercept course, and it grabs us and pulls us to it. At the same time we filter
out
the pulling force of the Earth, essentially nullifying it, or for the purpose of illustration, make ourselves appear as a pebble.”

“Ah. I suppose I’d have to understand the engines better.”

“The transmogrifier and the Tesla coil
are
the engine.”

“Oh. You’re trying to deflect me. You never fully answered before—why the fake accent?”

“A diversion. I get to hide myself behind it. I don’t have to get overly cozy with the remainder of the crew. No one bothers me—they keep out of my way. It’s the perfect arrangement.”

“Alright. Are you going to continue the charade?” Teach asked.

“Yes.”

“Your secret’s safe with me. Whiskey?” Teach held up a small jug. “Jay-Patten’s best.”

“I believe I’ll have some. Thank you. It should help me sleep.”

Teach handed Koothrappally the jug.

“Why did you signal the sky pirates to attack Custer’s forces, allowing us to escape. It is not the act of a prisoner.”

“I’m no prisoner here. I had a friend once who was in Newgate prison for almost fifteen years. When they let him out, he became a big nothing. But when he was inside, he flourished and prospered. He
ran
the prison from the inside.”

“A prisoner...running the prison. I’m not sure I understand.”

“Let me put it this way. The only way the warden could get any control was to get rid of him. As I understand it, the warden had to do a lot of politicking about how my friend was the model prisoner—about how he had completely reformed and was now morally capable of being set free. It apparently took quite a bit of pull, but he managed to pry the man from his cell and cast him adrift into the world. Short of that he would have had to concoct a way to kill him, and there would have been dire repercussions from that. The easiest way was to free him, and this he did.”

“I still do not understand.”

Teach shrugged. “I suppose a man has to have certain barriers in order to express his freedom. He has to have something to push against. Some of us have to have an impossible situation in order to have a challenge.”