Romulus Buckle and the Luminiferous Aether (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin #3) (7 page)

XII

THE ROAD OF TOMBS

The Guardians closed in. The cyclone of razorfish—there seemed to be even more of them now, judging by the height of the wall—wound tighter and tighter, with the lashing tentacles of the cephalopods looming behind, and atop them the horrible blazing eyes of the gagools, the beasties terrible in aspect from atop their perches, their long black claws fully extended. It seemed to Buckle that Penny Dreadful was the only member of the group who could inflict any real damage on the gagools and he doubted it could take them all on.

A great horn sounded, a soulful, whale-song blare, low and dense and ancient, throbbing inside Buckle’s helmet though he hardly noticed it, so immense was the desperate gallows-gasp of his own breathing in his ears.

Penny Dreadful’s baleful siren stopped.

The razorfish vanished abruptly, the currents of their whirlpool whipping around Buckle and his company in empty whorls of disturbed sand. The octopi retreated, tentacles retracting, the two gagools snapping their heads back and forth in some kind of indignant rage, releasing high-pitched cries as the lights in their eyes quickly faded to a glowing, red-black that looked like fire embers.

Above the heads of the gagools appeared a beautiful, dolphin-like machine with an open deck, its hull colored white and gold with copper and brass elements polished to a brilliant sheen. It was an Atlantean patrol boat, the keel burning with the same bright light pulsing from the domes.

One Atlantean diver stood at the boat controls while another, gripping a long white pike, glared through the clear glass bubble of her seahorse-shaped helmet. Both divers were encased in white diving suits laced with the same brilliant light as the hull. They shut off their booming horn, leaving Buckle’s ears to ring in the odd silence of his pinging oxygen tank. Through the scratched glass of his helmet window the Atlanteans looked blurred, bathed in the mysterious light.

Penny Dreadful strode forward, cresting a small rise of rocks glowing with green algae. It snapped its arm-blades back into its forearms, allowing its hands to click back into their normal positions. She raised one reset hand and waved, waved like a little girl coming home.

The Atlanteans stared at her in cold silence.

Buckle waited, shaking off his adrenalin, waiting for his heart to stop pounding in his chest so he could swallow and ease the parchment of his throat.

Felix stepped forward in his bulky diving suit; he shoved Penny Dreadful aside and made a dramatic, awkward bow to the Atlanteans. He pointed back in the direction of the
Dart
and made some kind of signal with his hands.

The female Atlantean nodded. She disconnected an umbilical line from her suit and hopped off the boat, descending to the bottom in a vault of glowing light. Once on the sea floor she motioned for them all to follow her to Atlantis.

Felix hurried back, joining the surviving members of his crew as they secured the bodies of their two dead crewmates. The Atlantean aboard the boat made no effort to assist, wheeling around and speeding away, the sea machine’s engines running bizarrely silent and clean. Sabrina helped Rachel and Tonda with Gustey’s stretcher. Within moments they set off after the Atlantean woman, who was already fifty yards ahead of them, not looking back, cutting through the water far more easily than the weight belt-encumbered
Dart
divers could ever hope to manage. They trudged after her at their best speed.

Buckle pushed his aching muscles on without letting up. Penny Dreadful fell in alongside him and the automaton looked to Buckle to be both excited and worried, though he didn’t know how he might read such emotions from a machine’s inflexible metal face and body.

The walk to Atlantis took some time—the domes, their glass exteriors illumed by the strange yellow-white light, loomed taller and taller out of the murk—but still looked to be at least three quarters of a mile away. Buckle had lost track of how long he’d been in the diving suit. The gagool’s attack had ripped away the pressure gauge apparatus on his right wrist so he had no way of knowing how much air he might have left in his tanks. But since there was nothing for it he decided he needn’t worry about it.

The seaweed fields fell away as the Atlantean diver entered the sunken Roman city. The road turned into a thoroughfare, striking a straight course through the magnificent ruins fringed by fluted columns and surging schools of fish. Statues of Neptune, tridents held high, the white marble overgrown by fantastic patterns of glowing green sea algae, watched.

Buckle was familiar with the
Iliad
and the
Odyssey
—two books which had survived The Storming—and much of the Snow World’s knowledge of ancient human civilizations was drawn from those pages. The sacred Victoriana was the blueprint of the new society reconstructed from the ashes of the apocalypse and the fragmented ancient histories were given an elevated importance in the education of the young, at least in the Crankshaft schools. Buckle had been taught about the Greeks and Romans but much of it was extrapolation. The difference between a Doric, Ionic and Corinthian column had somehow survived while so much else had been lost.

Buckle realized that the glorious city was a façade, an elaborate sham, a beautiful replica—up close it was easy to see most of the structures were shells, hollow and well braced. The false Roman city was beautiful and alive with sea life, silver and orange fish flitting through the loggias and porticoes like flocks of lovely birds. But it was nothing more than an elaborately constructed piece of scenery, built for the leisure and contemplation of the Atlanteans looking out their windows into the ocean. Buckle both liked and disliked the idea; the memory of the great civilizations had been reduced to an artificial background for the Atlanteans to appreciate as they sipped some form of seaweed tea.

It all seems so still and quiet down here
, Buckle thought,
once one got past the gagools
.

But the war-footing of men intruded: the Founders submarines constantly rumbled just under the shimmering surface overhead, their dark outlines veering, haunting and not dissimilar to zeppelins in the sky.

The nature of the ocean bottom changed once again after the company cleared the false city. The road plunged through golden-brown and yellow-green sea fields waving back and forth as far as the eye could see, the rows dotted with groups of diver-farmers and their helpful sea creatures. Thick layers of bioluminescent algae filled the cracks between the road flagstones, giving the path a honeycombed glow.

Buckle was struck by the appearance of tomb markers and mausoleums lining the sides of the highway, ornate statues and scrolls of marble, granite, pink-orange coral or lapis lazuli, running to the very gates of Atlantis itself. The gravestones were chiseled with the words of a language Buckle recognized as Latin, surely listing the names and accomplishments of the Atlantean dead. How odd to line one’s grand avenue with sarcophagi, he thought. It felt a bit macabre to a man whose clan burned their dead on funeral pyres, but there were many ways to ensure the dead might not be forgotten—at least, not forgotten too quickly.

Once the company reached the nearest dome they marched under it, into its vast shadow away from the sunlight. Buckle felt the presence of the massive, barnacle-coated underside of the dome as it passed twenty feet above him. The Atlantean diver, now seventy-five yards ahead, stopped in the middle of a circle of seven green-coated pillars, jammed the end of her pike into the sand and waited for the group to catch up with her. Once he arrived alongside the woman, Buckle realized they were standing under the surface of a glittering pool, an oval opening into a large interior chamber flooded with light.

Buckle’s skin tingled. Hovering on the other side of the biggest column, one which had some kind of lift built into it, was a gagool. The creature, floating easily, its webbed feet inches above the sand, watched them with its red-ember eyes, motionless except for the constant pumping of its thick reddish-blue gills at the neck.

The Atlantean diver unclipped her weight belt and sailed upward, breaching the surface of the pool. Felix, Kishi and Rachel relieved themselves of their belts and nursed Gustey’s stretcher on their ascent. Tonda followed suit. Buckle signaled for Sabrina and Welly to follow them up.

The last one on the bottom, Buckle glanced up at the surface of the dome pool, now agitated by the many swimmers treading water at its flashing surface. Activity flickered above that, people pulling the divers out of the water. He glanced at Penny Dreadful and pointed up. Penny nodded and shot upwards in a burst of bubbles.

Now alone, the last man, Buckle felt the hairs standing on the back of his neck as he turned to look at the gagool; it stared at him, its big flickering eyes as reflective as two big cauldrons full of clear water. Buckle saw his reflection, his green face inside the diving helmet, looking back at him from the two mirrors of the gagool’s eyes; it looked like his soul peering back at him from the land of the dead.

That was damned unpleasant
, Buckle thought.

Buckle dropped his weight belt and his body ascended, feeling light as a feather after being anchored by lead bricks to the bottom for so long, up into the shimmering white light above, plunging upwards into the sparkling white light of the unknown.

XIII

THE MOON POOL

Buckle’s head broke the surface into a glaring wall of light flooding through his greenish window glass. The weight of the helmet above the water was a struggle but he felt relieved, relieved to be away from the gagool. It would be good to get the helmet off, to breathe air that wasn’t stale.

A pale white hand reached down from above, the fingers impossibly stiff. It was the arm of a statue, a beautiful marble woman leaning over the water. Flesh and blood human beings worked diligently alongside her, their pink and brown faces leaning over the edges of the pool as they fished the divers out of the water. Strong hands with sleeves rolled up to the elbows soon found Buckle, leveraging harness straps under his armpits and winching him out of the water.

Swinging through the air until his diving boots landed on the deck, Buckle’s faceplate fogged and his suit felt heavy, dangerously so, to the point where he was impatient for someone to pry him out of it even as he felt expert hands unstrapping, unscrewing and unbuckling him from the gear. The helmet locks clicked and it lifted, straight up, over his head. The gush of cool air gave him a heady rush as it swept across his damp skin and flooded his lungs with sweetness. The diving chamber smelled like fish and wet leather, along with another deep ocean smell he did not recognize. The busyness of the space assaulted his psyche, used as it was to the muffled claustrophobia of the helmet. The low ceiling pulsed with glass tubes full of a bright, white-amber liquid. He had never seen such a kind of illumination before.

The bulkheads of the oval diving chamber were packed with straightjacket-tidy rows of diving suits, air tanks, weight belts and harpoons, everything gold and cream colored and decorated with elegantly carved seahorses and ocean flora. The four Roman statues anchoring each compass point of the pool were both lovely and given utilitarian purpose, for their heads, arms and tridents sported built-in pulleys for the harnesses as they leveraged bulky divers out of the moon pool.

Buckle’s diving suit was pulled away and he stepped out of the boots. His own leather boots—his entire body—felt weirdly light, even detached from gravity, and it made him a bit woozy. He scanned the crowded bay to make certain Sabrina, Welly and Penny were there—they were—then placed one hand against a bulkhead to steady himself.

For thirty seconds the only sounds were the clank and rattle of the air tanks, the jingle of loose metal buckles and the brush of fabric and sealskin as the Atlanteans—four men and one woman—pried the last members of the
Dart
’s company out of their suits. Buckle noticed the Atlantean men and woman were lean and strong, though a little short—not one exceeded five foot and a half in height—and they smelled odd, emitting body odors not unpleasant but unfamiliar.

“Curse the depths to hell,” Felix muttered.

Buckle looked to Felix, who was supporting Gustey along with Kishi. Gustey looked better, for some color had returned to her face, though she appeared to be uncertain of where she was. Rachel and Tonda stood with them, free of their suits and grim-faced. The
Dart
’s crew had been decimated by the Guardians, losing both José and Marsh in the fight. “I am truly sorry for your losses, Captain Felix,” Buckle said.

“Welcome to Atlantis,” Felix grumbled, his voice heavy and sad. “The price of transit is always too high.”

“Please accept my condolences as well,” Sabrina said. “I hope your submarine can be salvaged.”

“It can and it shall,” Felix said. “The
Dart
isn’t finished yet. That’s for damned certain.”

“I shall send further compensation to you, to help pay for the damages,” Buckle offered. It was a pathetic way to try to ease the loss of life but it was the best he could do.

“Much appreciated, Captain,” Felix said.

“Silence!” the Atlantean diver, freed of her suit, snapped as she eyed the company from the hatchway. Her face was unpleasant, with small eyes and the jawline of a windswept ridge, her skin pearl-pale and her sand-colored hair pulled back against her head with a flat, silver barrette. She wore what looked to be a standard uniform, a tight white blouse and trousers, with rows of leather straps around the biceps and thighs. Her legs below the knees were wrapped with cream-colored puttees down to a set of gray oilskin boots. Air whiffing in and out of her nostrils, she glared at the dripping Penny Dreadful and ducked through the hatchway.

The five Atlantean helpers stepped back and looked uneasy. No one spoke. Buckle waited for Felix to take the lead; the mercenary was the one who knew the Atlanteans, after all. Bubbles gurgled in the moon pool and a gentle rush of fan-driven air whistled faintly from cantilevered vents overhead.

Buckle looked at Sabrina, who shrugged.

“I hope we didn’t get this wet for nothing,” Sabrina whispered.

“They don’t like unannounced visitors,” Kishi said.

“And we killed one of their gagools,” Welly added.

“The Atlanteans know me well and they are a hospitable clan,” Felix said, louder and somewhat angry. “But your insistence on bringing that thing”—he pointed at Penny Dreadful—“has endangered us all!”

“The only reason we survived the Guardian attack was because of this little automaton,” Sabrina countered.

“Silence!” the Atlantean diver roared, returning through the hatchway.

A group of Atlanteans followed the diver into the chamber, led by a woman with the straight-backed bearing and rich perfumed breeze of nobility. Her skin was dark brown and her face, with big blue eyes, high forehead, and a great punch of black curly hair held up in gold lace chains, carried the aspect of a lioness. She wore a full-length stola, a draped wrap of white wool edged with thin purple stripes at the sleeve and shoulders, held in at the waist by a white belt studded with brilliantly colored seashells. Her jewelry was prodigious, in the form of gold and emerald earrings, bracelets and rings, and at her throat hung a cameo carved out of deepening layers of precious blue stone.

More concerning to Buckle were the four men and women flanking the lioness, soldiers wearing bronze breastplates and Roman-patterned helmets over white tunics and knee-length skirts, with seahorse-engraved greaves on their shins and laced sandals on their feet. All four brandished well-polished tridents in their white gloved hands. Each of them also had a smooth, oblong device lined with valves built into the throat guard of their breastplates; Buckle assumed they were some kind of underwater breathing apparatus.

One of the female soldiers, an older woman with four golden seahorses sewn into both sides of her high white collar, held a pistol in her free hand. It may have been the tension that exaggerated Buckle’s vision but to him the muzzle of the firearm looked extraordinarily big, like a scattergun.

As soon as the tall noblewoman’s eyes found Penny Dreadful her demeanor shifted from annoyance to anger. “How dare you, Felix?” she said. “How dare you bring this mechanical abomination back into our city!”

“My passenger insisted, Lady Cressida,” Felix responded quickly, with a quick bow. “And since he is a clan ambassador in a time of great uncertainty I felt compelled to bring him in.”

“And how many gold coins did it take to compel you, Captain Felix?” Lady Cressida replied. “You know our laws. Your mercenary judgment has failed you once again.” She turned to Buckle and Sabrina. “None of you look anything like an ambassador.”

“I am acting for my father,” Buckle said. “Admiral Balthazar Crankshaft of the Crankshaft clan.”

“Turn the machine over to us immediately,” Lady Cressida ordered.

“Lady Cressida,” Buckle answered, “I am here to negotiate an alliance with the leaders of your city.”

Cressida’s eyes whipped to Buckle and back to Penny Dreadful. “Turn the abomination over to us so that it may be destroyed immediately. Then we can talk.”

Buckle glanced at the dripping Penny, then back at Cressida. “This automaton is my property. I shall not turn it over.”

“You have no choice,” Lady Cressida said evenly, menacing in the way of the calm before a storm.

“You have no right to take it,” Buckle replied. He heard Sabrina open the watertight oilskin satchel behind him and felt the press of a sword handle into the palm of his right hand.

“I have every right, for we built it,” Lady Cressida replied and stepped back. “Appropriate the machine,” she ordered.

The four soldiers stepped forward, their trident points gleaming in the light. The older woman advance with her pistol ready, the wide muzzle looming like a sabertooth cave.

Buckle jerked his sword around in front of him, whipping the blade out of the scabbard in the same motion. He heard a swift snap of leather, cloth and steel as Sabrina and Welly followed suit, their two blades joining his in front of the tridents.

The four guards paused. Sword blades and tridents wavered under the bright lights.

“Bad idea, Captain Buckle,” Felix muttered, hedging away, shaking his head. “Bad idea.”

“Crankshaft!” Lady Cressida roared. “You have no idea what that thing is. Do you really wish to die here in a vain defense of this infernal machine?”

Buckle gritted his teeth. He wasn’t going to give up Penny Dreadful. It would be a lousy place to die, however. He felt he should respond, but no words came.

No one moved, the steel blades hanging in the balance.

“Well, this has all gotten off on a rather bad foot,” Sabrina grumbled.