The White Oak (10 page)

The ferry is a large and frightful vessel, black as the river itself and barely seaworthy, more like a raft than a boat. It sits low in the water and has no guardrails, seats, or cabins. Passengers push and jockey for a position in the center of the boat, where there’s less danger of tumbling off into the river. Lucas tells me that the two huge fans in the back propel the boat across the thick water. The fans are enclosed in metal cages furred with greasy black soot.

“We have to stand near the fans,” Lucas says. He is pushing through the crowd and leading me toward the back. I pause when I see the boatswain drawing in the ropes and wrapping them around a post near the fans.

“I don’t want to stand near the boatswain,” I whisper.

“It’ll be okay,” Lucas says. The boatswain finishes pulling in the moorings at the back of the boat, then goes to the front. Lucas takes the band off his slingshot and uses it to tie up my hair. “When the fans start,” says Lucas, “grab on to this post and don’t let it go.”

“On to that?” I say in disgust. The wet ropes ooze foul-smelling sludge from the river.

“Yes,” he says firmly.

“But it’s not safe,” I plead. “There are poisons in the river.” I look around for something else to hold on to. There is nothing.

“Trust me, Cora,” Lucas says. “This is the only way.”

I nod unhappily and put my hand on the ropes—they are warm and sticky, bristled with thick hairs and dripping with the river’s noxious tar. Their stench is so strong I have to hold my breath to keep from gagging. Lucas is affected by it too. The fumes seem to burn him slightly.

The boatswain makes his way back to the fans, pausing behind me to pull down my hair. I swat his hand away and tie my hair back up. He cackles softly and says “I’ll get you” under his breath as he opens the control box next to the fans and switches them on. They moan as they come to life and draw the thick, putrid air between their enormous metal blades.

Lucas and I hug the mooring post as the boat lurches forward and makes a sharp turn from the dock. A dozen passengers tumble across the deck and into the water. Their efforts to swim are useless. They are pulled down like beasts in a tar pit.

Other passengers try to save the struggling souls, but the boat is moving too fast now, and all we can do is watch from a growing distance as Tartarus consumes them. A ripple of panic passes through the crowd, and I hear the boatswain laughing quietly at our misfortune.

The ferryman stands at the bow, both hands on a massive chrome wheel—the only part of the boat not black and with tar. Despite the thick water, the boat moves swiftly, and the passengers huddle together for safety as we race across the viscous surface.

The woman with the baby who stood ahead of me in the boarding line makes her way toward us to share our secure mooring. She is right next to us when the boat lurches and she stumbles, dropping her baby. The boatswain catches the child and the woman smiles at him. Grateful, but wary, she holds out her arms to take the child, but the boatswain cackles menacingly.

“Please give him back,” she begs.

The boatswain takes one of the baby’s tiny arms between his dirty fingers, and starts to place it into the fan cage where the sharp blades will slice it to bits.

The mother screams and tries to grab the child, but the boatswain kicks her hard and she falls to the deck, crying and pleading. Everyone is horrified, but no one has the courage to oppose him. He laughs as he teases the mother. The more she trembles and cries, the happier he becomes. I make a move as if to grab the baby myself, but Lucas puts a hand on my shoulder and shakes his head. The boatswain is about to push the baby’s arm into the fan when he stops short, cries out in pain, and lets go of the child. Lucas catches it. The boatswain’s foot has been nailed to the deck with Lucas’s pocketknife. The mother takes her baby and backs away as the boatswain pulls the knife out of his foot and lunges vengefully at Lucas. But Lucas is quick. He grabs the boatswains’ arm and twists it, recovering the knife. Lucas studied martial arts when he was alive and down here, his skills seem to trump his lack of substance. Brandishing the knife, he shoves the boatswain back into the fans.

“Boatswain!” the ferryman yells.

The boatswain scrambles back to his position before the ferryman can raise his whip. He gives us a look that promises revenge.

“Keep your head down,” Lucas whispers. “The bugs are coming.”

I look up and see black clouds closing in on us. The clouds are thick swarms of biting insects ranging in size from smaller than a fingernail to larger than my fist. I watch as they begin to attack the shades, feeding off them like monstrous mosquitoes. The passengers scream and swat, closing their mouths and eyes tight to keep the bugs out. They wave their arms and stomp their feet to shoo them away. This worsens their already precarious balance. A few of them fall overboard or knock over the passengers next to them.

The boatswain quietly turns up the fans and the strong pull of the wind draws the insects away from Lucas and me. We keep our heads low, hoping the other passengers don’t notice how comfortable we are in the midst of the frenzy.

When we pass through the swarm and reach the center of the river, I let out a deep breath and start to relax, but Lucas grips his knife and looks around warily. The boatswain wedges himself between the two fans, and even the ferryman seems on edge.

“What’s going on?” I say.

“Watch the water,” Lucas whispers.

I stare out across the still, black water and see them—huge, thick tentacles are rising out of the ooze, waving about blindly, looking for food. There are hundreds of them and there is no way to go around them. A forest of eel-like arms fills the center of the river as far up and downstream as we can see.

The ferryman steers the boat with one hand and holds his whip at the ready with the other. The passengers watch, terrified, as a tentacle emerges from behind us, reaches across the deck, and gropes blindly for a victim. Everyone scrambles out of the way as the ferryman uses his whip to slice the tentacle clean off. It falls, with a thud, on the deck, crushing two people. The ferryman pushes it back into the river. Moments later, another tentacle grabs a passenger and drags him below the surface. Dozens of tentacles surround the boat, grabbing souls from our raft like hors d’oeuvres off a tray. One of them reaches toward us, and Lucas stabs it with his knife. It recoils like a snail shrinking into its shell.

“This is worse than usual,” the boatswain mumbles, so focused on his own survival that for once he doesn’t take pleasure in the other passengers’ suffering. The grim look on his face worries me. The ferryman’s whip is snapping at the predators. They retreat as soon as they feel the sting of the whip, but there are too many of them.

“Increase speed!” the ferryman shouts. The boatswain turns up the fans and the boat lurches forward, causing a small crowd of passengers to roll into the river, where the monsters quickly drag them down.

We sail out of danger, and I breathe again. My shoulders are stiff with tension, but I can’t let go of it.

We’re approaching the City. Its size is incomprehensible. An iron planet, blackened with oil and polished smooth. Not a single door or window interrupts the slick, impenetrable surface.

“How do we get inside?” I whisper to Lucas.

“You’ll see,” he replies, keeping an eye on the boatswain.

There is something terrifying, awesome, about the sphere. It rotates in the oily water, and at first appears to be rolling toward us, but it’s turning in place, creating a subtle wake that gently rocks our boat. Bilge pipes appear just above the surface of the water, flushing the City’s waste, then closing before they are submerged in the river. We seem to be on a collision course with the sphere, and the passengers are screaming in fright. The ferryman cracks his whip to silence them.

“It’ll be okay,” Lucas whispers. “Just hold on.”

As we get closer, I see an opening form in the surface of the sphere. A pier extends outward, with a screeching of metal, like a branch growing from a tree. The opening widens but stays in the same position, just above the water, even as the sphere continues to turn. I can see, as we get closer, that the opening is tearing and then healing over before it submerges in the water.

“We have to be the first off the boat,” Lucas whispers. The raft is almost at the dock when he lets go of the post and says, “Follow me.” Lucas starts toward the side of the raft, but the moment he moves away, the boatswain is on me, pressing me against the post, holding my arms and loosening my hair. As my long hair catches on the wind and drifts toward the fans he whispers, “You’ll be scalped. When your hair twists around those blades, the skin on your head—maybe your whole head—will be pulled right off.” Then he laughs, holding my arms tighter and pressing my face into the ropes so that I can’t scream for Lucas.

My hair is being drawn into the fan cage. The blades beat against the ends. Any moment they will catch—and that will be the end of me. I’m seething with hatred for the boatswain, but then an idea comes to me. I reach my foot back and stomp with all my strength, hoping to pound his injured foot. I hit the mark and the boatswain screams in pain and loosens his grip for a moment. I manage to wrench my head free to yell, and Lucas is there in an instant, pulling the boatswain off me and grabbing my hair from the fan cage.

The dock is only a few feet away. The ferryman is yelling at the distracted boatswain to slow the fans and prepare to dock. The boatswain leaves us alone to focus on his work, his fear of the ferryman greater than his game with Lucas and me.

“Come on,” Lucas says, taking my hand and pulling me toward the edge of the raft. It slams into the pier a moment later and we jump off. Everyone behind us begins pushing and shoving to get away from that horrible craft.

From a distance, the sphere looked solid, but up close I see that it’s made of thousands of parts. The outer shell is formed by thick cast-iron plates that shift continuously in response to movement underneath. Several of the metal plates screech and clank, then pull apart, creating a gate about the size of a two-story building. Lucas and I run along the dock to be among the first to get to the gate. Iron bars with a single cagelike turnstile block the entrance. The crowd swarms and pushes on the turnstile, but it’s locked in place. The metal pier continues into the sphere about a hundred feet, forming a walkway through the shell that’s as treacherous as the river. The bands of metal that form the inner shell of the globe spin at different speeds, cutting through the walkway like guillotine blades. Some move so quickly that they’re only a blur. It’s like a giant armillary sphere with orbiting rings and metal plates that shuffle like puzzle pieces to open at the waterline and close again as the sphere plunges into the river, its wake rippling under the dock.

Lucas and I stand on tiptoe and try to peer through the gate. I see that the globe is an old machine. It must have been shiny and perfect when it was first made, but now it’s rusty, and it groans and clanks like an old tractor.

Behind us, shades push and clamor to get away from the ferry, off the dock, and through the metal turnstile. They’re crammed up against the iron bars, waiting to get in.

“Form a line!” a squeaky voice yells from above. The shades look up to see a troll-like man in a metal basket looking down at them. The basket, attached to a swiveling hydraulic arm, holds the little man high above the crowd. “I am the gatekeeper,” he says, as his basket swoops down and hovers above them, then glides down to lock into place next to the turnstile. His flabby body protrudes between the metal slats of the basket. He has thick, wrinkled skin and a flat head, and his toad eyes stare, unblinking, from behind tiny rectangular glasses. “Single file,” he croaks.

The crowd pushes and stumbles until an acceptable line is formed. It snakes down the dock all the way back to the ferry. Anxious to get inside, the crowd pushes the first shade toward the turnstile.

“Hold it!” the gatekeeper yells. “We can’t start without the scanner. Where’s the boatswain?”