Uncrashable Dakota (14 page)

“Delia,” he said, “is it true that I used to be decent?”

“Compared with what?”

“The way I am now, I guess.”

She paused. “I don’t know how to answer that.”

Most of the time he appreciated Delia’s candor. Right now he just wanted to hear her assurance that he was an okay person, becoming better, not worse. Which was the opposite of how he felt. The fact that he was worrying about himself right now probably meant that he was morally deficient in some way, he thought glumly.

“He popped you good, huh?” It was Maggie, pushing her way to the front of the crowd. She pointed to his mouth. “Got yourself a gusher there.”

Chester, thick arms folded across his chest, appeared next to her and surveyed the scene while he chewed the last of the bread.

Hollis used the inside of his collar to wipe the blood from his upper lip. Hesitantly, he reached toward Delia’s electricity gun. “What do you call that thing?”

She shoved it back into her satchel. “Cosgrove Immobilizer. Patent pending, of course. Probably won’t kill you, but it’ll give you quite the knock-out jolt.”

“
Probably?
”

“I wasn’t really gonna use it on you and Rob.” She held up her right hand. “Apprentice Beetle Keeper’s Honor.”

“Pretty nifty gadget,” Maggie said, sticking a frizzy tangle behind her ear.

“She’s an absolute genius,” Hollis said. He wanted this knife-wielding maniac to understand that he was better friends with Delia than she could ever hope to be.

“Yeah, we made quite the pair, me and her,” Maggie said.

“So you’re from Hell’s Kitchen,” Hollis said, triumphantly deploying his one tidbit about Delia’s childhood.

“Yep. Delia’s just like me,” Maggie said, “only smarter. Smarter’n all the girls at St. Theresa’s combined. Smarter’n you, too.”

“Honestly, Keenan,” Delia said, “that’s enough.”

“St. Theresa’s…” The name was naggingly familiar. It took Hollis a moment to recall where he’d seen it. “‘Know your saints,’ right?”

Delia’s face fell as he reached inside the transmitter bag, feeling for the picture cards. Hollis supposed she’d completely forgotten about them. Her grip tightened on the immobilizer as his fingers closed around one of the cards, but the desperate, calculating look on her face—like she couldn’t decide who to zap first, him or Maggie—made him leave the card in the bag. He showed Delia his empty hand and moved on.

“I have a question about the transmitter you made for me.” Hollis shot a quick glance at Maggie. “Can it be reversed?”

“What are you getting at, HD?”

“If I can get us to central communication, can we tap the wires? I mean, can we sort of turn the transmitter inside out and use it to listen?”

Delia chewed the inside of her cheek, thinking hard. “I’m not gonna say we can … but I’m not gonna say we
can’t
, either.”

“Because if Jefferson Castor has control of the bridge and the lift chamber, I figure he’s also got the main prop tower and everything else. He’s probably even infiltrated the furnace rooms. And he’s not sending messenger pigeons to give his orders. So maybe—”

“If we find a way to listen to his telephone jabber, he might let slip where he stashed your mother and Chief Owens and whoever else he’s grabbed.”

“Right. And where he’s taking us.”

Hollis pictured the construction schematic for the
Wendell Dakota
tacked up on the wall of his mother’s office, next to the portrait of President Lincoln in his retirement cottage, flashing the smile that had turned famously cockeyed when the man reached his nineties. Thin black lines representing telephone wires snaked from the prop tower to the bridge to the lift chambers to a hundred other locations. The details were too intricate to remember, except for one: almost exactly amidships, the lines were bundled inside a central shaft, which had to dead-end somewhere beyond the wall at the other end of the hold.

“Hey, Maggie,” Hollis said, pointing toward the far side of steerage, “is there a way out through there? Like a tunnel, or a hallway, or a space between the walls where you go to…” He wondered what kids did for fun down here. “Drink gin?”

Chester perked up, as if Hollis’s words had reminded him of some important task he had to complete. He mumbled good-bye and hurried away. Maggie aimed a dirty look at his back and then turned to Delia. “I talk to the society boy, you let me borrow your moblizer.”

“Immobilizer,” Delia said. “If you help us, it’s yours. I have a spare.”

“You got a deal, Cosgrove.” Maggie grinned at Hollis. “Follow me.”

13

ROB CASTOR
took the stairs two at a time, stirring up little clouds of sawdust. His mind skipped back through the day, only this time when his stepbrother barged into Delia’s room at some stupid predawn hour, Rob imagined shoving him away and diving back into
Brice Blank and the Carnival Barker’s Mask
. That simple act might have saved them both a lot of grief. He longed for the mind-erasing secretions of the Chinese paladin fly, harvested by the daring archaeologist Atticus Hunter in Rob’s own funny-book series (working title:
Hunter
), which currently existed in a sketch pad hidden in his underwear drawer. A little drop of paladin juice on the tongue for Hollis and another for Rob, and
ZAP
—they’d be friends again like nothing had happened. If only it were that easy to start over.

At the top of the stairs, he stopped to shake out his throbbing hand, ignoring some old man’s braying about soup. He picked his way through the tent city and along the catwalk, hopping onto the teeming gangway and retracing the steps that had brought him down into the hold. His body was still jumpy with adrenaline from the aborted fight. He felt like he could float his way out of steerage. A sudden tug at his sleeve almost made him lash out. It was a little girl.

“Excuse me.”

He picked up his pace without meeting her eyes. The passage up to the third-class bunk rooms was just ahead.

“Excuse me!”

“I’m kind of in a hurry here.”

“You dropped this.”

He stopped. A neatly dressed girl of six or eight or ten (he wasn’t good with ages) handed him a small packet of Herrimann’s pistachios, which he’d bought from a snack cart by the Mount Olympus fountain in the largest first-class ballroom.

“Thanks,” he said, tearing them open. “You want one?”

“What are they?”

“Ancient bird eggs.”

She giggled. “Eww.”

He held one out for her inspection. “Take it.”

She placed it in her upturned palm and peered into the gap in the shell.

“Let me know what you think,” he called back over his shoulder. As he headed into the corridor beyond the hold, lined on either side by trunks and blankets, his anger flared back up and he imagined Hollis’s face as nothing but a pulpy lump. The notion of his father—Dakota Aeronautics’ chief operating officer!—hijacking the airship was ridiculous. Actually, he was glad Chinese paladin fly secretions didn’t exist, because he didn’t want to start over. He wanted Hollis to remember that punch for the rest of his life. His only regret was losing his temper and screaming like a maniac in front of Delia. Popping Hollis a good one and then walking away silently, that would have been—what was that word?—
debonair.

Rob had never come right out and asked, but he was pretty sure that Hollis blamed Rob’s father for his own father’s death, as ridiculous as that was. Sometimes Hollis’s feelings were so obvious they might as well have been on display in the window of the Bloomingdale’s aboard the
Secret Wish
. Other times, everything was bottled up and stoppered tight. Like Brice Blank, Rob considered himself a detector of hidden truths, and in his professional opinion, Hollis was casting blame like a beetle net. Wendell Dakota had had the rotten luck to lean against a decrepit section of railing at the edge of the old D.C. Sky-dock. If anything, it was Wendell’s own fault for refusing to get some underling to oversee the renovations. What kind of company president personally inspected some second-rate dock? His own father had taught him that a boss doesn’t do everything himself—he masters the art of delegating responsibility.

What Hollis couldn’t get over was that Wendell Dakota’s death was an accident, no more or less tragic than Rob’s mother’s death in a hospital bed seventeen minutes after he had entered the world. This was something he often hurled at Hollis in the imaginary arguments he conducted in his head:
At least you got to know both your parents. I only ever had one.
He forced himself to relax his jaw, which popped at the hinges when he clenched his teeth.

The piles of steerage-class belongings ended when he turned the corner and entered third class. Someone had painted drippy hotel signs on the doors of the cramped bunk rooms. Past
THE
WALDORF-ASTORIA
,
THE PLAZA
, and
THE RITZ
, he came to an impromptu tavern that had sprung up in a sparse common room. The mingling smoke of a dozen cheap cigars made his eyes water. Someone inside began to sing in a strong but slurred voice.

As much as he could go for a hot lemonade to help pull himself together, Rob kept moving. He took measured breaths, trying to control another dizzying swell of anger. His hand reached inside the transmitter bag. Putting miles of corridors and staircases between himself and Hollis Dakota didn’t mean anything with instant communication at his fingertips. The machine ruined the purity of a clean break.
Throw it down a garbage chute
, he thought recklessly.
Smash it.
He needed that clean break, at least until he figured out what was really going on.

He imagined trying to explain to Delia Cosgrove why, exactly, he’d felt the need to destroy her invention. Then he shifted the bag so it hung behind him where he couldn’t see it. He was on his own now; he just had to find his father. Surely there was an explanation for the crew’s behavior. He’d been too hasty in his excitement to uncover some grand conspiracy. Maybe the crew went on strike at the last minute and left his father no choice but to replace them with transients and strike-breakers. That would explain their disheveled appearance. And the weather alert seemed to be true: the storm was so big out over the ocean, they were even catching the tail end of it along the coast.

The only thing he couldn’t figure out was why Hollis would make up some crazy kidnapping story about his mother. Maybe he’d just dreamt the entire thing. Rob decided not to care. He was done thinking about Hollis.

At the end of the hallway, he stepped onto an abrupt swatch of sea foam carpeting that led to second class. The stairs were guarded by two men and blocked off with a braided rope. Behind them, a series of framed illustrations depicted the joyful life of a shipyard worker, muscles glistening as he hammered rivets, nailed boards, and hoisted a foamy mug after a satisfying day on the job.

Rob approached with bold steps. No more sneaking around.

“Gentlemen,” he said, tipping his cap.

“No passage here, kid,” said the guard on the left, whose sleepy-looking face drooped like a hound’s.

“I’d be much obliged if one of you would take me to see Mr. Jefferson Castor.”

The other guard, a teenager a few years older than Rob, produced a rag from his back pocket and blew his nose with a great, wet honking noise.

“I said clear the air,” said the older man.

The younger man studied his rag in amazement. “Look at this, Will!”

Will ignored his partner and gestured back down the hall. “Come on, kid, don’t make it hard on yourself. Just get outta here.”

“My name is Robert Castor. I’m Jefferson Castor’s son.”

Will studied Rob’s face.

“No,” said the young one, imitating his partner’s squint, “you ain’t. ’Cause we’re all of us keepin’ a sharp eye out for Robert Castor. We got
orders.
So I think we would know if he up and walked right to us, wouldn’t we, Will?”

“I don’t know,” Will admitted.

“Then just tell me where my father is,” Rob said, “and I’ll find him myself. Don’t let me interrupt your analysis of that handkerchief.”

“Here’s what I’m thinking, Will. What if he’s
not
Mr. Castor’s son, and—hey!”

Rob ducked beneath the rope and charged up the center of the staircase. Will plodded behind him, but the younger guard was quick. Rob felt a tingling whoosh of air from a swiping hand that missed by an inch. Around the corner, he plowed into a startled tangle of doughy flesh, stiff uniform fabric, and flailing limbs. He squirmed and wriggled, but it was no use: he’d run straight into the middle of three more guards. After much yelling and confusion, they righted themselves. Two strong pairs of arms pinned him against the wall. Three pairs of eyes bored into him. He had no idea if these men were waiting for some kind of explanation or just catching their breath before beating him senseless. It was also possible that they were too dull-witted to do anything but hold him until someone else came and took charge of the situation.

“Really should’ve stayed in bed,” Rob said to himself.

“What’s that?” asked a panting bald man whose breath smelled of onions and tobacco.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

The man chuckled. “Whatever you say, kid.”

14

MAGGIE LED HOLLIS
and Delia into a neighborhood of clotheslines and quilts. They scurried to keep up as she darted between battered trunks and baskets, the worldly possessions of entire families packed into squares no bigger than Hollis’s bedroom. In this labyrinth, Hollis felt safer. People were too preoccupied with mending clothes or preparing meals to give him a second look. Hollis marveled at the fresh set of sights and sounds. It was as if an enclave had sprung up within the city of steerage, itself merely a small part of the greater metropolitan area of the
Wendell Dakota
.

“How did you become friends with that one?” Hollis asked Delia quietly, keeping an eye on the messy knot where Maggie’s kerchief joined a clump of hair.