Uncrashable Dakota (2 page)

Above the bar was the row of glass that defined the starboard edge of Il Bambino’s Restaurant. Its chef had abandoned a thriving career in Florence to create a first-class menu for the
Wendell Dakota
’s maiden voyage. On his birthday, Hollis had been treated to Il Bambino’s signature dish—braised rabbit on a bed of prunes in a white wine reduction—which he suspected was a punishment disguised as a gift. Skewering the center of the restaurant was the false smokestack, an exact replica of its two functional sisters that loomed over the back half of the sundeck. Each funnel was emblazoned with a black beetle, the logo of Dakota Aeronautics.

Hollis leaned against the rail and craned his neck in the other direction, toward the bow. Both the promenade and sundecks continued unimpeded for a few hundred feet, then began to slope upward, gently at first, then severely, until Hollis’s eyes were following a vertical wall up into the sky, as high as the smokestacks. This was the forward prop tower, built above the nose of the ship to house the turbine that spun the main propeller—the biggest in the world, and
Propulsion Weekly
’s current centerfold. Only three of the eight steel blades were visible from his vantage point, each the size of a freight-train car.

“I think Mr. Castor is trying to get your attention,” Marius said, pointing toward the dock.

Hollis tore his gaze from the tower. His mother waved up at him. A tall man had joined her on the platform. He put his arms out at his sides, palms up, and cocked his head—the universal gesture for
quit messing around and get on with it.

Hollis gave his stepfather a brusque professional nod. He pulled a glass vial from the breast pocket of his suit and dangled it out over the rail. The crowd hushed and watched him expectantly. The christening ritual for a new airship’s maiden voyage was usually performed by one of the company’s board members, but earlier this morning, Hollis had unwrapped a surprise present to find the vial of dirt. He could still hear his mother’s low, serious voice:

Send her off, Hollis. Your father would have wanted you to.

Down on the dock, photographers hid behind black curtains, thumbs crooked over the triggers of their silver flashbulbs. Hollis glanced up at Marius, who said softly, “If you’d like, I can give you a nudge when the wind’s just right.”

Hollis took a deep breath. “Thanks, but I think I’m supposed to do it myself.”

A proper airship christening was performed by spilling the dirt out into the sky at the precise moment the wind shifted, scattering it
away
from the ship. It was bad luck for the dirt to blow back onto the deck, which was why the more experienced members of the aeronautical community generally performed christenings.

Hollis uncorked the vial and closed his eyes against the blinding pops of a few premature flashbulbs. He felt the wind swirl around him. He concentrated, listening hard, trying to plot its meandering course. The glass vial was getting slippery in his sweaty hand.

Don’t rush it, Hollis.

All at once, the wind began to cool the back of his neck. He pictured the dirt scattering above the crowd. He could practically trace the journey of each little particle through the air. It was now or never.

He tipped the vial.

The crowd cheered. He opened his eyes in time to see the dirt float down in a loose spiral away from the side of the airship before vanishing into the sky. He exhaled. Flashbulbs popped. Frantic photographers rushed to pull glass slides from their cameras as assistants replaced the bulbs. His stepfather beamed. Leaping up onto the platform, his stepbrother, Rob Castor, whistled shrilly between two fingers jammed in the corners of his mouth, then doffed his hat to let hair the color of sun-bleached straw whip in the wind.

Marius saluted and returned to his post at the top of the ramp. Hollis put the empty vial back in his pocket, a souvenir of his first christening. When he glanced down to shield his eyes from the extra-bright glare of a flashbulb surrounded by a white reflecting umbrella, his breath caught in his throat.

A tiny pile of dirt sat atop the otherwise spotless railing, a smudge that hadn’t been carried out into the sky.

He told himself that it could have come from somewhere else. A bit of debris that fell from the prop tower. Ash from a crewman’s cigarette. But he knew that every inch of the ship had been scrubbed, spit-shined, and polished for today’s maiden send-off.

It had to be dirt from the vial.

Hollis leaned his elbows casually against the rail as if he were taking one last look across the dock and nudged the dirt with his sleeve to brush it over the edge. He strained his eyes to make sure every last speck blew away, but such a tiny bit was lost as soon as it hit the swirling air.

2

“
HEY, DAKOTA!
”

When Rob Castor yelled his name, Hollis had already been at the entrance with his mother for an hour, greeting the first-class passengers as they clanked on deck. To distract himself from the secret little smudge of dirt that darkened his thoughts, Hollis was keeping a tally of the old society ladies who insisted upon treating him like the cutest baby in the world. So far he’d endured eleven head pats, seven cheek pinches, and three nightmarish kisses. Now, instead of merely being damp, his clothes were infused with the clashing odors of mothballs and lavender.

“Rob,” he said with relief as the two Castors appeared beside him. At fourteen, Rob stood an inch or two taller than Hollis. Since the day they met nearly three years ago, Rob had always been the heavier one, until a bout of influenza that kept him bedridden on their last voyage aboard the airship
Secret Wish
had left him gaunt and hollow-eyed. Although he’d been fully recovered for several weeks, his former stockiness seemed to have deserted him for good. Equal parts dapper and shabby, he wore a finely tailored pinstripe suit like his father and a beat-up peaked cap that he hid when he slept so Hollis’s mother couldn’t dispose of it.

“How are the celebrities?” Rob leaned in close. “Pungent, it seems.”

“And never ending. The Countess of Rothes tried to peck off my face.”

“How terrible for you. Heavy lies the crown, eh?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

A pair of yelping Pekingese bounced daintily onboard, their leashes attached to the gloved fist of a fierce-looking old maid trailed by a coterie of pursers bearing luggage. With maniacal insistence, the animals demanded the attention of Hollis’s mother and stepfather.

“Did you hear about our class schedule?” Rob asked.

“I assumed it would be the usual.”

“It is. Except it starts today.”

Hollis’s plastered-on smile wavered. “What do you mean, today?”

“I mean today as in these waking hours we’re currently occupying.”

“We’ve never had classes on launch day before.”

“The Pea’s exercising her authority to hit us where it hurts. She’s been cozying up to Captain Quincy.”

The Pea was Miss Betzengraf, who favored green wool dresses too tight for her short, plump figure. She traveled with the aeronautical families, charged with maintaining a normal schedule of lessons amidst the constant chaos of embarking and disembarking, sky-docking and sky-crossing. A few of their classmates insisted that she was a gypsy from Romania who was constantly placing ancient curses upon her two least favorite students, Hollis Dakota and Rob Castor.

“You know,” Hollis said, his mother’s most recent lecture fresh in his mind, “I think we should try a little harder. Go to
some
of the classes, at least.”

Rob shot him a squinty sidelong glance, then nodded solemnly. He removed his cap—first undoing the chin strap that kept it from blowing off his head—and held it across his heart. “You speak the sky’s honest truth, Dakota. We haven’t been fair to Miss Betzengraf. We haven’t been fair to our parents. And most of all—”

“I’m not joking. People are starting to take stock of my behavior.”

Now Hollis was quoting his mother directly. Rob arranged his face into a droopy mask of sadness and regret, wiped an invisible tear from his eye, and flung it down to the deck with a dramatic flourish. “We haven’t been fair to
ourselves
.”

There was a riot of blue and gold as an army of porters rushed past with luggage carts and began dismantling a teetering pile of trunks and boxes dragged aboard by five weary attendants. The dogs transferred their affections to a peacock-feathered handbag. Hollis’s mother and stepfather stiffened their postures. She straightened her dress while he smoothed his necktie.

“Behold,” Rob whispered. “His lordship and the lady Sir Edmund Juniper!”

The Junipers appeared in the shadow of their suitcase mountain. Edmund Juniper was the fourth-richest man in the world and was dressed, as always, like the avid golfer he most certainly was not. (He simply preferred the “fashions of the links.”) Hollis had seen him decked out in plaid shorts for stuffy, unbearable dinners where all the other men wore tuxedos. He also refused to wear sky-boots on the exposed decks, which used to make Hollis’s father agitated, forcing him to fix his spectacles several times a minute. Edmund hailed from an old New York real estate family (the lordship was Rob’s invention) and, as far as Hollis could tell, didn’t do anything except spend his family’s money. According to Rob, this money was very old and arranged in piles.

Edmund strutted over to Jefferson Castor and gave him a vigorous handshake. Then he pulled the cigarette from his mouth and handed it to an attendant who had materialized beside him at just the right moment.

“My whole damn body’s shaking like a leaf!” Edmund said happily, stamping his foot on the deck and visibly unnerving Hollis’s mother and stepfather.

“On behalf of Dakota Aeronautics,” his mother began, “I’d like to welcome you—”

“A ship like this gives off electrical vapors,” Edmund explained, taking her hand, “which I can feel in my toes. Have you met my wife?” He groped the air behind him.

Hollis tried to imitate his mother’s professionalism and held his vacant smile. The newest Mrs. Juniper wore a simple dress that looked light and comfortable, unlike the dense, showy garment Hollis’s mother wore. He figured that when you were as rich as the Junipers, you didn’t have anybody left to impress. Maybe that was why Edmund didn’t seem to care what anyone thought of his domestic arrangement. His divorce had been frowned upon, but high-class reputations had survived worse. It was marrying a nineteen-year-old governess that gave his social circle a case of the horrified gasps.

“And you must be young Master Dakota.”

Mrs. Juniper was standing before him, offering an alarmingly pale hand which dangled at the end of her arm, palm down. Was he supposed to kiss it? She smelled like honeysuckle and had very white teeth. It occurred to Hollis that she was only six years his senior. And married to a stout old man.

“I am the … young master,” he agreed—at the same time wanting desperately to kick himself.
Young master, Hollis? Really?

He could sense Rob’s internal quiver as his stepbrother stifled laughter. And suddenly Rob’s hand was holding Mrs. Juniper’s as he brought it to his lips and kissed it gently.

“Clarissa Juniper,” she said. When Edmund turned to collect her, she gave Hollis a small bow. “We are very much looking forward to spending time on your uncrashable ship. It’s all anyone is talking about.” The newlyweds walked off, arm in arm.

“I hadn’t realized it was
your
ship,” Rob said.

“Oh, shut up.”

“Whatever the young master wishes.”

Rob nodded at a hawklike patrician thudding his cane along the deck with every step. Hollis scoured his brain for the man’s identity. His mother gave him little pop quizzes from time to time, as it would soon be his job to know every important passenger by his or her face.

“Colonel something-or-other,” Hollis said.

“General,” Rob corrected. “Swallowtail Ovaltine the Fourth.”

Making up first-class names was a reliable source of launch-day entertainment, but right now Hollis was vaguely annoyed that he couldn’t think of the man’s actual title. Behind the colonel/general with the percussive cane, a plump little boy was showing a sweat-drenched steward a card trick. The steward pulled a card from a fanned-out deck. The boy screwed up his face, bit his lip, and closed his eyes. Finally he exclaimed, “Three of diamonds!”

The steward reluctantly turned the card toward the boy and said, “
So
close, sir—king of hearts. I’m sure that was your next guess.”

“It was!” the boy said, snatching the card. “You threw me off, that’s all.”

“You are a wonderful and mysterious magician, sir,” the steward said wearily.

“I know.” The boy handed the steward the pile of cards in his hand. “Please arrange these carefully on my night table.”

“Yes, sir.” The steward sighed and clicked his heels together before pocketing the cards and rushing off to attend to the boy’s parents.

“He really does seem like a
wonderful
magician, that one,” Rob said.

“The true young master of this voyage,” Hollis agreed. “So what time’s our first class supposed to be?”

“Dakota, you can’t be serious.”

“I am serious. Except…”

“Ah. I knew you’d come around.”

“We do have to meet up with Delia.”

“
Delia!
” Rob exclaimed, as if he’d just now remembered the name of their friend. “So I’m not worth it, but when Delia enters the picture, you’ve once again conveniently forgotten the location of the classroom.”

“I have that stuff she wanted me to bring her,” Hollis said.

“What stuff?”

“Electrics. Wires. Junk. I don’t know.”

“For a bomb.”

“Not for a bomb, Rob.”

“She’s an anarchist. I always suspected.”

“She is not. She’s just, you know, Delia.”

“Either way,” Rob said. “It’s
yes sir, no sir
until after lunch, right? All
P
s and
Q
s. Then we accidentally get lost on the way to lessons.”