Uncrashable Dakota (28 page)

“We’re not going to the sundeck,” Hollis said firmly. “I’m getting us all out of here right now.”

A cold gust of air slammed into them. First class had become drafty. When the lanterns finally went out, they were crawling up the steep floor. Ahead, the end of the canted hallway looked like film of a starry night projected on a screen. Hollis couldn’t make sense of the angle.

The bow of the ship was plunging downward, faster and faster. They were scrabbling at the carpet, trying to bury their fingers in its plush threads.

Above them was nothing but sky.

They climbed the last few vertical feet and clung to protruding wreckage; nail-studded boards and iron girders, once laid flat supporting the first-class deck, now poking up into the night. Hollis and his mother held on with both hands. Maggie scrambled onto a perch of torn carpet and wood. Chester dangled, his one good arm wrapped around a board. Below their feet, the hallway had become a vertical shaft. Furniture crashed against the stateroom door that had once marked the end of the hall but now served as the floor. Hollis couldn’t see very much of this because it was dark at the bottom, but he could hear the tumult of mirrors, paintings, end tables, and ottomans.

The
Wendell Dakota
had cracked like an egg, splitting amidships, and the two halves were floating side by side, upended.

As they peered over the rim, a vast cross-section of the decks lay before them. It was like gazing across the top of a moonlit labyrinth. Hollis picked out the flat line of the second-class deck. If the wind weren’t whipping around, he could have walked along the paths created by the exposed, severed interior.

In its death throes, the dark ship was silent.

Hollis searched the skies for shimmering negative space, an impossibly airborne collection of rubble,
anything
that might be Samuel’s ship. Even if it had been knocked around by the split, Rob should have figured out a way to keep it hovering nearby. Hollis had made it work, and his stepbrother was even better at things like that. Had he accidentally rehidden the ship when he’d pulled those levers?

“Hollis,” his mother said. The rest of her words were lost to the wind. A cloud covered the moon, and her face retreated into shadow.

“It’ll be here,” Hollis yelled. “It’s a ship. Nobody let go.”

His body was so heavy. Fatigue was a soothing voice telling him to relax his grip. His toes kept digging into the carpet. The moon came back, and his mother’s eyes were spectral pools.

“There!” Maggie yelled.

A creature was picking its way, squidlike, along the decks of the cross-sectioned ship. It was coming toward them. Not really touching the decks, Hollis realized as it approached, but floating, just barely. There was a hitch in its movement, a tremulous hesitation as if it were just learning how to be mobile.

It wasn’t until it was almost on top of them that Hollis figured out he was looking at one of the spiders from the lift chambers. The machine was shedding parts, damaged beyond repair, but it was propped up in the air by swarms of beetles. Chester began to cough. Nozzled fingers descended all around them, then legs of wire and wood. Hollis was struck by the pungent gas. The stars were eclipsed by the unwieldy willow-tree of a machine. Back in the chamber Hollis had listened to its rhythmic hisses and clanks. Now it was chirping. His mother, Maggie, and Chester disappeared as it twined around them.

“Get on!” cried a familiar voice.

“Delia?”

He caught a glimpse of her sitting astride one of the legs, just in front of the shattered bubble. Surrounded on all sides by the many-limbed spider teeming with beetles, he let go of the ship one hand at a time and transferred his grip to the machine. He closed his eyes and felt his body ascend.

30

THE LANDING PLATFORMS
at the Washington, D.C. Sky-dock were tiered gardens bursting with cherry blossoms. Rows of tall iron lamps in the shape of trees lit the docks, painting the undersides of incoming life-ships with a pale glow. Fifty-three crossed the sky from the floating wreck of the
Wendell Dakota
to the dock under their own power. Twenty-six drifted. Four collided in the dark. One crashed into the Potomac. Emergency crewmen, summoned from their beds, launched sky-canoes at stranded ships. Hysteria reigned. It was not a cold night, but rescued passengers huddled under blankets, crowding the cones of light beneath the lamps. They had had enough of the dark. They sipped cocoa and coffee and tea until it ran out and more had to be trucked in from a warehouse in Bethesda. A few glittering women were laden with as many jewels and family heirlooms as they could fit on their bodies. Lone, furtive men clutched rescued cashboxes. Others smoked cigars and chatted. What a story! Some had escaped in their pajamas. As the night wore on, families were reunited, or they weren’t.

A photographer for the
Evening Star
happened to catch the stupendous arrival of what appeared to be a cluster of driftwood and machine parts. By the time his camera was ready, crewmen had aimed the sky-dock’s beacons at the ungainly thing. Spotlights played along a thicket of beetles. Someone said it was a spider. The photographer thought it looked more like a family of squid dragging scarves of seaweed and kelp through the air. One man was in favor of shooting it. Crewmen cleared a landing platform as best they could. It was coming in fast. Like a nervous soldier in a trench, the photographer waited until the last possible moment to trigger his flashbulb. The spider was almost upon him, its finger-tubes dragging across the dock, when he captured the image that would win him the 1912 Thayer Prize: a girl in a tattered dress clinging to one of the legs, her hands lost among the beetles, eyes shut tight against the flash. He was so intent on getting another picture of her that he missed the four others disembarking from their hidden berths.

A freelance reporter recognized one of them as Lucy Dakota, and it wasn’t long before his colleagues picked up the scent. The night galloped along in a frenzy of questions and photographs. She gave statement after weary statement to reporters. Around four in the morning, when government aviation inspectors finished hauling off hijackers—and a number of steerage passengers who weren’t hijackers—she had to tell the whole story again from the beginning. Of the spider’s other mysterious passengers, the big lug of a boy was seen to immediately, as his wounds were severe. The red-haired girl stayed by his side. The subject of the photographer’s lucky picture prowled the dock, lending a hand here and there, but mostly just walking, until a glass of water was forced upon her by one of the volunteer nurses who had begun to arrive in droves.

When the lamplights began to fade into the breaking dawn, the final passenger from the night’s most-talked-about arrival was alone at the edge of the dock, sitting cross-legged in front of a memorial plaque affixed to the reconstructed railing. He was watching the two halves of the great airship. They were drifting very slowly, keeping pace with one another. There was nothing between them but empty sky.

The photographer had already packed away his equipment—he was looking forward to a stiff drink and a long nap. But when he saw the boy, he paused for a moment. There was nothing special about the scene, just another shell-shocked passenger collecting his thoughts, gazing with wonder at the magnificent remains of the greatest airship in the world. And yet something drew him closer. The boy had a heavy reference book in his lap. The photographer watched him move a finger inside the book as if it were a telegraph device. Over and over he tapped out a message, looking up into the sky, then back down at his lap, as if he were waiting for an answer.

EPILOGUE

HOLLIS MADE THE DECISION
to move the press conference indoors. It was the end of June, and the shipyard was a sunbaked expanse of dust and heat. He had planned a ceremonial riveting, but a less dramatic unveiling would have to do. When he’d asked his mother if that was okay, she’d told him it was his ship, his decision.

The crowd funneled into the empty hangar and filled the neat rows of folding chairs. Reporters jostled at the edges, and when Hollis took the podium, he was flanked by photographers. High above, the beams of the vaulted ceiling met in a point. He forced himself to look down at his notes. The words jumbled together. He’d practiced a million times in front of the mirror, in front of his mother, in front of Delia, and now he felt unable to string together a single sentence. He took a deep breath. It was just a little speech. He reminded himself that the inquest was over, that Dakota Aeronautics had been absolved of any blame. He wasn’t testifying before some grim congressional committee. He was giving people a glimpse into the future.

“Thank you all for coming.” His voice sounded squeaky, and he was already talking too fast. He wanted to pull the sheet away from the easel and get it over with. But first, the notes. His speech had been written and revised countless times by the company’s advertising team. It was important for him to learn how to sell his ideas to the public.

“I loved my father,” he said.

In the front row, his mother, who knew the speech by heart, looked at him curiously. Next to her, Delia sat with her hands folded politely in her lap.

“I miss him every day,” Hollis continued to improvise. “So I want to start with a moment of silence for the people who never made it off the airship.” He counted to sixty in his head, then resumed. “As much as I want to tell you that when it comes time for me to take my place at the head of the company, I’ll keep moving along the path that my father and mother set out, I can’t. The
Wendell Dakota
was the last airship of its kind.”

He paused for the murmur to ripple through the crowd. Reporters jotted furiously. He tucked the notecards into the pocket of his jacket.

“Let me just say that my mother is still in charge. She decides when I’m ready to take over. I still have a lot to learn before that day.”

“Obviously!” someone yelled from the back. Hollis waited for the laughter to die down. He caught his mother’s eye, and she gave him a slight nod:
Go on.

“We’ve always tried to stick to the rules, to make air travel as comfortable as possible. But I’ve been thinking a lot about rules lately, and I wanted to give Dakota passengers a chance to break them a little bit.”

With that, he whisked the sheet away from the easel with a flourish. He was relieved that he didn’t send the blueprints crashing to the ground. He crossed his arms and smiled at the design while the crowd surged forward to get a better look. Flashbulbs popped.

The barrage of questions began, everyone yelling over everyone else. Hollis was forced to point to one reporter at a time.

“You can’t seriously intend to put first-class staterooms alongside third-class bunks
on the same deck
?”

“Why not? Next question, please.”

“Yeah, where’s the steerage hold supposed to be?”

“There is no steerage hold. Everyone gets a bunk.”

“Your ship will be the darling of the progressive papers, I’m sure, Mr. Dakota. But how, exactly, does it stay in the air? I only see one lift chamber.”

Hollis grinned at Delia. “We’ve got our best people working on some new ideas.”

*   *   *

AFTER HE’D FIELDED
the last of the questions and the reporters scurried off to file their stories, his mother took to the podium to reassure some very nervous-looking board members about the profitability of faster, more affordable air travel. Hollis wandered off with Delia, not wanting to listen to another word about budgets or company policy or shareholders. At the edge of the hangar, they paused to watch a stray mutt retrieve sticks tossed by a few off-duty workmen. Across the yard, the framework of a new ship shone like a ruby in the light of the setting sun.
Monster bones
, he thought.

Maggie and Chester came around the corner.

“About time!” Delia said.

“We miss anything good?”

“Unbelievable.” Hollis shook his head. “You were supposed to be here.”

“Take it easy, Dakota. Chester was getting his cast off.”

Chester held up his arm and rotated his wrist.

“Looks like you found time for a haircut, too,” Hollis said, rubbing the fuzz of Chester’s newly shaved head.

“The nurse did that. She said I had a lice problem.”

Hollis pulled his hand away. One of the workmen launched an apple core. The dog loped after it. An airship from Newark was cruising past Manhattan, and the sound of the distant propeller thudded across the yard.

“You think he’s still up there?” Hollis asked.

Delia watched the sky, as if Samuel’s ship were going to suddenly appear above them. “Well, I don’t think they’d risk a landing. Unless they flew somewhere really remote.”

“Why doesn’t he just come down? We were working things out. We were so close.”

“Would you, if it was your dad up there?”

Hollis didn’t have an answer for that.

“You know what I been wondering?” Maggie asked. Her eye had healed. She was wearing a brand-new Dakota Aeronautics handkerchief. “What are they eating up there?”

“I really don’t want to know.” Hollis said, walking toward the low-slung brick building that housed the new design office. Before he got too far away, he turned back and waved. “See you tomorrow, then?”

But they were all watching the airship head out to sea.

FOR
TONY

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Massive airship-sized thanks to Lauren O’Reilly for her unflagging love, support, and encouragement over the years. I’d like to thank my parents for providing constant artistic and personal inspiration.

My deepest thanks to my agent, Elana Roth, for her invaluable guidance and savvy insight into matters both on and off the page.

This book would not exist without the jaw-dropping expertise of my editor, Noa Wheeler, whose wide-ranging intelligence and attention to the oddest little details never ceases to amaze.