" 'A Daring Midshipman Handles the Situation,'" he read aloud, smirking. For once it was Dylan in the limelight instead of him. "May I keep this?"
The wildcount didn't answer - he was glaring at the ceiling, where a message lizard had appeared.
"Prince Aleksandar," the creature said in Dr. Barlow's voice. "Mr. Sharp and I would like the pleasure of your company in the cargo bay, if possible."
"The cargo bay?" Alek said. "Of course, Dr. Barlow. I'll join you shortly. End message."
Volger waved his hand to shoo the lizard away, but it had already scuttled off into a message tube. "Excellent. Maybe now we'll get some answers."
Alek folded up the newspaper and slipped it into a pocket. "But why would they need me?"
"For the pleasure of your company, of course." The wildcount shrugged. "Surely a lizard wouldn't lie."
The cargo bay smelled like a tannery, a mix of old meat and leather. Long strips of dark brown were piled everywhere, along with a few wooden crates.
"Is this your precious cargo?" Alek asked.
"It's two tons of dried beef, a hundredweight of tranquilizers, and a thousand rounds of machine-gun ammunition," said Dylan, reading from a list. "And a few boxes of something else."
"Something unexpected," Dr. Barlow said. She and Tazza were in the far corner of the bay, staring down into an open crate. "And quite heavy."
"Quite," the loris on her shoulder said, eyeing the crate with displeasure.
Alek looked around for Bovril. It was hanging from the ceiling above Dylan's head. He held his hand up, and the creature crawled down onto his shoulder. Count Volger, of course, did not permit abominations in his presence.
"Guten Tag," the creature said.
"Guten Abend," Alek corrected, then turned to Dr. Barlow. "May I ask why the czar wanted us to pick up a load of dried beef?"
"You may not," she said. "But please take a look at this unexpected cargo. We need your Clanker expertise."
"My Clanker expertise?" Alek joined the boffin beside the crate. Nestled in the packing straw was a jumble of metal parts, shiny and glinting in the darkness. He knelt, reached inside, and pulled one of the parts out. Tazza gave it a sniff and made a whining noise.
It was some kind of electrikal part, about as long as a forearm and topped with two bare wires.
"The czar didn't tell you how to put this all together?"
"There wasn't meant to be any machinery at all," Dylan said. "But there's almost half a ton of parts and tools in here. Enough to drag poor Mr. Newkirk into a pine tree!"
"And all of it Clanker-made," Alek murmured. He stared at another part, a sphere of handblown glass. It fit atop the first part with a satisfying click.
"This looks like an ignition capacitor, like the one aboard my Stormwalker."
"Ignition," Bovril repeated softly.
"So you can tell us the purpose of this device?" Dr. Barlow asked.
"Perhaps." Alek peered down into the crate. There were dozens more parts there, and two more boxes to come. "But I'll need Klopp's help."
"Well, that is a bother." Dr. Barlow sighed. "But I suppose the captain can be convinced. Just see that you're quick about it. We reach our destination tomorrow."
"That soon? Interesting." Alek smiled as he spoke - he'd just seen another part that would fit onto the other two. It was tightly wound with copper wire, at let a thousand turns, like a voltage multiplier. He whistled for a message lizard, then sent it to fetch his men, but didn't wait for them.
In a way it was easy, guessing how the pieces fit together. He'd spent a month helping to keep his Stormwalker running in the wilderness with repaired, stolen, and improvised parts. And the metal and glass pieces before him were hardly improvised - they were elegant, with lines as sinuous as the Leviathan's fabricated wood furniture. As Alek worked, his fingers seemed to grasp the pieces' connections, even though he didn't know the purpose of the whole yet. By the time Klopp and Hoffman had arrived, he'd made a fair start of it.
Perhaps His Serene Highness Aleksandar Prince of Hohenberg wasn't such a waste of hydrogen after all.
Chapter Five
By early the next morning the device was nearly done. The few remaining parts - the knobs and levers of the control panel - were spread across the floor. The dried beef had been removed from the cargo bay to make room, but the scent of new leather remained.
Alek, Dylan, Bauer, and Hoffman had worked without sleep, but Master Klopp had spent most of the night snoozing in a chair, awakening only to shout orders and curse whoever had designed the device. He had declared its graceful lines too fancy, an affront to Clanker principles. Bovril sat on his shoulder, memorizing new German obscenities with glee.
Since the night of the Ottoman Revolution, Klopp had used a cane, grimacing whenever he had to stand up. His battle-walker had fallen during the attack on the sultan's Tesla cannon, struck by the Orient-Express itself.
"ASSEMBLAGE OF THE DEVICE."
Dr. Busk, the Leviathan's surgeon, had said it was lucky the man could walk at all.
The revolution had lasted only one night, but the cost had been high. Lilit's father had been killed, along with a thousand rebel soldiers and countless Ottomans. Whole neighborhoods of the ancient city of Istanbul lay in ashes.
Of course, the battles going on in Europe were ten times worse, especially those between Alek's countrymen and the Russians. In Galicia a horde of fighting bears had met hundreds of machines, a vast collision of flesh and metal that had left Austria reeling. And, as Dylan kept saying, the war was only just beginning.
Newkirk brought them breakfast just as sunlight began to trickle in around the edges of the cargo door.
"What in blazes is that contraption?" he asked.
Alek took the coffeepot from Newkirk's tray and poured a cup.
"A good question." He handed the coffee to Klopp, switching to German. "Any fresh ideas?"
"Well, it's meant to be carried about,em">Of couKlopp said, poking at its long side handles with his cane. "Probably by two men, perhaps a third to operate it."
Alek nodded. Most of the crates had been full of spare parts and special tools; the device itself wasn't so heavy.
"But why not mount it on a vehicle?" Hoffman asked. "You could use the engine's power and save fiddling about with batteries."
"So it's designed for rough terrain," Klopp said.
"Lots of that in Siberia," Dylan spoke up. After a month among Clankers in Istanbul, the boy's German was good enough to follow most conversations now. "And Russia is Darwinist, so vehicles have no engines."
Alek frowned. "A Clanker machine designed for use by Darwinists?"
"Custom made for wherever we're headed, then." Klopp gently tapped the three glass spheres at its top. "These will react to magnetic fields."
"Magnetic," Bovril said from Klopp's shoulder, rolling the word around in its mouth.
Ignoring the engine grease under his fingernails, Alek took a piece of bacon from Newkirk's tray. The night's work had left him ravenous. "Meaning what, Master Klopp?"
"I still don't know, young master. Perhaps it's some kind of navigating machine."
"Awfully big for a compass," Alek said. And far too beautiful for anything so mundane. Most of the pieces had been milled by hand, as if its inventor hadn't wanted mass-produced parts to sully his vision.
"If I may ask something, sir?" Bauer asked.
Alek nodded. "Of course, Hans."
Bauer turned to Dylan. "We might understand this machine better if we knew why the czar tried to sneak it past you."
"Dr. Barlow reckons the czar doesn't know about this machine," Dylan said. "You see, the man we're headed toward has a reputation. He's a bit mad. The sort of fellow who might bribe a Russian officer to smuggle something for him, without thinking of the consequences. The lady boffin never liked the fellow, she says, and this just confirms that he's a . . ." He shrugged and switched to English, "A bum-rag."
"Bum-rag," Bovril said, and giggled.
"But who is he?" Alek asked in English.
Dylan shrugged again. "A Clanker boffin of some kind. That's all Dr. Barlow will say."
Alek finished his bacon, then looked at the parts scattered all around them and sighed. "Well, let's finish and see what happens when we turn it on."
"Is that a good idea?" Dylan looked down at the batteries, which Hoffman was charging with the power lines for the airship's searchlights. "It's stored enough electricity to throw sparks, or even explode. And we're hanging from a million cubic feet of hydrogen!"
Alek turned to Klopp and said in German, "Dylan thinks this could be dangerous."
"Nonsense." Klopp prodded the battery case with his cane. "It's designed to run for a long time at low voltage."
"Or designed to look that way," Dylan said, then switched to English. "Newkirk, fetch Dr. Barlow, would you?"
The other middy nodded and scampered off, looking happy to leave the Clanker device behind.
As they waited, Alek put together the control panel, polishing every piece with his sleeve. It was good to feel useful again, to have built something, even if he had no idea what it was.
When Dr. Barlow arrived, she walked once around the machine, both she and the creature on her shoulder inspecting it closely. The two lorises jabbered to each other, Bovril repeating the names of electrikal parts that it had learned during the night.
"Well done, all of you," Dr. Barlow said in her flawless German. "I take it this is a magnetic device of some kind?"
"Yes, ma'am." Klopp glanced at Dylan. "And I'm certain it won't explode."
"I should hope not." Dr. Barlow took a step back. "Well, we haven't much time. If you please, Alek, let's find out what it does."
"If you please," her loris added imperiously, which made Bovril giggle.
Alek took a slow breath, his hand pausing over the power switch. For a moment he wondered if Dylan might be right. They had no idea what this machine was.
But they'd spent all night putting the device together. There was no point in letting it sit here. He turned the power switch. . . .
For a moment nothing happened, but then a flickering glow appeared in each of the three glass spheres on the machine's top. In the drafty cargo bay Alek felt heat emanating from the machine, and a soft whine built in his ears.
The two lorises began to imitate the sound, and then Tazza joined in, until the cargo bay was humming. A sliver of light came into being inside each of the glass spheres, an electrikal disturbance, like a tiny, trapped bolt of lightning.
"Most intriguing," Dr. Barlow said.
"Aye, but what is it?" Dylan asked.
"As a biologist, I'm sure I don't know." The lady boffin lifted Bovril from Klopp's shoulder. "But our perspicacious friend has been watching and listening all night."
She placed the loris on the floor. It immediately clambered onto the machine, sniffing the batteries, the control panel, and finally the three glass spheres. While it moved, it kept up a steady nonsense conversation with Dr. Barlow's loris, the two beasts repeating the names of electrikal parts and concepts to each other.
Alek watched with bemusement. He'd always wondered how Dr. Barlow had expected these creatures to keepowettomans out of the war. They were charming enough but hardly likely to sway an entire empire toward Darwinism. He half suspected they had been only a ruse, an excuse to take the Leviathan to Istanbul, and that the real plan had always been to force the strait with the behemoth.