Ganymede (5 page)

Intrigued, Andan Cly nodded. “So what are we talking about?” he asked. “Pitch and the like, for seals? Masks? Pump equipment?”

“All that and more. We need canvas, lumber, charcoal for filters, coal for the furnaces, and that’s just the beginning.” He sighed. “Last week we ran out of coffee, and I thought the chemists would start an uprising.”

“It can be a lifesaver,” Cly acknowledged. “Sharpens the mind, and the hands, too.”

“That’s what they tell me.” Yaozu abandoned the beer glass, now more empty than full. “This will be an enormous undertaking, and I’m happy to finance it. Minnericht was an able tinkerer, but some of his works are not so stable or permanent as one might wish.”

The ensuing silence in the saloon was so thick, you could spoon it into a bowl. Cly realized that everyone had been listening in, but he was still startled to feel the eyes of everyone present glued to himself and Yaozu.

In a normal speaking voice, intended to be overheard, his companion added, “For now, things are as safe as always, of course. But there’s room for improvement, don’t you think? Here—” He pulled out some coins, one of which appeared to be pure gold. Placing them on the counter, he added, “Let us take a walk. We can discuss your fee.”

Andan Cly wasn’t sure how he felt about taking a stroll with Minnericht’s former right-hand man, but there was more to be said, and Yaozu was unwilling to say it in front of an audience. The captain couldn’t blame him, so he shot Lucy a two-fingered wave and followed the Chinaman out the sealed door, into the dark, mulch-smelling spots beneath the city.

Both men carried gas masks for convenience or emergency, but the masks were not required in the unfinished basement wonderland. There, forests of brick created a dank labyrinth that unfolded with bends, kinks, and curves under the streets as far as the Seattle wall extended, in every direction. It would have been an impenetrable place, blacker than any night without a moon, except that lanterns were hung on hooks at the spots where corners crossed, and at the mouths of the tunnel entrances.

Yaozu unhooked a lantern and turned the knob to raise its wick. He offered the lamp to Andan Cly, who lifted it above his head. Courtesy of his prodigious height, the whole quarter was bathed in a yolk-yellow glow.

“This way, Captain. Toward the vaults. If we take the long way around, I can show you what I mean.”

The corridor was wide and flanked by the exposed wet bricks that characterized so much of the underground’s topography. Its floor had been packed, but it was not paved in any way; the surface was soggy from the atmospheric moisture—seeping rains above, drizzling down long-dead tree roots and filtering past the houses and businesses of the polluted city.

The air captain and the oriental man walked side by side, their feet struggling slightly with the mucky path. And as they pushed onward, back farther and deeper away from the buried saloon called Maynard’s, Yaozu explained.

“I am fond of this particular passage. It sees little travel, partly because”—he gave his dirty boots a rueful gaze—“no one ever installed flagstones or slats. And up ahead, one of the walls has crumbled across the path.”

“Then why do you like it so much?” Cly asked, doing his best to keep the lantern steady. But with every step, shadows danced and kicked to the sway of the light, up and down the moss-covered walls and along the black-mud footway.

“Because it very nearly connects our Chinatown to your vaults, and to the storage quarters back beneath Commercial Street.”

Andan Cly said, “Huh. I can see why that would be useful. So you want to clean it out? Shore it up?”

“I do. However, two walls will need to come down in order to make the way passable by track and mining cart,” he replied, referencing the handcarts and buckets by which some of the residents moved supplies and toted important items. “And above those walls, new sections of street-level buildings must be sealed against the blight.”

“Gotcha.”

“Also, if we expand and fix this passage, we could turn one of the offshoot basements into another pump room.”

“Do we
need
another pump room? The air’s plenty breathable down here.”

“So far,” Yaozu agreed, “but in the last few weeks, the workers have been keeping longer hours, and more coal is being used to power the pumps. My engineers suggest that it’s a maintenance issue. Therefore, I wish to invest in maintenance procedures. I want to clean the pump tubes, all two to three hundred feet of them, one after another.”

Cly made a low, worried whistle. “That sounds like a big job.”

“Yes—a job that will require the pumps to be shut down for cleaning, one at a time. But before we can begin such a chore, supplementary pumps must be operational. Do you understand?”

“I do,” he said thoughtfully. Then he stopped and said, “And this must be the brick pile.”

Yaozu nodded. “You first? Since you’re holding the light.”

They scaled the bricks and slid down the other side. Cly dusted off his pants and observed, “The kind of thing you’re talking about … big renovations, big improvements … is going to take time. And money.”

“Money we have, and time, too—though less of the latter than the former.”

The path split before them, and Yaozu urged Andan Cly down the right fork.

“How much time?”

“Impossible to say. The tubes and pumps have held for years, and might hold for years to come. Or they might not.”

“What about those engineers you mentioned?” Cly asked. “Can they give you a better idea?”

“They’re trying, but they are new to the city and still learning the finer points of its workings. I have recruited them with
generous
paychecks. And I am trusting your confidence on this matter when I tell you—” He paused and looked up into the giant’s face. “—I’m burning through Minnericht’s coffers at a rather alarming rate. He left a fortune, of course. He hoarded it like a dragon, underneath King Street Station. But it is
costing
a fortune to keep this place livable.”

The captain asked, “Then why are you going to all this trouble? Does the sap really make that much money, to make it all worth this?”

A thin, slow smile spread across Yaozu’s face, and it was not entirely pleasant. “Oh,
yes
. And the potential for more money still is
staggering
. The gas—this punishing, brutal substance that killed the city above us—it offers us the means to save it. With better processing and more efficient means of survival underground, these doornails”—he used the white men’s slang for the underground citizens—“could make more money than Californians have ever dug out of their rocks.”

“And you.”

“Me?”

“You stand to make a bundle, too, don’t you?”

“Absolutely. But as I was sometimes forced to wonder, with regards to my former … employer, what does it profit a man to be wealthy, but to live in the midst of such…” He hunted for a word, and settled on one. “Instability? It was obscene to me, how much he could have done for this place—and how little interest he showed in doing so.”

“So why don’t you make your money and leave? With what’s left of Minnericht’s stash, you could live like a king outside these walls. Everybody knows it. Everybody wonders.”

“Everybody knows it?” Yaozu asked, his understated smile fixed in place. “I wonder what else everybody knows.” He gazed down the pathway and once more struck out for it. “But to answer your question, I stay here because I want to. I like this settlement where a man like me, or like you”—he gestured one long hand toward Cly’s chest—“can live undisturbed by others.”

“But
I
don’t live here.”

“You could if you wished; you’d fit right in. Perhaps,” he said, watching Cly duck to dodge a low-hanging support beam, “less so in the literal sense. I’ve often thought it must be strange to be a man of your size. Like Gulliver in Lilliput, at times.”

Cly was familiar with the tale, and Yaozu wasn’t the first to make that comparison. The captain shrugged as he ducked another beam. “I’ve been big my whole life. You get used to it. I’ve known a few dwarfs—a couple of them pirates, and damn fine ones—and I’ve wondered the same thing about them. I expect it’s not so different, living in a world where nothing is the right size.”

Yaozu murmured, “I know what you mean.”

“There’s nothing strange about your size,” Cly observed.

“Not my
size,
no. But outside these walls, I could be treated as a monster, evicted from my home, my property seized and my family sent away. It happens all the time in Portland, you know. Strange persons such as ourselves, Captain Cly … we may be very different from one another, but we recognize a kinship all the same.”

In silence they traversed another few blocks, and all the while, Cly considered this. Finally he said, “I suppose that answers my question well enough.”

“Speaking of fitting in … you’ve spent a good deal more time in the underground than before these last few months.”

Cly flushed, and even the rattling lantern couldn’t hide the creeping color. “I’m not … Well. Maybe a
little
more.”

“You protest too much, Captain. And look, here we are at the cross-paths before the vaults.”

It was true. Their conversation had brought them all the way to the edge of a set of living quarters, the entrance to which had once been a great bank vault with a reinforced door in a reinforced room.

Here, where people came and went more frequently, the labyrinth opened and the streets were packed cleaner, lined with planks or stepping stones held aloft from the perpetually moist floor. More lanterns hung, dimmed, from the end of every wall, and containers of fuel were stationed beneath them, left ready for any passers-through who might require them. Painted signs were affixed to walls or mounted to posts between the corners where mine-cart tracks split the right-of-way. These weathered rectangles held messages in handwritten black lettering and clearly marked arrows.

UNION STREET, THIS WAY; SENECA STREET, OVER HERE; COMMERCIAL AVENUE, TO YOUR RIGHT.

“So,” Yaozu said, clapping his hands together. “My appeal for your services.”

“Yeah, that,” Cly said. “Sure, I’ll make your supply run. I’ll need some details, and a list, and a budget—”

“Absolutely. I’ll draw up all of these things, and we’ll discuss your rate.”

“Oh, that’s easy. I ask—”

“Whatever it is, I’ll double it. I’ll need you back by the end of next month, and I’ll need my instructions followed to the letter. I’m fully prepared to pay for speed and quality service.”

“That’s good, that you’re giving me a few weeks. Because I’ve been thinking…”

“Yes?”

“About making a trip to New Orleans.”

“When?”

“Soon. Real soon.”

“That’s … quite a ways off, for a jaunt. May I ask why you’ve chosen such a destination?”

“An old friend wants me to run an easy job, down there on the Gulf. It wouldn’t interfere with anything you’re asking—not at all—and New Orleans has everything you’re looking for.”

“And then some, I’d bet.”

“You’d bet right,” Cly said. He was surprised to hear himself selling the idea, but he sold it anyway. “It’s huge, and with all those Texians on the premises, you can bet I’ll find plenty of good industrial-quality wares. They’ve got the best machine shops on the continent.”

“I’ve heard as much,” Yaozu said, considering the possibilities. “I wouldn’t have thought it’d be worth the trouble, to send you so far away. But if you’re already going … it might work out well for us both. Two of my engineers are Texians, or they
were
. They’ve been known to complain about things I can’t provide them—instruments and tools they wish they had, or equipment they can’t necessarily find on the West Coast.”

Cly said, “Ask them what they want. I’ll get it for them. I’ll kill two birds with one stone, Yaozu—yours and mine.”

“And you’ll collect two flight fees for a single trip.”

“There’s that, yes,” the captain admitted, counting up the coins in his head. Between what Josephine was offering and Yaozu’s bold statement that he’d double the usual asking price … there was enough money in the trip to make major plans.

Life-changing plans. Settling-down plans.

The Chinaman contemplated the pros and cons, staring alternately into space and into the captain’s eyes. After a few moments of deliberation, he declared, “I like the sound of it! I’ll speak with my engineers, and you and I shall confer again shortly.”

With that, he made a short, dipping bow and excused himself down the far passage to the right. He disappeared on the other side of a sign that said
KING STREET
. Before long, even his shadow and footsteps were lost to the buried city.

Captain Cly stood in the moldering chamber, chewing over the conversation, replaying it in his head—trying to figure out how much to believe, and how much to accept regardless of whether it was true or not.

Yaozu had been an unknown quantity back in the bad old days, suspicious for the obvious fact that he kept so close to a capricious madman. Even his fellow Chinamen didn’t trust him, for they had suffered too much at Minnericht’s hands. And Angeline, last surviving royalty of Chief Seattle’s reign, had made concerted efforts to kill him. Under the best of circumstances, it would have been difficult for the primarily white, working-class doornails to warm up to the oriental man with the educated voice and a millionaire’s manners. And now that he was running the empire that remained—whether it was by default, ambition, or some other power mechanism yet undetermined—the enigma of his presence was both a blessing and a curse.