Not Less Than Gods (24 page)

“I thought the blubbing was a nice touch, don’t you?” Pengrove said brightly, watching the patrol boat depart. “Lent it a certain verisimilitude. The chap looked as though he wanted to kick me, and the only thing that was stopping him was fearing he’d have to clean me off his shoes.”

“And now perhaps there’ll be an end to complaints about carrying the bloody equipment around,” said Ludbridge, looking sour. “Hobson, you’ll transmit the real photographs tonight. Damn! I had hoped we might sneak inland and get some shots of Sebastopol from the rear, but it ain’t likely now.”

“In fact, that might still be arranged,” said Mihalakis, with a smile. “Perhaps you have noticed the large basket lashed down on the rear deck?”

A black wind buffeted the balloon’s gondola, whining in the cables and causing the whole affair to creak alarmingly. Ludbridge looked over the side and wished he hadn’t; the
Heron
far below looked like a toy, the whipping tether and hydrogen gas line seeming ridiculously inadequate to hold the balloon secure above it.
And I’ve got the easy job
, he thought.

“But how in God’s name do you propose to steer a kite without string?” Pengrove’s terrified shriek cut through the noise of the wind. He presented an even more bizarre spectacle than was his customary wont, wearing infrared goggles with a scarf bound over his hat and tied under his chin to keep the camera firmly in place.

“It is not a kite,” said Mihalakis soothingly. “It is a flying machine. The Magi have employed them successfully many, many times.”

“Gentlemen, the wind is rising,” said Bell-Fairfax, turning his goggled face.

“Yes. Nearly ready now,” said Mihalakis, climbing into the wicker
framework. Above him, the great black wings fought the gusts and tried to lift away, even folded as they were. “Mr. Pengrove, please take your seat.”

Pengrove managed to get his safety line unfastened, but there his mortal form balked and refused to obey him further. He clung to the side of the gondola, staring helplessly at the sort of wickerwork bosun’s chair fastened immediately behind Mihalakis’s harness, and the black void beyond it. “I—chaps, I—”

Ludbridge turned his face toward Bell-Fairfax and nodded. Bell-Fairfax stooped and picked up Pengrove bodily. “Come on, old man,” he said, not unkindly, and thrust Pengrove over the side and into the seat. Pengrove came to life, with a galvanic clutching spasm, catching at the harness and buckling it extraordinarily swiftly.

“Very good!” shouted Mihalakis. The goggles rendered his eyes expressionless, but his grin was wide and manic. “The levers, gentlemen!”

Ludbridge and Bell-Fairfax reached out, one to either wing, and with all their strength hauled on the levers. The wings sprang outward, unfolding with the mechanical rigor of an immense umbrella. Instantly they caught the wind, with a thunderous crack. Mihalakis leaned forward, bracing his heels against the gondola, and yanked the release pin.

The wind shot them upward and out of sight immediately, against Ludbridge’s expectations. He heard Pengrove’s terrified yell growing fainter as the wings ascended. Clutching his safety line, Ludbridge leaned out as far as he dared and peered upward, trying to spot them. Even with his goggles adjusted to infrared, he peered in vain for any trace of them, and for a moment his heart sank.

“There they are!” cried Bell-Fairfax, from the other side of the gondola, and a moment later Ludbridge saw the flying machine circling around from behind the balloon. Mihalakis had clearly gained control of it now. He brought it down in a long swoop, past the gondola, and Ludbridge saw a gauntleted hand raised in salute. He heard another piercing scream as the wings swung around and bore them off in the direction of the Crimean mainland; Pengrove was alive and well, clearly.

Another blast of wind rocked the gondola. Ludbridge saw whitecaps
far below, and the
Heron
laboring on the swell. He groaned and withdrew into the depths of the basket, pulling out his flask as he did so. After a fortifying gulp he handed the flask to Bell-Fairfax and looked up into the billowing envelope of hydrogen that was all that kept them from a shattering plunge into icy waves. It was black, as the wings were black, for nocturnal operations. He felt rather as though he were looking up Death’s robe.

“Are you unwell, sir?” Bell-Fairfax crouched beside him and handed back the flask.

“Simply getting too old for this sort of thing, I expect,” said Ludbridge.

“I’m sure they’ll be all right,” said Bell-Fairfax, standing again to regard the night into which Mihalakis and Pengrove had vanished. “By Jove, don’t I envy Pengrove! Do you suppose we’ll ever get flying machines for the Society?”

“That sort? I expect so,” said Ludbridge, having another drink. He put the flask away. “There’s generally some exchange of useful information when we do business with the Magi.”

“Are there other branches of the Society?”

“Oh, yes; there’s a branch in the north, and another in the far east, for example. Group of Chinese calling themselves the Brothers of Liu Xin. I’m told that was one of the few successes to come out of Macartney negotiating over there back last century, you know; one of our chaps recognized a certain symbol one of their chaps had embroidered on his robe. Something similar happened in India. Lot of branch offices got cut off and isolated during the Dark Ages, and we’re only just finding one another again. Swapping research and inventions.

“I expect the process will speed up no end now we’re in the modern age. That’s where the railway and the telegraph will really come in useful.”

“What a wonderful idea,” said Bell-Fairfax, looking up at the stars. “The great minds of the world all working together in one common cause. What can stop us now?”

“Anything,” said Ludbridge. “Politicians. Money. All sorts of things.
Same struggle it’s always been, my boy. We fight on, all the same. This fool war of Louis-Napoléon’s will be fought and over with in a few months, I’d imagine; but
our
war never ends.”

Bell-Fairfax watched a star fall. “And I suppose the . . . the killing is to be expected, in a war.”

“It is, yes.” Ludbridge reached for his cigar case and thought better of it, looking up at the balloon with suspicion. “A mad dog must be shot, for the good of all society. So must the undesirables who keep the world ignorant and poor for their own gain, like that Turk, or the ones who keep old quarrels going for spite’s sake, like that Greek.

“One learns to do the job quickly and efficiently, and that’s the important thing.”

They had been riding there in the wind about an hour and a half, watching the stars and discussing history, when the gale brought them the distant impact of cannon fire.

“Good God.” Ludbridge swung around to stare. “Where’s that?”

Bell-Fairfax pointed. “Sebastopol,” he cried. They saw the red flare of distant guns, and heard a very faint
pop-pop-pop
that might have been rifle fire before the dull thunder of the big guns reached them.

“Jesus Bleeding Christ,” murmured Ludbridge. He gripped the cable as the gondola swung to and fro in the gusts. They watched the eastern horizon closely, but saw no more flashes. Five minutes crawled by, and then ten, and then—

“There!” Bell-Fairfax flung out his arm. “There they come.”

The black wings soared out of the night, a silhouette against the stars, growing nearer with each heartbeat. Ludbridge caught his breath as they swept by, and came back around the balloon in a steadily narrowing circle.

They heard Mihalakis cry, “Catch!” and he flung out a line with a hook on the end. Bell-Fairfax snatched it from the air and turned with it, passing it around the cables as the flying machine made its second pass around, yet closer in. Just before it came level with them, Bell-Fairfax
and Ludbridge hauled together on the rope, pulling sharply down and in, until Mihalakis’s feet found the edge of the gondola. A moment he poised there, while they tied off the line; he caught the cables to steady himself as they reached out and dragged the levers down. The vast black wings closed up, the shuttered machine sagged backward and swung the gondola with it for a moment—Ludbridge heard Pengrove scream again, and noted with relief that he must not have been shot—and then the whole affair swung back.

Mihalakis vaulted free, into the gondola. Bell-Fairfax reached past him and hauled Pengrove out of the wicker seat.

“What in hell happened out there?” said Ludbridge, as Mihalakis leaned down and signaled to the crewmen waiting on deck. They set to work reeling in the tether, coiling the gas lines as they went, and the balloon began to descend.

“I got quite a lot of infrared pictures,” said Pengrove, through chattering teeth. “I hope Greene appreciates them. The whole of the Woronzoff Road right up to the back of the city, with all those hills and bastions, and even the beastly marshes and the river and that bridge, the Inky-something. But the swooping was too much, you know. Stomach couldn’t take it. We were over some fortification or other and I had to lean out and puke. And, er, apparently I hit someone below.”

Mihalakis was shaking with laughter. “There will be stories about vomiting vampyrs now. We were well away before they started shooting, never fear.”

When they were safe on deck again they went into the saloon, to find that Hobson had nodded off beside the Aetheric Transmitter, in a positive sea of yellow dispatch-sheets covered in hasty scribbling. He sat up with a snort as Ludbridge and the others entered, and grabbing up a paper thrust it at Ludbridge.

“We’re to move on,” he said.

They stood forlornly on the quay at Varna, watching the
Heron
steam away.

“I enjoyed that,” said Pengrove. “Except for the flying machine, of course. ‘And so they came to windy Thrace,’ what?”

“This next part may be a trifle rough, by comparison,” said Ludbridge. Pengrove gave him an incredulous look.

Bell-Fairfax managed to find a porter with a wheelbarrow, who trundled their baggage to a hotel and dumped them there, either because there were no other hotels or because he was simply unwilling to go farther. They secured a room at some expense, and hauled their trunks up a steep, narrow flight of stairs to find that furniture had not been included in the agreed-upon room price.

“Why, yes, it is a trifle rough,” Hobson observed, surveying the bare chamber. The one window had a view of the wall of the house opposite.

“Look at it this way: where there are no beds, there are no bedbugs,” said Ludbridge.

They spent a comparatively uncomfortable night rolled up in their coats on the floor. The next morning they found a coffee house where they got breakfast.

“And to what charming spot am I dragging the old talbotype box?” asked Pengrove sullenly, dipping dry pastry in his coffee.

“You aren’t,” said Ludbridge.

“Thank God for that, anyway.”

“You’re going on a rowing excursion instead.”

“Oh, what fun.”

Ludbridge ignored the tone in Pengrove’s voice. “D’you remember the body of water you saw from the
Heron
’s deck as we were coming in, that you thought was a deep harbor? It isn’t. It’s a lake. Here’s a map.” He pulled a folded sheet of flimsy paper from his pocket, and handed it to Pengrove, who opened it. It was indeed a map, printed in violet ink, showing the long lake west of Varna. Certain locations along the lake’s shore were marked with circles.

“In the event you’re accosted by the authorities, drop that over the side into the water. Greene particularly wants those places photographed.”

“What on earth for?”

“You’re not to know. Neither am I, for that matter. You and Hobson hire a boat and row out for some good shots of those locations.”

“You mean I’m to go along?” Hobson brightened. “Not spend the whole day turning pictures into thousands of tiny lines of code and transmitting the damned things?”

“Yes. You could use some fresh air and exercise. Bell-Fairfax and I will go see about arranging our transportation to the next place.”

“You mean we’re not stopping long in lovely Varna? Jolly good!” said Pengrove. Bell-Fairfax knitted his brows.

“But . . . sir . . . does it seem quite wise to leave our trunks in that room unattended?”

“It does if one takes precautions,” said Ludbridge. He took out his watch and held it up, displaying the seal pendant from its chain. “And I did, before we left the room. In the event someone unauthorized shifts my trunk, a concealed gyroscope will trigger a single-channel transmission to this receiver on my watch chain. Then something nasty involving pyrethanatos will happen to the burglars. And that, I think, is all you need to know at this time.”

“The chaps in Fabrication have spared no expense to protect your socks and singlets, Bell-Fairfax,” said Pengrove. “Underwear is a sacred trust, you know.”

They parted ways outside the coffee house. Pengrove and Hobson went off toward the western edge of the waterfront; Ludbridge led Bell-Fairfax into a remote part of the city, looking for a certain address.

“Did I hear Mihalakis correctly?” Ludbridge wondered aloud, peering along a narrow lane. “Ought to have had him tell you too, Bell-Fairfax, you’ve got young ears . . . It ought to be this street, but I don’t see a house with a green door.”