Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War (27 page)

But the quiet was relative; two fireplaces at each end of the chamber crackled with wood burned to translucent red honey-combs sunk in drifts of gray-white ash. And there was the steady, mechanical beat of Tyro’s iron lung, a long cylindrical copper apparatus enclosing his bed. The pipes screwed in to its base ran up to the ceiling and through holes in the wall to the adjacent room, where a small boiler and pneumatic bellows were maintained.

The man inside the iron lung—or, more accurately, the Martian inside it—was Tyro, Max’s brother, lying in a coma since he’d been severely wounded during the Imperial raid. His head was the only part of him visible outside the apparatus, propped on a pillow, with a thick rubber seal around his neck; inside the iron lung, the rise and fall of air pressure induced normal breathing movements in his lungs.

Tyro had been a quiet young man, a capable engineer, though not as exceptional as his sister Max, whom he staunchly defended at every turn. He bore a great resemblance to his sister, though he was considerably more robust. His fine Martian nose bore the slight irregularity of having been broken at some point, though not flattened, and his hair was striped, black and white, the streaks matching the skin beneath. In this respect, his genetics differed from Max, whose mane was entirely black.

When the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
was home and Max was off duty, she could be found in the hospital, sitting beside Tyro. Nurses had confided to Buckle that Max would often read to her brother well into the night, and occasionally—if the rest of the infirmary was empty—she would sleep in the empty bunk beside his. There had always been an intense connection between Max and Tyro, Buckle knew, for the Martians possessed some sort of collective mind as well as an individual one, and he often felt sorry for Max, left alone without her brother, the only other Martian in the clan.

Buckle felt sorry for both of them. Now, as they lay close together, the hissing pulsations of Tyro’s machine sounded reassuring, or at least soothing. This was a good thing, for Buckle, a man who would never allow fear a stage inside his system, knew that a despair did lie deep inside him, out of sight in the darkness, but present nonetheless, that Max might die.

Balthazar sat beside Max’s bed, leaning his bulk close to her, his big hands cradling her long white fingers; he was listening to her steady intake of air as well.

Buckle stopped beside Balthazar, placing his hand on his father’s shoulder.

“She looks so very troubled, my little girl,” Balthazar said softly.

Buckle looked at Max. She slept, unconscious within a lotus fog of morphine. Under the pale-gray blanket she appeared small, like a child. She was breathing easily, to a constant beat, and that encouraged Buckle.

It was hard to forget Max, pressed against him in the cave, her cold, naked torso against his, the quaking shivers of her stomach making the fight for her life all too real, a broken baby bird clutched against his breast. He had not wanted to lose her. In the very depths of his soul he had not wanted to lose her. And the
kiss
. Buckle’s brain still could not even begin to compute the ramifications. But his heart was certain—and silently asking for more.

When hell freezes over.

“I think she appears rather relaxed, Father,” Buckle said, peering at Max’s face in search of troubles and not finding any. A memory of Max being snatched by the sabertooth struck Buckle, and he suppressed a shiver.

“Hmmmm,” Balthazar replied. After a long pause he spoke again. “I have decided to dispatch you and the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
to Spartak for the negotiations.”

Buckle blinked. “Yes, Father.”

“With my sons and daughter aboard—you, Sabrina, and Ivan—along with the Imperial contingent, that should give the Russians ample evidence of my resolve,” Balthazar said.

“I am honored that you would ask this of my ship and my crew.”

“I am also sending Ambassador Washington along with you.”

“All right, sir,” Buckle replied, with a deflated nod. Rutherford Washington was a bit of a stick-in-the-mud, and Buckle would have preferred that his father trust him enough to stand for the clan at the negotiating table, but he also knew that was too much to ask.

“Take it easy on him,” Balthazar said, reading Buckle’s mind. “Yes, Rutherford is difficult, but I trust him.”

“Yes,” Buckle replied.

“How is our patient doing?” Doctor Edison Lee asked, appearing from a doorway, rubbing his hands with a white towel in front of his crisp light-blue smock. Lee was the clan’s chief physician and a man of considerable intellectual and professional prowess—verging on arrogance, Buckle felt—but while clinical, he was always kind.

“I cannot convince myself of her condition either way,” Balthazar said plaintively. “I do not seem able to separate what I sense of her health and what I wish it to be.”

Lee stopped at the foot of the bed and studied Max with an expert air. He was of medium height and slight build, his straight black hair and narrow, serious eyes strongly suggesting the Asian blood of his father. “Well, Doctor Fogg did have to assist me with an emergency transfusion from her brother as soon as he brought her in. It was good of Doctor Fogg to stay—I am not the expert on Martian physiology he is—but her vitals are holding and there is no sign of infection, which is a very good thing.”

“She is doing well, then?” Balthazar asked.

Lee nodded. “She is holding her own, though it is a battle to keep her hydrated. Her recovery will be slow, perhaps three weeks to a month before she can return to duty, barring any complications. But one never knows what to expect with the superb Martian recuperative arc.”

Balthazar kissed Max gently on the cheek and stood up. For a moment he looked unsteady, then he recovered. “All very good news, Doctor.” Balthazar smiled his strong, reassuring grin. “Now, my son, when shall the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
be ready to depart?”

“We should be airborne before dawn, Father,” Buckle said. “Once the
Arabella
is taken care of.”

“Splendid. Proceed at your best speed; you must reach Spartak as quickly as possible. The Imperials may depart tonight, but they shall wait for you to catch up with them at New Berlin.”

“Understood, Father.”

“Gentlemen,” Balthazar said, slapping Buckle on the shoulder as he stepped into the aisle. “And take care of my daughter, Doctor Lee,” he added as he strode out of the room.

“Where is my other crewman, Doctor? Name of Valentine?” Buckle asked.

“He is being prepared for surgery. He is going to lose the leg,” Lee replied with clinical propriety.

Buckle looked at Max, but he was thinking of Valentine. Old salts like Valentine—zeppelineering being his life—usually did not fare well when injuries forced them out of the air corps. They often became sad, pension-financed drunks in the local taverns, eventually discovered frozen in a back alley one morning, clutching an empty bottle.

“Captain Buckle, if I may have a moment,” Lee said.

“Of course.”

Lee glanced back, as if to make certain Balthazar had departed, then motioned for Buckle to follow him ten paces beyond the iron lung, down the aisle from Max’s bed, as if he somehow also feared that she might overhear what he had to say. “I have some serious matters to discuss with you regarding the health of your father.”

“Yes?” Buckle asked, dread creeping up his spine.

“I must ask you some questions, questions you may find intrusive—but I claim physician’s prerogative in the asking. Of course, respond as you see fit.”

“All right.”

“Has your father told you anything of what happened to him while he was in the hands of the Founders? I have asked him, but he refuses to provide any details.”

“He says they handled him reasonably well,” Buckle replied, but his original suspicion, that Balthazar’s story of his pleasant three-day imprisonment by the Founders was not the complete truth, surged back to haunt him.

“Yes,” Lee said, trailing off, completely dissatisfied. “That is all he had said to me as well, and I have pressed him rather uncomfortably over it.”

“Perhaps he is telling the truth,” Buckle offered, though for some reason he only half believed his own argument. “Perhaps they were only holding him for an ultimatum, as a bargaining chip.”

“And how do you explain his worsening condition?”

“The stress, perhaps.”

“If stress has inflicted damage upon your father’s health, then he is suddenly a different man than the one I have known, lo this last twenty-odd years,” Lee grumbled.

“I have noticed more tremors, more pronounced,” Buckle said.

“What you are seeing is a result, not a precursor,” Lee said. “He experienced a terrible attack of convulsions last night while you were gone. The most unsettling episode I have seen thus far.”

The dread flooded into Buckle’s abdomen, making his gut clench. “He spoke nothing of it to me.”

Lee nodded. “No. But I am gravely concerned. I have done all that I can do for him, and I believe that whatever happened to him in the City of the Founders has severely aggravated his condition.”

“Who knows about the event last night?”

“Only your brother Ryder and your lead servant—Sibley, I believe his name is. They called me to Balthazar’s chamber at three twenty-two this morning.”

“Three twenty-two? This seizure was violent enough to awaken both Ryder and Sibley in their rooms down the hall?”

Lee shifted his weight uncomfortably. “Ah, no. There was someone with your father, in his bedchamber with him.”

Buckle paused. Of course his father had taken a lover, though he had known nothing, suspected nothing, of it. Calypso had been dead for over a year now, and Balthazar was a man, a man finished with his mourning, a man of a physically ravenous nature. But this understanding did little to blunt the profound, if unreasonable, sense of betrayal Buckle felt in that instant. “Then there were three who witnessed his infirmity. Who was the third?”

“I am afraid I cannot disclose her identity,” Lee answered with a whisper. “I am sure you understand—I must protect all confidentialities not directly concerning your father’s health. Rest assured, she is a respectable lady.”

“Of course I understand.” Buckle nodded. He appreciated his father’s right to privacy. But he would find out. Ryder and Sibley would know who this woman was.

TYRO AND THE IMPERIAL RAID

W
HISPERS
. M
AX HEARD VOICES IN
the chamber of numbers. Many whispers. But she could not make out the words. There were many people in the little room with her, but she could not see them. Even Buckle was gone.

There was music as well, faint and distant, waltzing music.

She peered at the walls but the numbers remained blurry, as if protected behind foggy glass. She rubbed at them, but the charcoal smeared, leaving her fingers black.

A fluttering buzz arrived at Max’s left ear. She turned to see a hummingbird hovering there, a pretty little fellow of emerald green with a ruby-red throat. He stared at her with his tiny black eyes, and the throbbing of his wings grew louder and louder, rising from a papery flutter to a heaving
huff
of machinery bellows that assaulted her ears.

Max was not awake. But she was semiaware of that. She flowed, swimming in a morphine current under the surface of her consciousness, dragged down by the rhythmic lullaby of the iron lung as it breathed for Tyro…

“We have taken hits!” Max shouted over the thunder of the propellers, quickly wrenching hydrogen-feed handles and shutting valve switches, taking in the readings of a hundred dials and gauge pointers all at once. “Hydrogen pressure critical! Compensating!”

“Aye!” Captain Halifax shouted back. “Keep the
Cleopatra
out of the dirt, Engineer!”

A fistful of grapeshot skidded past the gondola, a screaming swarm of phosphorus in the night.

Tyro was at Max’s side, his eyes glittering orange in his goggles, tufts of his white-and-black hair poking out from beneath his flying helmet as he manhandled the ballast wheels.

Reflections arced like prisms across Max’s goggles. She fought the urge to tear them off.