Skykeep (18 page)

There was little to be learned about the
towers at each corner, save that they were only accessible with
ladders, as downward-pointing spikes had been installed on the
uprights to prevent prisoners from scaling them. As an added
precaution, the ladders were in sections, and the lowest one had
been hauled up from the ground. The central tower was more
interesting, as it was triple the size of the other towers. Nita
felt certain at least one of the scattering of shacks and rooms at
the base was a supply locker. Getting into that would provide her
with all sorts of potential assets to an escape attempt, but aside
from the fact at least two sharpshooters could see her from
whichever way she might approach, there was a chain-link fence
around the base separating it from the rest of the yard. There was
also that
monster
of a hound to contend with.

She turned her eyes upward, following the
central tower. Oddly, the anticlimbing spikes were missing from
this one. No doubt they felt the fence and hound provided adequate
protection. She continued sweeping her gaze upward to its pointed
roof and onward to the shaft that projected from it. Along the
shaft ran a thick copper cable that didn’t seem to serve any
obvious purpose. The cable ran all the way to the decking and
across it to the edge. The “isolation” boom had been raised now
that it was not in use. She squinted a bit as she craned her neck
to try to make out the very top of the shaft. It stretched beyond
even the tops of the envelopes and was difficult to see with the
midday sun almost perfectly behind it, but there was
something
at the tip. It wasn’t just a point, though there
was
some sort of gleaming metal rod above all else. In
addition to the rod was a boxy shape, one that let the light
through. It almost looked like the crow’s nest of the old sailing
ships, but unless her sense of scale was off, it was far too small
for a person.

“Nita! Come here!” Lil called.

To Nita’s relief, and mild surprise, it was a
call of excitement rather than a call for help. She looked to her
friend and was greeted by a wide smile and wave of her hand. Lil
was now alone with the two previously smiling large fug people.
Nita made her way quickly over.

“What is it?” she asked.

“This is Donald and this is Kent,” Lil said,
pointing to each of the men in turn.

She had to point upward, because the two men
were approaching seven feet tall. Their lanky limbs had visible
muscle. Each man offered a callused hand that had obviously seen a
bit of hard work, and Nita gave each a firm shake.

“Guess what these guys used to do,” Lil
said.

“What?”

“We done work at the shipyards,” said Kent,
his words slow and accented with an odd, loose diction. “We were
the ones what built half of what them fancy folk ride around
in.”

“I knew they made all of the boilers and
stuff down in the fug, and I could never picture any of those
twisty, pasty white skeletons in fancy suits doing a lick of real
work,” Lil said. “It turns out there are blue-collar fuggers.”

Nita flinched.

“Huh-huh,” chuckled Donald. He spoke in a
voice so deep it was almost difficult to understand. “She finks we
fink that’s not a nice name.”

“No one cares what you call us.
We
don’t because one word’s as good as another. And the bosses don’t
care because they don’t care about
anything
anyone says but
them,” Kent explained.

“And tell her why you got locked up,” Lil
said.

“I tried to sneak repair parts to one of them
cities up north. Them valves the bosses let you folks swap in and
out,” Kent said.

“I tried to cave in the head of my boss when
he tried to lock up Kent here,” Donald said.

“In other words, these two tried to help
people like
us
, and that’s why they got locked up!
That’s
the sort of people fuggers lock up. People who almost
caused them to lose grip of the world even a little bit,” Lil
said.

“That’s right. There’s… how many of us,
Kent?” Donald said.

“Fifty-eight. An even sixty with these two,”
Kent said.

“Fifty-eight people in this place. And
fifty-six of us’d sooner see the bosses choke on their own ties
than do what they say anymore. Just about everybody on our side of
the bars is glad you done what you done.”

“Who are the two holdouts?”

“The Ebonwhite brothers. Real snakes among
snakes, them two,” Donald said.

“Ebonwhite… isn’t that—”

“The mayor of Fugtown. Them’s his nephews. He
caught them embee… embuh… He caught them nicking coin from the city
coffers and all that. Had them sent here. They’d do just about
anything to be back in good with their dear old uncle again. The
rest of us would like to do to him what you done to that
dreadnought.”

“I was on the crew what assembled that ship.
Took us
years
. I never thought the old girl would go down.
How did you do it?” Kent asked.

“The bigger the boiler, the bigger the boom,”
Nita said. “I have my ways.”

“I told you the boiler’s what done it,”
Donald said.

“But the boiler was tucked away in the heart
of the thing. How’d you even hit it?” Kent said.

“It’s a long story. I suppose we’ll have time
for that later,” Nita said.

“Hey, you two. I’ve been meaning to ask you.
How come you’re so much meatier than the other fuggers?”

“We were near the center of Rim, where the
fug gets thin. Didn’t get the same dose other folks got. There’s…
how many, you figure? Maybe two thousand fug folk when it’s all
said and done? Could be more. Anyway, maybe two hundred are like
us. They have us doing most of the grunt work. Matter of fact, they
usually call us ‘grunts.’”

“But we’ve clashed with fug soldiers plenty
of times, and they’re always the scrawny sort,” Lil said.

“They would rather keep us grunts in the
factories, making money for them. Plus, they say we’re apt to
disobey orders. They don’t really feel that we’re enough like them
to be trusted.”

“Do they do the same with the women? Keep
them hidden away working?” Nita asked.

“The ladies are hid away, all right. But not
for working. There just ain’t many of ’em. Maybe as many as there
are grunts. Maybe less. When there’s so few, you make sure you keep
’em safe. And there’s nothing as dangerous as dealing with the
surface folk, far as the bosses are concerned.”

“Fascinating,” Nita said. “How long have you
been here?”

“Three years, the bofe of us,” Donald
said.

“Have you ever seen anyone escape?”

“We never even seen someone let out. They
don’t let people leave the Ph’lact’ry. You get sent here to die,
slow.”

“Beats dying fast,” Lil said with a
shrug.

“No, Lil. It really doesn’t,” Kent said.
“About twice a year, someone goes over the side rather than spend
another day here. A minute of free fall is still a minute
free.”

“It doesn’t really seem that bad,” Nita
said.

“Except that dangling box they put me in,”
Lil said.

“At least you’re a little shrimpy fing. You
probably fit just fine. Last time Kent got put in there, he
couldn’t straighten his neck out for a week,” Donald said.

“Hey! Watch who you’re calling shrimpy,
beanpole. You’re
this
close to being the first couple of
fuggers I ever actually
liked
,” Lil said.

“Oi,” Donald said, elbowing Kent in the ribs.
“Ask what you were wondering about the other day.”

“Oh, right! Is it true that captain of yours
took down a scout ship by dropping a
boat
on it?”

“Ha! Not only is it true, but
I’m
the
one who dropped the boat!” Lil said proudly.

Lil and the two grunts continued to chat and
share stories for the better part of forty minutes. It wasn’t
precisely what one would call friendship. The grunts were, if
anything, starstruck at meeting one of the only humans they
considered famous. Nita chimed in now and again, but mostly she
devoted her time to observing as much as she could about the
courtyard. She ran a few dozen scenarios through her head of how
they might get away, but none of them were promising. They couldn’t
risk doing anything to threaten the facility’s airworthiness
because it would only have to drop a few dozen feet for it to be
deep enough in the fug for them to suffocate. That meant no firing
on the envelopes, no attempting or even threatening to unfasten
them. And at the same time they couldn’t even try to physically
leave the facility. All ships docked below the fug, so they would
need filter masks just to board them. Finally she abandoned the
thoughts. It was as she’d said to Lil. They had their small tasks.
Better to stick to solving those than attempt to tackle something
as insurmountable as a full escape. And so she walked about the
courtyard looking for weaknesses. Looking for possibilities.
Slowly, some new ideas began to form.

Nita paced over to Lil and the grunts as Lil
was reaching the conclusion of one of her raunchier jokes.

“… and the farmer said ‘If he’s that far in,
I think he’s a goner!’” Lil said.

Kent burst out laughing. Donald scratched his
head. “But what’s that got to do with a shoe?”

“Sorry to interrupt, but how long did you say
we would stay out here in the yard?” Nita asked.

“An hour,” Kent said, wiping a tear away.
“Not a minute less.”

“How much longer do you suppose we’ve
got?”

“I don’t know. Oi! Warden Blanc! How much
longer?” he called out to a guard standing near one of the
staircases.

His cry was addressed to the very man whom
Lil had tried to choke during their arrival. The assistant warden
reached into an inside pocket of his elaborate uniform and tugged
free a pocket watch. “Two more minutes,” he replied. “Start lining
up for your restraints.”

The appearance of a pocket watch was not lost
on Lil. She gave Nita a meaningful glance, then turned to the
grunts as the group began to line up near the stairs for their
chains to be applied. “So Blanche over there tells me we can get
out here for a midnight yard time if we’re good.”

“Heh.
Sometimes
. If they’re in the
mood. And you ask nice,” Kent said. “I manage that a few times a
year. Cleaning and the like, usually.”

“Most times the guards won’t do anyfing for
you. They’d rather do fings
to
you,” Donald added.

Nita nodded. “So I’d imagined.” The sparks of
inspiration fluttered in her mind as she shuffled forward, awaiting
lockup.

One by one manacles were attached and the
group were moved off toward their cells. It took a rather long time
to move everyone down because the staff of the place was very
small, and even with restraints in place, the guards didn’t move
any group that was larger than two inmates to every one guard. It
took ten trips before Nita and Lil were ready to be taken to their
cell, but rather than taking them together, Lil was taken
first.

“The warden wants to speak with you,” said
the guard.

“Does he now? Oh, this ought to be good,” Lil
said with a smile, stumbling down the stairs with the guards.

#

The guards thrust Lil down into her chair,
hands still shackled, with Warden Linn sitting opposite. Unlike
when Nita had been interviewed, this time the door stayed open, an
armed guard watching dutifully over the volatile crewmate.

“So, Miss Cooper. I’m terribly sorry for your
regrettable stay in isolation.”

“Feh. It was a walk in the park. I loved it.
Reminded me of home. I had a real little bedroom as a kid,” Lil
said.

“Putting a defiant face on it. I hadn’t
expected anything less. But I watched as they removed you from
isolation. I know the effect it had on you. I take no joy in
inflicting so savage a punishment, but you must be taught the
consequences of violence against our people.”

“Yeah, yeah. Spare the switch, spoil the
child. You’re all heart, teaching us dumb ol’ surface folk proper
manners and such.”

“This will be much easier for you if you
simply learn to follow the rules.”

“This is a prison, Linn. I know about
prisons. They aren’t about things being easy. Am I here for any
real reason, or are you just lookin’ to lie to my face for an
hour?”

The warden didn’t show any sign of annoyance
at Lil’s attitude, which was more than could be said for the guard,
who became visibly more furious with each word Lil said. Instead,
Linn simply opened a packet of pages, just like the one he’d held
during Nita’s interview, and looked over the first one.

“Tell me. How has Miss Graus been performing
in her duties as your ship’s engineer?”

“Better than you fuggers ever did. The
Wind Breaker
is purring like a kitten. We go farther on a
load of coal, we go faster than we ever have, and she even got rid
of most of the rattles and squeaks.”

“It is a significant task. Particularly for
one unskilled in our equipment. Has there been any exterior decay?
Wood rot?”

Lil grinned. “You should see the old girl.
Pretty as a painting. Nita spent a couple of weeks of her own time
painting up all these gold lines on it. You ain’t
seen
a
ship so pretty. Not a speck of rot to be seen.”

“And how does she manage to be certain that
it remains in such a fine state of repair?”

“If one of them little rats you have knocking
on all of the boards and such can do it, then you better bet Nita
can do it.”

“If you had an inspector, you wouldn’t
need
her to do so. The inspectors are for your safety.”

“Like I said, you guys are all heart. You
care so much about us. Let me ask you this. If you actually wanted
us to be safe, why wouldn’t you let us fix our own ships?”

“That’s not the issue at hand.”