CHAPTER 20
Something Going Ka-Boom
Do we have a plan?” Tom asked two minutes later as we wedged ourselves between some crates on the foredeck in a desperate attempt to stay hidden.
“Don’t get caught,” I answered, wondering what had happened to Frankie. “If they catch us, they’ll hold us as stowaways. We won’t be able to save Dwina and Seth.”
“We won’t be able to save ourselves,” Tom added, beginning a familiar series of coin flips. I watched the quarter warily each time he tossed it in the air.
“The hogsheads are in the boiler room,” I said. “We should find them, get Dwina and Seth out, and tell them they have to get off the boat.”
“Dwina can’t swim.”
“Seth can, and he can get her to safety. Should I be thinking of a question?”
“I’m wondering what’s going to happen next,” said Tom, using his pencil to draw the sixth and final I-Ching line—a broken yin—on the side of the crate next to him. “The same thing you’re wondering.”
The completed hexagram looked like this:
“Two yins above four yangs.” Tom consulted his book. “Page one oh eight.”
I read over his shoulder.
HEXAGRAM 34
GREAT POWER.
A FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH. THUNDER MEANS LIGHTNING.
EXPLOSIVE ENERGY. IS THAT A VACANT LOT OR THE HOME OF CONSOLIDATED ANTIMATTER? HOW COULD YOU TELL?
“Sounds like something going ka-boom, to me,” I said uneasily. “What’s the Morse?”
“Four dots, three dashes, and a final dash,” said Tom. “It spells hot.”
“Great power? Hot? It’s telling us the steam boilers are going to explode. It’s telling us stuff we already know! What good is it?”
“If Dwina and Seth are in the boiler room, they’re at ground zero. It’s telling us we have to hurry!”
I raised my head above the crates. The coast was clear. We squeezed out of our hiding spot and, crouching low, headed for the sound of machinery.
I glanced toward the water and stopped.
“Something’s wrong,” I said.
We weren’t going in the right direction. The boat had entered the Lesser Gustimuck instead of the Greater. It was a dead end. I swept my gaze toward the bow, and then I understood. The boat was maneuvering to intercept the floating tree we had seen earlier. The enormous log was closer, and I could see that the knobby thing down one end was a man, clutching the tree’s roots and waving frantically for attention.
“That’s—” said Tom.
“Archie Killbreath. I guess he figured out a way to get back across the river from wherever it was Ganto dumped him and his boys. And the boat’s going to pick him up. And he’s friends with Captain Mishrag. One more reason we can’t afford to get caught!”
More and more of the Beauty’s passengers and crew were gathering at the bow, waving at the bedraggled man on the log and shouting words of encouragement. One crewman had a long pole with a hook on the end; another was waiting for his chance to throw a rope.
“Come on,” I said, “while they’re distracted.”
We headed for the stern and the loud thumpa-thumpa that cried steam engine. Just before we got to the paddle wheel, we found a long room open to the air on both sides, full of machinery and two enormous boilers. A man with his back to us was throwing logs into a furnace. Two huge pistons went alternately up and down, turning iron wheels attached to rods that stretched through the back wall and connected to either side of the paddle wheel. Scattered here and there were the barrels Collins had delivered. We found the two hogsheads together near the back wall.
“Hello?” I rapped on the top of one. Close up, I could see holes drilled in the sides for ventilation, cleverly made to look like knots in the wood. I decided this wasn’t the first time the barrels had been used to transport people. I hoped that meant there was some easy way to open them.
“Hello!” I shouted again, trying to make myself heard above the racket of the engine. “It’s okay! It’s me, the kid who pulled Dwina out of the water when the pier collapsed. You have to get off the boat!”
The top of the hogshead dropped two inches, then twisted sideways out of the way. The sweat-streaked face of my great-great-ancestor Dwina looked up at me. “Are we there already? Steam is so fast! It’s not natural!”
Seth climbed easily out of the other barrel, ignoring the hand Tom offered him, and helped me lift Dwina from the cocoon of quilts that surrounded her.
“What’s goin’ on?” Seth asked warily.
“It’s hard to explain,” I said. “You have to trust me. This boat is going to blow up in half an hour. We have to get off!”
Seth looked like he was going to argue. Dwina stopped him with a touch to his chest.
“Rose has the Sight. If he says get off, we get off!”
“HEY THERE!” a new voice shouted, and I spun around to see the guy who had been feeding the fire coming at us, clutching a piece of wood. Seth stepped in front of me with his fists clenched.
“Get back in those barrels!” the man cried. “We ain’t nowhere near Jordan yet!”
I leaned around Seth. “Is your name Clarence?”
“Yes, yes, Clarence Whiffletree! They can’t be seen! It’ll cost me my job! And who are you? Are you with them? How many people did they stuff in them barrels, anyway?”
A number of people shouted “Huzzah!” from the front of the boat, cheering something, and I feared it was Killbreath’s rescue.
“There’s been a change in plan,” I said. “We weren’t in the barrels. Mr. Collins sent us. Seth and Dwina have to leave the boat now.”
“Are you crazy? We’re in the middle of the river!”
Raucous laughter, barely audible above the noise of the engine, came from the bow.
“What on earth?” Clarence Whiffletree gave in to his curiosity and walked out to the railing. He leaned over and looked to the front of the boat. I followed.
“It’s Archibald Killbreath,” I said. “He just got pulled from the water.”
“What, that slave-catcher varmint?”
Clarence walked farther up the deck for a better look. I stayed behind him, allowing him to shield me from view.
“You know him?” I asked.
In answer, Clarence spat in the river. I thought I felt the boat pitch to one side from the force of it.
“Lowlife!”
“Killbreath knows there are runaway slaves on board,” I lied, seeing it as a way to get Clarence to help us. “He’s figured out the trick with the hogsheads. He’ll tell your captain—”
Clarence spat again, this time causing a definite lurch.
“—and they’ll search the boat. This is why Dwina and Seth have to jump ship.”
“Well, they can’t do it here. Don’t matter how good they can swim—this here’s the Lesser Gustimuck; current’s too strong. They’d be over the falls and dashed to death on the rocks afore they could as much as blink. The BB’s gonna swing around—and it better start doin’ it mighty soon—and head the other way. When that happens, it’ll come in real close to the far bank. Shallow water, current not as swift—that’d be the time to jump.”
“IT WAS A GIANT APE!” Killbreath’s voice rang out, and I peeked around Clarence to see what was going on. Clarence took a few steps closer, and I quickly closed the gap.
“It had EYES O’ FIRE ’n’ musta been FORTY FEET TALL!” Killbreath stood shakily in the center of a circle of crew and passengers, dripping like a rain cloud. The log he had been clinging to was hitched to the side of the boat. His clothing hung in tatters. Beneath his suit and pants, he was wearing a nineteenth-century woman’s frilly corset and pantaloons. A day earlier, I would have found that funny.
“It had GREAT, BIG”—the crowd leaned in close, so as not to miss a single terrifying word—“FLOWERS ON ITS SHIRT!”
One of the women fainted. Her male companion caught her and lowered her gently to the deck.
I craned my neck, looking for some sign of Frankie. She knew Dwina and Seth were in the boiler room. With everybody’s attention focused on Killbreath, I figured she would have used the diversion to get to us. But there was no sign of her. I was seriously worried.
“Wait a minute, Kill,” said a man in a captain’s uniform. “The giant ape was wearing a shirt?”
“An’ short pants DOWN TO ITS KNEES! Hadda be escaped from a menagerie or a circus! Left the boys stranded on Chubb Island an’ me on Fidget’s Point!”
The man I assumed was Captain Mishrag glanced at the river, raised a megaphone to his lips, and shouted, “Mr. Bixby! Bring her around! Get us out of here!”
From overhead there was a cry of “Aye, aye, sir!”
The boat shuddered and began a turn that I could see would be a wide one. I cupped my phone in my hand and checked the time. It was nineteen minutes until the boilers blew.
“Cap’n!” shouted a new voice from the overhead deck. “We caught one of the stowaways!”
Everything inside me turned to ice. I leaned out over the water and looked up. One of the crewmen had Frankie by the scruff of the neck and was holding her against the upper railing, waggling her back and forth like he was doing a puppet show.
“Good work, Stevens!” Mishrag called back.
“That there’s my property!” Killbreath declared. “She’s a runner! We had her all caught fair an’ square, her an’ her two friends! That’s Dorothy Gale! Don’t let her go!”
Mishrag raised the megaphone to his lips, and even though they were separated only by ten feet, bellowed at Stevens, “Take her to the wheelhouse! We’ll be up in a moment. This requires privacy.” He aimed the megaphone at the crowd. “Break it up, please! Crew, back to work! The rest of you, give this man some breathing space! He’s been through an ordeal! Shipwrecked! Hallucinating!”
“None o’ them things!” protested Killbreath. Mishrag threw an arm around his shoulders and hustled him toward a stairway.
I plucked at the back of Clarence’s shirt. “C’mon!” I pulled him back to the engine room.
“They’ve got Frankie!” I told Tom, finding him and Dwina and Seth gathered around a barrel, where Tom had obviously been flipping his quarter and consulting the I-Ching. “We have less than twenty minutes to save her! Otherwise, she’s going sky-high with everybody else when the boilers blow!”
“That would explain the hexagram.”
“What hexagram?”
Tom held it in front of my face.
HEXAGRAM 54
THE WELL-REGARDED MAIDEN.
A GIRL OF SUBSTANCE. MAY NOT KNOW HER PLACE, SO MAKES EVERY PLACE HER OWN. APPROACHABLE, BUT BE PREPARED TO DUCK. A WOMAN TO WALK THROUGH SAND FOR, AND BY THAT I MEAN SAND THAT HAS BEEN HEATED BY THE SUN UNTIL IT’S BORDERLINE UNCOMFORTABLE. USE YOUR JUDGMENT.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “That sounds like Frankie. What’s the Morse?”
“A dot followed by three dots, then a dash followed by a dot and another dot, ending in two dashes. It spells esteem.”
“Meaning what?”
“That we’re supposed to ESTEEM this girl. Value her and respect her. And, I suppose, rescue her.”
“Really?”
“Either that, or it means she’s going to die in ESTEEM explosion.”
I punched him on the shoulder. “What?” I demanded. “Now it’s making puns?”
“Yeah,” he admitted sheepishly. “But not very good ones.” As if that made it okay.
“More steam, Mr. Whiffletree!” came Mishrag’s voice, sounding tinny through a brass speaking tube that hung down from the ceiling between the double boilers.
Clarence shouted “Aye, aye!” and started throwing more logs in the furnace.
“Won’t that make it too hot?” I said, coming up beside him.
“These boilers ain’t blown in fifty trips,” he informed me cheerfully. “They’ll only blow if there’s a flaw in the plates, which more ’n’ more, I’m thinkin’ there ain’t! At least, I hope there ain’t!”
He grinned and threw another log in.
I adjusted my bonnet for maximum concealment and went back outside to check on our progress. The boat had the turn-radius of a Brontosaurus, but it was finally swinging around toward the Greater Gustimuck. The shore opposite the town of Freedom Falls was getting closer and closer. The current seemed less swift. I figured there would be plenty of time to get Dwina and Seth safely away from the doomed boat. Rescuing Frankie was the bigger problem.
Immediately, I didn’t like it.
As soon as we had seen Seth and Dwina safely on their way, I would play the Time Trombone. I was pretty sure I could hit the right notes to take the three of us home. Mr. Ganto had said he would be within earshot, so he would come, too. We would be whisked away, just before the boat exploded.
And everybody else would die in the explosion.
The two little boys who had used rock-paper-scissors on the dock ran past me, the one with the gun chasing the other and shouting “Ka-pow! Ka-pow!” The one being chased turned, aimed his finger, and shouted “Ka-pow!” right back.
I looked at my phone.
Fourteen minutes.
I had seen two other kids on board, one of them a baby. Clarence seemed like a nice enough guy, helping runaway slaves and all, and I was sure there were other good people on the boat as well.
Frankie had said we couldn’t interfere. What had happened in the past couldn’t be changed, because it would put the future in peril. You couldn’t deflect the bullet intended for Lincoln, you couldn’t warn the Titanic, you couldn’t save the crew and passengers of the Buckeye Beauty if it was their fate to be blown sky-high.
“Oh yeah?” I said.
And I came up with a better plan.