The Explorer with the Clockwork Hand was sunburned, shaggy, unwashed. “What are you doing here?” I said. “The ship is swarming with agents. If they find you . . .”
“I know,” he said. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve been on the boat for a while, and I know their routines.”
“Aren’t you afraid they’ll find you?”
He ignored my question. “How are you, Kit? I’m sorry we didn’t get to talk at the Academy. They almost caught me that night.” He smiled a little, as though remembering his near capture.
“I’m . . . I don’t know, how do you think I am?” I took a deep breath. There wasn’t time to be angry. “I went to the room. I found the map that Dad left us. I saw the Muller Machine. We wrote a proposal to go to the place on Dad’s map. King Triton’s Lair. It’s off the coast of St. Beatrice, where all those ships have gone down and where Dad almost died on his own expedition. But Lazlo stole it and turned in his own proposal. So now we’re on Lazlo’s expedition, and Leo Nackley knows I’m holding out on him and I don’t even know what Dad wants us to find there. It may be something called Girafalco’s Trench, but I can’t figure out what . . .”
“Girafalco?” he asked sharply.
“Yes. Do you know who he is?”
He didn’t answer. “I know the name,” he said vaguely. “Now, do you have a plan?”
“Well . . . not really. M.K. built a submersible that can explore the ocean floor, and Lazlo thinks we’re going to use it to find the oil.” The truth was that we didn’t have a plan at all.
“If you get close enough, you’ll need to abandon the expedition and go off by yourself,” he said. “Are you prepared to do that?”
I stared at him. “I don’t know. What would happen to us?”
He grabbed my shoulders and brought his face very close to mine. “Everything may depend on whether or not you are able to do what your father wanted you to do. If you have the chance, you have to take it. Do you understand?”
I could feel anger wash over me. “How can you ask me to do that when you won’t even tell me what’s going on here? Where’s Dad? What is this all about? What am I looking for?” I hesitated. “Is he alive? You have to tell me.”
He sighed and sat back on the bench.
“You have every right to ask those questions,” he said. “We don’t have much time, but I’ll do the best I can.” He stood up and strolled casually down the deck, then came back and went the other direction, checking to see if anyone was near.
He sat down again. “For all I know, your father died in Fazia,” he said. “I was given my instructions before he left on the expedition. If something happened to him, I was supposed to find you and give you the package. That was all I knew. But I can tell you that there are things that are . . . suspicious about the government’s account of his disappearance. And I’ve heard, well . . . rumors, I suppose you’d call them. Anyway, you accused me of being a member of the Mapmakers’ Guild. I can’t confirm that, but you’re on the right track.”
“What is the Mapmakers’ Guild? What do you do?”
“You’ve already figured out that it’s a secret society of Explorers. What else do you know?”
“He’s leading us to something. It’s like a treasure hunt. One map leading to another, leading to another. What I want to know is what’s at the end.”
There was a long silence. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know exactly. But I do know that it’s a matter of life or death.”
Suddenly we heard voices coming our way, a woman laughing and then murmuring something to a man, who laughed in response.
We sat quietly until they had passed, arm in arm, still laughing, uninterested in what they thought was a Simerian businessman and his son sitting on the bench.
“You don’t know?” I asked incredulously. “And you’re asking us to risk our lives for it?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“What are we supposed to do, anyway? Just jump off the boat and see if King Triton or some freaky mermaid or something swims over and says hello?”
“It worked in Arizona,” he said.
“We got somebody killed in Arizona. And how do you know it ‘worked’? The Nackleys found the gold. Lazlo Nackley is the hero of Drowned Man’s Canyon.”
“Oh, come on. Let’s not play games here,” he said. “I know exactly what you did in Arizona. You protected the people in the canyon. John had already pledged his life to the task. He was happy to give it up. And it was Francis Foley who shot him. You bear no responsibility at all.”
There was a long silence while I decided whether I should ask him the question that had been on my mind for weeks. “I heard about Munopia. About what my father did there. Did he . . . did he really take bribes?”
He turned to look at me. “Your father wasn’t perfect, but I can guarantee you that if he took a bribe, he had a good reason.”
It wasn’t the answer I’d been hoping for. “Look, I think there must be some mistake. Maybe we weren’t supposed to start finding the maps for a couple of years. Maybe we weren’t supposed to start this until we’re older, until we, I don’t know . . . until my brother and sister . . . They’re the ones who—”
We heard voices again, two men this time, speaking English.
“I have to go,” he said. “But I think you’re selling yourself short. And you should know that it isn’t about your brother and sister. I was directed by your father to give the book to you. Just you. Not to Zander, not to M.K. To you, Kit.”
“What? But—”
“Goodbye. Good luck.”
I watched him make his way all the way down to the end of the deck, where he turned left into a doorway, his white robes swirling around him, and then he was gone.
