Chapter Twenty-Eight

The view was definitely the most spectacular thing either of them had ever seen. Far below them, like a rolling field of snow stretching away to all four points of the compass were the clouds, illuminated by the clear, cold, unwavering light of a quarter moon. Above them and seemingly all around them were more stars than either of them knew existed, unobscured by clouds, steam-engine smoke, dust, and all the myriad things that came between earthbound humans and the heavens.

Becky and Liam were seated where they imagined the Captain and the First Mate (or something of the sort) must ordinarily sit—two very comfortable kidney-buttoned chairs of dark green leather on shiny brass pedestals that let them swivel in any direction they pleased. At the moment, they pleased to be facing forward, drinking in the stars. Finally Liam spoke:

“Becky Fox, will you marry me?”

She laughed her deep, unrestrained, joyous laugh—just hearing it made Liam smile.

“Perhaps,” she said. “Liam McCool, if I marry you will you give up being King of the Cracksmen so I needn’t worry every day about somebody or other clapping you in the jug?”

Liam thought that over for a bit and then grinned: “Perhaps.”

“Well, then,” she said with a smile, “let’s just wait and see and meantime enjoy every minute we can.”

“That sounds like a good plan to me.”

They sat there for a little while longer, each of them playing with daydreams of the future, until finally Liam tore himself away from Becky and the view and got up. “All right,” he said, “maybe we’d better figure out how to set a course and get this thing flying properly on its way home.”

With a little sigh of regret Becky pushed herself free of the armchair’s embrace and joined Liam at the control panel. At the top of the first bank of instruments was an enormous convex glass magnifier, perhaps three feet square, above which was a brass plaque with inch-high enamel letters reading “Mapping.” It was illuminated by electric bulbs that had been recessed into its frame all the way around the edges, and was currently showing the area around New Petersburg. In the center, below the bottom edge of the magnifier, were dials labeled “Country,” “City,” and “Environs.”

“See if you can find New York,” Liam suggested. Becky bent over and turned the first knob to “U.S.” which came up on the dial alphabetically (after tedious knob twirling through a gazetteer of other countries) following “Little Russia.” Fascinated, Liam watched as the map of Little Russia slid out of view, only to be replaced with one of the U.S. showing the area more or less across the Mississippi from where they had just been.

“I don’t think that’s what we want right now,” Liam said, “let’s try this.”

He gestured to a bank of dials and switches on the other side of the Mapping device that surrounded a steering bar pretty much like the one in any ordinary steam car. Liam pointed:

“There’s the compass that shows how we’re heading, which right now is due east. And there next to it is the Course Selection Compass—it looks like you move the needle the way you’d set the hands of a clock and then lock it onto your course with that green switch there that says ‘Set Course.’ The big question is, what’s the best route to get us home?”

Becky thought about it for a few moments. “The first thing we need to consider is what time we want to arrive. The main chronometer says it’s 10:20 p.m., July 1^st, and we need to cover something like a thousand miles at what that air speed indicator says is 200 miles per hour, so allowing for unfavorable winds and the general cussedness of things if we head directly there we would probably be arriving in or near New York uncomfortably close to dawn.”

Liam nodded thoughtfully. “Hard to make a clandestine landing in broad daylight in an aerial battleship the size of Staten Island.”

“It could be a bit sticky,” Becky agreed.

“Another thought is Stanton’s aerial patrols, you know …” (he made a simpering face) “… the ones your handsome beau Ubaldo told us about.”

“I’m much stronger than you realize,” Becky said with a pleasant smile, “if I hit you might be quite sorry.”

“Hmph,” Liam said. “Anyway, now that we’ve crossed the Mississippi into the U.S. we’re obviously in greater danger of discovery. So what do you think about heading directly north until we cross the Canadian border and then more or less following it until we get to Lake Ontario? From there to the city is only about three hundred miles, so if we can figure out someplace remote on the Canadian side of Lake Ontario where we can lay low in the daytime tomorrow, we should be able to time our arrival late enough on the 2^nd to avoid putting on a show.”

Liam could see that Becky was turning the idea over thoroughly and finding it satisfactory.

“I think I know a good place,” she said, “I once did a story on the Mississauga Ojibway who moved north to escape land-hungry New Yorkers. All along the Canadian side of Lake Ontario there are huge grassy stretches of prairie where we can set this thing down for as long as we like without a soul to see us or care if they do.”

“Perfect,” said Liam, “let’s set the course compass for due north—we should be in Canada in less than half an hour.”

As Becky set the course selection compass and locked down the “Set Course” dial, Liam investigated some of the other controls on the panels in front of what they assumed to be the Captain’s chair. Directly to the right on the panel facing the Captain was a red button the size of a silver dollar with an enameled label reading “TeslaBolt.”

“What the Dickens do you suppose that is?” he mused, resting his thumb on it as Becky joined him. Becky looked at the button dubiously and was about to pull Liam’s arm back when he gave in to temptation and pushed. Instantly a red light began flashing behind a brass label with cut-out letters reading “Capacitor Charging,” at the same time as a weird, groaning whine arose somewhere behind the control panels, moving rapidly up the scale till it reached an almost unbearable pitch. Involuntarily, Becky and Liam moved closer together, but before either of them could think what to do or where to go, a lightning bolt of blinding intensity shot out into the night from somewhere below the front of the Delta, filling the air in the control area with a sharp scent of ozone followed simultaneously by a thunderclap so loud that they both scrunched their eyes tight shut and threw their hands over their ears.

When they finally opened their eyes again the serene vista of moonlit clouds was stretching in front of them once more, the only clue to what had happened a moment before being the jagged after-images that still burned in their vision.

“Holy Mary!” Liam said hollowly.

Becky looked around at the cavernous space behind them, with its cheerful brass fixtures and green shades, thick maroon carpeting, and endless expanses of decoratively carved wood and mahogany paneling.

“Just look at that,” Becky said with a slight tremor in her voice. We might as well be in the lobby of a really lovely hotel, but we seem to be surrounded by more hideously lethal weaponry than our surface Navy has in any of its heavy battleships.”

Liam nodded soberly. “I expect this thing will end up on Shelter Island at Freedom Party headquarters within the next few days, but once it’s landed there you’d better tell Mr. Clemens to be ready to blow it to smithereens if either Stanton’s or Lukas’ people come after it. No politician anywhere has the brains and the goodness to be trusted with a gadget like this.”

Sunk in thought, Becky and Liam went back to their armchairs and watched the stars until finally the alarm on the control panel chimed.

“Well, Miss Fox,” Liam said with a stretch and a yawn, “unless we’re total dunces at mathematics, we should be about twenty miles into Canada by now. What do you say we re-set the course for Lake Ontario and catch a little shuteye before it starts to get light out?”

Becky smiled and copied Liam’s stretch, then got up and walked over to the control panel. After a few minor adjustments she closed the “Set Course” switch again and looked around.

“Now where do you suppose the officers’ staterooms are?”

Liam got up and joined her, looking around on every side and then making a face as he discovered where Becky was looking. A short corridor branched off the main cabin to the right and a couple of bulbs glowed behind a glass panel that announced “Officers’ Quarters.”

“Come on,” she said with a laugh, and grabbing his hand she pulled him forward down the corridor. “Ah!,” she said, pointing to the end of the hallway, where a brass panel on a large leather-covered door announced “Captain.” “The Captain’s quarters for me,” she announced and ran to the door, which opened to reveal a cozy, shipshape room with bookshelves, armchairs, green-shaded lamps and a big, comfortable-looking bed with a dark green coverlet.

“I’ll just sit on the floor and guard your door till sunrise,” Liam said with melodramatic gallantry.

“Like fun you will,” she said, pulling him firmly inside and closing the door after them …

Liam was sitting on the sandy bottom of a small, cool stream under a balmy spring sun, listening to the birds sing and watching the minnows chase each other while his freshly washed clothes dried on the grass. He had to admit it, even to a deep-dyed city boy this bucolic peace seemed pretty good. In fact, despite the incredible abundance of bad people and bad things in it, the world was actually a pretty terrific place. Of course, this conclusion became possible only if your initial premise was the presence of Becky Fox, but even so …

“LIAM!” She was calling from the direction of the Delta and she sounded excited. “LIAM! COME QUICKLY!”

Drying himself hastily with one of the nice thick dark-green towels he’d found in the Captain’s bathroom, Liam hurried into his clothes and trotted back towards the airship.

Looking as fresh and rosy as one of the little pink flowers that speckled the prairie around them, Becky was waving Liam towards her, nearly dancing up and down in her eagerness to get him there faster.

“Gosh,” he teased when he reached her, “I know kissing me is one of the finest things any right-thinking woman could do with her free time, but even so you could have waited until …”

She kissed him briskly and then laid a finger on his lips to shut him up. “You remember how you were saying you wished you knew what was waiting for us when we got back?”

He nodded, puzzled.

“Well,” she said with a cat-that-ate-the-cream smile, “I went exploring and I found something very interesting!”

Taking his hand, she pulled him up the stairs into the main cabin, and across it to what looked like a double-length roll-top desk set into the wall opposite the control panel. Becky gestured towards it mysteriously:

“Pull it back!”

Intrigued, Liam walked over to the arched wooden cover, stuck his fingertips into the recess that concealed the latch and pulled the cover up and back. It rolled up into the wall with oiled smoothness, revealing an assortment of unfamiliar gadgets.

To one side was a brass viewing-port like the business end of a stereopticon, a sort of projecting shield with curved sides that prevented stray light from spoiling your view while you pressed your forehead against the straight part at the top. In bold red letters the brass plaque above it said “Bausch & Lomb ShurShot Bombing Sight,” and below it were a series of large black knobs with knurled edges that Liam didn’t really want to think about, especially considering the labels: “Canister Bombs,” “Fire Bombs” and “Dynamite Bombs.”

Next to that was another, similar viewing port with the label “TeslaLux Night Viewer,” and finally, at the right of the group was the appliance that Becky was so excited about. It was nothing much to look at—a rosewood bar with brass fittings at either end, each of which held a little brass bowl about the size of a demitasse cup, resting on a sort of hooked holder on the panel and connected to the panel itself by a long insulated wire. Above this gadget was a brass plaque that announced it to be a “TeslaVox Transmitter and Receiver,” and below it was a simple red knob with a brass arrow at its edge and the unambiguous legend: “ON—OFF.”

“Go on,” Becky urged, “pick the thing up and turn it on!”

Smiling a little uneasily, Liam picked it up and turned the red knob, at which point he heard a thin jabbering sound coming out of one of the brass cups. Liam gave it a mistrustful look, wondering what was supposed to happen next.

“For Heaven’s sake,” Becky said impatiently, “listen to it!” She pantomimed holding the thing up to her ear, and no sooner had Liam followed suit than he heard a thin, cross-sounding voice saying:

“Hello! Voicewire operator #81. Hello!?”

Without even thinking about it, Liam jammed the thing back onto its holder and stood staring at it incredulously.

“Is that what I think …”

“Of course it is!” Becky exclaimed. “We saw the other night how well Tesla’s new electricity-transmitting towers are working. It seems plain enough that he’s actually figured out how to transmit the energy that makes the voicewire work, without a wire!”

Liam was shaking his head wryly: “But of course only the Department of Public Safety can have these.”

Becky spread her hands: “Let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth! In a few minutes I want to call Mr. Clemens at Shelter Island and dictate a full story on what’s happening—and for that matter what’s not happening—in Little Russia. He’ll be able to get it to every American paper that dares to print it and to all the foreign papers. By the end of the day the story will be going around the globe like wildfire: ‘No war preparations in Little Russia!’ ‘Little Russian Aerial Navy a pitiful sham!’ And finally, even if our facts are a little thin right now: ‘Revolution breaks out in Little Russia! Gigantic dynamite explosion at Viceroy’s palace!’” Becky grinned cheerfully. “I’m afraid Stanton will have to re-write his war plans, since France and England both have treaties with Russia that provide for military support in the case of unprovoked attack by a third party, and that would mean biting off a bigger risk than Stanton will want to chew.”

Liam was shaking his head again, this time admiringly: “Becky Fox, you are a wonder! Stanton will be as wild as a bear with a sore paw! Go on, what’s keeping you?”

She gave him a hug. “Silly man, I’ll be talking forever—I thought you might like to call Mike first and find out if he’s learned anything about your grandmother.”

Liam kissed Becky. “You really are a wonder. Let’s give it a try.”

He picked up the TeslaVox gadget, and this time another operator answered:

“Voicewire Operator #47, how can I help you?”

A little gingerly, still not quite believing in it, he gave her Mike’s voicewire number and waited for what seemed like forever. But finally a thin voice came from the cup at his ear:

“Vysotsky!”

“Misha!” Liam bellowed happily. “It’s me!”

“Hey, pipe down, durak, you’re breaking my ear! Where are you? What’ve you been up to? They got posters out now, you’re wanted dead or alive! What’d you do, anyway, pinch Stanton’s watch?”

Liam beckoned Becky over and instinctively cupped the thing in his hands to make it louder as she bent close to listen:

“Druzhok, if I told you, you’d say I was smoking hop. I’ll give you the whole story really soon, I promise. Right now I want to know how everything’s going in the city. How are you and the boys? How’s Gran?”

Mike barked a tinny little laugh. Then: “Ever since the other night with the riots this town is so bughouse I don’t know where to start. First off, old Pilkington is out of the picture. That’s O-U-T, out! His son Willie—his own son, would you believe?—has him under house arrest. And guess who Willie the Piglet put in charge of the New York Agency instead? None other than The Great Detective!”

“McPherson?” Liam said incredulously.

“I kid you not, batiushka,” said Mike. “So you can forget about any understandings you had with Papa Pig, they’re all ancient history now. Except don’t forget, the old man probably had to leave all his papers back at Union Square, which means including your arrest record, the indictment, the sentencing recommendation and all the other little goodies he was holding over your head.”

“Oh, man,” muttered Liam. “Well, OK, that’ll have to be for later. Right now, #1 is where’s Gran?”

“Yeah,” Mike said, “that’s the part that isn’t so good. I got inside word you can make book on, says she and our boys and most of the other people they picked up in the sweeps are right now sitting in a big shed they used to use for a warehouse … you ready for this?”

“Nu podi zhe, chort voz’mi!” snapped Liam.

A tinny sigh at the other end. “OK,” said Mike, “they’re all at Sing Sing.”

Liam’s jaw dropped. He stared at Becky and he didn’t like what he saw there, either. He stood there for a long handful of seconds, his brain racing a thousand miles a minute. Then he put his hand over the TeslaVox gadget for a moment and spoke to Becky:

“Do you think once we pick a safe landing spot somewhere near Sing Sing you could ask Mr. Clemens to send Capt. Ubaldo to meet us there tomorrow night, the 3^rd?”

Becky thought for a moment. “If he has enough warning I can’t imagine why he’d say no.”

Mike was running out of patience: “Hey! You still there?”

“Yeah, I’m here all right,” Liam said slowly. “Listen, Misha, I’m going to stay where I am for another day—that’ll give you enough time to get everything ready to go the minute I get back. So here’s the shopping list: First of all, do we still have people on the inside at the Brooklyn Bridge building site?”

“Yeah, sure, but…”

“I’m going to need you to buy us some supplies before I get back. Don’t worry, I’ll tell you in a minute. Number two is, I want you to get in touch with the two Dannys, we need to get together with them and make some plans. Invite them to our Fourth of July party.”

“Are you serious? You want to get together with the Whyos?”

“You bet I’m serious. The Dannys may think the Whyos are God, but we’re all going to need to co-operate for a while here, no feuding. We need to get the Whyos on board first because every other gang in town but us has to go to the Dannys to ask if it’s OK to breathe. If the two Dannys are OK with working together, then the rest of them will be OK. And believe me, there isn’t a single one of us can draw a free breath again until we get rid of Stanton and his mob, so we’re going to have to join forces to do it.”

“Man!” Mike said heavily. “You don’t like to play for pennies, do you?”

“Listen to me, Mishen’ka,” Liam said, “I just spent the last day or so with General Custer, you know?”

“Yeah, sure,” Mike chortled, “and I was shooting craps with Genghis Khan!”

“Dammit, Mike, listen to me. I’m not kidding, and Custer’s in this game with us. The advice he gave me was solid gold: He said if you’re going up against an enemy as big as Stanton, you want to do like the Sioux do with the white man: hit and run, hit and run over and over again, biting off a chunk here and a chunk there until he finally blows his stack and drops his guard. Then you can cut his gizzard out and throw him in the East River, OK?”

“OK, I’m listening,” said Mike reflectively.

“So: #1, the Brooklyn Bridge. #2, the two Dannys. And number three is I think maybe I have an idea what to do about Sing Sing, thanks to Little Adam. We still have any credit with the Grogans?”

“Lyovushka, milyi moi,” Mike said, “I told you they owe us, they’re gonna be our water taxi from now till they ferry us down the River Styx.”

“Good,” said Liam, “then here’s what we’re going to do …”

New York and Environs July 3–July 4, 1877