Ganymede (The Clockwork Century 3)

The smell of dead fish swelling in the sun invaded the usual odors of the bayou, and soon the hum of mosquitoes was matched and drowned out by the fiercer buzz of larger insects. Stagnant pools and puddles rippled with the small slaps of long-legged water birds stepping carefully among the tufts of grass, fishing with their javelin-sharp beaks; somewhere not too far away, a heavy-bodied pelican with shimmering brown feathers launched itself off the surface of the lake and into the air, its powerful wings spreading wider than Captain Cly’s arms and pumping hard to lift the big bird into the sky.

The pathway opened against a sodden, silt-thickened bank, and Lake Pontchartrain sprawled before them.

The water was quiet, save for the softly broken rushes of short waves pushed by wind, alligators, muskrats, or more pelicans with their pendulous torsos. Mostly it spread out flat and dark, its water the same shade of murk that made up the sopping bayous and the bubbling swamps. The tall, stiff grasses sagged as small white birds with spindly feet clutched at and bounced atop the vegetation. Turtles as slick and black as oil clustered on logs and rocks, sometimes ignoring the intruders and sometimes slipping away with a quiet plop. Glistening spiderwebs wider than curtains were strung between plants, trees, and the occasional piece of man-made pier blocking.

Everything, everywhere, was alive.

“This is the dock,” Deaderick said, and he leaned up against a rough-hewn banister that led to a wood-slat walkway over the water’s body. He looked as if he’d very much like to sit or lie down, but had no intention of doing so.

Houjin asked, “Where’s the ship? I don’t see it. ”

Josephine flashed her brother a look that told him to stay right the hell where he was, and led the way out onto the planks. “Over here,” she told them, as she stopped to kneel at the walkway’s edge. Leaning over, she reached underneath and pulled a lever or a switch that no one could see. With a loud clank and rattling of chains much like what they’d heard at the gate, the pier began to shake. Its pilings cast ringed waves in tiny loops as the whole structure shuddered.

“Look!” cried the boy.

He pointed at a separate set of pilings hidden in the grass. These, too, were wobbling, straining to heft something enormous—lifting it up between the two structures on a platform that must have been resting on the lake floor. The pulley chains twisted and tightened, and the clattering was raspy with rust, but the underwater lift did its work.

Up from the silted basin of Lake Pontchartrain rose the hull of a grim metal leviathan.

The whole of its steel cranium sloughed off swamp water and grass, clumps of runny mud and slippery tangles of fallen moss. It reared up out of the water, its bulbous and misshapen skull hammered into a shape influenced by the airships. But even with two-thirds of its bulk yet submerged, Cly could see the design elements that made this machine ready for water, and unworthy for air.

At water level, a pair of fixed fins were mounted on either side, left and right; larger fins were barely visible beneath the murky lake. The front was remarkable for what could not be called a windscreen, but a rounded glass window split down the middle and reaching up like a forehead.

This window gave the overall impression of a nearsighted mechanical whale wearing an oversized pair of spectacles.

Through it, Captain Cly could spy seating in the ordinary configuration: one spot for the captain, two chairs on either side for a first mate and engineer. All the fixtures were bolted to the floor or the wall, in case of … not turbulence, but waves, and tides, and currents.

Cly walked to the end of the pier in order to see the back end of the Ganymede, or what was visible of it above the water.

From the rear, the ship more closely resembled an actual sea creature. The back was snubbed, and then fitted with a fin that clearly moved not side to side, but up and down; below this fin—which must serve for stability more than for propulsion—a set of flaps were mounted, maybe for steering. Below these flaps, a pair of propulsion screws jabbed, dripping with river-bottom muck.

The large round portal to the left was likely matched by one on the far side, and if Cly recalled the schematics correctly, these were vents for taking on or ejecting water in order to let the craft rise or sink more easily.

Around front, Houjin was leaning so far off the pier that a sparrow’s wing could’ve knocked him flat into the water, bouncing him off the front windows of the Ganymede. Probably, he wouldn’t have minded.

“Watch out, Huey. I don’t know if we could fish you out of there before the alligators get you. ”

Houjin jerked back upright and peered anxiously into the water. “Are there alligators? I didn’t see any?…”

Deaderick said, “There are always alligators. The damn things are a fact of life around here. But,” he added as an afterthought, “they do tend to keep unwanted visitors away. ”

“Can we take a look inside?” Houjin asked.

“I’ll just open the hatch,” the guerrilla replied.

Josephine said, “No, I’ll do it. You hold tight. ”

“I’m fine. ”

“If Dr. Polk says so, then all right. And here he comes. ”

“Now I need a permission note?” he argued.

“No, I need one. You don’t want me to worry, do you?” Without waiting for an answer, she stepped to Ganymede’s side. She anchored herself by holding on to a piling with one arm, and then she leaned out with the other to grasp a lever embedded on the craft’s upper left side. When she gave the lever a yank, a panel jerked open with a sucking pop, revealing a bright red wheel.

Josephine turned the wheel with one hand, still holding tight to the dock with the other one. Going was slow until Cly joined her, saying, “Let me. ”

“I can do it. ”