He waited for his eyes to adjust to the blackness, willing his heart to stop pounding in his ears....
Someone, or something, was breathing in here.
For an awful moment Alek wondered if there were creatures aboard the Leviathan that Dylan hadn't told him about. Monsters, perhaps. He remembered his military toys, and the Darwinist fighting creatures fabricated from the life threads of extinct and giant reptiles.
"Um, hello?" he whispered.
"Hello?" someone answered.
Alek swallowed. "Oh, I seem to have gotten lost. I'm sorry."
"Gotten lost?" came the reply. The words sounded hesitant, and there was something eerily familiar about the voice.
"Yes. I'll just be going." Alek turned back to the doorway and felt blindly for the knob. The metal squeaked a little as he turned it, and he froze.
Suddenly the room was full of tiny screeches and complaints.
"I'm sorry," a voice said. Then another whispered, "Hello?"
The murmurs increased, building in intensity. The room felt no bigger than a closet, but it sounded as though a dozen men were waking up around him. They muttered half-formed words, in a nervous and agitated babble.
Was this the airship's madhouse?
Yanking open the door, Alek banged it into his bare foot. He yelped with pain, and a symphony of angry voices answered. More cries filled the darkness, as though a brawl were breaking out!
Through the half-open door a green face stared back at him.
"Barking spiders! What are you doing?" the intruder said.
"Spiders! Barking spiders!" came a dozen cries from every direction.
Alek opened his mouth to scream, but then a low whistling sound floated through the room. The cacophony instantly went silent.
A glowworm lantern lifted in front of Alek's face. In its green light he made out Dylan squinting back at him, a command whistle in one hand.
"I reckoned it was you," the boy whispered.
"But ... but who are these - "
"Shush, you ninny. Don't get the beasties started again." Dylan pushed him backward and slipped into the room, closing the door behind them. "We'll be lucky if the navigators haven't heard this ruckus already."
Alek blinked, and in the light of the wormlamp finally saw the stacks of cages climbing the walls. They were full of message lizards, crowded together like puppies in a pet store.
"What is this place?" he breathed.
"It's the barking lizard room, isn't it?" Dylan whispered. "It's where Dr. Erasmus takes care of the beasties."
Alek swallowed, his eyes falling on a table where a dissected lizard lay pinned. Then he saw that the ceiling was covered with the gaping mouths of message tubes, tangled like railroad tracks at a station. "And it's a sort of junction, too, isn't it?"
"Aye. Dr. Erasmus is in charge of all that palaver - origin and destination tags, emergency alerts, clearing up traffic jams."
Alek stared at the dozens of tiny eyes peering at him, all glowing with wormlight. "I had no idea it was so ... complicated."
"How did you think the beasties always found you? By magic?" Dylan snorted. "It's a tricky job, even for a boffin, especially with half the lizards still dizzy from that Clanker lightning. Look at the poor things, and here's you riling them up!"
A few of the lizards started to murmur, repeating Dylan's words. But when he blew another soft, low note on his command whistle, they settled again.
Alek looked at Dylan. "You didn't just happen along, did you?"
"No. I couldn't sleep. And you know how Dr. Barlow doesn't want us bothering each other on egg duty? Well, I thought if I dropped by now, she wouldn't be about."
"But I wasn't there," Alek said.
Dylan nodded. "And that was a wee bit odd. So I thought I'd sniff around and see what you were up to."
"Didn't take you long to find me, did it?"
"The beasties' ruckus helped, but I reckoned you'd be down here in the storerooms." Dylan leaned closer. "You're looking for a way to escape, aren't you?"
Alek felt his jaw clench. "Am I that obvious?"
"No. I'm just dead clever," the boy said. "Have you not noticed?"
Alek took a moment to think about this, then smiled. "I have."
"Good." Dylan took a step past him and knelt at a small hatch on the opposite side of the room. "Come through here, then, before we start the beasties yammering again."
Chapter Nine
Dylan went first through the hatchway, climbing down a few rungs mounted on the slanted wall.
Alek passed the wormlamp down, spilling light into the small spherical chamber. He'd seen this place from outside the airship: a round bulge in the gondola's underbelly. The space was crowded by what looked like a mismatched pair of telescopes pointed down at the sea.
"Is that a weapon?" he asked.
"No. The fat one is a reconnaissance camera," Dylan said. "And the wee one's a sight for aerial bombs and navigation. But they're useless at night, so it'll be private enough."
"If not luxurious," Alek said. He climbed down and wedged himself onto a corner, half squatting on a giant gear attached to the camera's side. "But aren't we right below the bridge?"
Dylan glanced up. "That's the navigation room over us, and the bridge is above that. But it's safer here than in the lizard room. You're lucky you didn't send out an alert to the whole barking ship!"
"That might have been awkward," Alek said, imagining an army of lizards scampering through the airship's message tubes, shouting in his voice to the sleeping crew. "I'm a pretty useless spy, I suppose."
"At least you were clever enough to be caught by me," Dylan said. "And not someone who might have objected to you skulking about."
"Not so much skulking as bumbling," Alek said. "But thank you for not reporting me."
The boy shrugged. "I reckon it's a prisoner's duty to escape. After all, you Clankers keep saving the ship - that's three times now - and the captain's treating you like enemies! And just because Britain declared war on your granduncle. I think it's dead rotten."
Alek found himself smiling. On the subject of Dylan's loyalty, at least, Volger's suspicions were completely wrong.
"So that's why you were looking for me," Alek said. "To talk about how we can escape."
"Well, I'm not keen to help you. That might be a squick too treasonous, even for me. It was only ..." Dylan's voice faded.
"What?"
"We'll be in Constantinople by noon tomorrow, so I reckoned you might be slipping away soon, and this might be our last chance to talk." The boy wrapped his arms around himself. "And I've hardly slept anyway."
Alek squinted through the darkness. Dylan's fine features looked drawn, even in the soft light of the glowworms. His usual smile was missing.
"What's wrong?"
"It was what happened to Newkirk. It's left me dead shattered."
"Shattered?" Alek frowned. Dylan's strange way with the English language was playing tricks again. "Newkirk is the midshipman whose Huxley burned, right?"
"Aye, it was so much like ... what happened when my da died. It's given me nightmares."
Alek nodded. The boy had never said much about his father's death. Only that he'd been lost in an accident, and that Dylan hadn't spoken for a whole month afterward.
"You've never told anyone about it, have you?"
The boy shook his head, then fell still.
Alek waited, remembering how hard it had been to tell Dylan about his own parents. In the silence he could hear the wind sweeping around the prow of the airship, testing its joints and seams. A draft swirled up from where the camera thrust out into the night sky, snatches of cold air coiling around their feet.
"I mean, since you're leaving the ship anyway," Dylan said, "I reckoned it wouldn't burden you too much to hear it."
"Of course you can tell me, Dylan. You know plenty of my secrets, after all."
The boy nodded, but fell silent again, his arms still wrapped tight around himself. Alek took a slow breath. He'd never seen Dylan afraid to speak his mind. The boy had never seemed afraid of anything before, much less a memory.
Perhaps he didn't want anyone to see him this way, looking weak and ... shattered.
Alek slipped off his jacket and laid it over the wormlamp. Darkness wrapped around them both.
"Tell me," he said gently.
A moment later Dylan began to speak.
"Da flew hot-air balloons, you see, even after the hydrogen breathers got so big. I always went up with him, so I was there when it happened. We were still on the ground, the burners firing to warm up the air in the envelope. Then suddenly there was this great blast of heat, like opening a boiler door. One of the kerosene tanks ..."
Dylan's voice had gradually gone softer, almost like a girl's, and now it faded away altogether. Alek slid closer, putting his arm around the boy until he spoke again.
"It was just like with Newkirk. The fire shot straight up until the whole balloon was burning overhead, the heat pulling us skyward. The tethers held, even though they must have been on fire too. And my da pushed me out of the basket."
"So he saved you."
"Aye, but that's what killed him. With my weight gone, the ropes broke, all at once, like knuckles cracking. And Da's balloon went roaring away."
Alek's breath caught. He remembered again the German zeppelin in the Alps, falling right in front of him, its hydrogen ignited by machine-gun fire. He could still hear the snow beneath the wreck hissing as it turned to steam, and the thin screams from inside the gondola.
"Everyone saw how he'd saved me," Dylan said, reaching into his pocket. "They gave him a medal for it."
He pulled out a small decoration, a rounded silver cross that dangled from a sky blue ribbon. In the darkness Alek could just make out the face of Charles Darwin engraved upon its center.
"It's called the Air Gallantry Cross, the highest honor they can give a civilian for deeds in the air."
"You must be proud," Alek said.
"Back in that first year, when I couldn't sleep, I used to stare at it at night. But I thought the nightmares were over and done with, until what happened to Newkirk." Dylan looked at him. "Maybe you understand a wee bit, how it comes back? Because of your ma and da?"
Alek nodded, staring at the medal and wondering what to say. He still had dreams, of course, but his own parents' death had happened in far-off Sarajevo, not in front of his eyes. Even his nightmares couldn't compare with what Dylan had described.
But then he remembered the moment when the Tesla cannon had fired, his horror that the Leviathan would be engulfed in flame.
"I think you're very brave, serving on this ship."
"Aye, or mad." The boy's eyes glistened in the glimmers of wormlight from beneath Alek's jacket. "Don't you think it's daft? Like I'm trying to burn to death, same as he did?"
"Don't be absurd," Alek said. "You're honoring your father. Of course you'd want to be on this ship. If I weren't ..." He paused. "I mean, if things were different, I'd want to stay here too."
"You would?"
"Well, maybe it's silly. But the last few days, it's like something's changing inside me. Everything I ever knew is upside down. Sometimes it's almost as if I'm ... in love ..."
Dylan's body tightened beside Alek.
"I know it sounds silly," Alek said quickly. "It's quite obviously ridiculous."
"But are you saying that ... ? I mean, what if things were different than you thought? If I were ... or have you guessed already?" Dylan let out a groan. "Just what are you saying?"