Chapter Eight: Unknowing Youth
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originalsam_backupChapter Eight: Unknowing Youth
Jack didn't see Clare or Graveworthy at lunch that day, and he felt somewhat lonely as he ate his meal at the bar and wandered out into the afternoon. The stormclouds had finally blown away; on a day like this in Harvard he might be holed up in the library or working on a machine in his rooms, but here all he could do was walk the deck or try and find somewhere else to explore, and he was fairly sure he'd seen all the really interesting things to see. He plucked at one of the rigging lines on deck, decorative for the most part or intended only for flying flags of communication to other vessels they passed.
Leonardo Da Vinci himself had invented a flying machine, but the engine to power it would weigh too much for the lift it would provide. He had sketched little gliders, too, and Jack supposed those would work for a short time, but they weren't secure enough for real travel. He would try to build a Da Vinci engine when they made land, but he was growing more and more certain that he would have to design his own model.
And if that was the case, why wait to arrive? Here he was on a ship with the raw materials to hand, and he had nothing better to do. There must be glue somewhere, and there was plenty of paper in the stateroom.
He resolutely walked back into the dining saloon and pushed open the doors to the kitchen, walking through as if he owned the place. Many of the entrances to the engines were through the kitchens or staff rooms, and the chefs paid him very little mind. He found what he needed, returned to his stateroom, and got to work.
By the time Graveworthy came in, a few hours later, Jack had constructed two passable wings out of rolled paper glued to linen napkins, with a card-board rudder controlled by two levers made out of forks.
"Hi! Look!" Jack said, holding it up. Graveworthy eyed it with the kind of look that Jack's professors often employed when he was showing off a machine that wasn't strictly class-related.
"Does it fly?" he asked, examining the knotwork Jack had used on the forks.
"If you throw it hard enough, anything flies," Jack replied. "What I want is...um...air-buoyancy."
"Lighter-than-airness," Graveworthy suggested.
"That's it. Is there a word for that? You're the writer."
Graveworthy considered matters as he twiddled the forks, moving the rudder back and forth. "Not a single word, I don't think. I should invent one. Levitousness, perhaps."
He set the little craft down on the desk and sat on the edge of the bed. "Jack...are you aware of Clare's origins?"
Jack frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Where she comes from, why she lives with her godparents."
"I do. But she -- I mean, no offence, but she doesn't like you much. I don't think she'd want you knowing."
"It's a trifle late for that now."
Jack raised his eyebrows. "Who told you? I didn't think anyone but me and her godparents knew."
"She did. I doubt she intended it." Graveworthy tilted his head at the wall that separated her cabin from theirs. "She locked herself in, earlier. I think she is...confused. And homesick."
"Clare's never homesick."
"Perhaps she's never been quite so far from home. You're used to being confined and away from your family; the Trade Schools are much less constricting than Harvard. And as you say...she's angry at me. Which is perhaps good in the grand scheme of things..." he shrugged. "Gives her something to do."
Jack glanced at the wall, biting his lip. One hand strayed to a scrap of paper leftover from wing-building, crumpling it. "She told you about Australia?"
"In a manner of speaking. I asked too many questions. And I know a little about expatriates. There are more in Britain, you know. More than in America, as big as it is."
"Listen, do you do this to her on purpose?" Jack asked. "Because if you're picking on her you're not too big for me to beat you up."
Graveworthy smiled. "I'm not too big for her to beat me up, either. I want to understand the pair of you, but it becomes increasingly complex the more I question. I don't want to hurt her, Jack, I'm not a sadist. But I want her to understand that I am not an enemy. Sometimes the only way to do that is to let her come to that conclusion herself, and think what she likes of me in the meantime."
This didn't make much sense to Jack, but he didn't say so; often people didn't make sense until he'd waited for a while and seen more of them, like particularly complex engines. Sometimes you just had to let it run until you got it.
"Maybe she needs me," he said hesitantly.
"Undoubtedly she needs you, as you need her. At this particular moment, I'm sure she would be glad of your presence." Another faint smile. "Perhaps you're too young to comprehend what a rare thing it is to exist in such harmony with someone. Do you and she ever fight?"
"What would we fight about?" Jack asked, standing and tossing the paper in his hand to one side. "All the fighting we had to do we got out of the way when I was still in short-pants."
As he stepped out of the stateroom and ducked over to Clare's door, he heard Graveworthy chuckle.
"Unknowing youth," the writer murmured, before the door shut.
***
The walls on the ship were not entirely too thick to hear through, and Ellis was not above listening at doors. It was a handy skill, especially when you were a sixteen-year-old printer's apprentice trying to determine your destiny. He stood near the wall, breathing softly, and listened as the conversation went on in Clare's small room.
"Clare," Jack called, trying to be silent on the other side of Clare's door. "Clare, it's Jack. Come on, let me in."
No response from the room.
"Clare, it's no use; you know I can pick these stupid locks if I want to. You might as well open the door."
He didn't hear footsteps, but he heard the lock snick back and the door open and close.
"Thanks. Nobody likes to look like an idiot talking to a door that isn't his."
Ellis smiled, but at the same time he wondered if Jack ever really took anything seriously. Other than machines, of course.
"I talked with Graveworthy," he said, and then something muffled that wasn't quite intelligible. Clare replied, but her voice was higher and didn't carry as well as Jack's baritone.
"Well, it's pretty obvious he keeps plenty of other secrets."
Clare's reply.
"I think he knows a lot of things about us he hasn't said. He watches people," Jack said.
Clare launched into a long and angry monologue, enough words audible for Ellis to determine that she was telling the story of their afternoon encounter in steerage. That had probably been as upsetting as anything. Ellis didn't think the children had spent much time seeing how the working-class lived. It was hard to avoid, in Boston or any other large city, but it wasn't hard to ignore. They'd obviously had middle-class upbringings and even as students they were accustomed to a certain level of comfort. Ellis wondered idly how Jack would react. He'd probably cheerfully sit down on someone's bunk and draw out a design in coal on wood for making it more durable and comfortable.
Ellis wished more people saw the world as Jack did, a composition of interlocking parts -- each valuable, and none functional without the others. Jack lived to improve lives and invent things for the sheer joy of creation, never thinking what his machines might do -- but Ellis didn't think he would intentionally create anything to hurt someone. The idea of Jack employed in making torture devices was at once horrifying and impossible to comprehend.
That would be an interesting story, wouldn't it? A man discovering that his machines were being employed to hurt others. Perhaps even a man who made war machines -- because machines didn't have to follow any kind of ethical Edict, not like Creationists in times of war.
Human life is sacred above all else, and no Creation shall harm or do it wrong --
He pulled himself back to listening, realising that Clare had gone silent.
"It's okay," Jack was saying, and Ellis wondered if Clare was crying. She didn't seem the type. "Sometimes people see things other people don't want them to. And I'm all right. I wanted to go. Maybe not quite so fast, but obviously this is important. And I like the idea of flying."
Clare said something low and vehement.
"Yeah -- I don't know where he wants to go. But I don't think he wants us to get hurt. He wants you to like him. I think, anyway. He's really complicated when he's trying to tell you something."
Ellis laughed silently. The most honest criticism, out of the mouth of a barely-grown engineer. He'd have to remember that the next time he was working on a book.
"Well, I think you should," Jack said, in reply to something Clare had told him. "Read it again, I mean. I guess you can learn about authors from their books. Every time he learns something about us we learn something about him, too, right? Like he can keep secrets. And you know he's a spy, so you're even, really."
There was a creak, like bedsprings settling.
"Do you want some dinner sent up?"
A laugh, and Clare obviously reminding him she was in the wrong cabin.
"Oh. I can bring you some...okay. Well, if you get hungry, come and find me."
The door opened and closed again, and Ellis returned to his seat on the bed, hastily taking out a notebook and a pen. He expected Jack to return, but he didn't; instead his footsteps disappeared down the hallway, and Ellis realised that Jack probably hadn't eaten dinner -- nor had he himself. He wondered if Jack wanted company, but decided against it. Instead he left the room, locked the door behind him, hesitated outside of Clare's room and then turned resolutely to the crewmens' quarters.
In a sense he was writing something, in his head, about steamship travel, but nothing like what the men and women in first-class thought. The ship's crew and the steerage passengers interested him far more than what fashions the first-classers were wearing or how they dealt with keeping their children busy on the long voyage. Jack's dreams of industry were already coming alive, and Jack was too young or too fascinated with machines to realise it, but it was a reality for the sailors aboard this ship. Most of them could recall crewing sailing ships, and some of them had lost their livelihoods to it.
He ducked into the crew mess and was greeted loudly by Cally, a middle-aged woman of no little beauty who had been a first-lieutenant on a cargo ship before taking up with steam.
"Ellis!" she called. "Over here, inkslinger!"
He accepted a tray of food from one of the cooks and seated himself next to her, among the upper operations officers. Nigel, who had been raised and trained on steamships, shoved a pitcher of water across the table.
"We was just talkin' bout you," he said.
"We were just speaking of you," Cally corrected. Nigel glared at her.
"Oh?" Ellis asked.
"Mmh. Captain thinks your book everyone's talking about is going to be on us," she replied. "He's getting nervous."
"Says him'll contact -- " Nigel rolled his eyes at Cally. "He'll contact the company when we go ashore and get constraints so's you can't tell anything naughty."
Ellis gave Cally an inquiring look. She nodded.
"Slander against the company is bad for business," she said.
"What is there to slander?" he asked. "You run an excellent service."
"You been down in steerage," Nigel said darkly.
"Yes, and they're fine people. I'm not writing a book about the poor conditions on a steam line. But I am writing a book about you," he added, and Nigel looked pleased. "If the steamships think it's slander to talk about industrialisation of the marine industry and the transition from a Creationist to an Engineered society, they may be bang to rights."
"See, he says it," Nigel said to Cally.
"Says what? Bang to rights? He only says it to get in good with you," she said loftily.
"What's all your talk about industrialisation?" Nigel asked, ignoring her.
"Well, people are learning more and more about labour-saving devices like engines, which don't require sails," Ellis said. "Your jobs have changed drastically in the past fifty years."
"No doubt," cally murmured.
"And they say," he added, baiting the hook carefully, "that in places like Australia they've found ways around Creationism that sooner or later have to catch on in the rest of the world."
"Who says that? Nobody's spoke to anyone but the government in years," Nigel said. "Even the cargo ships don't dock there. Not properly, anyway. Steven did an Australia run a few times."
"Eerie, I call it," Steven piped up from the end of the table, catching his name. The others fell silent; Steven was a gnarled sailor of the old school, who had gone round Cape Horn in a wooden vessel and fought pirates off the coast of India. His stories of his travels were worth the telling. "I reckon I'm the only one here as ever took an Australia run."
"Why eerie?" Ellis called.
"Well, the way they does it, those that don't get pirate-boarded, is they runs two routes. First half of the cargo's unloaded at Darwin port, second at Sydney to the south. Tis strange sailing round the western coast; all the city lights go up an' you can see 'em so close, but can't put in to port for love or money."
"Why don't you unload everything at Darwin?" Ellis asked.
"Well, now I hear they run a train all to Sydney so's they don't stop there, but in my day they was ports for the north and south."
"Of the east, surely," Ellis said. "What about the western coast?"
"Ain't noody in the western coast but them tribes of Aboriges," Steven said. "Who's tellin' this, me or you?"
"You are, Steven, I'm sorry."
"Well, there you are. So at Darwin they sends up a flare, and t'next day they pulls into port. Then all us take t'lifeboats and floats away, see, and the Australians come aboard when we drop sail. We don't see them, they don't see us. They takes their half of the cargo and leaves the rest, and meanwhile some banker," and he infused the word with all the sailor's hatred of merchantmen, "transfers payment for it. They know if they stole a thing we'd come after 'em with cannon, and you don't need to see a man to blow him to pieces."
"Not anymore," Ellis murmured.
"Then they raise sail when they leave, and we come aboard and on we go to Sydney, where we does it in Botany Bay all over again. And I tell you something, there's no silence like the silence of t'men waiting to take their ship back. We hear the Australians singin' away as they unload, but we don't see 'em. I done the trip three times and the only time I ever seen an Australian was some Aborige who hailed us as we came in to Botany Bay."
"How do you know he was an Aborigine?" Ellis asked, amused.
"He were drinkin'," Steven said darkly. The amusement Ellis had felt drained away slowly.
"Tis a wild country, Australia," Steven continued. "They got no Creation, and they're all convicts or foundling children-of, or crooked gov'ment men."
"Surely if they've run a steam engine all the way across the country they can't be uncivilised," Ellis replied.
"Can't they?" Nigel asked. "I hear them's asking for scrap iron and all. Word is them'll have their own steamships soon, and come and invade Injia."
"You're hopeless, Nigel," Cally replied disgustedly.
"I've heard the rumour too," Ellis said.
"I recall one man," Steven reminisced, ignoring the discussion at the other end of the table, "was left behind on ship on accident, and they made him go ashore and stay in Australia."
"But there are plenty of expatriates -- "
"Children," Steven answered sharply. "Children too young to know better. They send 'em off and we train 'em right, but you ain't met an expat in Britain who ain't a shade shifty."
"I've met quite good men and women who expatriated," Ellis said.
"They say it's in the dirt," Nigel said. "Once you eat food from Australia you're practically dead. You know, if you're a Creationist. That's why they shipped all those Creationists there. I shouldn't like to see Australia."
"You'll spook the crew," Cally said, capping the discussion neatly. "It's not likely we'll ever go there, anyway. We'll be in Penzance in another six days, and then back to Boston, and after that I'm taking service on a line to Dublin. They've offered me first navigator after one more passage."
Ellis lost interest in the discussion as it turned to the politics of company advancement; he had been waiting for a story like Steven's to surface. All the old sailors had them; some of them had even been on the last convict ships to Botany Bay, carrying the dangerous Creationists and the madmen and the politically disenchanted.
He knew, because it was his business these days to know, that Darwin Port was a military garrison designed to prevent pirates or other unsavouries from stealing the shipments that came in from Great Britain and India. It was also designed to prevent illegal immigration, not that many people wanted to. And while Botany Bay might still be a shipping town, no foreign ships ever docked there.
If they had no Creation, then everything they had was built by design, and they could be designing warships that the rest of the world only imagined in dreams. If that was why they were requesting iron and steel, as he knew also that they were, then it was indeed possible that Australia, like America a hundred years before, was about to declare its independence.
Unlike America, where gentle Father LaRoche had held an iron stand against violence of any sort and indoctrinated generations of leaders against the very idea of offensive battle tactics, Australia might make their declaration with blood and fire.
***
Excerpt of "The Voyage" taken from
THE CONSOLATIONS OF FATHER LAROCHE
By Vilhelm (called William) LaRoche
First Professor, Founding Overseer
"The Eternal Fire" 1672 - 1790
When I took ship from England to the coast of America, I had no conception of what would await me on the other side. I was confident in my people to settle an untamed land, but there was speech of wild murderous savages, and even those who had gone before from Europe were said to be uncivilised, given to cannibalism, and hostile towards those who came after. This I disbelieved; as Creationists we must search ever more cautiously for the truth behind what our eyes and ears show to us. I was right to do so.
My people were much afraid, fleeing the English hostility to our cause, some leaving behind sons or sisters or cousins to continue our work abroad -- and now that I am old, I think perhaps they were more the blessed for staying, though I am proud that I did not fight and did not allow myself to be martyred. Another great Creationist, Christ the Jew, could have done much more good on this earth, I feel, had he fled -- but then he believed it was his destiny to die, and perhaps we none of us escape the Creator's destiny.
It was my destiny to go ashore in America in a likely area for farming, and to encounter on my third day in this new country the gentle, kind peoples who populated the area, they also having decided it was farming land as well. Perhaps the Creator set them there or perhaps they came as we did, in fragile boats, far back in ancient history. You may see in the grand design of the universe the fortuitousness of this: my people, on meeting our allies, were no longer afraid and believed America to be a promised land. They were soon to discover that the natives of this country practiced Creation even as we did, though in much more peace than their European brothers ever had. They had accepted the gifts of the Creator and though they had not our rules, they had still given their Creationists rules to bind and settle them.
On my first encounter with a native I was hunting meat in a wood when three men came out of the trees silently, appearing before me and speaking not one word of English. And why would they? I did not speak their language either. When they saw me with a knife, looking I imagine quite bedraggled -- it had been a wet night -- one of them stepped forward and Created immediately. It was a weapon, a bladed device for throwing, and it was of inordinate size. More than this, however, it was Created with beauty, adorned with decorative designs, and very good to look on.
So I, in my innocent surprise, created a shield with the blazon of my Church in bright colours, to protect me as the Church protects all of my children -- and on seeing this he laid down his weapon and laughed, and after I saw that I would not be hurt I laughed too.
Thus you see, my sons and daughters who read this in ages to come, when Creation met Creation, even in fear, the end was laughter. May it be ever so.
***
Flyleaf of the first legal American printing of
GEPPETTO
by Ellis Graveworthy
(printed in "pulp" in 1960; Popular Publications, publishers)
THE SENSATIONAL NOVEL - NOW IN PRINT IN AMERICA FOR THE FIRST TIME!
THE TRAGIC ROMANCE OF TWO MEN CAUGHT IN THEIR OWN WEB OF LIES AND CRIME!
A HISTORICAL CLASSIC!
Homosexual sculptor Liam Geppetto wants love -- from another man!
His passion for the young "dandys" of UNDERWORLD LONDON leads to his DESTRUCTION when he falls in love with Pino, an Italian dockworker with a shady past and even SHADIER FUTURE! Their exploits take them down a path where he must break free -- or PERISH!
LEARN the lurid details of Victorian love among men!
DISCOVER Pino's secrets and why he accepts Geppetto's love!
READ as Geppetto entangles himself in a web of lies for the MAN HE LOVES!
BANNED IN AMERICA FOR DECADES - NOW AVAILABLE TO YOU!
The scandalous story of Geppetto and Pino that dared to take a classic tale -- and TWIST IT!
Written by literary master ELLIS GRAVEWORTHY for the STIMULATION of the populace!
READ IT BEFORE THEY BURN IT!
In a diary entry dated the evening before the first American printing of Geppetto, the owner of Popular Publications wrote:
My business is to pander to the tastes of the general public, but I try where I can to shed a little literary light into their eyes. If pulp was the only way to publish Graveworthy's work, so be it; they might be drawn in by the lurid advertisements and sexy covers, but the story is worth telling and it won't do them any harm to read a tragedy for once.
I'm sure Graveworthy is weeping in some afterlife or other, but I like to think that he's also proud it finally made it across the pond and I'm sure he wouldn't say no to the profitable dividends. Excellent old wretch, he must have been. Wonder what he and Baker got up to when they weren't leading revolutions.
Chapter 7 | Chapter 9
Jack didn't see Clare or Graveworthy at lunch that day, and he felt somewhat lonely as he ate his meal at the bar and wandered out into the afternoon. The stormclouds had finally blown away; on a day like this in Harvard he might be holed up in the library or working on a machine in his rooms, but here all he could do was walk the deck or try and find somewhere else to explore, and he was fairly sure he'd seen all the really interesting things to see. He plucked at one of the rigging lines on deck, decorative for the most part or intended only for flying flags of communication to other vessels they passed.
Leonardo Da Vinci himself had invented a flying machine, but the engine to power it would weigh too much for the lift it would provide. He had sketched little gliders, too, and Jack supposed those would work for a short time, but they weren't secure enough for real travel. He would try to build a Da Vinci engine when they made land, but he was growing more and more certain that he would have to design his own model.
And if that was the case, why wait to arrive? Here he was on a ship with the raw materials to hand, and he had nothing better to do. There must be glue somewhere, and there was plenty of paper in the stateroom.
He resolutely walked back into the dining saloon and pushed open the doors to the kitchen, walking through as if he owned the place. Many of the entrances to the engines were through the kitchens or staff rooms, and the chefs paid him very little mind. He found what he needed, returned to his stateroom, and got to work.
By the time Graveworthy came in, a few hours later, Jack had constructed two passable wings out of rolled paper glued to linen napkins, with a card-board rudder controlled by two levers made out of forks.
"Hi! Look!" Jack said, holding it up. Graveworthy eyed it with the kind of look that Jack's professors often employed when he was showing off a machine that wasn't strictly class-related.
"Does it fly?" he asked, examining the knotwork Jack had used on the forks.
"If you throw it hard enough, anything flies," Jack replied. "What I want is...um...air-buoyancy."
"Lighter-than-airness," Graveworthy suggested.
"That's it. Is there a word for that? You're the writer."
Graveworthy considered matters as he twiddled the forks, moving the rudder back and forth. "Not a single word, I don't think. I should invent one. Levitousness, perhaps."
He set the little craft down on the desk and sat on the edge of the bed. "Jack...are you aware of Clare's origins?"
Jack frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Where she comes from, why she lives with her godparents."
"I do. But she -- I mean, no offence, but she doesn't like you much. I don't think she'd want you knowing."
"It's a trifle late for that now."
Jack raised his eyebrows. "Who told you? I didn't think anyone but me and her godparents knew."
"She did. I doubt she intended it." Graveworthy tilted his head at the wall that separated her cabin from theirs. "She locked herself in, earlier. I think she is...confused. And homesick."
"Clare's never homesick."
"Perhaps she's never been quite so far from home. You're used to being confined and away from your family; the Trade Schools are much less constricting than Harvard. And as you say...she's angry at me. Which is perhaps good in the grand scheme of things..." he shrugged. "Gives her something to do."
Jack glanced at the wall, biting his lip. One hand strayed to a scrap of paper leftover from wing-building, crumpling it. "She told you about Australia?"
"In a manner of speaking. I asked too many questions. And I know a little about expatriates. There are more in Britain, you know. More than in America, as big as it is."
"Listen, do you do this to her on purpose?" Jack asked. "Because if you're picking on her you're not too big for me to beat you up."
Graveworthy smiled. "I'm not too big for her to beat me up, either. I want to understand the pair of you, but it becomes increasingly complex the more I question. I don't want to hurt her, Jack, I'm not a sadist. But I want her to understand that I am not an enemy. Sometimes the only way to do that is to let her come to that conclusion herself, and think what she likes of me in the meantime."
This didn't make much sense to Jack, but he didn't say so; often people didn't make sense until he'd waited for a while and seen more of them, like particularly complex engines. Sometimes you just had to let it run until you got it.
"Maybe she needs me," he said hesitantly.
"Undoubtedly she needs you, as you need her. At this particular moment, I'm sure she would be glad of your presence." Another faint smile. "Perhaps you're too young to comprehend what a rare thing it is to exist in such harmony with someone. Do you and she ever fight?"
"What would we fight about?" Jack asked, standing and tossing the paper in his hand to one side. "All the fighting we had to do we got out of the way when I was still in short-pants."
As he stepped out of the stateroom and ducked over to Clare's door, he heard Graveworthy chuckle.
"Unknowing youth," the writer murmured, before the door shut.
***
The walls on the ship were not entirely too thick to hear through, and Ellis was not above listening at doors. It was a handy skill, especially when you were a sixteen-year-old printer's apprentice trying to determine your destiny. He stood near the wall, breathing softly, and listened as the conversation went on in Clare's small room.
"Clare," Jack called, trying to be silent on the other side of Clare's door. "Clare, it's Jack. Come on, let me in."
No response from the room.
"Clare, it's no use; you know I can pick these stupid locks if I want to. You might as well open the door."
He didn't hear footsteps, but he heard the lock snick back and the door open and close.
"Thanks. Nobody likes to look like an idiot talking to a door that isn't his."
Ellis smiled, but at the same time he wondered if Jack ever really took anything seriously. Other than machines, of course.
"I talked with Graveworthy," he said, and then something muffled that wasn't quite intelligible. Clare replied, but her voice was higher and didn't carry as well as Jack's baritone.
"Well, it's pretty obvious he keeps plenty of other secrets."
Clare's reply.
"I think he knows a lot of things about us he hasn't said. He watches people," Jack said.
Clare launched into a long and angry monologue, enough words audible for Ellis to determine that she was telling the story of their afternoon encounter in steerage. That had probably been as upsetting as anything. Ellis didn't think the children had spent much time seeing how the working-class lived. It was hard to avoid, in Boston or any other large city, but it wasn't hard to ignore. They'd obviously had middle-class upbringings and even as students they were accustomed to a certain level of comfort. Ellis wondered idly how Jack would react. He'd probably cheerfully sit down on someone's bunk and draw out a design in coal on wood for making it more durable and comfortable.
Ellis wished more people saw the world as Jack did, a composition of interlocking parts -- each valuable, and none functional without the others. Jack lived to improve lives and invent things for the sheer joy of creation, never thinking what his machines might do -- but Ellis didn't think he would intentionally create anything to hurt someone. The idea of Jack employed in making torture devices was at once horrifying and impossible to comprehend.
That would be an interesting story, wouldn't it? A man discovering that his machines were being employed to hurt others. Perhaps even a man who made war machines -- because machines didn't have to follow any kind of ethical Edict, not like Creationists in times of war.
Human life is sacred above all else, and no Creation shall harm or do it wrong --
He pulled himself back to listening, realising that Clare had gone silent.
"It's okay," Jack was saying, and Ellis wondered if Clare was crying. She didn't seem the type. "Sometimes people see things other people don't want them to. And I'm all right. I wanted to go. Maybe not quite so fast, but obviously this is important. And I like the idea of flying."
Clare said something low and vehement.
"Yeah -- I don't know where he wants to go. But I don't think he wants us to get hurt. He wants you to like him. I think, anyway. He's really complicated when he's trying to tell you something."
Ellis laughed silently. The most honest criticism, out of the mouth of a barely-grown engineer. He'd have to remember that the next time he was working on a book.
"Well, I think you should," Jack said, in reply to something Clare had told him. "Read it again, I mean. I guess you can learn about authors from their books. Every time he learns something about us we learn something about him, too, right? Like he can keep secrets. And you know he's a spy, so you're even, really."
There was a creak, like bedsprings settling.
"Do you want some dinner sent up?"
A laugh, and Clare obviously reminding him she was in the wrong cabin.
"Oh. I can bring you some...okay. Well, if you get hungry, come and find me."
The door opened and closed again, and Ellis returned to his seat on the bed, hastily taking out a notebook and a pen. He expected Jack to return, but he didn't; instead his footsteps disappeared down the hallway, and Ellis realised that Jack probably hadn't eaten dinner -- nor had he himself. He wondered if Jack wanted company, but decided against it. Instead he left the room, locked the door behind him, hesitated outside of Clare's room and then turned resolutely to the crewmens' quarters.
In a sense he was writing something, in his head, about steamship travel, but nothing like what the men and women in first-class thought. The ship's crew and the steerage passengers interested him far more than what fashions the first-classers were wearing or how they dealt with keeping their children busy on the long voyage. Jack's dreams of industry were already coming alive, and Jack was too young or too fascinated with machines to realise it, but it was a reality for the sailors aboard this ship. Most of them could recall crewing sailing ships, and some of them had lost their livelihoods to it.
He ducked into the crew mess and was greeted loudly by Cally, a middle-aged woman of no little beauty who had been a first-lieutenant on a cargo ship before taking up with steam.
"Ellis!" she called. "Over here, inkslinger!"
He accepted a tray of food from one of the cooks and seated himself next to her, among the upper operations officers. Nigel, who had been raised and trained on steamships, shoved a pitcher of water across the table.
"We was just talkin' bout you," he said.
"We were just speaking of you," Cally corrected. Nigel glared at her.
"Oh?" Ellis asked.
"Mmh. Captain thinks your book everyone's talking about is going to be on us," she replied. "He's getting nervous."
"Says him'll contact -- " Nigel rolled his eyes at Cally. "He'll contact the company when we go ashore and get constraints so's you can't tell anything naughty."
Ellis gave Cally an inquiring look. She nodded.
"Slander against the company is bad for business," she said.
"What is there to slander?" he asked. "You run an excellent service."
"You been down in steerage," Nigel said darkly.
"Yes, and they're fine people. I'm not writing a book about the poor conditions on a steam line. But I am writing a book about you," he added, and Nigel looked pleased. "If the steamships think it's slander to talk about industrialisation of the marine industry and the transition from a Creationist to an Engineered society, they may be bang to rights."
"See, he says it," Nigel said to Cally.
"Says what? Bang to rights? He only says it to get in good with you," she said loftily.
"What's all your talk about industrialisation?" Nigel asked, ignoring her.
"Well, people are learning more and more about labour-saving devices like engines, which don't require sails," Ellis said. "Your jobs have changed drastically in the past fifty years."
"No doubt," cally murmured.
"And they say," he added, baiting the hook carefully, "that in places like Australia they've found ways around Creationism that sooner or later have to catch on in the rest of the world."
"Who says that? Nobody's spoke to anyone but the government in years," Nigel said. "Even the cargo ships don't dock there. Not properly, anyway. Steven did an Australia run a few times."
"Eerie, I call it," Steven piped up from the end of the table, catching his name. The others fell silent; Steven was a gnarled sailor of the old school, who had gone round Cape Horn in a wooden vessel and fought pirates off the coast of India. His stories of his travels were worth the telling. "I reckon I'm the only one here as ever took an Australia run."
"Why eerie?" Ellis called.
"Well, the way they does it, those that don't get pirate-boarded, is they runs two routes. First half of the cargo's unloaded at Darwin port, second at Sydney to the south. Tis strange sailing round the western coast; all the city lights go up an' you can see 'em so close, but can't put in to port for love or money."
"Why don't you unload everything at Darwin?" Ellis asked.
"Well, now I hear they run a train all to Sydney so's they don't stop there, but in my day they was ports for the north and south."
"Of the east, surely," Ellis said. "What about the western coast?"
"Ain't noody in the western coast but them tribes of Aboriges," Steven said. "Who's tellin' this, me or you?"
"You are, Steven, I'm sorry."
"Well, there you are. So at Darwin they sends up a flare, and t'next day they pulls into port. Then all us take t'lifeboats and floats away, see, and the Australians come aboard when we drop sail. We don't see them, they don't see us. They takes their half of the cargo and leaves the rest, and meanwhile some banker," and he infused the word with all the sailor's hatred of merchantmen, "transfers payment for it. They know if they stole a thing we'd come after 'em with cannon, and you don't need to see a man to blow him to pieces."
"Not anymore," Ellis murmured.
"Then they raise sail when they leave, and we come aboard and on we go to Sydney, where we does it in Botany Bay all over again. And I tell you something, there's no silence like the silence of t'men waiting to take their ship back. We hear the Australians singin' away as they unload, but we don't see 'em. I done the trip three times and the only time I ever seen an Australian was some Aborige who hailed us as we came in to Botany Bay."
"How do you know he was an Aborigine?" Ellis asked, amused.
"He were drinkin'," Steven said darkly. The amusement Ellis had felt drained away slowly.
"Tis a wild country, Australia," Steven continued. "They got no Creation, and they're all convicts or foundling children-of, or crooked gov'ment men."
"Surely if they've run a steam engine all the way across the country they can't be uncivilised," Ellis replied.
"Can't they?" Nigel asked. "I hear them's asking for scrap iron and all. Word is them'll have their own steamships soon, and come and invade Injia."
"You're hopeless, Nigel," Cally replied disgustedly.
"I've heard the rumour too," Ellis said.
"I recall one man," Steven reminisced, ignoring the discussion at the other end of the table, "was left behind on ship on accident, and they made him go ashore and stay in Australia."
"But there are plenty of expatriates -- "
"Children," Steven answered sharply. "Children too young to know better. They send 'em off and we train 'em right, but you ain't met an expat in Britain who ain't a shade shifty."
"I've met quite good men and women who expatriated," Ellis said.
"They say it's in the dirt," Nigel said. "Once you eat food from Australia you're practically dead. You know, if you're a Creationist. That's why they shipped all those Creationists there. I shouldn't like to see Australia."
"You'll spook the crew," Cally said, capping the discussion neatly. "It's not likely we'll ever go there, anyway. We'll be in Penzance in another six days, and then back to Boston, and after that I'm taking service on a line to Dublin. They've offered me first navigator after one more passage."
Ellis lost interest in the discussion as it turned to the politics of company advancement; he had been waiting for a story like Steven's to surface. All the old sailors had them; some of them had even been on the last convict ships to Botany Bay, carrying the dangerous Creationists and the madmen and the politically disenchanted.
He knew, because it was his business these days to know, that Darwin Port was a military garrison designed to prevent pirates or other unsavouries from stealing the shipments that came in from Great Britain and India. It was also designed to prevent illegal immigration, not that many people wanted to. And while Botany Bay might still be a shipping town, no foreign ships ever docked there.
If they had no Creation, then everything they had was built by design, and they could be designing warships that the rest of the world only imagined in dreams. If that was why they were requesting iron and steel, as he knew also that they were, then it was indeed possible that Australia, like America a hundred years before, was about to declare its independence.
Unlike America, where gentle Father LaRoche had held an iron stand against violence of any sort and indoctrinated generations of leaders against the very idea of offensive battle tactics, Australia might make their declaration with blood and fire.
***
Excerpt of "The Voyage" taken from
THE CONSOLATIONS OF FATHER LAROCHE
By Vilhelm (called William) LaRoche
First Professor, Founding Overseer
"The Eternal Fire" 1672 - 1790
When I took ship from England to the coast of America, I had no conception of what would await me on the other side. I was confident in my people to settle an untamed land, but there was speech of wild murderous savages, and even those who had gone before from Europe were said to be uncivilised, given to cannibalism, and hostile towards those who came after. This I disbelieved; as Creationists we must search ever more cautiously for the truth behind what our eyes and ears show to us. I was right to do so.
My people were much afraid, fleeing the English hostility to our cause, some leaving behind sons or sisters or cousins to continue our work abroad -- and now that I am old, I think perhaps they were more the blessed for staying, though I am proud that I did not fight and did not allow myself to be martyred. Another great Creationist, Christ the Jew, could have done much more good on this earth, I feel, had he fled -- but then he believed it was his destiny to die, and perhaps we none of us escape the Creator's destiny.
It was my destiny to go ashore in America in a likely area for farming, and to encounter on my third day in this new country the gentle, kind peoples who populated the area, they also having decided it was farming land as well. Perhaps the Creator set them there or perhaps they came as we did, in fragile boats, far back in ancient history. You may see in the grand design of the universe the fortuitousness of this: my people, on meeting our allies, were no longer afraid and believed America to be a promised land. They were soon to discover that the natives of this country practiced Creation even as we did, though in much more peace than their European brothers ever had. They had accepted the gifts of the Creator and though they had not our rules, they had still given their Creationists rules to bind and settle them.
On my first encounter with a native I was hunting meat in a wood when three men came out of the trees silently, appearing before me and speaking not one word of English. And why would they? I did not speak their language either. When they saw me with a knife, looking I imagine quite bedraggled -- it had been a wet night -- one of them stepped forward and Created immediately. It was a weapon, a bladed device for throwing, and it was of inordinate size. More than this, however, it was Created with beauty, adorned with decorative designs, and very good to look on.
So I, in my innocent surprise, created a shield with the blazon of my Church in bright colours, to protect me as the Church protects all of my children -- and on seeing this he laid down his weapon and laughed, and after I saw that I would not be hurt I laughed too.
Thus you see, my sons and daughters who read this in ages to come, when Creation met Creation, even in fear, the end was laughter. May it be ever so.
***
Flyleaf of the first legal American printing of
GEPPETTO
by Ellis Graveworthy
(printed in "pulp" in 1960; Popular Publications, publishers)
THE SENSATIONAL NOVEL - NOW IN PRINT IN AMERICA FOR THE FIRST TIME!
THE TRAGIC ROMANCE OF TWO MEN CAUGHT IN THEIR OWN WEB OF LIES AND CRIME!
A HISTORICAL CLASSIC!
Homosexual sculptor Liam Geppetto wants love -- from another man!
His passion for the young "dandys" of UNDERWORLD LONDON leads to his DESTRUCTION when he falls in love with Pino, an Italian dockworker with a shady past and even SHADIER FUTURE! Their exploits take them down a path where he must break free -- or PERISH!
LEARN the lurid details of Victorian love among men!
DISCOVER Pino's secrets and why he accepts Geppetto's love!
READ as Geppetto entangles himself in a web of lies for the MAN HE LOVES!
BANNED IN AMERICA FOR DECADES - NOW AVAILABLE TO YOU!
The scandalous story of Geppetto and Pino that dared to take a classic tale -- and TWIST IT!
Written by literary master ELLIS GRAVEWORTHY for the STIMULATION of the populace!
READ IT BEFORE THEY BURN IT!
In a diary entry dated the evening before the first American printing of Geppetto, the owner of Popular Publications wrote:
My business is to pander to the tastes of the general public, but I try where I can to shed a little literary light into their eyes. If pulp was the only way to publish Graveworthy's work, so be it; they might be drawn in by the lurid advertisements and sexy covers, but the story is worth telling and it won't do them any harm to read a tragedy for once.
I'm sure Graveworthy is weeping in some afterlife or other, but I like to think that he's also proud it finally made it across the pond and I'm sure he wouldn't say no to the profitable dividends. Excellent old wretch, he must have been. Wonder what he and Baker got up to when they weren't leading revolutions.
Chapter 7 | Chapter 9
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Date: 2008-10-06 10:12 am (UTC)Human life is sacred above all else, and no Creation shall harm or do it wrong —
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Date: 2008-10-06 11:19 am (UTC)Still, subconsciously, perhaps yes...
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Date: 2008-10-06 12:20 pm (UTC)Did I ever tell you I met the Good Doctor? I was a senior in high school, and our librarian was Secretary of the Lunarians, the New York Science Fiction Society. It was her custom to offer to take 3 or 4 of her favorite seniors to LunaCon as junior staff, with free admission... Dr A was as wonderful and funny and LECHEROUS as the legends say!
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Date: 2008-10-06 01:37 pm (UTC)He writes scifi that's a little too hardcore for me -- that's not a bad thing, I just struggle with science fiction that gets too science-y (Ender's Game, which is not all that science-y, took me three reads to fully comprehend). So I stick with the short story anthologies. :)
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Date: 2008-10-29 10:13 pm (UTC)For starters you have model making! Hooray for model making! It reminds me of my student years...
I absolutely loved this quote:
often people didn't make sense until he'd waited for a while and seen more of them, like particularly complex engines. Sometimes you just had to let it run until you got it.
It's ALWAYS true! A person has to be really really shallow and dull to make sense immediately. Or sometimes they seem to make sense at first, but the more you know them the more confusing they get. I think I’m like that. Many people who first meet me mistake me for someone who’s calm and sensible, never gets stressed and knows a whole deal more than I actual do. Only my friends know what a mess I actually am.
I also love that Women’s lib seems to have already happened! (I wish that it would hurry up and happen in the Real World too!)
You know, the way you describe the situation in Australia, it brings to mind USSR and Iron Curtain...
More quotes:
"How do you know he was an Aborigine?" Ellis asked, amused.
"He were drinkin'," Steven said darkly.
No comment.
Unlike America, where gentle Father LaRoche had held an iron stand against violence of any sort and indoctrinated generations of leaders against the very idea of offensive war,
I wish Real Life America was like that...
Another great Creationist, Christ the Jew,
Ha ha! Good one! Only, his name was Jesus. Christ is a title given to people, not actually a name.
You know, reading this Philip Pullman's Dark Material trilogy comes a bit to mind. Not because of the style of writting or the storyline, but because of the world created. The way your universe is parallel yet different from ours, and the way "magic", technology and the victorian era are integrated.
Anyway, I'm off to read the next chapter...
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Date: 2008-11-21 01:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-30 11:20 pm (UTC)On a petty note after they talked about bang to rights and Cally mummered "no doubt" her name was not capitalized. Otherwise, perfect!!
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Date: 2009-04-01 06:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-01 01:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-23 08:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-23 02:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-23 06:58 pm (UTC)The Dead Isle: Chapter Eight: Unknowing Youth
Date: 2009-08-17 09:39 pm (UTC)Graveworthy's Geppetto is striking me as a combination of Oscar Wilde and Giovanni's Room, but then, my knowledge of such stories is sadly limited.
I'm fascinated by the alternate history for Australia. No gold rush? no shipwreck coast? Was Adelaide still founded by aristocracy? But word on the or crooked gov'ment men - people extolling their/our convict past forget the bad-prison-guard part of the First Fleet.
You've got: "No doubt," cally murmured.
Re: The Dead Isle: Chapter Eight: Unknowing Youth
Date: 2009-08-18 04:32 pm (UTC)I knew a lot more about Australia at the end of this than I did at the start -- I will probably incorporate more history in the rewrite. There were still mining strikes, and I think I mention the gold rush in there somewhere.
Re: The Dead Isle: Chapter Eight: Unknowing Youth
Date: 2009-08-18 09:20 pm (UTC)It's interesting to think of how isolationist Australia could be. I don't have anything thoughts through yet, but it's making me go hmm. I wish I'd learnt more internal history at school. A lot of what we learn is Australia's relationships with the UK and the US.
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Date: 2009-08-23 04:06 am (UTC)I understand why you can't publish this. Ellis was originally an OC is HP fic, lah di dah, JKR comes after you, throwing those damned sticky lawyers at you.
But...you should write Gepetto/ Or someone should, anyway. It'd be brilliant, we'd all buy it, and then you'd've written TWO Ellis Graveworthy books.
Additionally, we all love re-told fairy/Disney tales. Just Ella, Ella Enchanted, six million other "new" Cinderellas, The Rumplestiltskin Problem, Briar Rose, Tam Lin, Prince of the Pond...The list goes on. Many of them are in no way appropriate for small children, but then again, most true fairy tales aren't.
I'm sure you've been told this before- write the story.
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Date: 2009-08-23 02:41 pm (UTC)Actually there's no reason I can't publish this, to be honest; it just needs a crap-ton of revisions first. I plan to self-publish, once I've finished with my current writing project.
I'd write Gepetto, but I don't think that's a story that necessarily needs telling anymore -- there are better stories to write *grins*
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Date: 2009-12-21 08:55 am (UTC)Excellent old wretch, he must have been. Wonder what he and Baker got up to when they weren't leading revolutions.
I am so excited right now and I love this story and everybody in it and I hope Clare gets a boyfriend and I just... Yay. Thank you.