Chapter Fifteen: Heart's Desire

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

Chapter Fifteen: Heart's Desire

The morning after Anderson was shot, they bought hot pastries from a cookshop near the hotel they had stayed in, breakfasting with a slightly hung-over and rather wretched-feeling Anderson. Jack noticed that he didn't ask what happened to Benneton; presumably all these secret agents knew what happened to men who shot other men in the back. They were shoo'd out when the doctor arrived to take Anderson home and, though they offered, Anderson told them he was going to sleep all day and they should amuse themselves instead of standing vigil.

Jack was unhappy that Anderson had been hurt, of course, and he had a dim inkling that he should feel guilty that his work was causing so much fuss, but he couldn't help being just a little glad that they had the morning to themselves. As soon as he felt it was appropriate, he suggested that they should go to the silk warehouse.

Graveworthy's smile told him he probably hadn't been as suave as he wanted, but he didn't seem upset, so it was all one in the end. They bought a truly mind-numbing amount of silk in the weave that seemed to work best, and Miranda thought they were some kind of angels sent from heaven to buy up bolts of cloth that not many people found very attractive.

"Tell me, can you recommend any good seamstresses?" Jack asked, as Miranda was fussing over filling out the bill. "I need someone who can sew very tight, very even seams."

"I think we've all figured what you're doing," Miranda said, pausing to smile at him. Jack felt cold.

"What...?" he asked hesitantly.

"You're making a big-top! Industrialist indeed -- you're like those men who run the circuses, aren't you?" she said. Jack heard a muffled laugh behind him, and knew Graveworthy was near.

"That's right," Jack said. "I suppose you've caught me."

"Reckon you're going to put it on as some kind of curiousity, eh? The only hand-made circus-tent in the world? All the others use Creationists, you know."

"Mr. Parsons is quite an innovator," Graveworthy said, leaning on the counter. "But he wants to surprise the people back in the states -- don't tell anyone, eh?"

"Silent as the grave, sir," she said, charmed. "Just think. My silks in a circus! In America!"

"I can guarantee, your silks will be involved in one of the most unique sights of the age," Graveworthy said. Miranda turned pink.

"Those seamstresses..." Jack said, for once the one to guide the conversation back on track.

"Well, my cousin's father-in-law runs a shop that makes umbrellas and dress trains," Miranda said thoughtfully. "I could speak to them for you."

"Please," Jack said. "Until then just hold the bolts here. If we can't find someone in London we'll have you send them on."

"Just so, Mr. Parsons. Now don't let any of this near those lions and acrobats!" she said, laughing as she bustled away.

"I should have thought of that as an excuse," Graveworthy said. "A circus tent's the same general shape, just a little more tucked in. It needs the same long seams."

"You sound like an engineer now," Jack said, as they left the shop.

"Always learning," Graveworthy replied. "Ms. Fields, what were you talking with the shop attendant about in the corner?"

"He wanted to interest me in ascots. I said no," Clare said loftily.

"Quite right."

"Should we go see Anderson again?" Jack asked, as Graveworthy checked his pocketwatch.

"Indeed; he ought to be settled by now. I hope you don't mind spending another night in the hotel; I'd like to remain until tomorrow afternoon. And Ms. Fields really should attend a service at the London Grand Temple," Graveworthy added. "I've been there myself. It's quite impressive."

"I don't mind," Clare said. Jack shrugged and smiled.

"There's not much I can do at the moment anyway, except maybe look in on Sir William," he said. "The steam engine and propellers are on order and the coal for the engine can come up with the helium when we're ready for it. This is the part I never like," he added, kicking a stone down the dusty street. "When you can't do anything even though there's so much to do."

"Enjoy it while it lasts," Graveworthy replied. "I'm certain you won't shirk when there is something to be done, Mr. Baker. Let us proceed to the house of Anderson and entertain him, shall we?"

Anderson welcomed them with the quiet decency of a good host and had delicious food brought up to his bedroom where he was resting, sipping on beef broth while Jack and the others ate new potatoes and roasted chicken. He prattled about the doctor and the strange looks from the club until they were finished, and the coffee had been brought in.

"Ms. Fields, Mr. Baker, I don't mean to be rude or to be a bad host, but Ellis and I have things to discuss," he said finally, sipping weak watered coffee with his left hand. "There's an excellent library downstairs, with a few game boards and plenty of books -- he says you're fond of reading. If I could ask for half an hour or so..."

"You're going to talk about Australia," Clare said. Jack stared at her. Anderson glanced at Ellis.

"I didn't tell them," he said. "They figured it out. Baker mentioned it a week ago, and Clare, I think, knows that we are going to discuss your successor."

"How did you know?" Anderson asked.

"It was Clare," Jack said, before she could talk. "Where else would you need to go that you couldn't get to by land or boat, and couldn't use anything Created?"

"Mr. Graveworthy told us you're carrying supplies and people into dangerous territory. And that others think you're going to make a pact, which means you're not, or you wouldn't bother sharing the suspicions of others," Clare said.

"She'd make a good spy," Anderson said to Graveworthy.

"She doesn't want to be," Clare said sharply.

"Then it isn't any business of yours, who we choose, is it?" Graveworthy asked mildly.

"I don't want to be a spy. That doesn't mean I don't want to come with you," she said. Both men looked startled; Graveworthy hid it better, Jack noticed.

"Come with me?" Graveworthy asked.

"Jack and I both. You'll need someone to keep the airship up," she continued. "Two men isn't enough to run something like that, not for days at a time. With three, we'll be safer. I'm like you...Australia doesn't affect me."

Anderson leaned forward a little. "Ellis said you were an expat."

Clare glared at him. Graveworthy looked unapologetic.

"Which means you want to go to Australia for the same shallow, self-serving reason I did," Anderson continued with a smile. "You want to see your family. You want to see your home."

"It's not shallow -- "

"Not to you, I suppose, but in the eyes of Her Majesty...well. We serve a higher purpose, Ms. Fields, and those who stray from that purpose end like Benneton -- betraying the ones they love for the things they want. You know, it occurs to me," he added, turning to Graveworthy, "that it's possible Benneton did me a favour in keeping me out of this affair."

Graveworthy tilted his head. "You are grasping at reasons not to mourn, Gregory."

"We take what we're given. Ms. Fields," Anderson said, turning back to Clare, "I know what you feel, and I've felt it a good deal longer than you have. You're hardly grown -- and as brilliant as you are, which Graveworthy assures me is the case, you and Mr. Baker are still young with bright futures. You should not risk them on this."

"There won't be any 'this' unless Jack builds your flying machine -- and you know he's the only one who knows how it will work."

"Hey!" Jack said, turning to Clare. "Don't blackmail them with my ship, Clare."

"Your ship," Clare said.

"Paid for by my government," Anderson said. "As are the clothes on your back and the crossing to England."

"Children," Graveworthy said, and his gaze took in not just the pair of them but Anderson as well. "Ms. Fields and Mr. Baker are technically under the auspices of our organisation. Jack is building our airship, and Ms. Fields' remarks are not entirely out of line, if ill-timed," he drawled.

"You can't be serious, El."

"Why not? They have shown themselves to be extraordinary individuals and assets in more ways than simply technical," Graveworthy continued.

Anderson pursed his lips.

"Ms. Fields, Mr. Baker, I really do think you might enjoy a game of backgammon," he said. Jack took Clare's hand and squeezed it, hoping she would keep quiet.

"We'll go," he said, standing and picking up his coffee, leading her away. He held the door for her and shut it behind them, but not before he heard Anderson's voice, quiet but not quiet enough.

"El, you can't give these children everything they ask for."

"They aren't stupid, Gregory, and I've already given Jack what he wants -- Clare deserves to see her family again."

***

When Ellis came down to the library an hour later, Jack was flicking backgammon tiles across the room like tiddly-winks, apparently going for distance. Clare stood at the window, looking out at the dark sky and the moon. They were waiting for him, of course, but they looked also like some scene from a book he hadn't written yet -- a handsome, lazy boy with keen eyes, toying with a children's game while the beautiful woman at the window watched the stars come out.

Then he pushed the door open fully and the scene broke apart; Clare turned, her face catching the light of the fire, and Jack looked up with a red backgammon tile still in his hand. He wasn't certain how he could have come to care so much about them in such a short time; perhaps it was the charm of youth, or the fact that they reminded him of his own young self. Or perhaps it was just because they were worth the affection, and so few people seemed to be worth it or willing to accept it if they were.

"I've spoken with Anderson," he said slowly, pulling out a chair and seating himself at the table with Jack. "Ms. Fields, will you sit down?"

She came with odd obedience, as if she thought at this late stage she could impress him with her ability to take direction.

"You are both clever and driven and young enough to believe you're immortal," he said. "Which is the sort of man or woman we look for in someone who plays the Game. If it were Jack petitioning to go as an Engineer, as a pilot, there would be no trouble -- " he held up his hand to forestall Clare's objection. "Hear me out, please."

She closed her mouth and nodded.

"Jack has no family -- he only has you," he continued. "There is no one to be concerned with his welfare as a parent or a wife. Nobody keeps count of him except you."

He glanced at Jack, and saw the pain of it written on his face. It was hard to touch a person's truths, Ellis knew that; sooner or later you had to, but it hurt the person deeply. Jack was young enough to recover himself.

"You have godparents -- parents in America who love you and raised you," he said to Clare, though he was watching Jack's knuckles whiten where he clenched the backgammon tile. "I'm responsible to them for your welfare. Flying alone with two men to Australia, gone who knows how long...how can you or I explain that to them? And your parents, in Australia. Would they want that for you?"

Clare's face was pale too. "I don't know," she said. "Because I haven't seen them in sixteen years."

"Anderson understands that -- as much as I can, so do I," he said. "There is no answer yet, certainly not in the negative, but I feel, and Gregory feels also, that this is not something you have thought about as carefully as you ought. You must allow us to guide you in this if you want to have your way, Clare, and you must believe that, being older than you, we do possess wisdom you don't." He drew a deep breath. "You do not have every piece of information that you need to decide this, and that was necessary until now. You aren't aware that this project is the culmination of years of work -- months spent studying star charts for navigation, speaking to other expats to try and gather information. They aren't easy to find. They don't want to talk when you do. Reports have been coming in for years of activity in Australia that threatens the strength of the Empire and the safety of our colonies and sister governments. It's impossible to smuggle people in from ships; we've tried. The waters around Australia are prime pickings for pirates, and a ship small enough to slip through to the coast would be destroyed before it got close. It has happened. Agents have died. No one goes to Australia and no one comes out -- except the expats. Letters are rare, and often stolen by the sailors. We don't know that it's a militant state, but the ports are run as if it were."

"So why are you going?" Jack asked. His voice was taut with tension.

"To see what can be seen. To find out about the governing bodies there, who are tearing away from the Queen little by little. To see if what they're building with all the iron they buy is trains or tools or warships. To see what the warships are capable of, if they exist." Ellis smiled a little. "A sort of tourist. Which is another problem, because the pair of you are American. It took two years to train Anderson out of his Australian accent when he was a boy, and his wasn't that different from an Englishman's. You would stand out like sore thumbs."

He saw Clare bow her head. Jack was looking down at the tile in his hand.

"I...hesitantly believe that these are troubles that can be worked round, and that you would both be an immense benefit to the mission," he continued. "But I want you to make sure this is what you want. Both of you. And..." he added, lightening his tone, "I think perhaps the night is fine enough to walk to the hotel. Come with me?"

Both of them were silent and thoughtful as they walked, and he didn't bother to break it. It had been a hard day, running into the night before. They'd all had a shock, after all.

He took off his jacket and waistcoat and unshouldered his braces, while Jack and Clare apparently had a hushed conference in the other room. When Jack didn't immediately return, he sat down and took out his notebook; just because he was about to take the first ever hand-built flying machine to the Dead Isle was no reason to fall behind on his writing. His publisher would expect a novel when he returned.

If he returned.

It was madness, of course, advocating that he bring two students, two Americans, to Australia with him. He couldn't quite believe he'd done it, that he'd said to Anderson what he'd said when they discussed it. It seemed completely illogical at this moment, but it had seemed sensible at the time. After all, Clare was intelligent and level-headed and keen to discover what people didn't want known. Jack, even if he were a fool -- which he wasn't -- would be an asset as a pilot and if anything went wrong he was the only one competent to repair it...

Ellis laughed a little. It hadn't occurred to him that Jack would finally be a ride-along mechanic, just not in any way he could have dreamed of.

He bent to his work, trying to shake off the sense of unreality by burying his mind in fiction.

When the door opened, some indeterminate amount of time later, he hardly came up for breath from the work; everything seemed to intrude too much, so he simply stopped writing for a moment and said, "I can put out the light if you're tired," before he began to write again. He expected a sleepy grunt from Jack or perhaps the sound of the bedsprings on the cot nearer the door; instead, he heard the quiet rustle of a blanket being taken off the bed, and the shuffle of stocking feet.

"I'll stay up a little while, if you don't mind," Clare said, and then he did look up. The world in his head receded and died away; uncertainty rushed back in its place.

"Where's Mr. Baker?" he asked.

"He fell asleep on my bed. he was tired."

She sat down in the chair, tucking the blanket up under her chin.

"You hurt him today," she added.

"I'm aware," he replied. "It was necessary. He had to know that these were the practical considerations on my side. This is not a student lark in Boston, Ms. Fields. There are lives at stake. Lives have already been lost. He needed to know. You both did."

"And now that we know?" she asked.

"Now, think carefully about what it is you want. There is time," he said. He closed his notebook and sat back in the chair, rubbing his eyes. "There's always time. Jack will not drag his heels on the building of the airship, however burdened by indecision he may or may not be, but he can only work so many hours a day."

Clare yawned, tucking her feet up on the chair. "He isn't indecisive."

"Perhaps not. Difficult to know, with him." He tilted his head back. "You told me once that his parents died only a few years ago."

"When he was seventeen."

"How did they die?" he asked, turning to look at her.

"That's really something you should ask Jack, if you want to know."

"Indulge my cowardice," he said. She sank deeper into the chair. "Tell me a story, Clare."

She tilted her head onto her shoulder, sleepily. "His mother was a ride-along mechanic. He didn't see her very often -- his father used to joke that she stayed away from the engine just long enough to get Jack on solids."

"You knew them."

"His father more. He looked after Jack. Before that he was a musician -- well, a Creationist, but mostly a musician."

"A musician," Ellis mused. "That's unexpected. Does Jack play music?"

"Not anymore. He wasn't like this, you know, before they died. He was bright, and he loved steam engines, but he wasn't so..." she shook her head. "There was a time he would have chosen a pretty girl over an engine any day. Now it's like...if he doesn't have a distraction, you know. That's why he invents things. At least that's what I think." She rested her cheek on her hand, or perhaps covered her face; it was hard to tell. "His father wanted to go on some ride-along job his mother had. A tour. He played the piano...he Created pianos very well."

"They say when a musician Creates an instrument it has a little of their soul in it," Ellis said.

"The Church would say that's blasphemy."

"Do you know the story of Johann Dippel?"

"Of course."

"Sometime I'll tell you another version," Ellis replied. "Do go on."

"They left Jack with my godparents, and went away on the train. And they just...never came back. There was a derailment near Chicago. They both died."

"And Jack doesn't play music anymore," he said.

"No," she said softly.

He looked down at the desk, at his notebook resting there with the pen on top. He had never thought of engineering as a way to escape the world; after all, engineers didn't build stories or other worlds.

Or, well, perhaps they did; perhaps, late at night, huddled around the boiler with the driver and the conductor, they told their own stories. Famous robberies in the west, derailments, perhaps even ghost trains or passengers long dead who still prowled the carriages.

Either way, Jack had turned his profession into his escape, which Ellis could respect.

"I'll go wake him up if you're not going to write any more tonight," she said. "I think you should tell him you're sorry."

"I'm not sorry," he answered.

"People like to hear it," she said, and left the blanket on the bed as she passed. In a few minutes the door opened again and Jack stumbled in, sleepily crawling under the rumpled blanket with most of his clothing still on. Ellis stayed at the desk, looking up at the room's single light.

"I never meant to upset you, Jack," he said. The fair mop of hair moved slightly. "I know this hasn't always been easy for either one of you."

"It doesn't matter," Jack said, voice muffled by the blanket.

"It's easy to say that."

"I'd like to sleep."

"Perhaps that's best." Ellis doused the light and turned down the covers of the other bed, unbuttoning his shirt and hanging it carefully on the chair. He felt stiff as he turned down the covers on the bed and climbed in; not entirely comfortable, he rolled his shoulders and turned onto his side, watching Jack's regular breathing in the bed across from him.

"Do Engineers have stories, Jack?" he asked.

"What?" Jack said, without moving.

"Stories. Myths. Things to keep the boredom out on a long shift."

"I think they play cards, mostly," Jack answered. It was a lie, but he told it with surprising deftness; not a waver in his voice or a hesitation in his words. Only the tightening of his shoulders told Ellis he was lying.

Before he could think of another question to ask, Jack was asleep, snoring with a low but steady, unvarying noise. It was a sound he'd become accustomed to on the passage to England, and he paid it no mind as the world darkened and he slid down into sleep himself.

Chapter 14 | Chapter 16

Comments

[secondsilk.livejournal.com]

Backgammon! That's more delightful than seeing a character with my name.
Although backgammon is played with men. Well, it's played with checkers, but they're called men or stones, or pieces. According to wikipedia, "[backgammon pieces] are known variously as checkers, stones, men, counters, pawns, or chips." (The pawns possibly comes from the game being played with chess pawns.)

I'm still really liking Clare and Ellis's relationship.
The idea of Created instruments is wonderful. I think it's the first time I've wanted Creationism wanted to be a Creationist rather than simply finding aspects of it useful and nifty (like the icecream cups disappearing and the note).