by Berrien C. Henderson

. . . In the months following Jase’s death, Tom did the only thing he could do: adjust and adapt. The maintenance crew had seen its fair share of shifts in seniority, but Jase’s void was difficult to fill, and Old Gabe helped. Tom’s admiration of him grew as he watched the older man move with measured grace outside Cloud Majesty as if there was his true place. Tom’s guess was the man had been part of the airship for so long that he was as vital as any rivet or band or valve.

Still, threats lurked. A corroded pipe might give way and send banshee-shrieking steam along an access from the boiler to the kitchen. As dangerous as any rogue wave on the seas, the wind shears buffeting the airship posed equal opportunity of casting stitch angels overboard.

Since Jase, three other names had been added to the list.

But it wasn’t the seamwalking per se that was dangerous or the occasional crashed dirigible. Progress and technology themselves brought double-edged swords aplenty to the fore. Even train engines blew up, or entire trains derailed. Or a woman got a bit of unbundled hair caught in a factory machine and found herself scalped like some East American commonwealth citizen. Children burned in a factory with locked exits. No, it wasn’t just that. There were rumors. Scottish Independents trying to assassinate Her Majesty Queen Victoria. Albert helming a Royal Marine sortie past old Hadrian’s Wall after some recent dissident activity from the same corners as the assassination plots. Whispers in the presses of Russians moving on the ‘stans and hectoring into India betimes.

Tom had been reading and picking it up fast. He had the Crown Dirigible Company’s code down pat and could cipher fairly well, read even better although Old Gabe waxed peculiar about people touching the newspapers he picked up on their various stops. He even had a few books of poems, and Tom would sneak a reading or three when he thought he could get away with it; he liked Blake the best.

“Tom, a word with you, boy,” said Old Gabe, finding the young seamwalker on the observation deck of Cloud Majesty. With their recent quick run from Spain and back, they only had trade goods in the cargo hold and were now on their way to France to upgrade for new Renault-Gaultier batteries. Tom’s shift didn’t start for little while, and he enjoyed not having to be invisible to the passengers because those that pay do so for the ride, the sights, and the leaving alone. he liked the wind outside, too, and respected it, for he new what it could do.

Hastings peeked at them from some low cloud cover as the Channel welcomed them, and Tom imagined William’s boatloads of Normans pouring onto the beach. Old Gabe always told the most picaresque stories of history and read aloud to the boys when he could.

“Is Jonathan still sick?” said Tom.

“Aye.”

“And the next inspection walk needs going out?”

“How’d you ever guess?” Old Gabe clapped Tom’s shoulder. “No reports this hour from the skitterlings. Just help an old hand needing some help with the mooring duties and the lines.”

“I hate it,” said Tom. “Meh.” Those mooring lines represented a singular form of drudgery among his various step ‘n’ fetch duties on Cloud Majesty. “Old Gabe, I’ll pull two shifts—”

“You’ll by God do like you’re told. Ain’t nobody asked you whether you liked it, just to do it.” His eyes, flint before, softened a bit as he leaned down and said, “Hell, so do I, but Cap’n Edward didn’t ask us our opinions nor feelings.”

“What?”

“What about ‘What’?”

“Gabe, we’re needin’ to take on some new crew,” said Tom. “That’s what. We’re down four workers, and I’m still the newest one.”

“And since months ago when that boy Allen moved on to apprentice at one of Crown Dirigible’s factories,” said Old Gabe, “you’ve the luxury of no bunkmate. Yep, look lively, Tom. Mooring tower coming up.”

The Cloud Majesty began its gentle descent for the next several minutes.

“Guess we best get ready,” said Tom.

They eased back along the catwalk toward the access hatch leading to the main cargo hold. Down there Tom felt the low, steady thrumming of the prop screws amd the ubiquitous drone of the guts of Cloud Majesty. He thought, too, of the folk in the passenger section having some tea and talking or enjoying the view. Here lately, they had taken on fewer passengers as they’d been scheduled for more mundane trade runs.

A bell ting-tang-a-langed a couple of times once they’d arrived hold-side. Tom was still fascinated by the communication system that wended its secret paths from the fo’c’s’le to other parts of the airship. He went to a button set beside a tube. He pressed the button twice to let the sender know that someone had received the signal. A hiss ensued. Then a whoosh of air preceded the abrupt phunt of a cylinder having been shunted through Cloud Majesty.

Tom handed it to Old Gabe, who opened the tube and slid out the message. He unrolled it and read it, then scritched out a missive and sent it back.

“Think you can handle helping an old man lug those bundled mooring lines?” said Old Gabe.

The work was hard, yet simple. The mooring lines got dropped out once they were in place, and Cloud Majesty would inch ever closer to its designated tower. Old Gabe and Tom dragged line and hauled and huffed and cursed until all lay ready. Old Gabe secured the ship end of the mooring line while Tom double-checked the hooks. The boy then opened the trap door in the hold for the lines in Cloud Majesty’s belly and started feeding out the line. A blast of cool air played up from the hatch, and the boy caught glimpses of the tower’s framework. Cloud Majesty had already descended several hundred feet in what Old Gabe called “Cap’n Edward’s puttering” while two men on the tower waited for the hooks to catch. Cloud Majesty was already moving so slow it seemed to Tom they transformed into a cloud chugging along. It took a fine hand on the helm to lock in to a mooring tower.

Once the airship hovered in place, secure like some strange caught whale, passengers began to offload. The other boys came down to help deal with the cargo hold and goods that needed moving as a few hands from the tower came aboard.

“Don’t forget you all go and get you some food. Don’t go squandering your pittance, either,” said Old Gabe. Some of the boys snickered. The only thing they’d get would be some company food at this company port.

“Should a few of us stay?” said Tom.

Old Gabe said, “Now, there you go thinking and asking again. Just do like you’re to–”

He’d seen Tom’s narrow, and he turned around.

All the other boys had finished their various duties and dispersed like a group of skitterlings scrambling along the skin of the airship.

Old Gabe leaned down and said, “Go run along now. Enjoy your time and forget you saw that man down here.”

“What man?” said Tom.

“I knew you were a cagey one,” he said, his voice a sharp whisper as he clapped Tom’s shoulder.

The boy hurried to a narrow ladder that took him back up to the rear hold near the bunks. He only looked back once at the stranger talking hurriedly with Old Gabe and noticing Tom’s leaving at the same time.

As the seamwalker exited Cloud Majesty—how he loved climbing the rickety extendable catwalks to and from the tower—he thought about catching up with the other youths and feeding his grumbling stomach. But feeding his curiosity was going to be another matter, especially knowing Cloud Majesty ran commercially for Crown Dirigible Company. Not that he knew much about the vague innerworkings of government and the Crown itself, but despite some of the places he’d visited the better part of this year had shown Tom much of the world. Much more of England itself than he’d ever seen, once restricted by the whimsy of fate to the orphange’s grounds.

Even he knew that you just didn’t see that many Royal Marines in France.

And he’d just seen one talking to Old Gabe.

Berrien C. Henderson lives in Georgia with his wife and two children. He teaches full time, which actually means nine months out of the year, so the rest of the time is playing catch-up on the writing avocation. Although he loves writing, he still must contribute to the division of household labor since his wife, through her grounding influence, believes that “Writers still have to take out the trash and mow the yard, don’t they?” His children are valuable beta-idea testers who opine that, with any given fantasy or science fiction story, “Snakes are way better than dragons.”

By Land, by Sea, by Dirigible, above, is a batik print by Y Lundberg. See more at Deviant Art.