Chapter Six

“Pickwick’s Inheritors”

1.

Mad bomber. Anarchist. Saboteur. Assassin.

The glass of brandy pushed into Nathanial’s hands helped somewhat, but the words continued to loom over him like shadows. He looked at the brown liquid, swishing in the glass, and wished for Arnaud’s company.

“For your nerves,” Fullbright said, indicating the liquor. Holmes raised his glass in salute.

“Difficult thing, indeed,” Holmes added. He filled a snifter for himself from the decanter on the table before him.

Holmes’ quarters lay at one end of sickbay, with his private office at the other end. The quarters looked more like a sitting room in a middle class London home, with several overstuffed chairs and a settee pulled into a circle around the table. Two oak bookshelves protected its volumes behind glass cabinet doors that slid down when the books were not being perused. A small bed was all that told a visitor this was a private quarters. Indeed, Holmes’ intent surely had been to make this place welcome to visitors, and visitors he had.

Provost and Fullbright took their seats nearby, concern on their faces. Each sipped from a glass of brandy and regarded their new visitor with grave faces. Nathanial appreciated their concern, but he was uncomfortable under such scrutiny.

“I had a patient attack me with a knife,” Holmes said. “Came right at me. He was down from Winlaton. Turned over a new leaf, he’d said. He had taken up with his brother-in-law a bit late in life, or so he said, and was learning the pawnbroker business. Spent most of his life working the coal mines. The diagnosis I gave him, black lung, should not have come as a surprise to him, then, but I suppose he felt he had escaped that fate. It was too much for him to take, and he tried to kill me.”

“Sad thing, that,” Fullbright said, clearly lacking empathy, but trying nonetheless.

“Mmmm. Indeed it was. I still have the scar to remind me. Taught me something about mortality.”

“What did it teach you?” Nathanial asked.

“Nothing I can say to you, lad,” Holmes said. “Put any man in the same situation, and he would learn an entirely different lesson, each personal to he who learns it.” Momentarily the doctor’s eyes became lucid, and he squinted at Nathanial. “But I think you know that, or are becoming aware of it, at any rate.”

“How could someone have laid a trap for me so quickly?” Nathanial asked. The question had been rolling around in his head since dinner. He had scarcely heard van den Bosch’s roars of outrage and dire threats toward Dolan and the others to find the responsible party and bring him to justice. He had only nodded, numb, when Holmes had suggested he repair to quarters with the rest of them for a nip of “the creature”. Nathanial could not even remember if he had finished his dinner or not, knowing only that his appetite was gone, and that his hands had not stopped shaking. Now the question came tumbling out, and he was sure it sounded desperate.

Fullbright was quick to put him at ease. “We’ve known about you for several days. We keep observers at their posts on the telescopes at all times, every cycle. Your flyer was seen three days ago. I recommended caution even though the Juggernaut was ready to hit you with broadsides as soon as you were spotted. You were given the opportunity to change course away from Peregrine, but you instead altered course directly for us.”

“I corrected course for Mars,” Nathanial protested.

“I’m sure that’s so, but we couldn’t know that at the time. So, we prepared to intercept you. Word of your existence must have trickled down to the workers from that moment. So you see, there was more time to prepare a trap for you than you think. This surely can’t comfort you, of course, but there you have it.”

“And who’s to say it was directed at you, anyway,” Provost said.

“Oh, yes. There is that,” Holmes said, finishing his brandy. He sat forward and poured another, and when he reclined again, he looked none too likely to continue his narrative.

“What?” Nathanial asked.

“Oh, the usual,” Provost said. “At least, we believed it was nothing. Every project, even the most secret ones, get found out.”

“There are anarchists everywhere,” Fullbright added, “enemies of the Crown, even in the highest levels of Parliament. Rumour is passed around, and our enemies become aware of our activities.”

“Same thing happened on Harbinger,” Holmes said.

“Someone tried to blow it up?” Nathanial asked.

“Oh, no,” Holmes said. “You misunderstand.”

“Threats,” Provost said. “Written threats. Notes slipped under doors, stuck to doors back on Earth with knives, pinned to dead animals left on ministry doorsteps. Frightful stuff, meant to scare us away from progress.”

“I wasn’t aware of this,” Nathanial said.

“Of course not,” said Provost. “This is not the first heliograph station I’ve helped hurl into the sky, you see. Holmes and I were on Harbinger when we began receiving threats. And really, Stone, that was all they ever were, was threats. So you see, we had no reason to believe any different this time around. Empty threats to destabilise this co-venture between the United Kingdom and Austria.”

Nathanial shook his head. He was by no means a drinker of spirits, and already the brandy was muddying his senses. “Just a moment, gentlemen, please. Let me see if I understand you. You’ve been receiving death threats prior to my arrival.”

“That is correct,” Fullbright said. “We were scarcely up a week. The shell was together, and we had just begun pressurising the interior.”

“Yes,” Provost said. “I was overseeing the greenhouses. My crew and I were the only ones on Peregrine at that point.”

“Oh, yes,” added Fullbright. “Living out of the cutters and tugs we’d brought with us. The last ship had come to resupply us before we moved to our new accommodations, and the first note arrived. Slipped under the Juggernaut’s door of an evening.”

“Full of the usual monstrosities, of course,” Provost said, hints of a smile reminding Nathanial of the man’s wit. “Entrails, brutality, entrails, heads on pikes, a world without sin, entrails, etcetera. Really frightful stuff. We all had a good laugh over it, in fact.”

“Well, as you can see, there’s no reason to laugh over it anymore,” Nathanial said, a trifle angry at the flippancy that had gone on prior to his arrival. But of course, they could not have known something like this would happen. He had no reason to be angry, really, at least not at them. Now, the one who had tried to kill him, oh, there was plenty of anger for him, and it was just starting to bubble to the surface. Nathanial downed the rest of his brandy, felt it burn his throat and trace the shape of his stomach.

He held out the snifter, and Holmes refilled it.

“Then again,” Provost said, “it may not be an anarchist at all, just some fellow gone off his chump.”

That wasn’t a wholly reassuring notion, but Nathanial understood its intent. “So, our objective, then, is to get drunk and forget about it?” he asked.

“Oh, good heavens, no!” Holmes cried. “Your intention should be to repair our broken stabilisers before the vortex devours us whole, and our intent is to make sure such a thing happens.”

“Hear hear!” Fullbright and Provost said in unison, and there was a particularly vigorous toast at this pronouncement.

Nathanial could not help but smile. Truly, he had been thrilled at the antics of these men from the moment he had met them, and now he was sure his instincts had been true. Surely, they looked a mess, but they were good chaps, all of them, drunkenness aside.

“Well, thank you, gentlemen,” he said. “I’m glad for your help.”

Fullbright laughed. “You’re going to need it, believe me.”

“Oh, yes,” said Provost.

“I think you’re going to find Doctor van den Bosch quite difficult,” Holmes said.

Nathanial chuckled into his snifter. “Oh, I’ve already learned that first hand. Does anyone know a good drinking song?”

They knew several, in fact.