Goliath Read online

  “America,” Bovril said softly from Alek’s shoulder.

  “Aye, that’s right.” Deryn reached up to stroke the beastie’s fur, wondering if it was only repeating the word, or if it had a real sense that this was a new place with its own name.

  Alek lowered his field glasses. “Looks rather wild, doesn’t it?”

  “Here, maybe. But we’re halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Put together, those two cities have got almost a million people!”

  “Most impressive. Then, why is it so empty between them?”

  Deryn gestured at the maps on the mess table. “Because America’s barking huge. One country, as big as all of Europe!”

  Bovril leaned forward on Alek’s shoulder, pressing its nose against the glass. “Big.”

  “And growing stronger,” Alek said. “If they enter the war, they’ll tip the balance.”

  “Aye, but which way?”

  Alek turned, revealing the fresh scar on his forehead. His color had returned since the accident, and he no longer complained of headaches. But sometimes he got that daft look in his eye again, as if he didn’t quite believe the world around him was real.

  At least he hadn’t forgotten again that Deryn was a girl. Kissing him had made certain of that.

  She still wasn’t quite sure why she’d done it. Maybe the energies of the storm had brought on an unsoldierly madness in her. Or maybe that’s what oaths were all about, keeping your word even when it made everything go pear-shaped. No more secrets between them, no matter what. . . . That had a scary ring to it.

  Neither of them had spoken of that moment again, of course. There was no future in kissing Alek. He was a prince and she was a commoner, and she’d made her peace with that back in Istanbul. The pope didn’t write letters turning Scottish girls dressed as boys into royalty. Not in a million years.

  But at least she’d done it once.

  “They’d never take up arms against Britain,” Alek was saying. “Even if they are half Clanker.”

  Deryn shook her head. “But Americans aren’t just a mix of Clanker and Darwinist; they’re a mix of nations. Plenty of German immigrants fresh off the b oaths werd still loyal to the kaiser. And plenty of spies among them, I’ll bet.”

  “Mr. Tesla will end the war before any of that matters.” Alek handed the field glasses to Deryn and pointed. “On those cliffs.”

  It took her a moment to spot the mooring tower, rising up from an odd cluster of buildings on the seaside hills. They were a mishmash of styles—medieval castles, ramshackle houses, modern Clanker towers, all half finished. Massive building machines moved among them, huffing steam into the clear sky, and cargo ships swarmed the long pier jutting into the sea below.

  “Blisters, that’s this fellow’s house?”

  “William Randolph Hearst is a very rich man,” Alek said. “And a bit odd as well, according to Mr. Tesla.”

  “Which is saying something, coming from him.”

  “But he’s the right man for the job. Hearst owns half a dozen newspapers, a newsreel company, and a few politicians as well.” Alek said this firmly, then let out a sigh. “It was a lucky storm that blew us this far south, I suppose.”

  “News,” Bovril said softly.

  Deryn handed back the field glasses and put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. Back in Istanbul, Alek had spilled his secrets to Eddie Malone to keep the reporter from sniffing out the revolution, about fleeing his home after his parents’ murder and joining the Leviathan’s crew. Everything except the pope’s letter that promised Alek the throne, his last secret. He had hated every minute of being in the limelight. And now Tesla wanted to exhibit Alek’s story on a much larger stage.

  “Doesn’t seem fair, making you go through all that palaver again.”

  Alek shrugged. “It can’t be any worse a second time, can it?”

  They watched in silence as the sprawling mansion drew nearer. The Leviathan came about and turned its nose into the steady breeze coming off the sea, approaching the mooring tower from the landward side.

  A lizard popped its head out of a message tube overhead.

  “Mr. Sharp, report to the topside,” it said in Mr. Rigby’s voice.

  “Right away, sir. End message.” She looked at Alek. “I’ll be down helping with the landing. Maybe I’ll get to see your big entrance from the ground.”

  He gave her a smile. “I shall try to look dashing.”

  “Aye, I’m sure you will.” Deryn turned to the window, pretending to make a quick survey of the landing field, the obstacles of machines and men, the wind’s patterns in the ruffling grass. “They’re just reporters, Alek. They can’t hurt you.”

  “I’ll try to remember that, Deryn,” he said.

  “Deryn Sharp,” said Bovril with a chuckle as she headed toward the door. “Quite dashing.”

  She hit the airfield softly, her gliding wings stiff with ocean air. A dozen ground men waited to steady her, and a young man in civilian clothes presented himself. “Philip Francis, at your service.”

  “Midshipman Sharp, of His Majesty’s Airship Leviathan,” Deryn said, giving him a salute. “How many ground men do you have?”

  “Two hundred or so. Is that enough?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Aye, that’s loads. But are any of them trained?”

  “All trained, and they’ve got lots of practice. Mr. Hearst has his own airship, you know. It’s in Chicago at the moment, undergoing repairs.”

  “He has his own barking airship?”

  “He dislikes train travel,” the man said simply.

  “Aye, of course,” Deryn managed, turning to take stock of the airfield. The swarm of ground men was already in position, arranged in a perfect oval beneath the Leviathan’s gondola. They looked sharp enough in their red uniforms, and most wore sandbags on their belts for extra weight, no doubt to guard against the gusty ocean breeze.

  She heard the growl of Clanker engines, and turned to find a trio of strange machines lumbering forward—six-legged walkers. Their pilots rode out in the open, and metal arms rose up from their backsides, carrying some sort of contraption.

  “What in blazes are those?” she asked Mr. Francis.

  “Moving-picture cameras, on the latest walking platforms. Mr. Hearst wants the Leviathan’s arrival captured for his newsreels.”

  Deryn frowned. She’d heard about the Clanker obsession with moving pictures but had never seen one herself. The cameras whirred and shuddered, a bit like the sewing machines back in Tokyo. Each one had three lenses like insect eyes, all staring up at the airship overhead.

  “That’s the door on the starboard side, correct?” Mr. Francis asked. “We’ll want to shoot them coming out.”

  “You want to shoot them?”

  “Photograph them.” He smiled. “Figure of speech.”

  “Of course. Aye, the gangway drops from starboard,” she said, feeling like a traitor to Alek for helping. This Mr. Francis wasn’t an airman at all, calling the gangway hatch a door. He was some sort of moving-picture reporter!

  Behind the walkers waited more men in civilian clothes, recording frogs on their shoulders, cameras in their hands. They surged forward as the airship dropped its lines to the waiting ground men.

  “You might want to pull those reporters back,” Deryn said. “In case there’s a gust.”

  “Mr. Hearst’s crewcan handle it.”

  She scowled. The ground men looked sure enough in their duties, but how dare they call her down here just to help with barking camera angles!

  The ground men took hold of the lines and began to spread out, pulling the Leviathan downward. When the gondola was a few yards above the airfield, the gangplank lowered itself to the ground, revealing Captain Hobbes, Mr. Tesla, and Prince Aleksandar. The captain saluted smartly, and the inventor waved his walking stick, but Alek looked unsteady. His eyes flicked between the cameras and the crowd for a moment, until he managed a halfhearted bow.

  The walking platforms plodd
ed closer, their cameras rising up, and suddenly they looked predatory, reminding Deryn of the scorpion walker that had captured her men at Gallipoli. The cameras even looked a bit like Clanker machine guns.

  A plump man with a broad hat and pin-striped pants detached himself from the scrum of reporters, making his way up the gangplank. He reached out and pumped the captain’s hand.

  “Is that Mr. Hearst?” Deryn asked.

  “The man himself,” Mr. Francis said. “You’re lucky to find him at home. With the war boiling over, he’s been in New York since late summer, tending to his newspapers.”

  “Lucky us,” Deryn said, watching Alek greet Mr. Hearst. In the cavalry tunic he’d borrowed from Volger, Alek did in fact look quite dashing. And with his host before him, his aristocratic reflexes seemed to take over. He bowed again, gracefully this time, and even smiled for the cameras looming overhead.

  Deryn was glad to see him getting into the spirit of things, but then she had a disturbing thought. What if he started to enjoy all this attention?

  “THE MOGUL.”

  No, it would take more than a knock on the head to change Alek that much.

  She tore her gaze from the spectacle and checked the landing field once more. To her relief a tangle was developing among the ropes.

  “Looks as though your men might need some help after all,” she said to Mr. Francis, and took off at a run.

  The snarl of cables was near the bow of the ship, where the breeze was strongest. Overhead the topside crew had already cast a line across to the mooring tower, but they were waiting for the chaos below to settle before hitching the airship fast.

  As Deryn approached, two groups of ground men were shouting at each other. Someone had pulled in the wrong direction, crossing the ropes, and now no one wanted to let go. She waded in, barking orders while making sure the men didn’t all drop their lines at once. It was sorted out soon enough, and Deryn pulled out her semaphore flags to flash a quick R-E-A-D-Y to the topside crew.

  “I’m afraid that was my fault,” came a voice from behind her.

  She turnind a man in an ill-fitting uniform, a bit older than the other crewmen. Behind his mustache his face was somehow familiar.

  “Are you . . . ,” she began, but then a croak came from one of the sandbags on his belt.

  “Shush, Rusty,” he hissed. “Good to see you again, Mr. Sharp. Do you suppose we might have a quick word in the privacy of your ship?”

  She squinted at his face, and recognized him just as he stuck out his hand.

  “Eddie Malone. Reporter for the New York World.”

  “What in blazes are

  you doing here?”

  Malone considered the question. “Why am I in California? Or why am I in disguise, instead of snapping photos with the other reporters?”

  “Aye, both!”

  “Happy to explain everything,” Malone said. “But first we need to get aboard your ship. Otherwise those fellows are about to give me a thrashing.”

  Deryn turned to follow Malone’s gaze, and saw a trio of burly men in dark blue uniforms striding across the airfield.

  “Who in blazes are they?”

  “Pinkertons—security guards in the employ of Mr. Hearst. You see, my paper was owned by a fellow called Pulitzer, and he and Hearst weren’t exactly pals. So let’s not dawdle.” The man started to drag her toward the Leviathan’s gondola.

  “Surely they won’t set upon you in broad daylight!”

  “Whatever they do, it won’t be pretty.”

  Deryn looked at the men again. They carried truncheons in their hands. Perhaps it was better to be safe than sorry.

  The Leviathan’s gondola was still too high to jump aboard, and she and Malone would never make it past the Pinkertons to the gangplank on the other side. But where the navigator’s bubble bulged downward beneath the bridge were two steel mooring rings, just out of reach.

  “Get ready to grab one of those handholds,” she ordered Malone, then turned to the ground men she’d just untangled, shouting, “Give me a good heave in one . . . two . . . three!”

  The men pulled back in a mass, and the ship’s nose dipped just enough. Eddie Malone and Deryn jumped to grab the mooring rings, then hauled themselves up as the ship bobbed back to level.

  “This way,” she said, scrambling toward the forward cargo bay windows. Malone followed, his shoes almost slipping from the metal rail around the bottom of thondola.

  The Pinkertons had arrived below them, and were peering up at Deryn and Malone with annoyed expressions.

  “PINKERTONS’ PURSUIT.”

  “Come down here!” one shouted, but Deryn ignored him. She rapped on a cargo bay porthole.

  The ship shifted a squick beneath her—the ground crew was bringing it slowly down. In another minute she and Malone would be within reach of the Pinkertons’ truncheons.

  An airman’s face appeared at the porthole, looking a bit perplexed.

  “Open up. That’s an order!” Deryn shouted, and the porthole popped open.

  As she shoved Eddie Malone through, she wondered why she was helping him. Maybe he’d done them a favor back in Istanbul by not spilling the revolution’s secrets, but only for a price.

  In any case he was aboard now. It was the captain’s decision whether to throw him back or not.

  Deryn scrambled after him, not waiting to see if the Pinkertons would take out their frustration on her. She climbed down from the barrels of the ship’s honey stacked by the window, then gave the confused airman who’d let them inside a salute. “Carry on, lad.”

  Malone was looking about the darkened cargo bay, his pencil already scribbling in his notepad.

  “So this is what belowdecks looks like?”

  “I’m afraid we haven’t time for a tour, Mr. Malone. Why were those men after you?”

  “As I said, I work for the New York World, and Hearst owns the New York Journal. Archrivals, you might say.”

  “And here in America rival newspapermen attack each other on sight?”

  The man barked a laugh. “Not always. But Hearst didn’t exactly send me an engraved invitation. I had to disguise myself just to snap a few pictures. Speaking of which . . .”

  He pulled a camera from one of his sandbags, then reached into the other for his recording frog. As he placed the beastie on his shoulder, it made a burping noise, blinking at Deryn.

  “I thought you were the Istanbul bureau chief,” she said. “Again, what are you doing here? Istanbul is seven thousand miles away!”

  The reporter waved his hand. “Prince Alek’s the best scoop I ever had. I’m not about to let a couple of oceans get in my way. Once I found out the Leviathan was headed east, I sailed back to New York. Been there for two weeks now, waiting to see where you popped up again.”

  “But how did you get here?”

  “After Mr. MalonTesla’s shindig in Tokyo made the papers, I jumped on a train for Los Angeles. That’s where the biggest airfield on the West Coast is. But last night I got a tip that you were coming here instead.”

  Deryn shook her head. Mr. Tesla had only convinced the officers yesterday to resupply at Hearst’s. “A tip? From whom?”

  “From the great inventor himself. Radio waves aren’t like carrier pigeons, Mr. Sharp. Anyone with an antenna can pick them up.” The man shrugged. “You shouldn’t be surprised that Tesla sent uncoded messages. Why let one newspaper have all the fun?”

  Deryn swore, wondering who else was following the Leviathan’s movements. Clanker spies had radios too. She also wondered why she’d been so anxious to rescue Malone. Sticky-beaks like him would only cause trouble in the end.

  “Well, however you got here, Mr. Malone, we’ll have to ask the officers if you can stay aboard. Follow me.”

  She led the man to the central staircase, then up and forward toward the bridge. The ship’s corridors were buzzing; the cargo bay was already open to take on fuel and supplies. It was only a matter of time before Malone’s pursuers found
their way aboard.

  But the bridge was just as hectic as the rest of the ship, and Deryn found herself shunted from one officer to the next. The captain was busy being photographed for the newsreels, and no one else wanted to take responsibility for a wayward reporter. So when Deryn spotted the lady boffin and her loris taking tea in the officers’ mess, she pulled Malone inside and shut the door behind them.

  “Afternoon, ma’am. This is Mr. Malone. He’s a reporter.”

  The lady boffin nodded. “How kind of Mr. Hearst, remembering that there are more than just Clanker scientists to interview aboard this ship!”

  “Clankers!” said the loris with a snooty tone.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” Deryn said. “But it’s not what you think. You see, Mr. Malone doesn’t work for Mr. Hearst.”

  “I’m with the New York World,” Malone said

  “A trespasser, then?” Dr. Barlow’s eyes traveled over his ground crew uniform. “And in disguise as well, I see. Do you realize, Mr. Sharp, that there are German spies here in America?”

  “You’re right about that, ma’am,” Malone said with a smile. “Stacks of them!”

  “Mr. Sharp, how exactly did this man get aboard?”

  Deryn’s voice felt small in her throat. “Um, I sort of let him in a porthole, ma’am.”

  Dr. Barlow raised an eyebrow at this, and her loris said, “Spies!”

  “But he can’t be a German agent!” Deryn cried. “I met him back in Istanbul. In fact, you did too! On the ambassador’s elephant, remember?”

  Malone stepped forward. “The boy’s though we didn’t chat much. And of course I wasn’t wearing this.”

  He reached up and took one end of his mustache, yanked it off in a single jerk, and threw it onto the table. The lady boffin’s eyebrows shot up, and her loris crawled over to inspect the false mustache.

  “Ah, you’re that Malone,” she said slowly. “The one who’s been writing those dreadful articles about Prince Aleksandar.”