Cuttlefish Read online

  Published 2012 by Pyr®, an imprint of Prometheus Books

  Cuttlefish. Copyright © 2012 by Dave Freer. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cover illustration © Paul Young

  Jacket design by Nicole Sommer Lecht

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Freer, Dave.

  Cuttlefish / by Dave Freer.

  p. cm. — (Drowning empire ; bk. 1)

  Summary: In an alternate 1976 dominated by coal power and the British Empire, Clara Calland and her mother, an important scientist, embark on a treacherous journey toward freedom in Westralia aboard a smugglers' submarine, the Cuttlefish, pursued by Menshevik spies and Imperial soldiers.

  ISBN 978–1–61614–625–2 (cloth)

  ISBN 978–1–61614–626–9 (ebook)

  [1. Science fiction. 2. Submarines (Ships)—Fiction. 3. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. 4. Voyages and travels—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.F8788Cut 2012

  [Fic]—dc23

  2012000417

  Printed in the United States of America

  No book is ever just poured out of an author. Cuttlefish is no different in that respect anyway. It owes its existence to my agent, Mike Kabongo, and to my editor, Lou Anders. Lou is the kind of editor most new authors dream they'll get when they venture into being published, and I'm glad it's happened to me at last.

  The Cuttlefish is the submarine you get when a scientist spends too much time talking to an inventor about ways to do things in a coal-powered universe. I love talking to a guy who doesn't say “You can't do that,” but helps me think of ways that allow me to do it plausibly. Thank you, Peter.

  And always, this book would not be without Barbara.

  It was after midnight, and London's lights shimmered on the waters that had once been her streets. Something dark moved down there, in the murky depths. Bubbles of smoke belched up in its wake. No one was likely to notice. The still, warm air already reeked of coal smoke, and the rotting ooze lying down on the drowned street that had once been Landsdown Way bubbled anyway.

  The dark shadow crept onwards into Wandsworth Canal, and down into Nine Elms Waterway, and then slipped through the rotting concrete teeth into the deep channel.

  Like the rest of the crew of the Cuttlefish, Tim Barnabas let out a sigh of relief. He knew all about the dangers of the Stockwell tube run—dead trees, fallen masonry, and, of course, the chance of detection in the relatively shallow waters of London's street-canals. Even though the submarines of the Underpeople did this run often, it was still the most risky part of their journey.

  “Up snuiver, Seaman,” said Captain Malkis. “Let's breathe before we head down-channel.”

  Tim worked the brass crank with a will, sending the breathing pipe to the surface of the Thames.

  He swallowed hard to sort out the effect of the pressure change on his ears.

  And then an explosion rocked the Cuttlefish. Rang the sub like a bell. Tim could hear nothing. But he saw Captain Malkis push the dive levers to full.

  A blast of water sprayed out of the snuiver outlet, soaking them all, before the cutoff valve closed it off. The Cuttlefish settled onto the bottom of the dredged channel. No one moved or spoke. Tim's ears still rang, but he could hear sounds again, and saw the captain signal to the Marconi man hunched protectively over the dials and valves of his wireless set. The Marconi operator nodded, wound his spooler, and sent an aerial wire up to the surface.

  Tim watched the man's face in the dim glow of the battery lights. His expression grew increasingly bleak. He flicked the dial expertly to another frequency. Then the Marconi operator pulled the headphones off. “I got the Clapham Common sender first. Transmission cut out after an SOS. I picked up Parson's Green. They weren't even sending coded messages. Just reports that Stockwell's been blown, and Clapham had reported that they were under attack by men of the Royal Inniskillen Fusiliers, before they went off air, Captain. And I picked up a signal on the Royal Navy calling channel. The HMS Mornington and the HMS Torquay are ordered to start laying dropping mines in the Thames Channel from Blackfriars Point to Rotherhithe Bay. The captain of the Mornington was getting mighty shirty about the operation not running according to orders, and him still being below Plumstead Shoal and not on station.”

  Captain Malkis's face showed no trace of expression. They all knew that the Inniskillens were Duke Malcolm's special troops. As the chief of Imperial Intelligence, the duke had made them into a regiment to be feared. “Get the aerial and the snuiver down, crewmen.” He turned to the engine-room speaker tube. “Chief Engineer. I'll have all the power that you can give us. Mr. Mate.” He turned to First Mate Werner. “You work out our time to the mouth of the Lea. We'll see how they like risking their ships in the Canningtown shallows.”

  “Captain…should we not go back?” asked the first mate, his voice cracking, his heavy Dutch accent even thicker than usual.

  “No, Mr. Mate,” said Malkis. “It's us…or rather our passenger, that they're after. It's just as well that we set our departure forward as soon as the Callands arrived.”

  Tim cranked the snuiver in. He could feel the heavy, slow thump of the Cuttlefish's engines picking up speed. The breathing pipe clicked home. “Snuiver down, Captain,” he said, trying to keep his voice as controlled as the ship's master. It quavered slightly. But he didn't scream. He didn't say, “My mam. I need to go back to the tunnels to see if she's all right,” although those were the words that wanted out, and his fear dried his mouth and made it hard to speak.

  “Good lad, Barnabas,” said the captain, as if this was something that happened every day. “Get down to Chief Barstone in the engine room. He'll have work for an extra greaser if he's going to keep the engines running at this speed.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” Tim did his best to salute without bumping any of the brass instruments that protruded into the small bridge space.

  He turned to leave. “Barnabas.” The captain's voice halted him.

  “Sir.” Tim halted.

  “The Underpeople have more tunnels, and locks, and secret ways than the king's men know about, boy,” the captain said, reaching out to squeeze his shoulder gently but firmly. “It's our home, our territory; we know it. It's not the first time Duke Malcolm's had a go at us. And it won't be the last. Now get along with you.”

  Tim swallowed. Nodded. He couldn't actually say anything, because his voice was too choked up. He turned away before the captain could see the tears starting, and hurried along the narrow gangway, and then down the ladder to the lower deck. At the base of it he nearly ran smash into something that had no place on a submarine.

  A girl. A girl in a flouncy dress with silly little puff sleeves. Honestly! Where did she think she was? On a pleasure barge cruising along Pall Mall Canal?

  “Hi, hold on,” she said, grabbing his arm as he tried to squirm past. Her blue eyes were bright and wide with excitement, and one of her pale blonde plaits had come undone. She brushed the fine hair away from her eyes, “What's going on?” she asked, smiling at him.

  “I'm busy,” he said gruffly, hoping that he'd wiped all trace of the tears away. “Got to get to the engin
e room.”

  “Oh, it's so important that you are,” she said, teasingly. “Just tell me what the bang was?”

  “The Inniskillens blowing up my home,” he said fiercely as he pulled his arm free and blundered on, blinded by the tears again, down the passage.

  Clara Calland stared after him. She nearly ran after him too, to ask him what he meant. But…horrible snotty London boy. He'd looked nice, with a bit of a grin on his brownish face, when she'd seen him earlier, bringing their two small valises to the cabin. And he'd helped to carry Mother's book trunk. When you considered the size of the cabin, maybe it was just as well they'd had to leave everything behind.

  She considered going up the ladder to find someone else to ask. But…it sounded like trouble. More trouble. She'd been so relieved when they had finally got out of the smelly, wet tunnels under London, and into this strange submarine. The whole idea just fascinated her. Of course, submarines were something she'd heard stories about, and hadn't ever expected to really experience. They were illegal, banned in all civilized countries. Yet…everyone knew they existed. One of the girls from school, one of the Cashel sisters, claimed that she'd once seen one in Tralee Bay. Which was possible…anything could happen down in Kerry. It was crock full of rebels, down there, like Cork used to be before most of the city got drowned. She swallowed. Daddy had once let slip that his trips away had taken him to Kerry. She'd said that she hoped he was safe from those rebel scum. He'd just tousled her hair and laughed. That was before the men from Scotland Yard had come and taken him to the New East Barracks military prison, to be detained indefinitely at His Majesty's pleasure.

  She stared blindly down the narrow little passage. She didn't want to be here. She wanted her old, familiar life back again. Mother and Dad together again, home and school and…

  That was where it broke down. Clara, who always tried to be honest with herself, had to admit that she did not want her school life back. Nor did she want to go back to the tall, cold house on Redmond Street that they'd been living in when her life had suddenly turned upside down.

  So, instead, she went back through the narrow little steel door and climbed up onto her bunk in their broom-cupboard-sized cabin. On the bed below, her mother was asleep, the deep sleep of absolute exhaustion, and, Clara realised, of relief.

  Clara lay down on the thin horse-hair mattress and thought back about just how they'd ended up here. Parts of it cut at her like a knife.

  On the day it had all started, Clara had not wanted to leave school. It was not that St. Margaret's School for the Children of Officers and Gentlemen in Fermoy, Cork, Ireland, was a place that she loved. She detested every inch of it, from the courtyard with its limp Union Jack, surrounded by three stories of clattering corridors and classrooms, to the coal cellar that Ellen—helped by the three terrors—had pushed her into last week. Clara knew that she should keep quiet, keep her head down…but she wasn't good at that. And the girls on the top of the pile were bigger than her, better at sports, popular with boys and with the teachers…but stupid, too.

  Well, the library—with its tall stacks of slightly musty leather-bound books—mostly fifty years old, and, often as not, from parts of the Empire that had vanished beneath the waves in the Big Melt—was the all right part of the school. It had books and protection, in the shape of a librarian on duty. Besides, going in there was something the popular girls wouldn't be caught dead doing. So Clara had been lurking in between the stacks. She'd been looking at a book on the Australian Colonies, complete with pictures of funny-looking black men with painted throwing sticks and very few clothes.

  No decent Englishman would be seen like that! Not even at New Brighton! The other girls would at least pretend to be shocked. That, and the angry expression on the man's face, made Clara curious enough to start reading. She'd read all the fiction in the place years ago, and besides, it was about a place that was a long way away, a place where she was unlikely to meet other St. Margaret's girls and be jeered at or, worse, sniffed at and turned away from. Books like this were good for dreams. She'd like to go there.…It would be far enough away from home so she would not have to explain to her mother that she had got a B for chemistry in the latest set of tests. It didn't matter that she'd got 98% for mathematics, no.

  She looked at the leather cover: Queensland, the Dominion of Australia. Its People and the Quaint Customs of the Native Inhabitants. A place on the other side of the world…it would be far away from anyone who knew that her father was in prison. Clara wasn't sure if they regarded that as any better than her mother being divorced, but she knew that when you added the two together it made her life in Fermoy, and at St. Margaret's, barely worth living.

  Then, to her utter horror, she'd heard her mother's voice. “Is my daughter Clara here?”

  Did she have to come here?

  “Yes, Dr. Calland.” The librarian sniffed. “I believe Miss Calland is in the geography section.” Disapproval was written clearly in the librarian's tone. Parents, even the daughters of an original founding lady-governor, were not welcome on the school grounds. They should hand over their child at the gate, and their money at the front office, and that was it. A divorced mother, wandering around unaccompanied, would be as welcome at St. Margaret's as leprosy.

  What was her mother doing here? Clara wondered, caught between irritation and sudden fear. Something must be wrong. She should be at work, in her laboratory at Imperial Chemicals and Dyes.

  Clara's mother was tall, elegant, and all the other things Clara had decided she wasn't ever going to grow up to be: womanly, and a research chemist. Her mother's hair was always so precisely pinned up, especially when she went out…but it definitely was not in perfect order right now. And she was very pale. The moment her mother stepped around the stack, Clara knew that something was very wrong.

  The fact that she put her finger to her lips was also somewhat of a clue. “Ah, Clara,” said her mother, a little too loudly and cheerfully, quite unlike herself. “You must come with me right now. I have a motoring car waiting out front.”

  A car? Almost no one had one of those. The trams ran well and to time. Fuel for motoring cars was ruinously expensive too. Well, in the British Empire. It was said that in America even a lot of ordinary people owned cars. The idea of going in one was rather exciting. “Yes, Mother,” she said, doing her best to sound like a good St. Margaret's girl. “I must just take out my library books and collect my satchel.”

  “You can do that tomorrow, Clara. I am going to Belfast now, and I need to make certain arrangements,” her mother said, firmly, while shaking her head and beckoning, a pleading expression on her face.

  Clara got the message. She still wasn't sure what it meant. But she was perfectly happy to leave her satchel, and the chemistry test inside it—which had to be signed by her mother—behind. The library books were a bit more of a wrench. She put the book back in its place on the shelf and took her mother's outstretched hand.

  Really. Holding hands. As if she were a little girl or something. But the look on her mother's face made her take it. Mother's hand was cold and damp.

  Dr. Calland smiled politely at the sour-faced librarian, and led her out. Down the corridor. And then…away from the front gate.

  “It's the other way,” said Clara.

  Her mother shook her head. “I'll explain when I have a chance. Come with me, Clara. Just come along without arguing, just this once, please.”

  That had been enough to get Clara to follow her into the junior teachers' common room. It was empty right now. They were all away taking luncheon at the dining hall.

  On the far side of the room was a little fire escape door next to the class racks. Clara's mother reached over the top of the cast iron fretwork on the edge of the rack of workbooks waiting to be marked. She felt about…and took down a key. She breathed a sigh of relief. “I was worried someone might have dusted and found it. Oh well. It's only been sixteen years.”

  She fitted the key into the lock of a d
oor marked FIRE ESCAPE, DO NOT LOCK. Clara noticed that her mother's hands were trembling slightly. The little door creaked open. “They removed the key of the fire escape door because the headmistress found out that we'd been using it to sneak in when we were late for chapel and assembly,” said her mother, with almost a hint of a smile. “I had had two spare keys cut, because I knew someone was bound to tumble to our using it. It'll serve them right if the place catches fire and they all roast.”

  Clara knew that her mother had taught here at St. Margaret's, back while she'd been a student. The idea of her being late for anything, or even doing something as…well, as underhand as that was quite strange, though. Parents didn't, did they? At least, not her mother. She was always so…proper.

  They went through the doorway and out onto the landing, and her mother carefully locked the door behind them. That was more like her mother, than sneaking in late for assembly! The steep, rusty steel fire escape led down the outside of the old brick back wall facing the camogie fields, with the canal path beyond them.

  “It's to be hoped that they keep watching the gate. I told them it could take a little time to get you out of there,” said Clara's mother. “Here.” She dug into her handbag and pulled out a pair of kerchiefs. Handed one to Clara. “Put one over your hair,” she said hastily, shaking the other out. “We're too obvious with our blonde heads.”

  Clara was shocked. “We'll look like gypsies, Mother!” Being blonde in Ireland announced that you were possibly English or German. No one would hide that! Otherwise you might be thought to be merely Irish.

  “Good. They're not looking for gypsies,” her mother answered, tying the kerchief in place. “I wish I'd thought of shawls.”

  They made their way down the narrow stair and along the weedy edge of the third-team camogie field. There was a gap in the privet hedge at the far end of the field that girls who wanted to avoid camogie practice used to slip away through.

  Clara knew it well.

  It appeared that her mother must have known it too. It had proved to be quite a day for ruining the ideas she'd had about her parent.