Zachariah stood at the rampart and looked at the ocean. He turned when he heard
footsteps coming up to the roof. Primrose shifted some of her bulk as the newcomers
invaded her space.
“Zachariah Eight Arms?,” said the stouter of the arrivals. He laughed. “I thought you
were dead.”
“Hello, Carson,” said Zachariah. “How’s Maureen and the boys?”
“Maureen is better machinist than me now,” said Carson. He gestured with a wide,
callused hand. “The boys want to do other things. Their daemons are only suitable for
machining in tangential ways, but they know enough they can fix things if they want.
How’s Sara and Sola?”
“Sara died,” said Zachariah. “Sola is waiting for me on the landing field set aside for
racers. We finally put together a flying machine. It’s faster than I thought it would
be.”
“I’m sorry about Sara,” said Carson. “We thought you were dead after what had
happened. A lot of people were killed when that thing attacked. We still don’t know
how many.”
“It ripped its victims to shreds,” said Zachariah. “Anyone who was too close to that
thing when it answered its summons died.”
“You lived,” said the other new arrival. He wore the Watch’s badge of authority, and
a patch over one eye. His daemon, a red ferret, hung on his shoulders.
“My assistant’s daemon can create fields for protection,” said Zachariah. “Between
that and my daughter’s daemon, it was enough to get us out of the city during the rock
attack.”
“She named him Hardy, didn’t she?,” said Carson. “He was only as big as your Gold
Bug the last time we worked together.”
“He’s grown in the last few years,” said Zachariah. “He’s almost half her height now.
Who knows how big he will get before he reaches the end of it.”
“Half her height?,” said Carson. He put a hand in the air to indicate his estimate.
Zachariah lifted the hand a few more inches. “That big?”
“And he seems to be getting bigger,” said Zachariah. “He might grow as big as
Primrose, but all he can do is fly and pull things. We use him to move things around.”
“This is all very well, but why are we here?,” asked the Watch commander.
“Go ahead and tell them what you told me,” said Festus. He leaned against Primrose.
“Once we have the explanation out of the way, we can make a plan.”
“I have built an air machine, and have entered the Continental Air Race with my
daughter and assistant acting as my crew,” said Zachariah. “Before the race started,
I was approached by a man and a wooden dog. He wished to commission me to
explore the waters around the harbor here to search for an egg dropped into the sea.
The thought is when the egg hatches, it will release something like the black tower
that Festus destroyed with Primrose’s natural weapon. I have two years to build such
a boat, arm it, and start searching.”
“How reliable is this information?,” asked the Watch commander.
“I don’t know,” said Zachariah. “I am going to get started in case it is very reliable.
That means I will set up another shop on the mainland to build what I need and then
start looking.”
“So what does this have to do with us?,” asked the Watch commander.
“Carson One Thumb is going to help with this expedition,” said Festus. “We’re going
to need people who can come up with the solutions for the problems that are going
to come up. And if the egg hatches before we can find it, the Watch is going to have
to be ready to repel it from the city.”
“And I think the reason a machine is required is because the egg poisons anything
that gets close to it unprotected,” said Zachariah. “We can’t use daemons to look for
it if we think we’ll lose the daemons.”
“All right,” said the Watch commander. “I can start getting the Watch together and
do fly overs to train for coordinated attacks, escape routes from the city, work on
creating instant walls for more protection.”
“I can get equipment set up for a boat building,” said Carson. “You’re going to need
air recyclers and other things while you’re under. I have never considered trying to
build a boat to go underwater.”
“I thought about modifying the Rocket, but it’ll still take a lot of work,” said
Zachariah.
“Do you have plans for the Rocket with you?,” asked Carson. “I can start laying a hull
if I had them.”
“They’re back in Messer’s Reach,” said Zachariah. “I didn’t want to bring them in
case something happened to us.”
“I understand,” said Carson. “Can we go down and look at the Rocket?”
“That would be good,” said Zachariah. “We plan to kill this thing in the water. The
If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.thing inside won’t allow us to exist if it hatches. And once we’re gone, it’ll start
reaching for the other cities on the continent and wipe out as many people as it can
before it can be wiped out.”
“It won’t leave the ocean,” said Festus. “We’ve lost too much. We won’t lose anyone
else.”
“Come on, Carson,” said Zachariah. “We’re going to need the fish finder and any of
those artificial lights you came up with for the automatic carriages.”
“I’m going to fly out for a bit, George,” said Festus. “When I get back, we’ll start
trying to put more patrol boats on the water while we’re looking at getting our people
ready.”
“I’ll talk to my assistants about what skills we have,” said the Watch commander.
“We’ll start on target practice as soon as we have our list of projectors ready.”
“Put a man on ferry duty,” said Festus. “We want one projector riding with citizens
until we’re sure we’re not going to have another attack.”
“Right,” said George. “How soon can you get started on this, Master Eight Arms?”
“I plan to fly into Messer’s Reach to finish the race,” said Zachariah. “It will take me
a small amount of time to gather my plans, and then fly back. Carson and I will have
to plan a keel, put in controls, and test it to make sure I won’t kill myself when I go
in the water. Then it will take some time to find the egg and kill it. That part is in the
unknown range, but the rest might take a year at most.”
“Don’t worry, George,” said Carson. “Zachariah is the best machinist in the world.
I’m second best. Between the two of us, we’ll be able to sail around the world under
the sea without any problem by the time we’re done.”
“We’re going to get ready in case the time table moves,” said Festus. “Conditions
might change before your boat can be readied.”
“If it does, I will add arms to the Rocket so she can attack from the air to help hold
the line,” said Zachariah. “Lobster Bay might give me a look at the weapons they put
on their air ships so I‘ll have some idea on how to mount them.”
“Let’s get started,” said Festus. He straightened. “I expect reports from all of you
when things are fully going.”
“I will have Campbell to send a message when I get back to the Reach and when I am
on the way back,” said Zachariah. “His bird seems faster than sound from what my
daughter said.”
“I have one more question,” said George. “Did you really kill someone in Messer’s
Reach?”
“Yes,” said Zachariah.
“Why?,” asked George.
“I lost my Sara with the city,” said Zachariah. “He was going to do the same thing to
millions of people who don’t have a lot of natural weapons at their disposal. He
needed to be stopped.”
“And it’s the same reason we’re going to take this warning seriously,” said Festus.
“We can’t lose any more people, and we can’t let anything try to kill everybody we
might know whether they are Riordianians, or not.”
“Let’s go down and look at this famous Rocket of yours,” said Carson. “A flying
machine and an underwater boat. I never thought of trying to build either one.”
“The flying machine was Sola and Bolan’s idea,” said Zachariah. “They wanted to fly
in the air race when they saw it.”
The machinists took the stairs to get down to the lobby, and out to the street. As they
walked toward the harbor, the shadow of a long dragon swam through the air on tiny
wings.
“I’m sorry about Sara,” said Carson as they walked to the dock for the ferry.
“So am I,” said Zachariah. “She was everything good about me.”
“That’s true but I didn’t want to say it,” said Carson.
“You didn’t have to,” said Zachariah. “Gold Bug came up with an engine design that
works on gravity. We built a working unit from the prototype he put together. It
works like a dream.”
“I can’t wait to see this,” said Carson. “The most I have been able to do is engines for
the ferry so it will run on the sea water.”
“Sea water?,” said Zachariah.
“It works fine to charge the engine which turns the paddle,” said Carson. “It’s not
fast.”
“It doesn’t have to be for what it does,” said Zachariah. “Do you mind if I look at the
design work?”
“No, I don’t,” said Carson. “How did you get the gravity thing to work?”
“We had to design a new metal and a projector apparatus,” said Zachariah. “Just
finding the right combination took months. The prototype blew apart halfway through
testing.”
Carson nodded. He had suffered similar explosions trying to put things together for
the island.
“The other racers will be coming in soon,” said Zachariah. “Some might already be
on the field. Gold Bug built an air machine from scrap. I need to look at that before
something happens to it.”
“An air machine built from scrap?,” said Carson. “How did that happen?”
Zachariah recounted the race to his friend while they boarded the ferry and rode back
across the harbor to the coastal part of the city. He answered questions as well as he
could about the air pirates and the desert raiders. He put in guesses about motives and
means where he had to guess at what was going on.
“A lightning gun sounds a little dangerous to use underwater,” said Carson.
“It’s not my first choice,” admitted Zachariah. “The boat would have to be specially
insulated from any feedback. I don’t want to fire it and then have everything turn to
mush around me.”
“I agree with that sentiment,” said Carson. “How many are going to be on the crew?”
“Right now, just me,” said Zachariah. “Sola and Bolan are going to have to remain
on the surface to mount a rescue if something goes wrong. They’ll probably need you
to help with anything like that.”
“You’re going to need someone to help with your search on the boat,” said Carson.
“Have you considered that?”
“This is going to be dangerous, Carson,” said Zachariah. “Anyone who rides with me
on this will likely be killed if things go wrong. There are things in the sea more
immediately dangerous than an unhatched egg of evil.”
“I would still like to go,” said Carson. “And if I am helping build this, I am going to
be one of the few able enough to fix things if there is a problem.”
“All right,” said Zachariah. “This is against my best judgement, but we’ll put in an
engineer’s console for you to ride along. If you get killed, I am not going to tell your
family anything. I won’t face them.”
“George will do that for you, if you give him something to use,” said Carson. “And
he probably will do it better than you could anyway.”
“If the egg hatches, I hope he can lead his men enough to protect the city,” said
Zachariah.
“If that thing hatches into another one of those towers while we’re in the water, that
is going to be the least of our problems,” said Carson. He made a waterspout motion
with his hands.
Zachariah nodded. That was another reason he wanted something to kill giants
onboard.
“It looks like your Rocket isn’t alone,” said Carson. He nodded at the fliers coming
in for landings.
“Look out for these boy machinists from Lobster Bay,” said Zachariah. “They like to
cause trouble.”
“Don’t worry,” said Carson. He smiled. “I have never been involved in the air race.
Thank you for the chance.”
“Let’s find the kids and then I have to check on Gear Octo’s air machine,” said
Zachariah. “He might have to sit the rest of the race out.”