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“I can’t,” she admitted. “None of my ladies are allowed to touch it, or anything like it. This isn’t that kind of place, and these aren’t those kinds of women, no matter what you might think. ”
“I never said—”
“I know what you did and didn’t say. But I can’t help you find it, unless…” She rose from her seat, pushing it aside. “I know someone who might have an idea. ”
“A customer or two?”
“He’s more like a resident, these days,” she muttered. “A Texian. I wouldn’t accuse him of using the dust, but if anyone could point you toward it, it’d be Mr. Calais. Let me see if he’s indisposed. ”
Horatio Korman rose from his seat and waited for her to lead the way again. “He lives here?”
“He might as well. Wait here. I’ll knock, and bring him up. ”
Down on the second floor, she stood outside Delphine’s room and rapped in her most businesslike fashion. Momentarily it was opened by the girl in question, mostly dressed.
Behind her, Fenn Calais was seated in a pair of pants and nothing else. He looked up from a chessboard. “Miss Early?”
“Mr. Calais, you’re up. Excellent. And I’m glad I’m not interrupting anything. ”
“Only the whipping this girl is giving me. ” He scooted off the bed, which he was using as a seat, with the board on an end table. “You never do give room and board to the dumb ones, do you, Miss Early?”
“Not if I can help it. Could I possibly have a word with you? I
n my office? Momentarily?”
“Should I dress?”
“It’s up to you. There’s a Ranger present, if that makes a difference. ”
He nodded solemnly. “It does. ” Rather than reaching for his shoes or shirt, he grabbed his hat, jammed it onto his head, and said, “Let’s go. ”
Eleven
Captain Cly and his crew members had spent as long as possible getting further acquainted with the intricacies, quirks, and foibles of the strange machine. By the onset of nightfall, they knew it well enough to usher it around even in the dark—not speedily, not perfectly, but effectively.
Could they shuttle it around the lake? Absolutely.
Would they be able to navigate the river in it? Debatable. But no longer negotiable.
Word had come from the Valiant, by taps and spies and eventually Norman Somers, that the ship wouldn’t wait much longer. Texas was homing in, hovering and sweeping, gathering enough forces to chase the airship carrier farther out into the Gulf. It wouldn’t be safe for the Union to hang around any closer, any longer.
They had forty-eight hours to bring Ganymede out to the Gulf to dock with Valiant. After that, the window would close and the opportunity would be lost … perhaps indefinitely.
As the sun set on that afternoon, the shadows all stretched out until they lost their shape, and the lake was dropped into the golden-edged dimness of twilight.
And then, these tense, frightened, brilliant men set their plan irrevocably into motion.
It was a precision operation, planned to the very smallest detail and—as Cly learned from Chester Fishwick—it had been dry-rehearsed at quiet, sneaky length. Not with the actual Ganymede in tow, of course. That would be too risky. They’d get only one shot at moving the enormous contraption from Lake Pontchartrain to the Mississippi River, and it had to count.
Eleven men worked as a unit, setting up an enormous cagelike contraption—a custom-made crane bracing a winch with the power to do what a thousand men would be hard-pressed to accomplish.
Lights flared to life throughout the bayou, dimmed by shades and covered with blue or red glass. They burned in lanterns, on poles, marking the pier’s edges as the hoist began to crank. The craft began to rise.
On the lake’s banks, just at the spot where it could be described as land instead of muddy water, a set of braced reinforcements had been sunk into the soggy earth to shore it up against the Ganymede’s unseemly weight. Backed up to these reinforcements, the two rolling-crawlers were hitched to the largest wheeled platform Cly had ever seen. The pilfered Texian machines were set up like a pair of draft horses, ready to pull.
Houjin whispered the captain’s own concerns. “Will those machines be able to tow it? And will they fit through the road leading out of the bayou?”
Before Cly could tell him that he didn’t know, Anderson Worth replied, “Those things can pull it, no problem. But they can’t cut through the bayou, not the same way you folks came inside it. There’s a secondary road—one we’ve been building up for the last few months. We’ve cut it as wide as we can, given it all the beams, braces, and support possible, and we’ve covered it up with the nettings, like the ones we use in the camp. ”
