Наоми Новик – Tongues of Serpents (страница 15)
He drew Laurence into his study, and on the desk drew out the maps of the colony, and the penning mountain range about it, a great labyrinthine mass of gorges and peaks, only vaguely sketched. ‘All our purposes can march together,’ MacArthur said. ‘You wish to be well out of the affair; just so: I wish you out of it also, and every other dragon in the place with you, at least long enough for our doom to arrive. It cannot be long now, when the last frigate brought the post only a month behind our news.’
His proposal was an expedition whose purpose should be to find a crossing over the Blue Mountains, and establish a cattle-drive road from the colony to the open territory beyond, ‘where,’ he continued, ‘you may set up this covert your beasts will require, and take yourselves all the land you might like: I cannot see how anyone can complain, when you have opened the passage yourselves.
‘Captain Granby is senior, I think,’ he added, ‘and can I suppose order this Captain Rankin on such a mission: if this new creature means to go on eating as he has begun, it seems to me you had all better be thinking of how to feed him, particularly as you have two more hatchlings to come.’
‘I am afraid it must keep you here a little longer,’ Laurence said, rather diffident in making the suggestion: he could not like asking Granby to enter into such a stratagem, however practical.
He felt himself caught between shoals and a lee-shore, in an unfamiliar channel: MacArthur’s machinations were no more noble than Bligh’s in their ends, and likely less; even if in their forthrightness more appealing, and with the benefit of MacArthur’s greater charm of person. And they were neither of them looking beyond the parochial boundaries of their quarrel, to the titanic struggle creeping ever more widely over the world. If either of them gave a thought to the war, Laurence could not discover it, and though they might gladly make him any promises which would make of him the useful ally they desired, they neither of them recognized in any real way the colossal folly of wasting Temeraire in this isolate part of the world.
It was enough to make him look again at Tharkay’s suggestion: Laurence could easily long for the sea-wind in his face and the open ocean, and at least the comfort of doing
MacArthur’s proposal offered, however, at least a temporary escape from all these alternatives; Laurence was at present in the mood to be satisfied with small blessings. ‘But I would not in the least press it upon you,’ he added, ‘and I hope you will not act in any way contrary to your judgment, nor—’
Nor, he meant to add: in excessive haste, but Granby broke in on him before he could. ‘For God’s sake let us go first thing in the morning,’ Granby said passionately. ‘I have been living in mortal terror every day I should wake up and find myself a hundred miles into the interior: she keeps talking of going to look for elephants. What I am to do if Rankin will not come, though, I cannot tell you. No one can argue Iskierka isn’t in a different class, but I have no official orders to be here, where he does; and seniority is a sad puzzle: he was a captain first, even if he hasn’t had a dragon for years.’
‘I suggest you do not concern yourselves until the event,’ Tharkay said, ‘if it should arise,’ and shrugged when Rankin, to Laurence’s private surprise, made no objections either to the project or to Granby’s assertion of rank. ‘Bligh’s support was desirable to him when he thought you might try to deny him the egg,’ Tharkay said. ‘Now he can only gain very little and risk much by committing himself; I imagine he is perfectly satisfied to have you provide him a convenient excuse to withdraw, particularly when Granby must soon depart and restore his precedence.’
Laurence could of course not look upon the expedition with anything like pleasure, save the meagre sort involved in escaping a worse outcome. There was nothing attractive in the prospect of shepherding a gang of convicts, and a month in Rankin’s company would have been a most effective punishment in quarters less confined than a small encampment; and for insult to add upon these injuries, he might also expect the hostility of the rest of the aviators.
‘I know they have made clods of themselves, but you had better have at least one officer,’ Granby said, scratching out a haphazard list of the aviators on the back of a napkin, in his shipboard cabin, as he chose which men to assign to Temeraire and to Iskierka, as temporary crews. Laurence of course had been stripped of his subordinates with his rank, and Iskierka had left her own back in Britain when she had decamped without permission to follow them, taking only Granby. ‘Will you take Forthing?’
‘Temeraire has taken him a little in dislike, I find,’ Laurence said.
‘Yes, I know,’ Granby said. ‘I should like to give Forthing a chance to make it up with him; otherwise we will have a job of it to persuade Temeraire to let him make a try for one of the eggs. Not that Forthing is any less a clod than the rest, but at least he is a competent clod. Most of the rest are the flotsam of the Corps as much as the eggs are. That fellow Blincoln is pleased with himself if he manages to round up half a dozen men to put away harness in good order; and I suppose he may as well be, because it don’t happen very often.’
Laurence nodded. ‘We will take Fellowes and Dorset, of course; and Roland and Demane can manage the rest, I expect,’ he said. ‘We ought not take more men than necessary; there can be no need to burden the dragons.’
‘I hope,’ Tharkay said, ‘that I may form one of your party, as well, if it is not inconvenient.’
They looked at him with surprise. After a moment, Laurence said, ‘Certainly, if you like,’ forcibly repressing his curiosity; Granby said, ‘But Lord above, whyever for? We will end with pickaxing our way through solid rock for a month in the worst heat of summer, and there is not a blessed soul out there to be found: unless we see some of the natives, and with three dragons I am pretty sure we won’t.’
Tharkay paused, and then said quietly, ‘You will be surveying first, from aloft; if there is a route in use, that will offer the best chance of seeing it.’
‘If there were a route in use, we shouldn’t have to build one,’ Granby said.
‘I am not expecting to find a road suitable for general use,’ Tharkay said. ‘A mule-track at most, I should think.’
‘But,’ Laurence said, and only barely restrained himself; Granby also had stopped, with an open mouth: but it was too plain Tharkay did not choose to volunteer more; he might easily have done so. ‘Oh, if you like, then,’ Granby said awkwardly, after a moment, looking at Laurence.
‘We should be glad of your company,’ Laurence said, with a bow, and only later, privately to Temeraire expressed his confusion.
‘Maybe he is looking for the smugglers,’ Temeraire said, unconcernedly, nibbling up another portion of sheep stuffed with raisins and grains: MacArthur had sent another present that morning, letting no grass grow. Laurence stared. ‘Well, if someone has a secret road and has not said anything to anyone about it,’ Temeraire offered, having swallowed, ‘it stands to reason they must be hiding it for a reason; and you were just telling me of all these goods from China which are coming in.’
‘It would be a very peculiar way to bring goods into a port city,’ Laurence said, doubtfully, but he recalled Tharkay had engaged himself in service to the directors of the East India Company: at Maden’s request, he might well have undertaken such a task, even if it did not seem a likely explanation for his wishing to accompany their party.
‘But anyone could think of searching the ships and the dockyards, to catch them,’ Temeraire said, and Laurence after a little more consideration had to acknowledge that if the intention was ultimately to ship the goods on to England, the arrangement was ideal: slip the goods into the markets unsuspected, and then any legitimate captain might openly purchase them and carry them onward.
‘They must be landing them in a convenient bay, then, somewhere further up the coast,’ Laurence said, ‘and taking them around by land; but it would be a most circuitous route, through unsettled and dangerous countryside.’
‘There is nothing very dangerous when there is nothing but kangaroos about,’ Temeraire said dismissively.
They decamped in accord with Granby’s fondest wishes, the very next morning, with all the speed and disorder usual to the Aerial Corps and more when travelling so light: the bulk of their baggage was made of simple pickaxes and hammers and shovels, instead of bombshells and gunpowder, and the few tents which would be their shelter. The mountains were richly green despite the summer, even seen from a distance; they might rely on finding sufficient water without trying to carry very much of it as supply, and with a few sacks of biscuit and barrels of salt pork they were ready to depart.