5. Underpass

We avoided the station and ascended the streets using a utility access ladder, emerging from beneath a manhole cover in a deserted alley. Through the nearby doors of a deserted warehouse, I ushered them, while in the distance sirens wailed.

"Okay, so how far away do these friends of yours live?" I asked, peering out through the front doors at the chaos along Main Street.

"Not far...they have a townhouse in the Comstock Center...it's just down the street." Claire said. I noticed her continued study of my person.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing...nothing wrong..." She said in worried tone. "It's just...just that Daisy always said someone like you'd come along. Hard to believe you're…"

"Daisy?" I queried with a regrip of the Broadsider, attention turning through split wooden doors to a troupe of police hastening down the sidewalks. Near a department store three men were reeling the float of an odd-looking blonde-haired boy down onto a truck.

"Daisy Fitzroy. She's the leader of the Vox Populi."

I turned to look at them. "Look, I don't know nothin' about any Daisy Fitzroy or Lamb or Columbian politics. I'm just here for the girl."

Cavanaugh peered through the crack of the doors beside me. "Where are you from, if you don't mind me asking?"

"New York. I'm a private detective there and specialize in cases like this." I said, wondering if one case now made me a 'specialist.'

"Well, my father grew up in Chicago. That's how we came to be here. I don't remember much of it, but, well, you must have noticed that there aren't a whole lot of black folk about."

Now that he mentioned it, I had, but I hadn't thought anything of it since the Lady. "And your point?"

"Well, that's just..." Outside a noise stymied our conversation...but the noise was from behind us. Forefinger to my nose, I slipped off behind a rise of crates that stepped up toward the ceiling. Finding them easy to mount, I ascended to the topmost. Ten feet in the air, it looked out upon a rear window. I motioned the couple to keep talking.

I reached out and levered the window open. Outside in the alley at the warehouse's rear door I saw a man ear to door listening, straw hat in hand. I leaned out the window and took a bead on his head. Just as I was about to fire the crate, I'd steadied myself upon shifted. I struck my head on the open window, weapon falling ten feet to the cobble below. The man turned, revealing blond hair and blue eyes.

At the racket he had produced a clean looking black Steyr raised precisely at my ungainly hang. Seeing it was me, he sighed and lowered it, seating the weapon after a moment in a vest holster. "DeWitt. Fancy meeting you here."

Ass on the sill, I braced myself long enough to respond to his comment. "You've been following me, Edmonton." As I spoke the crate gave way and I down I went, crashing with a bone jarring thud to the ground inside. I heard the rush of feet...saw the concerned eyes of James and Claire hovering over me.

"Not initially, but you made such a damned sensation I just couldn't help myself." His voice carried through the door. "Are you quite all right?"

Sprawled upon the concrete, I felt myself for broken bones. "Couldn't be better."

"Good." The Brit said, opening the door to my charges' surprise. "And not alone." Looking Claire and James over, he seemed hardly fazed despite their attire. "I'd heard Columbia had some unique matrimonial traditions. I take it you were at the Raffle?"

"We were the Raffle." Cavanaugh said, looking to his girl...offering me a hand up.

With his assistance I rose and dusted myself off, my shoulder hurting like the Dickens. "Why are you following me?"

"A fair question. Not that the swath of destruction you've carved was easily avoidable. The truth of the matter is that with your shambolic approach toward this woman in the tower has the city in an uproar. That makes any chance I'd had of obtaining an invitation into the Liftworks legitimate or otherwise unlikely.

"Why should I care about your misfortune?" I brushed myself off, eyeing the pistol in his outstretched hand.

"Yours, I believe?" I checked the load and tuckered it into my holster. "I don't believe we've been introduced." He said, turning to my charges. "Andrew Edmonton, Lloyds of London."

"James Cavanaugh. This is my fiancée Claire. Claire Greene."

"A pleasure to meet you, Madame." Edmonton said with a kiss upon the back of her hand. "We need to see about getting you clothing."

"We're near a friend's house." Claire whispered. We should be able to find help there.

"A friend's house?" Edmonton said with a glance toward my aching wreck. "And you think that perhaps they might be able to help us?"

"There ain't no us." I said, walking past the three to look again out the crack of the doors. The streets were empty now, the float and cops gone. Empty enough that we'd stand out.

Edmonton came alongside and with outstretched hand pointed toward a gondola just over the skyline, one that ran upward toward the Angel of Columbia on Monument Island. "That is our destination."

"Now you want to go to the Island?"

"Since my efforts with Fink are confounded, yes. What manner of guards do you think they'll have on it?"

"No idea." I caught my breath. "But worrying about that is putting the ox before the cart...we're going to have to chance the streets." Further down the boulevard, an armed checkpoint was being set up.

"You're a wanted man now, DeWitt...with baggage in tow. Comstock and his renegades were eventually run down, but in the meantime, they gained enough of a following here and in the superstitious corners of your fair land to provide him a modicum of immunity. These people believe in their heavenly city and in particular its founder, and who can blame them? He foretells their future and delivers them fortune. Their home flies. I believe they've shown they'll die for him."

"Tell me something new. They've still got to find me."

"Remember the posters." He glanced back at the couple. "Perhaps he spies us even now."

"I don't think so."

"And how can you be so certain of that?"

I eyed him as I stood, wondering if he believed that hokum or was a plant for this old geezer himself. "Cause the cops ain't bustin' down this door. Maybe ole Comstock can see the future, but he can't do it all that well or I'd have had a bullet..." I stopped mid-sentence, suddenly back in the misty alleyway behind McSorley's. "In my brain."

I felt a shiver course my body.

"Are you quite all right?"

"Yeah. I'm just fine. Let's get moving."

#

We emerged to a lightly traveled street just off Main, keeping to the walls beneath a skyline above, clunking with passing of box cars. Our route, chosen by the girl, was at least out of sight of the checkpoint. Cavanaugh seemed to follow his woman, who seemed to know her way along the back alleys and lesser used streets better than he. Above us a calligraphic ironwork called out Comstock Center. Pasted upon one of its brick pillars a poster depicted the announcer I'd beaned at the Raffle, finger outstretched.

Columbia Raffle and Fair!

Jerimiah Fink wants YOU to attend the July 6th Raffle!

"What is it, DeWitt?" Edmonton asked.

"You wanted to meet Fink." I pointed at the poster. "That's him." I crossed my arms. "Next time I'll have to introduce you."

After waiting out the passage of a Constabulary patrol, Claire brought us down a nearby alley, rounding a cluster of wooden barrels to a back door. Finding a key beneath a loose street brick, she turned the lock and entered. Beyond lay a second door and stairs down. The building we'd entered seemed a residence, and we were careful not to make undue noise. Luckily its halls were empty. Beside a cold stove hung a poster on the wall, that of a black man:

A Meeting of the Columbia Friends of the Negro Society.

Until the Negro is Equal, None of Us are Equal

Its display in an unfrequented back-room wall didn't bode well. I paused to look at it as Edmonton arrived next to me.

"Getting to know the culture?"

"Yeah." I said, remembering fresh the lavatory and wait staff on the First Lady.

Claire had gone on while James paused to look with us. "It's sad, isn't it? In this day and age."

"Not as sad for me as it nearly was for you."

He smirked. Following Claire once more down another flight of stairs, we paused at the corner to the clank and clash of metal behind closed twin doors. They were unlocked, and inside I beheld a pair of modern printing presses, hard at work churning out handbills advertising the upcoming meeting whose poster we'd stumbled across. Treading cautiously, I emerged behind James into a living room only to be met by a mortified man in a grey suit...his wife caught wide eyed with reams of paper in her hands. At Claire's appearance both had turned white as sheets. Dropping her papers, the woman ran and embraced the girl, tears pouring from her eyes. "Oh, my God...Claire, James! We thought you were lost!"

"You're him." The man said before holding up his hands. Brown haired and well-dressed, his feet sifting scrolls of paper now rumpled to the floor. "The one they're looking for. Don't hurt us."

I turned my nose up. "What do you mean, hurt you?"

The wife, whose strained visage would have been appealing were not her hair in a severe brown bun, finally let go of Claire and turned to hug Cavanaugh. "He saved us." Claire said quietly, pretty brown eyes looking at me. "At the Raffle, he..."

"We heard." The man said, producing a handbill with my image woodcut upon it. He didn't say anything else...just let me look.

"It's a pretty good likeness." I admitted after some consideration.

"Are you truly the False Shepherd?" The woman asked, almost giddy.

"Obviously not." Edmonton said as he glanced over my shoulder to the portrait. "His nose is all wrong."

I turned a baleful eye to him and shoved the scrap of paper back at her. "I ain't no 'False Shepherd.' And I ain't here to hurt no one either, but I sure as hell will if I have to." Outside I heard the approach of boots, police pounding upon doors. "Open your house upon orders of the Columbia Police Authority!"

"They're here!" The wife whispered.

"Keep your voice down, Evelyn!" The man hushed. "If they think no one is home, perhaps they'll move on." Worried for our presence, he reconsidered the door. "On second thought, take James and Claire to the basement. They'll be safe there. And take them too."

As a group we followed 'Evelyn' down the stairs, James and Claire nervously looking back, as did I. "Why are you helping us?" I eventually asked as we entered what appeared to be a garage. I didn't mean to seem ungrateful but I didn't know these people and had no assurance we weren't waltzing into a trap

Evelyn looked back to me over her shoulder with worrisome green eyes. "Because some of us still remember the dream for Columbia our parents had and may yet be."

"Look, I just got here, Lady, so mind ditching the hyperbole and telling me what the hell that means?" Drawing away from the end of the stairs toward a closed wooden door, she gestured with her hand for her charges to follow.

"It means anyone who is an enemy of Comstock and his ilk is an ally of ours. You saved our friends..." She said with a solemn look. Behind her Claire and James gathered. "This is the least we can do."

#

"Absolutely not." Archibald Montgomery insisted ten minutes later, arms crossed, shaking his head. "I agree with my wife, Mr. DeWitt...we owe you a debt of gratitude for saving our friends, but half of the Constabulary of Columbia is after you. Assisting you would be utter suicide!"

"But Archie..." His wife said. "We just have to help them!"

"And get ourselves killed or worse? And likely James and Claire after that? Out of the question. The risk is simply too great." A vindicated Montgomery had followed us downstairs after the police had moved on, soon finding himself aghast at the plan his wife was concocting. "We were lucky with the Constabulary, but I don't wish to tempt fate a second time. You've heard the wireless, Evelyn...the city is in an uproar! There will be checkpoints at every corner, guards at every major building. They're mobilizing the Columbian Guard after this fellow!"

"Look, you don't owe me shit." I said, not wishing to break up a marriage. "I just want to get across the city."

"We want to get across the city." Edmonton corrected from where he leant his weight to the brickwork wall.

"Well, good luck with that." Montgomery responded with a huff. "I mean, my God, did you really throw a baseball into Jerimiah Fink's face and think you'd get away with it?"

"You, uh, heard about that?"

"I assure you, Mr. DeWitt...everyone in Columbia has heard about that. As well as the menace that you are. It is all over the wireless. You killed four policemen!"

"Who were trying to kill me."

"And who would have killed us..." Evelyn supplied, approaching her husband's side, talking his forearm into hers. "If they'd found out. There simply has to be something we can do."

Montgomery sighed, put his forehead into his palm. "If...and only if I do this, will you do what you can to help Claire and James get on their feet in America?"

"Assuming I make it that far…" I glanced to the pair. "Sure"

"Very well then, I have a plan."

"A plan?" His wife responded, brow puzzled. In the room she wasn't the only one.

"Evelyn, dear...fetch the hooks and place them in the trunk. We'll have need of them."

"Hooks? Where...where are we going?"

"You three are not going anywhere." Montgomery insisted with level eyes. "At least not until I get back. With Comstock's minions otherwise distracted, we might have some us leeway to spirit James and Claire over to Shantytown. Now, if you two gentlemen will please follow me."

"To where?" Edmonton asked.

"Through this door." He said with a step forward, flying a gleeful smirk. "We have an automobile."

#

I was no slouch at driving. Montgomery was a champ. His chariot was a black Parry Pathfinder, four door, six cylinders roaring beneath its cowling with a red streak along its side. Fifty feet beneath Emporia Archie raced at breakneck through a network of tunnels, air fed undoubtedly by the great fans I'd spied upon the buttresses alongside the bedrock. Occasionally a train shot past us on the central track with a great blow, and after a second shuddering passage he explained that the subways were mainly for the trains. Unlike the streets above, the access roads remained empty not only of traffic but police.

Sitting behind me in the seat, Edmonton seemed to approve. "If this works, we'll be able to cut off hours from our journey, and any unfortunate encounters associated with it."

"So, the Prophecy is true?" Montgomery said apprehensively, and in his voice, I heard both hope and fear.

"Look I'm not the damned antichrist..." I said, realizing what he was getting at. "And I'm not trying to wreck Comstock's little utopia. I just want to get the goddamned girl. Jesus...it's like everybody thinks the sky's gonna fall."

"We don't think that Mr. DeWitt, but..." Suddenly Montgomery swerved hard, honking his horn as a repair truck flew by in the opposite lane. "But we do wonder. The prophecies of Comstock...have an uncanny way of coming true. Too many times. How they found out about Claire and James...who tried so hard to be discreet. It's like...it's like Comstock can truly see."

"Or he has plentiful spies..." Edmonton insinuated from behind.

"Okay, so maybe your good Prophet can see the future, but he can't see intentions. Especially not mine. Who is this woman in the tower, anyway?"

"No one knows for certain." Montgomery answered. Now slowing, he made a wide turn to the left and puttered up a circling ramp. "Other than she is the Miracle Child, Comstock's daughter. The Church says that she was conceived and born within seven days, a miracle of the Angel Columbia that watches over the city of her namesake."

"And what do you think?"

"I think she's the product of the old man's wild oats, as do most of the Founders, from what I hear. Perhaps that's why Lady Comstock disowned her."

"Disowned her?" I asked as an ambulance passed us by, wailing, heading uptown. "I thought you said there wasn't any other traffic down here?"

"I said not much. Because I work for the City with James I have access."

"So, what's going to happen to them now that they've been sprung?" I asked, referring to the couple.

"They cannot remain in the Emporia, at least not for long. Shantytown should prove a refuge for the time being...the Constabulary seldom goes there except in force, but it would be best to get them to the Mainland. That is where you come in, should you survive. We have arrangements with some of the workers at the Finkton Docks and should be able to get them aboard a cargo transport. Unfortunately, that still requires getting them to Shantytown.

"How?" I asked, remembering Shantytown next to Finkton.

"Either via airship or a circuitous routing of gondolas. You needn't worry, though...this is what we do."

"You help people like them escape?" I asked.

"No, Mr. DeWitt..." Montgomery said as he crested the ramp's rise, joining another disused underground thoroughfare. "Evelyn and I...and people like us...we help people live. We're almost there."

#

We slowed into a subterranean car park, coming to a halt at the base of a ramp that opened into sunlight above. Dismounting the idling vehicle, I climbed the ramp to crouch behind a stonework railing. About us lay a park, a grassy table surrounded by trees. Prominently in the center rose a fountain, attended by four policemen.

"Now what?" Edmonton said, consternation in his voice as he came to my side. The park, I could see, had been roped off at the entrance and the gondola service by prominent sign "Discontinued." The four cops were sitting atop the fountain, eating a late lunch. The Monument towered angelic amid the clouds beyond them. "Damnation. The gondola is shuttered."

"Well, I am afraid that this is as far as I can take you. I'd do more but I'm afraid Chitty doesn't fly."

"Chitty?"

"The car. Looks like you're out of luck, unless you want to draw attention to yourself."

Edmonton drew alongside me, huddling together with Montgomery. "Seems like a bad spot we're in despite the keen plan. Any other way out there?"

I pulled my pistol. "Yeah. One way." As I rose Montgomery grasped my elbow.

"Wait, violence can't be the solution."

I rolled my eyes. "Do you really believe that horseshit? It's nearly always the solution."

"Over there." He said, pointing beyond the gondola towards a pair of glinting rail lines running above the cables that led upward toward the Tower. "The skylines. Normally they're used for freight but occasionally mechanics ride the rails using a Skyhook." I looked at the man as though he were insane, because he was suggesting that I ride those rails. I thought about shooting him.

"Well, if we just happened to have a 'Skyhook' or whatever the hell you called it lying about we might be in luck, but I don't see..." As I spoke he was into the car's boot, producing one of the nightmarish contraptions I'd nearly been introduced to face first...three rotary hooks, a steel arm and leather waist strap. An arm brace dominated the upper reach of cowhide, complete with all manner of straps.

"Skyhook." Observed Montgomery, burnishing it with his sleeve. At his production I got the feeling he was rather pleased with himself. "Upon occasion Evelyn and I have used them to make our way to clandestine meetings. "But her not so much...it's positively awful on the shoulder and ribs, not to mention the feminine padding.

I glanced to Edmonton, who was intrigued. "Brilliant. How does it work?"

"The skylines are embedded with Lutece Cells at intervals of ten feet. They not only suspend the rails but provide a boost every so often along the direction of your chosen travel. You control your speed by clenching harder upon the grip and frankly the hook does the rest...don't ask me how. Oh, yes, one other thing...its heavily magnetized."

"What's that mean?"

"It means we might not die." Edmonton answered for him. "Come on, DeWitt...we have a girl to find."