10. High Passage

With blood slick hand I clung to the wall railing, gripping tightly as the pilot put the dirigible into ascent. The tang of urine and possibly feces hung in the control cabin, the source obvious, and by his terrified reflection in the glass more threatened. As the deck canted, Elizabeth barely held herself against the incline, her back pressed against the forward windows by the airman and boots firmly at an angle on the wooden decking, glaring at me. In the wispy clouds a mile above, visible now in the panorama that surrounded the compartment, the aerial islands of Columbia began to emerge, gray and solid from below, ringed by inverted steel and concrete under-retainment walls which somehow failed to fall into the sea. The shadow from Emporia drew over the airship as it cut the sun to our southwest.

I made sure to keep my barrel firmly on our soiled driver. My hand was throbbing, blood everywhere…the railing, the boards…my boots.

"You killed those people..." Her voice quivered, anguish wrenching her face. "I can't believe you did that. They're all…dead." Relinquishing my hold and against the new slope, I approached, but with and frightening eyes she pushed me violently away. "You're a monster!"

"What did you think was going to happen?" I said softly as I caught myself back, pain shooting through my wounded appendage. With quick glance I made sure the pilot engaged in no shenanigans. Her hair was a mess now, from the battle and losing her footing, fine brown teased and astray from her wrecked blue bow. Once more I glanced to the pilot who, aware of my renewed attention, redoubled his fixation with his panel. "Hmmm?"

"What?" She asked, though she wouldn't look at me. A tear ran down grimy cheek.

Again, I approached…slower this time…hand raised. "Do you understand the expense these people went to keep you locked up in that tower? Do you think people like that are just going to...going to let you walk away? You are an investment, and you will not be safe until you are far away from here."

Despite her aversion I knew she was listening. "What am I?" She asked almost imperceptibly, then more loudly. "What do they want from me?" Her face was dire.

"I don't know. But that's the last time anyone gets the drop on me."

Elizabeth's hand rose to her chest then looked back to me…my wretched hand. Remorse swelled in her eyes. She looked upon it then back to me. "Let me see that." Taking its mangle into hers, she winced. After a short examination, she reached down and tore a strip of hem from her dress. "What happened back there...it's not the last of it, is it?"

"I don't know." I answered as she wrapped it, then tightened. Monster. So very right she was…not even knowing the half of it. Finishing the binding of my wound, Elizabeth tied the bloodied impromptu bandage off, seemingly a bit more buoyed…as if her gesture at healing could somehow make recompense the bloodshed I'd done.

"There." Her eyes cast upward. Could she see the sorrow in mine?

I held it up...clenched my fist. It hurt like hell, but it worked and the bleeding was staunched. I could hit and I could, if needed, shoot a gun. I handed her the shotgun and nodded to the pilot. "Keep it on him. If he does something funny, shoot. I…I have to sit for a minute."

"S…shoot?" She exclaimed, holding the weapon like something from Mars.

With increasing heights the aerial traffic grew, airships of a mostly smaller variety shadowed in transit between Columbia's smaller islands, glinting occasionally in the afternoon sun as we rose above the skyscrapers of Emporia. With the other islands of the Columbian Archipelago spread about us like some sort of massive gray and blue map, we made for the commuting docks of the Aerodrome where an array of much larger sky-ships hung.

Amongst the array of aerial islands, it wasn't hard to find her old place. Above the skyline of Emporia the decapitated ruin of her angelic former dwelling still smoldered streamers of black soot, though the fires proper appeared out. Across from me, hair and clothing caked, Elizabeth continued to look implausible with the shotgun.

Had our reluctant pilot doubts of her capability, he did not show them. The Aerodrome continued to swell in the glass windows, and soon we came alongside a long wooden boarding pier. Outside a gaggle of men carried rope and hawsers. One leapt cross the closing gap to alight upon our deck, causing Elizabeth to shriek. Catching rope, he ran it to a bit and tied us off, smiling and winking green eyes from beneath handsome brown locks as he did so. None of them having seen the gun, he and his mates began to rope us in. I'd been watching the pilot, expecting some action. His movement was quick, the opening of his mouth expected. Just before his cry of alarm, I whipped his crown with the pommel of the Mauser. He crumpled to the deck, unconscious. Elizabeth yelped…recoiled. "He'll be all right." I figured without any sure knowledge. "He's just unconscious. Nite-nite is better than dead-dead, don't you think?" She didn't answer, instead knelt to check his pulse before looking at me with forlorn eyes. Stepping to the cabin's coat closet, I retrieved a pair of cloaks and offered her one. "Stick close to me and try to blend in with the crowd."

She didn't move, nor take it. She barely even looked.

"God dammit, Elizabeth…you DO want your freedom, don't you? THIS is the PRICE."

"Yes, Mr. DeWitt." She whispered, still staring vacantly at the unconscious pilot upon the deck.

I offered my hand. She couldn't stop looking at him. The memory came back to me when I'd been that young. Her eyes returned from the dispatched man. She took the coat.

"Call me Booker."

"Uh...oh, all right...Booker."

#

All was not well in the fair flying city, and by the grave looks independent of the concern with our state, we were not the only ones aware of that fact.

Her island had been easy to see from below, followed as it was by the vapors of its demise, but as I looked down across Emporia and the surrounding islands smoke from more than one pyre rose. With the boarding plank down, I escorted our sad sights past the boys working the dock, turning to one once safely on 'land.' I gestured toward one of the conflagrations. "Just got in from Battleship Bay. Any idea of what's, err, going on down there?" At my side I felt Elizabeth close, looking on attentively.

"Sorry, friend, all I know is that they're evacuating all non-nationals from the city. Constabulary claims that there is an insurrection underway and told the populace to return to their homes...and us to get out. You ever heard of this 'False Shepherd?"

I paused, heat rising about my neck…perhaps too long. "Can't rightly say I have."

Beside us Columbian soldiers disembarked a newly alighted military dirigible, rushing past us in gray uniform, bedrolls upon backpack with heavy brown rifles in hand. In ragged formation they made with haste toward another boarding arm. "They say he's here! In league with the Vox and that devil herself! I heard tell that the shatter of the Monument was Fitzroy's doing, and that there's gonna be a lot more. They even took over the Arsenal, and if they got the Arsenal..."

"They'll soon have Columbia." Another kid answered from our side. Shaggy and dark-haired, he couldn't have been more than twenty, and the sense of dread he spoke with caused me pause. Did they all think of me like this? "It's going to be a long, bad night.

I made haste away, Elizabeth in tow, and as we did so it seemed that soldiers and even civilians were running everywhere. As a mountainous chain of clouds approached from the west, Constabulary and troops in gondolas and blimps descended toward the streets below. A sinking feeling in my gut reminded me of the Rocks.

"What, what is that?" She nearly cried, studying intently the white monoliths hanging but a mile or so off Emporia. Edmonton's lying visage came to mind. More than smokestack fire was coming from them now, and I didn't have to wonder long to figure he must somehow be a part of this.

"Finkton." Of all the islands, it belched smoke the fiercest. "Thank God that's not our path."

#

Elizabeth was not the stoutest girl in the world. Fearful that someone might be waiting in the crowds to snatch her away, I kept her close. As we walked the inner curve of the concourse, a rounding arcade with great, gold-trimmed glass windows looking over the outer ringing walkway, leaden drops began to pelt the windows, rolling down glass, their heavy, glinting streaks and bright dots replacing the sunlight that had graced us just minutes earlier. The weather we'd seen coming in overtook the Emporia in a misty wave, then the Aerodrome. Darkness came on…soon the sprinkle commenced to pour.

From outer verandas refugees dove inside for cover, lending a dank and musty tang to the already dense cavalcade coursing within. As people scurried beneath overhangs and into the inner portions of the terminal, the girl and I made our way up a flight of steps to the central ticketing booths. Like others who had donned slickers, I turned my hood upward to avoid the eyes of the omnipresent police. I felt Elizabeth's hand slip from mine, fingertip rising to trace the misted glass as we walked.

"So, Mr. DeWitt. Is...there a woman in your life?"

Her question caught me off guard, though I figured it was like a woman to wonder such things. It took me a while to answer. "There was. She...died."

"How?" Elizabeth asked softly, somehow expressing a raft of sympathy and inquisitiveness in a single syllable.

I sighed, remembering her screams, the newborn's cries and finally the silence of me alone in my apartment. I couldn't look at her. "Giving birth."

"Oh." Naïve as she was, had she ever considered such a thing possible? The fate in store for so many women. Not looking directly at me, she examined her fingers. "You...you have a child?"

The memory remained an open wound. "No." Though I remained quiet she kept close at my side. The silence made me uncomfortable. "Why do you ask?"

"When you were laying on the beach, you kept saying a woman's name...Anna." She glanced upward to me from beneath the black hood, almost as if she weren't supposed to have heard it.

Through the driving rain I could still see now but a hint of Emporia through the glass. Despite the storm the fires below appeared to be spreading. "I don't want to talk about that." My voice came quiet and firm.

Attending her thimbled finger, which I'd noticed to be a habit, Elizabeth bowed her head. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have pried. Would you mind telling me where you're from, Mr. DeWitt?"

"New York."

"New York. You mean the city?" She brushed the hood back. For a moment her eyes kindled, and in the blue I saw her dreams of far off places. "What did you...do there?"

"Business much like this." I answered, my thought drifting back to the Bowery and McSorley's and a hundred other dives. Whatever vision was in her eyes, it wasn't my New York. "Not something that caters to writing on a resume. "You know, I never even heard of this place before I got here."

"Really? I assumed Columbia was common knowledge below." She said off hand, distracted by the clearing rainstorms outside...the emerging heights of the city.

"I guess I got a bit behind with current events." With a sweep of my arm I drew her back behind a corner as people filed by.

"What is it?" She asked, suddenly on edge. Beneath the slicker she fidgeted.

Long lines had formed where Columbia's police had set up shop on Aerodrome's Promenade. Their line I could now see was between us and the ticketing booths. Ahead I heard, "Identification please. Have your photographic identification ready or you'll not be travelling." Photographs again! Realizing we were in trouble, I looked about. Beneath the domed glass roof of its central rotunda the airship lines handled steamer trunks and conducted ticketing. That was where we needed to go to check in, and from where we were at the only approach took us through the check point.

"Why don't we just stow away?" Elizabeth whispered eagerly.

"A reasonable plan if we didn't mind getting thrown off into the ocean below, but it still doesn't get us to a single airship." Spying a maintenance corridor and recollecting my spelunking after Augney, I nodded back the way we'd come. "I've got an idea."

"Where are we going?" She said with wide, eager eyes.

I cast back over my shoulder to ensure we'd not been followed. "To find a way around."

Passing a sign that proclaimed, "Authorized Personnel Only," I hustled Elizabeth back past a knot of hurrying, scurrying refugees, we ducked into an adjacent maintenance way. Unlike the white and gray marble elegance of the Promenade the stonework here was darker, brick rather than marble. From my arrival I'd seen the place to have multiple levels and searched for a stair. We found an elevator instead.

"This might do." I said, pushing the button. Inside its shaft a loud clunking could be heard, the sound of cables and machinery.

"This is like the one back in my tower." Elizabeth said, looking to the button and back to me as the bell rung. The doors opened and she jumped back.

I caught her. She looked up to me and smiled. Ditching my cloak, I stepped inside. "Come on."

Apprehensively she doffed hers and followed, inspecting the panel. We were on the fifth floor. "If I'm reading this right, we're at the top?"

"That's right." I said, pressing for the first. "There's bound to be other passages and other elevators. We'll find one and pop up beyond the checkpoint, check our passes and do it again to get to the ship. Then we're scot free."

"Scot free?"

The doors closed. It means, uh, free. Not caught."

"Then why didn't you just say 'free'?"

I punched the first floor. "It's just a figure of speech."

"A figure of speech?" I shook my head. I was anxious and more than a little worried. One false move and we were done for...and I was dead. Before I realized it, I found myself looking at her silvered pinkie.

"If you want to ask me, ask me."

"About what?"

"My finger."

"Ah, I'm sorry I didn't..."

"It's all right." She studied the stub with a distance in her eyes. "It's as much of a mystery to me as anyone else."

"Well, uh...I'm sorry..."

"What for?" Holding her hand palm toward me, she inspected the ornament's backside. "I get to wear this stylish thimble to cover up my hideous deformity." Her countenance darkened, turning it between thumb and forefinger. "I hear they're all the rage in Paris."

As the third bell rung, the lift jerked and rocked to a halt. Thrown backward, Elizabeth gasped and caught the wall.

"What the hell?!" I drew my Mauser. Somewhere outside I heard a muffled thump and cries.

"Is something wrong?" Elizabeth worried, glancing about.

Whatever had occurred reverberated...like an explosion. "I don't know, but we gotta get this thing moving." I joined her search, finding a fuse box on the wall. Removing the panel inside its door, I was faced with four fuses and a spare. One seemed blown. As I pulled it, a buzzing I'd heard became louder.

"Ahhh...it's a bee!" Elizabeth cried, shooing it away with her hand, near panic in her voice. "I hate these things!"

"A bee? What the hell is a bee doing at five thousand…ah, Jeez..." I sighed. "Just kill it."

"No!" She protested. "It'll sting me!" At the sight of the minuscule insect the woman was genuinely terrified.

"Elizabeth..." I groaned.

"I have a better idea." By the time I'd turned from the fuse panel she'd hunched over, straining against the wall of the compartment.

Only…it wasn't the wall.

I heard her grunt, saw her straining with her hands in thin air. Above and below her a sort of crease appeared, a distortion in the wall. With a final effort she sheared the distortion open in a bursting ring of light.

"God Almighty!" I yelped. Now it was my turn to back the wall. About her creation glowing lines undulated. A dull thrum reverberated throughout the car. The bee, which I could barely make out, flew through the apparition into blinding daylight. Between a planter of roses and hanging potted plant I saw pink and blue clouds drifting by against blue skies. It was literally a window, frame and all, to the outside. An outside where it was not raining. Of blue skies. A fresh breeze blew in from those clouds and Elizabeth sighed, closed her eyes and half turned back to me, seeming to revel in its peace.

"What...is that?" I asked in sheer terror.

She looked back at me quizzically, completely at ease and unaware that anything was amiss. "It's a tear." She said with a casual wave of her hand. "I used to open them all the time in my tower." She followed with a shrug.

"What is a 'tear!?" I demanded, hearing a wind that suggested precipitous heights.

Her brow tightened, obviously at a loss for words. "It's like a...a...window. A window into another world." She gestured with palms up. Turning back to the view and the clouds swirling by, she lost herself in thought. "Most of the time...they're dull as dishwater. A different colored towel, or tea instead of coffee. But sometimes, sometimes I see something amazing." As she looked outward I could see now she was smiling. "And I pull it through. There..." She said, pleased with herself as she plucked a rose from the planter. Turning back to me, she tucked it with a smile behind her ear.

"Good, God..." I said, now knowing exactly why Laslowe, Comstock and likely every other tin pot potentate on Earth wanted to get his mitts on this woman. "I don't suppose you've got an airship in there?"

"I don't think so." She chuckled, turning to face me. Behind her movement caught my eye, shadow shifting within darkening clouds.

Seeing my change, she turned back to the cloudscape and craned her head. "But there is...there is something. I..." Closer to the planter she leaned, eyes narrowed. What had before been faintest shade resolved into an enormous shape, birdlike, soaring, wings flapping, eyes casting orange beams of fire through the murk. Her eyes widened. "Oh, no!" She wailed. Obviously seeing her portal, whatever the hell the thing was dove upon it like a hawk, eyes blazing beacons. It was enormous.

"Close it." I commanded, composed but insistent.

"I'm trying!" She exclaimed, reaching and yanking air inward to no avail.

"Close it!" I yelled. Bringing her hands together, a pink flash bloomed and the apparition imploded. The gargantuan bird's red eyes had been upon us. In our short hours together, even in the fall, I'd seen Elizabeth afraid, but not this afraid. She collapsed against the elevator wall, trembling, and sunk to her haunches. Still reeling, I realized that we remained stuck. I replaced the burned-out fuse with shaking hand and the elevator began suddenly to move anew. Elizabeth was nearly catatonic. The lift descended another floor or two before its doors opened with a ding. Sheepishly she looked up to me.

"I don't really understand what I just saw back there..." I said as I took her by the arm and drew her from the floor. "But it sure as hell looks like a shortcut to getting us killed!" We'd emerged into a utility room, an abandoned mop and dry bucket off to the side of the door. Only now fully catching her breath, she turned away from me.

"But...I could help." She protested, head hung low.

I walked up to her, looking the girl squarely in the eye. "I can handle whatever comes along. Trust me. Whatever you did, don't do it again."