Daria on the Trail
DISCLAIMER: A Song of Ice and Fire is the creation of George RR Martin. Daria is the creation of Glen Eichler and is the property of MTV Viacom. I own neither property and neither expect not deserve any sort of financial compensation for this work of fiction.
This story is a Western, not a fantasy of swords and sorcery. It is largely based on my research on the historical Oregon Trail, not on the computer game of the same name.
I like reviews. They inform me that somebody is not only reading my stuff, but enjoying it, too.
Chapter 28: Airships and Ancestresses
Daria:
It was 1:45 in the afternoon. It was about time to set off to the Fort and talk to the soldiers about what she knew about dirigibles—which wasn't all that much.
She did know something. She'd done research and taken notes on the design of dirigibles for some alternate-history novels she'd been thinking about writing before she was taken from twenty-first century Boston, then dumped past the line of settlement in western Nebraska. She'd read about some of the designs the Germans had thought of for pre-World War One airships, as well as the Hindenburg and the Graf Zeppelin. She'd also read the history of the US Navy's ill-fated dirigible program, trying to find elements she could use for her novel.
Despite the emotional whiplash she'd been through with the Ashfields the day before, she found that she could remember much of her research. She'd spent part of the morning writing an outline about the history of the US Navy's ill-fated dirigible program, at least as much as she remembered: its origins, its history after World War One, its doctrine, and how the Navy hoped to use them in times of peace and during wartime.
She stood in the tent thinking about what she'd say to the soldiers. She wondered if it would be a lecture followed by question-and-answers or if it would be a debriefing. She grimaced: if the officers wanted a lecture on building a dirigible, they were out of luck: she was a Liberal Arts major, not an engineer.
In spite of her efforts, she was quite aware of the other issue: her relations with her quasi-relations. Despite her growing ties to the Trouts, the Ashfields were the closest thing she had to blood kin in the here-and-now. Physically closer, she told herself, as her heart pinged while she thought of all the family and friends back in the twenty first century she was unlikely to ever see again. She closed her eyes and sighed. To her surprise she found that a couple of teardrops falling down her cheeks.
She was so pre-occupied with her surging emotions and what she'd say to the soldiers that she missed the low voices outside the tent and Kara saying "Yes, she'd in there."
Her brooding was interrupted by a male voice by the tent flap saying "Excuse me. Miss Morgendorffer?"
"That's me," said Daria. The Colonel sent me an escort, she thought.
A man clad in a blue uniform, an officer, stepped into the tent. "I'm Lieutenant Gerald Stokes," he said. "I'm here to escort you to the Fort."
"Thank you," said Daria. "I suppose we should set off." Together, she and Lieutenant Stokes set off for Fort Laramie.
"It's not often that we find women who know about airships," said Lieutenant Stokes.
"There's not much reason for anyone to tap what little knowledge I have," said Daria. "If I were back where I came from and someone asked me about airship design, I'd tell them to look for an aerospace engineer, not an aspiring novelist."
"So where are you from?" Lieutenant Stokes. Daria was amused to note that he had a genuine Yankee accent, something not so common in the early 2000's.
"Before I was transposed from the early twenty-first century, I was a student attending school near Boston, Massachusetts," said Daria. "Before that, I was living in Maryland." She decided to deflect questions about where she lived before Lawndale. "And yourself?"
"I'm from Ohio," said Lieutenant Stokes.
A Northerner, thought Daria. Would he be in the Union Army if war broke out?
"How did you get here?" he asked.
"I'd like to know myself, not that I really expect you to believe it," said Daria. "One evening I was safely in my bed in a small apartment in Providence, Rhode Island, then I woke up in the middle of an Emigrant's camp not far from Chimney Rock. I have no recollection of who did it or how it was done.
"I was lucky that I awoke with the Emigrants in the here-and-now or God alone knows what might have happened to me."
"So what is the future like?" said Lieutenant Stokes.
"A future," said Daria, "not your future. There was no Arch is my United States' history. That gives me cause to believe that I'm in a different universe than the one I was born in."
"There is only one universe," said Lieutenant Stokes.
"I disagree," said Daria. "I believe I've been given ample reason to believe there are multiple universes and that people who try to place limits on the power of God look as ridiculous as those people who thought that the sun orbited the Earth. But I've got questions about those sailors who turned up last year."
"What about them?" asked Lieutenant Stokes.
"When did they get here?" asked Daria.
"Late last summer," Lieutenant Stokes replied.
"Lucky fellows," said Daria. "If they'd arrived in the late fall or winter they would have frozen to death."
"They weren't so lucky," said Lieutenant Stokes. "They say that a lot of them died in the crash and afterwards from injuries, exposure, and hunger."
Lieutenant Stokes missed her sardonic humor. Daria silently took the rebuke and said nothing. "I'm sorry," said Daria. "I misspoke."
"Can I ask how were they dressed?" asked Daria.
"They wore the strangest outfits I'd ever seen on any sailor," said Lieutenant Stokes. "They didn't look like they were prepared to travel cross-country. And they certainly didn't pack any supplies for such a journey."
"They wouldn't have if they were airship crew, would they?" said Daria. "They wouldn't expect to crash so there'd be no boots, no rucksacks, or canteens.".
"No," said Lieutenant Stokes.
"It strikes me that even if they thought they'd crash, they'd either crash at sea or near someplace where they'd have access to a telephone or radio," said Daria.
"What's a telephone?" asked Lieutenant Stokes.
"A telephone is a device somewhat like a telegraph except that you can speak into it and hear the voice of someone who could be miles away," said Daria. "Telephone receivers can also be located much closer to each other. I'd bet that that airship probably had several on board."
She grinned. "You might want to nick those if you find any."
"Hey-yaw! Hup now!" shouted someone ahead of them. Daria and the Lieutenant stepped over to the side to let a man leading a team of mules pass them.
"What is a radio?" asked Lieutenant Stokes.
"Didn't those sailors tell you last summer?" asked Daria.
"I'm a lieutenant," said Captain Stokes. "I wasn't present when they saw the Colonel."
"A radio is a device for transmitting voice and signals across long distances without the need for wires or cables," said Daria. "If those sailors were from an airship, that airship would almost certainly have had a radio set on it."
"And why is that?" said the Lieutenant.
Daria shot him a look. Surely he couldn't be that dense, could he?
"Radio is an invaluable tool for scouting ahead," said Daria. "That was one of the reasons the Navy experimented with them where I came from. You'd have dirigibles scouting ahead of your battle fleet, then transmitting the enemy's location to your fleet once you found them."
"Why couldn't you use them over land?" asked the Lieutenant.
"You could, but it wouldn't make sense," said Daria. "First, they're big. Second, they can be noisy, but the third reason's the killer."
"What's the third reason?" asked the Lieutenant.
"According to the history books, the service ceiling for US Navy dirigibles was somewhere between eight and nine thousand feet," said Daria. "They'd be vulnerable to attack from fixed-wing aircraft or from ground-based artillery or rockets fired from the ground."
"So?" asked the Lieutenant.
"Out here you've got a lot of mountains that are eleven thousand, twelve thousand, even some that are fourteen thousand feet high," said Daria. "Not to mention mountain passes that are only either eight or nine thousand feet high. If you'd want to use them out west, you'd have to use them down south near the Mexican border, not this far north. The same goes for sending them from ocean to ocean. You'd either have to run them in the southern part of New Mexico or send them across one of the Central American countries where there isn't a great mountain chain between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans."
The Lieutenant looked thoughtful.
"If what they told the Colonel and other officers at the Fort is true and if what you told me about them is true, I don't think they were brought here willingly," said Daria. "I can't believe that the airship captain or navigators were such idiots that they'd willingly attempt to cross the Rockies or the Sierra Nevada mountains this far north."
"Who or what brought them over here, then?" asked Lieutenant Stokes.
"Good question," said Daria. "I don't know."
Neither of them said anything as they walked a little further. The Lieutenant seemed to be processing some of the information Daria had given to him while she found that talking about the airship's transposition from one dimension to another poked at her own thoughts and feelings about being removed from College and then being dumped out here. In many ways the dirigible crewmen were much like her: people with friends and families and careers who'd been snatched away from everyone they knew and then dropped out past the line of settlement and then left to fend for themselves. Daria suspected that they had it far worse than she did: they had been as little-prepared as she was and they must have had to trudge for miles and miles without help.
A thought bubbled up from her subconscious: Mom, Dad, Quinn, Rikka, will I ever see you again? She had no answer. Right now she had her debt to the Trouts to keep her going forward, otherwise she might give into grief and depression. She hoped that it was enough.
Her thoughts were interrupted when someone shouted "Stokes!". She recognized that voice: it was Marcus Ashfield.
"Ashfield!" said Stokes. Ashfield started walking towards them.
Daria watched Marcus' body language shift as he took in Daria walking with Stokes. "Miss Morgendorffer," he said.
Daria stared at him. How should she address him? Marcus? Lieutenant? She didn't know.
"How is Bethany Ann doing?" she said.
"She's very upset," Marcus replied.
"I'm trying to do what I can to protect you all," said Daria, letting her West Texas drawl reassert itself. "You're the closest thing I've got to family out here and I did what I could to warn you about hard times ahead."
"Your abolitionist comments hurt her" he replied.
"I said that the country would be better off without it," Daria replied. "That's hardly the same thing as announcing that I was planning to become one of John Brown's acolytes and instigate a slave revolt. Bethany Ann and I disagree; I do not reject her as a human being. Bethany Ann is a whole person, not her opinion. I hope to God she realizes that."
Marcus stared at her and said nothing.
"Just think it over," said Daria. "I do care. I'll be worrying about you and Bethany Ann all the way to Oregon and beyond."
Marcus turned away.
"What was that about?" asked Lieutenant Stokes.
"In the world I came from, Bethany Ann is one of my ancestresses five or six generations back," said Daria.
Stokes gave her an odd look. "In this one?" he said.
"No," said Daria. "Like I said, my world didn't have an Arch. We would have remembered it if we did."
