2015 Young Explorer's Adventure Guide Read online

  I looked at the map. “There’s no way for the third-class passengers to get to the first-class part of the ship without being really obvious and walking right through the kitchen,” I said.

  “That’s right. Now, this little square…” William drew a square next to the door which led from the first-class observation deck to the passageway for the first-class cabins. “…is your table, where we’ve been sitting and talking. No one could access the first-class cabins without passing right by us. And no one could leave the first-class cabins without passing by us as well.”

  “You mean the thief walked right past me?” I asked.

  “Twice, probably,” said William. “So think back. How long have you been sitting here, and who passed by you?”

  I sat and thought. “I remember when I left the Professor, alone and healthy, I told him we would land in two hours. And after we found the Professor, the captain said that we land in an hour. So I’ve been sitting at this table for about an hour.”

  “Good!” said William. “So, what did you see during that hour?”

  “I was playing cards at first,” I said miserably. “People were moving around... talking... asking for help... things like that. I don’t remember.”

  “Well, all of the crew and staff have been working with us for at least a year,” said William. “They’re not in the habit of randomly robbing passengers. It’s bad for business. But why your Professor’s automatons? I know he’s the greatest automaton engineer in Europe,” he added hastily, “but there are a lot of wealthy, influential people on this trip. Why not steal the Countess of Caldwell’s jewel case…” (he flicked his pen to indicate the woman in a green dress) “…or the secret papers of Alario the Pasta King?” (indicating one of the men arguing over salt shakers.)

  “How do you know who they are?” I asked him, impressed.

  “I always read the passenger manifest,” William replied simply. “Shouldn’t I know who I serve?”

  I sat back and racked my brains. “The Countess was writing letters to people. I don’t remember her ever getting up from the writing desk. She asked for a stamp, and the steward gave her one.”

  William was writing a list of names next to his map. He put an X next to the Countess of Caldwell.

  “The Pasta King was with his two friends. I only saw them arguing over a map. They had a bunch of salt shakers they were using for markers, so I’m sure they got them from somewhere, but I never actually saw them go anywhere,” I said.

  William put tidy little X’s next to “Alario (Pasta King)”, “Niro (Olive Oil King)”, and “Tomassi (Tomato King)”. I grinned, wondering if they had been using their map to plot world domination through spaghetti, but then I got serious again.

  “Those two grandmas who were reading a guidebook. It was an Egyptian guidebook, which is weird, because we’re not going to Egypt. We’re going to Greece and Turkey.”

  “Ah, that would be the two Americans, Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Marsh, on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. But first, one week in Florence, two weeks in Venice, two weeks in Rome. On to Athens to see the Acropolis. Later on to Egypt to see the pyramids.”

  “Who tells you this stuff?” I asked.

  “People like to talk about their travel plans. Just like you told me how you were traveling, in the most expensive way in the world, to deliver automata to a presumably fabulously wealthy client at a palace in Constantinople.”

  I stared at him. Had I accidentally blabbed the Professor’s secrets? Had William snuck into the compartment, knocked the Professor on the head, stolen his case, hid it somewhere safe, and then kept me company to prevent his crime from being discovered long enough to land in Athens and pass the goods on to an accomplice?

  William didn’t see my suspicion. He was already bent back over our paper, writing more names. “The woman with the knitting is Miss Easton. She’s the Countess’ traveling companion. Did she ever move?”

  “They ate together earlier, but I didn’t realize they were actually traveling together. She sat in that chair the whole time, and the Countess was over at the writing desk. The only weird thing was that the Countess asked the steward for stamps directly. She didn’t tell Miss Easton to put down her knitting and get the steward to get her a stamp. But since they were so far apart, she probably wouldn’t yell across the room. It would have been easier to ask whichever of them was closer,” I said. I tried to remember which side William had appeared from when he had joined me. The door side or the window side? It had been the door side, right? He had remained standing for our whole conversation – it wouldn’t have been proper for a waiter to sit down at a passenger’s table – but he had moved over to the window side of my table so as not to block the door to the cabins. Hadn’t he?

  “You’ve met Herr Doktor Schmidt,” he said. “What was he doing while you were playing cards?”

  “He asked for a newspaper. And then he read it,” I said. “He asked for a London newspaper, which I thought was interesting since he had a German accent, and we were traveling in Italy and Greece. Wouldn’t he want local news or home news?” I hadn’t seen which way William had approached me. Had he come through the door then turned to tell me how to play my cards, or had he approached the door, but got distracted by my game before he reached it?

  “And that leaves Mr. Rokos and Mr. Terzi,” said William, looking at the two men in silk vests and frock coats who were still engrossed in their respective books. “They’re very famous architects.”

  “They haven’t moved at all.” Would William hit me on the head too if he knew I suspected him? My palms were hot and sweaty, and I clenched my fists under the table to keep them from shaking.

  “This is hard,” frowned William, looking at the paper. “What about your movements? Did you notice any clues?”

  I shook my head. “After lunch, I visited the Professor, but not for long. He was sitting on the bed and working on the inner mechanisms of a commission. A clockwork lotus. He suggested that I work on my hedgehog after we departed Athens. I left pretty quickly at that. I played cards for a while. You joined me sometime during my game. I didn’t keep track of how many hands I played. I won a few; I lost a lot. We talked for a while. I went to go get my notebook. I found him.”

  “Was the door open?” asked William.

  “No, the door was shut,” I said. “I remember, because it was locked, and I had to stop long enough to get my key.”

  “Did you lock the door behind you on your way out before?”

  “No, I was busy thinking about that hedgehog. I didn’t even think about locking the door behind me.”

  “So he locked himself in. And yet somehow, someone got in, banged him on the head, stole the case, and disappeared without you seeing him.”

  “The window was open,” I suggested.

  William stared at me. “You seriously think someone crawled along the outside of the gondola? We’re a mile over the Gulf of Corinth. There’s no railing or ladder or platform. Can you think of anyone being that insane?”

  For ordinary jeweled birds, no. For jeweled birds that could listen to a secret conversation and transmit a signal to a hidden receiver... yes. But I had endangered enough of the Professor’s secrets. If William had taken the clockwork birds, it was for their gold and their jewels, not because he knew their true value.

  “And it’s not like you can take someone by surprise like that,” said William. “I mean, if someone from outside tried to climb through that open window over there, you honestly think that every person in this room wouldn’t know about it before he got his leg over the sill?”

  “How could someone hit him on the head, I wonder? He was sitting on the bed when I left him. When the Professor starts working, he doesn’t stop to eat, he doesn’t stop to sleep, he doesn’t stop to go to the bathroom... he has no sense of time. He’d work forever if he could. Dr. Schmidt said he was struck from behind. But how could someone strike him from behind if he was on the bed? That doesn’t make sense either. He was an
xious for the safety of his little birds. He wouldn’t open the door to a stranger. He wouldn’t even open the door for me.”

  I wondered if William would tell me how he did it. But he looked just as baffled as I felt.

  I edged away from my friend. “I’m going to go back to the cabin.”

  “I’ll come with you. Maybe there are clues,” said William, setting down his pen and standing up.

  Did William want to make sure he hadn’t done something dumb like drop his calling card on the floor? “Aren’t you at work?” I asked him. “Won’t your boss get mad at you?”

  “I work in the kitchen. I serve the meals and tidy things up in between. This is my free time.” He looked a little hurt. “You don’t want to be detectives together?”

  What I wanted to say was, “I’m scared of you.” But of course I couldn’t. Instead, I said, “You said the staff and the crew were innocent. How much crew does the Nephele actually have?”

  “The chef and his assistant prepare the food. I serve first class. Ahmed serves third class. The first-class steward tidies the compartments in the morning, serves drinks at night, and makes sure everyone has what they need throughout the day. There’s a third-class steward as well.”

  “You said the crew worked on twelve-hour shifts. What about the staff?”

  “The airship can’t fly by itself,” said William. “But fortunately, the passengers understand that if they want foie gras at three in the morning, they need to wait. You can ring the steward for an emergency that you can’t handle on your own, but otherwise, we have usual working hours between six in the morning and nine at night.”

  I did the math in my head. A fifteen-hour working day!

  “The captain has a master key. I saw him use it. Does anyone else have the master key to the compartments?” I asked.

  “Of course. Like with a hotel. You don’t want someone accidentally locking themselves out of their compartment,” said William. “And we have to get in to change the sheets, make the bed, empty the slops. The steward has a set, and the captain has a set.”

  “Could someone steal the steward’s keys?” I asked. “Or does he loan his keys out?”

  “He’d get fired if he did,” said William.

  I opened the cabin door. Professor Zoltán snored gently on the berth and muttered in Hungarian. I gingerly sat on the edge of the bed so as not to disturb him.

  “When I left him, he was sitting like this,” I said. “He had the lap desk on his lap, and the loupe over his eye.”

  “The lap desk is in the corner,” said William. It was neatly set out of the way, as tidy as though he had just set it aside to stretch and take a quick break when an invisible hand had raised itself to attack...

  “Oh, there’s the loupe,” I said. “It’s under the washstand. I wonder if it fell off when he fell?” I picked up the delicate optic. The wires were a little bent, but the lenses were intact. It could be repaired.

  Dr. Schmidt appeared in the open doorway. I jumped and tried not to yell. I was really on edge. He looked surprised. “I’ve come to change the poultice and check on Professor Zoltán,” he said. He sat down where I had been sitting before I got up to pick up the loupe, and began checking the Professor’s vital signs. I watched him.

  Tick. Tick. Tick. My head felt like there was something I was supposed to be seeing, something I ought to remember. I felt like a stuck cog that just couldn’t quite get past a jam.

  And then I saw it. And this time, I didn’t try to stop my yell. “Get the captain! Quick! Before it’s too late!” I hollered at Dr. Schmidt.

  …………………………

  Professor Zoltán’s head was bandaged up. His mind, normally racing along ten different thoughts at once, was sluggish and quiet, and the calm disturbed him. I knew it would be a while before he felt himself again, but I also knew he was grateful to have just traded a bit of his mental sharpness in exchange for, say, his life.

  “So how did you know it was the steward?” he asked. “I still have no memory of anything.”

  “I had thought it was William at first,” I explained. “But it didn’t fit. You were so focused on your work, nothing could have interrupted you. Except for room service. The bed was messy when I left you, and has been ever since we left Rome, but when I came back, the bed was made. The steward must have come; you must have set your lap desk in the corner, where it wouldn’t get knocked over or trod upon; and he went about his work. Either you let him in, or he let himself in. Normally, a servant wouldn’t do his work where he could be seen, but you never left the cabin, not even to eat. He needed the case to disappear before we reached Athens so it would be presumed that it was gone by the time we made it to Constantinople. He was getting desperate. No one pays attention to a servant who’s working; I bet it was easy for him to cosh you, grab the case, hide it in the service compartment linens, lock the door behind him so that no one would notice, get on with his duties on the observation deck, and leave the rest to time.”

  Professor Zoltán looked sad. “The captain tells me our friend the steward is being detained and will be thoroughly interrogated, but I would not be surprised to hear he had been bribed by a powerful enemy of our client. I would not be surprised to hear that an accident befalls him before we find out, either.”

  It gave my stomach an unpleasant feeling to think that the steward wasn’t alone and there might still be danger. The manufacture of items intended for espionage was obviously lucrative, but gold was worthless if you weren’t alive to spend it.

  “I hope they don’t try anything else,” I said. “I think I’ll stay with you in the cabin. Just for the extra protection.”

  “Ahh, excellent. My head hurts, but I find myself rather hungry. I take that to be a good sign. Do you think they might have a jar of rollmops somewhere? I’m having an odd craving for them.”

  “Fishpickles? I don’t think so. But they have amazing sandwiches.”

  The Sugimori Sisters and the Interplanetary Concept Clash

  Brigid Collins

  Brigid Collins is an author living in Michigan with her husband, Nick, and their cat, Brooke. She writes mainly works of fantasy and science fiction. She has written and published two novels, with her third due to be published this fall. Two of her short stories will be appearing in Fiction River late in 2014, and she has achieved Honorable Mention in the Writers of the Future Contest. She also enjoys music, video games, and copious quantities of stuffed animals. Brigid Collins has a blog at www.backwrites.wordpress.com and can be contacted through that site, as well as through her twitter account, @purellian

  Ellen Sugimori fought to keep the heat of shame from showing on her face. If her mom had tried to embarrass her in front of the entire sixth-grade class, she couldn’t have done a more effective job. Since the move from Lansing, Ellen was a new student this year. She didn’t need her mom adding to her status of weird.

  Ellen watched her mom take her tiny, shuffling steps out of the classroom and braced herself for the slithering snickers she knew her classmates had been holding back throughout the presentation.

  Ellen should have said no two weeks ago when her history teacher had asked her to invite her mom to do a presentation on the Japanese tea ceremony for the class.

  “But my mom doesn’t speak English,” Ellen had protested, keeping her voice low so the other students wouldn’t hear.

  “You can translate for her. Your classmates will be impressed that you speak Japanese as well as English.”

  Ellen knew they wouldn’t. Worse, they would know that her mom wasn’t like theirs; she wasn’t a normal American mom who made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for her lunch or drove her to soccer practice after school. They would know that her mom was stupid and weird.

  And none of the other kids would be impressed with her mom’s choice of clothes.

  Why, oh, why had her mom come to school in a kimono?

  As the other kids chattered, Ellen picked up the tea cups and leftover mat
cha powder. Ellen took the cups to the sink in the back of the classroom to wash them before shoving them into her backpack.

  Her mouth was dry from the translating and from standing by the chalkboard for so long, where the air was full of the tasteless white dust. But she didn’t ask to go get a drink.

  Ellen didn’t dare look at any of the other kids for the rest of the day. She couldn’t bear to see their teasing faces, so she kept her eyes forward and sat on her hands so she wouldn’t accidentally raise them to answer questions.

  Instead, Ellen spent the whole class stewing over the culture project she had to do for Japanese school next week. She had to go every Saturday to study her Japanese heritage and language, as if she didn’t get enough of that at home. She still hadn’t decided what to do for the project since everything she thought of sounded boring and irrelevant. They didn’t live in Japan, after all. They lived in Detroit.

  People in Detroit didn’t do things like the tea ceremony or flower arranging.

  When the final bell rang, Ellen pushed her chair back so fast it screeched against the floor. Grabbing up her backpack and swinging it over her shoulder, Ellen dashed out the door ahead of everyone else.

  The tea cups clinked against each other as she fast-walked out of the building. Ellen heard them even over the screams and laughs of other students pouring out into the freedom of the afternoon.