Goliath

object in his hand. “With this magnet I can wrest control of this flicker from the earth itself.”

He stepped still closer, and the light stopped spinning. Tesla began to walk around the bulb, and the flicker began to move again, always pointing away from him, no matter how he paused or hurried.

“Strange, isn’t it? To think that one can aim lightning as easily as a pistol.” He pulled out his pocket watch and checked it. “But now it is time for a larger demonstration. Much larger. A few days ago I sent a message from the Leviathan to Tokyo by courier eagle. The message was forwarded by underwater fiber to London, and finally by radio waves to my assistants in New York, more than halfway around the world. There, a few minutes from now, they will follow my instructions.”

He signaled to Klopp, who began to make adjustments in one of the black boxes. A moment later all the devices onstage began to flicker and hum. Mr. Tesla stood among them, his hair standing on end like an angry cat’s. Deryn felt her own hairs tingle, as if a summer storm were in the air.

“The results will be visible on these instruments here,” Tesla said, then turned toward the Royal Navy officer at the telegraph key. “And also in the early morning sky of London, if you would kindly ask Mr. Churchill and the Sea Lords to step to a window?”

Another murmur went through the room, and Deryn whispered to the lady boffin, “What’s he on about?”

“His machine in New York is going to send a signal into the air. Like a radio wave, but far more powerful.” Dr. Barlow leaned closer. “It’s daylight here, so we need instruments to see its effects. But in London the sun isn’t up yet.”

“You mean, he thinks Goliath can change the sky?”

The lady boffin nodded silently, and Deryn stared at the stage, where needles of light had begun to flicker from every object. Even Mr. Tesla’s pocket watch was glowing, and a buzzing filled the air, like the bees in the gut of the Leviathan when they needed feeding.

“The transmission will begin in ten seconds,” Tesla said, then snapped his watch closed. “It will not take long to reach us.”

“Transmission,” Bovril said, shifting unhappily. The loris began to keen softly, and suddenly the buzzing wasn’t so bad in Deryn’s ear. She reached up to scratch the beastie’s head gratefully.

For a long moment nothing happened, and Deryn let herself hope that the experiment was failing. The great Tesla would be humiliated, and all this yackum about going to America would end.

But then the fingers of lightning in the hanging globe grew stronger, flickering across the inside surface of the glass. Then they spun aimlessly for a moment, then turned strong and steady, pointing to the left side of the stage.

All the other instruments had come to life, filling the theater with light. The glass tubes were filled with rainbows of color, the metal spheres covered with a thousand needles of electricity. The antennae on Klopp’s black box had erupted, sending shoots of lightning climbing up them, only to sputter out in the air. The officer at the telegraph still tapped away, the buttons on his coat alight with tiny sparks.

Gradually the countless fingers of light began to align, all of them pointed to the left. Deryn could feel the hairs on her head pulling in that direction.

“North-northeast,” Dr. Barlow muttered. “Directly toward New York, by great circle.”

“As you can see,” Tesla cried above the buzzing, “I am able to control the currents in this room, even from ten thousand kilometers away. Imagine a thunderstorm brought to heel at such a distance. Or even the electrical charges of the earth’s atmosphere itself, focused and aimed like a searchlight!”

Bovril was burbling madly. The creature’s fur stood on end, and its eyes were open wider than Deryn had ever seen.

“Don’t worry, beastie,” she said. “He’s on our side.”

“Let’s hope so,” Dr. Barlow said.

Tesla lifted his hands into the air, waving them to and fro. Tendrils of lightning clung to his fingertips, but then went shooting off in the same direction—north-northeast.

“This is the power of Goliath, that no one on earth, Clanker or Darwinist, can escape. So we all must learn to share the globe, or perish together!”

He waved a hand, and Klopp cut a master switch. All the lightning disappeared at once, leaving the room in darkness. The silence was quickly filled with gasps and mutterings. Then came a halting applause that slowly grew in strength.

A thousand flickers seemed to hover in the air, burned like sunbeams into Deryn’s vision. Through them she saw Tesla reaching up to grab the hanging wire again. He picked up the simple glass tube, which sprang to life.

“Any word from the Admiralty?” he asked, silencing the applause.

The Royal Navy officer stood up from his telegraph, a piece of paper in his quivering hand. “Lord Churchill and the Sea Lords send their greetings, and wish to report that your experiment was a success. Subtle but strange colors appeared in the dawn sky over London.”

The crowd went dead silent.

“They offer hearty congratulations.” The officer cleared his throat. “Pardon me, ladies and gentlemen, but the rest of the message is for the captain of the Leviathan.”

Dr. Barlow leaned back into her seat. “Well, that’s not much of a mystery, is it, Mr. Sharp? It looks as though we’re headed for New York.”

“New York,” Bovril said thoughtfully, and began to smooth its frizzled fur.

/a>

The Pacific Ocean was nearly half the world, as Mr. Rigby liked to say. It certainly looked vast now, spread out beneath the ship like a rippling sheet of silver. The Japanese home islands were less than a day behind them, but already the very notion of land seemed distant and obscure.

The Leviathan was at full-ahead, making airspeed of sixty miles an hour. The wind blew down the spine at whole gale force, thrumming along the ship’s surface like a surging river.

“Is it always like this?” Alek shouted over the wind.

“Aye,” Deryn replied. “Brilliant, isn’t it?”

Alek just scowled at her. His gloved hands clutched the ratlines in a death grip, and Hoffman’s eyes were wide with fear behind his goggles. The two Clankers had been at full-ahead in their engine pods before, but never out here on the open spine.

“This is real flying!” Deryn leaned closer. “But if you’re afraid, your princeliness, you can go back down.”

Alek shook his head. “Hoffman needs a translator.”

“My German’s good enough,” Deryn said. “I had a whole month of your Clanker jabbering in Istanbul!”

“Wei?t du, was ein Kondensator ist?”

“That’s easy. You asked me if I know what a Kondensator is!”

“Well, do you?”

Deryn frowned. “Well, it’s some sort of . . . condenser. Obviously.”

“No,” Alek said. “A capacitor. You just blew up the ship, Dummkopf.”

She rolled her eyes. It seemed a bit unfair, expecting her to know German words for contraptions she’d never seen before. But she couldn’t argue the point. Hoffman was the engineer best able to follow Tesla’s orders, and only Alek could translate Clanker technical jargon into English.

This whole trip topside was at the bidding of the great inventor. He wanted a radio antenna stretching the length of the Leviathan, but he didn’t want the ship slowing down. The captain had little choice but to obey—the Admiralty’s orders were to cooperate with Tesla, and to get him to America as quickly as practical.

Working on the spine at top speed wasn’t impossible, after all, just a bit tricky. And also dead good fun.

“Take the wire to the bow, Sharp!” Mr. Rigby shouted above the wind. “And before you head back, make sure that end is secure.”

“I’ll go along,” Alek said.