Lord Kelvin's Machine - By James P. Blaylock Page 0,59
call it. Sleeping like a baby while these two...”
The captain swiveled the rifle around and—blam!—fired a round past Higgins’s ear. I leaped straight off my feet, but not nearly so far off them as Higgins did. He threw himself facedown into the straw on the floor, mewling like a wet cat. Captain Bowker chuckled until his eyes watered as Higgins, pale and shaken, struggled back up, fear and fury playing in his eyes.
“Who cares?” said the captain.
Higgins worked his mouth, priming his throat. “But the diving bell...”
“Who cares about the filthy bell? It ain’t worth a nickel to me. You ain’t worth a nickel to me. I’d just as leave kill the three of you and have done with it. You’ll get your diving bell back when the tall one finds out we’ve got his friends.”
This last added an optimistic flavor to the discussion. “The tall one” was clearly Hasbro, who, of course, would happily trade a dozen diving bells for the lives of dear old Jack and the professor. I didn’t at all mind being held for ransom; it was being dead that bothered me.
“Or one of his friends, anyway.” The captain shifted his gaze from one to the other of us, as if coming to a decision. There went the optimism. I was surely the most expendable of the two of us, since I knew the least. Captain Bowker sniffed the air and wrinkled up his face. “Gimme the ’lixir,” he said to Higgins.
“He needs it,” said Higgins, shaking his head. It was a brave act, considering, for the captain trained the rifle on Higgins again, dead between the eyes now, and started straight in to chuckle. Without an instant’s hesitation, Higgins’s hand went into the pocket of his lab coat and hauled out a corked bottle, which he reached across toward the captain.
The captain grabbed for it, and St. Ives jumped—just when the rifle was midway between Higgins and us. It was the little pleasure in baiting Higgins that tripped the captain up.
“Run, Jack!” shouted St. Ives when he threw himself at the captain. In a storm of arms and legs he was flying forward, into the air, sideways into Captain Bowker’s expansive stomach. The captain smashed over backward, his head banging against the floorboards and the bottle of elixir sailing away toward the stacked ice with Higgins diving after it. I was out both doors and into the night, running again toward the two houses before St. Ives’s admonition had faded in my ears. He had commanded me to run, and I ran, like a spooked sheep. Live to fight another day, I told myself.
And while I ran I waited for the sound of a shot. What would I do if I heard it? Turn around? Turning around wasn’t on my mind. I pounded down the little boardwalk and angled toward the seawall, leaping along like an idiot instead of slowing down to think things out. No one was after me, and I was out of sight of the icehouse, so there was no longer any chance of being shot. It was cold fear that drove me on. And it was regret at having run in the first place, at having left St. Ives alone, that finally slowed me down.
I was walking when I got to the water, breathing like an engine. Fog was blowing past in billows, and the moon was lost beyond it. In moments I couldn’t see at all, except for the seawall, which I followed along up toward the Apple, moving slowly now and listening to the dripping of water off eaves and to what sounded like the slow dip of oars out on the bay. Suddenly it was the heavy silence that terrified me, an empty counterpoint, maybe, to the now-faded sound of gunfire and the moment of shouting chaos that had followed it.
Where was I bound? Back to the Apple to hide? To lie up until I learned that my friends were dead and the villains gone away? Or to confront the Pules, maybe, who were awaiting me in my room, honing their instruments? It was time for thinking all of a sudden, not for running. St. Ives had got me out of the icehouse. I couldn’t believe that his heroics were meant simply to save my miserable life—they were, without a doubt, but I couldn’t admit to it—and so what I needed was a plan, any plan, to justify my being out of danger.