He had neglected supper. He was not possessed of the iron liver of O’Neal or LaFono. So his head fairly swam with that glass of port. ‘Oh, my,’ he begged within for the strength not to show the effects of the theographic libation upon his nearly virgin mind.

‘Do not, Sir, drink with that Russian!’ commanded his inner Mum.

Despite his worries his feet clicked just fine up and around, as doors were passed on the narrow balcony and up a second flight of stairs they went. Further, after passing more doors on a second narrow balcony, the wooden stairs, which had narrowed along with the ascent, were replaced with a wrought iron spiral, quite an affair, which must ascend within an observation turret. Indeed, Theography included among its sub disciplines, geography, zoology, anthropology, archaeology, meteorology, astrology and astronomy, no less than three of these served by private observation turrets.

“Onward, at the double,” Mister Pete, encouraged Chess from below and behind to his black boy ahead and above.

The boy scampered and Richard trotted, his pack yet on his back, his sword at his side, which tapped and rang on every step as he had not a left hand to raise it, his right hand on the railing, trotting upward in heady excursitude. [1] Upward, round and round, the small black iron weave of steps he trotted, mightily keeping up with that fleet scion of Africa, the youthful Mister Pete. [2] Richard, having spent a full semester as a Leftenet in the Loyal Maryland Provincial Artillery had been trained to always count one’s steps, especially when scaling a feature, counted 200 steps, each step rising 6 inches, for a hundred feet of elevation above the third story of the house.

In mere yet tense moments, eased somewhat by his quick drunk, Richard was on solid floor board again, having emerged within a domed observatory, complete with a seat-mounted telescope that seemed a perfected form of heavy naval ordinance, yet pointed at the stars! His men were here, with their kit and his impedables. [3]

O’Neal, LaFano, Plimpton and Pope were at attention and in line with a tall, lean Irishman of wicked narrow make who was armed with a revolver in expeditionary holster on his left hip and a short straight naval cutlass in his right. This man he guessed by deduction was Easter McFadden, the backdoor man, a sinister post among the fancy. [4]

Mister Pete went to a door and stood at attention. Richard commanded him, “On Master Pullman’s order.”

Up the stairs and into the dome emerged, Pullman, huffing and puffing, Bing-Ham grinning manfully, Zephyr in languid excite, the tuxedoed mսlatto mixologist, indeed bearing a case of port, the two Russians in dutiful spirit, the printer and reporter who were fairly terrified, Color Sergeant Major, in full kit, and behind him, hulking up through the hatchless floor, the doorman, Brant Collins, with a case of whiskey under one arm, and a keg of ‘what?’

The hulk rumbled, “Imperial Stout for ye Rooskie crew,” and handed the keg, with one hand, to the Russian gunnery sergeant who nearly buckled under the weight, but bore it manfully in two hands like a man used to slinging large bore rounds into the breech.

Chess Pullman, caught his breath and gasped, “The merchant mob is already at the door. We are at your service, this Pub likely burnt to cinders by morning. Captain Richard Barrett to command on land operations, Commander Levsky to command at Sea and Aloft.

Agreed?”

Levsky took a bottle of Port from the bar keep, tore the cork loose with his horse-like Slavic teeth, handed that bottle to Richard, who took it in astonishment. He decapitated another bottle and formed Richard’s arm into a loop, bottle mouth to his lips, then looped his arm through Richard’s and growled, “Russian courage and British brass, one against our common foe, whose blood is signified by this red drink!”

‘Oh, My God, I thought this was a joke that the Russians drank before battle and that the Baltic feet sunk by the Japs at Tushima was manned by drunkards!’

‘I’m doing it, I must, I’m a Barrett. This must be the revenge of some moonshiner’s ghost for Old Blake hunting them down.’

The men were chanting, “Britannia! Britannia, as they chugged the wine, Levsky winking at him and slowing his own drink under his thick mustache, to give the young tea drinker’s liver a chance to keep up, while the gunnery sergeant chanted, “Russia, Russia!”

At last, the room spinning, the bottles were empty. Levsky then grinned and shattered his bottle against the crown of his rakish forehead.

Richard was horrified, ‘How can I keep to this masculine ritual.’

He began handling the neck of the bottle trying to factor the proper trajectory of doing something he had just witnessed and yet had never even imagined.

Levsky grinned and declared, “I do not mean to endanger the English brain of my Co-Commander!”

To this the voice of Color Sergeant Major boomed, “Irish in the breach, you will drink your bottle after as hazard pay.”

To this O’Neal reached forward to take the empty wine bottle, but LaFono, a notorious drunkard, darted under the big man’s extended arm, snatched the bottle as quick as you please, and dashed it to shards against his hard head under that ski cap, then crookedly saluted Levsky and returned to his post.

Richard noted after the din had died that a steam engine could be heard above, perhaps a hundred feet, and descending, “Commander of an air ship, I presume?”

Levsky spoke respectfully, “A Boradino Class 3, the Czar’s own flagship.”

Richard, becoming drunk and full of brass, and thrilled to be taking his first air ship adventure, commanded, “Mister Pete, lead us to the Sky Pier. Men, make way for Commander Levsky, who shall assign boarding.

“Commander,” he said, to Levsky with a salute, as Pete opened the door and the chanting of a mob below could be heard, along with the breaking of a window, “your Pier.”

Richard had handed off command just in time, for he began to weave on his feet, soon supported by Color Sergeant Major. He was soon looking up in wonder at a lowering air ship, a copy of the German Zeppelins used by the Russian and British navies.

The scramble for German Zeppelin and rocketry scientists at the end of the Second Great War was a legendary struggle that reignited the Great Game and turned it into what some called a Cold War. For the rocketry scientists acquired by both sides, mysteriously died of illness, seizure, murder, and both empires accused the other of these crimes against military technology. For, although winged flight as by birds, had been proven to be impossible due to the constant wreckage of test craft and the strange mania and psychosis that overcame test pilots and winged flight developers, usually resulting in suicide, Germany had improved rocketry to the point where some thought rocket flight, even to the moon might be possible. [5]

Such were the cryptic thoughts that washed upon the wine-stained shores of Richard’s rampant brain as he weaved on his feet, steadied by trusty hands, while riot and fire broke out below and a wonder of mankind’s seeking mind lowered to take on passengers, bound for adventure.

Up above lowered what seemed a great shark, bigger than a blue whale, hung with Air Decks underneath, and for a rudder had what could only be described as a godawful tail.

Richard heard himself slur, “Blast what Admiralty says—the Russians got the best German scientists.”

“Yes,” declared Levsky, “one was my grandfather.”

Notes

-1. A word created by old Blake Barrett to describe his bloodline’s affinity for risky service.

-2. Mister Pete was the American nautical term for negro sailors in the 1850s through 1890s. See Herbert Asbury, The Barbary Coast.

-3. An officers additional personal kit that must be born by others, prohibited in many colonial posts since the disasters at the Kyber and Indaswana.

-4. Sporting men, gamblers, boxers, rakes, duelists, inn keepers, etc.

-5. It was generally believed by psychiatry, whose greatest minds had been put to work on the problem of “Winged Design/Flight Psychosis” that the lack of the migratory magnetic compass present in the avian brain made the human brain prone to derangement. The dissenting opinion of Doctor Immanual Velikovsky, who had defected the scientific establishment for Theography, opined an imposed collective amnesia concealing a master race which afflicted humanity’s greatest minds with insanity.