Dreadnought by Cherie Priest Page A

Check your tickets, and make sure this is the ship you’re looking for. The next one on this route won’t be along until tomorrow.”
    While he spoke, the remaining two members of his crew were descending behind him, toting equipment and inspecting the work performed by the dock crew, making sure everything satisfied their personal standards. Then they stepped to the side of the ship and behind it, where they began gesturing to something down at the end of the row.
    Mercy craned her neck and spied the thing they motioned toward the ship.
    It moved on a narrow rail that ran the length of the dock between the rows and was roughly the size of a small train engine, with a taller, rounder shape confined by riveted bands of metal. It looked like a great steel-crusted loaf of bread, and it came up on the
Zephyr
smoothly, with only the soft ratcheting sound of segmented wheels on a carefully fitted track. A series of hoses was toted in a rear compartment, like a caboose. The men on the dock unfurled the hoses and locked one end onto the metal canister, one end to some port on the backside of the
Zephyr
. The biggest man present—a tall fellow in an undershirt, with arms like an ape—climbed up to the top of the canister and turned a valve there, which prompted the hose to puff like an elongated marshmallow as it unloaded the canister’s contents into the ship’s tanks.
    One of Mercy’s fellow passengers leaned toward her and said, “Hydrogen.”
    She replied, “I know.”
    “It’s a marvel, isn’t it?” he pressed, until she turned to regard him.
    He was well dressed, and the details would’ve betrayed his foreign origins even if his voice had not. The shoes were a brand and shape Mercy rarely saw; likewise, his suit had a cut that was a few lines distant from contemporary American styles. His hair was dark and curly, and his hands were long, soft, and unmarked—they were the hands of a scholar, not a man prone to labor.
    Mercy said, “A marvel, sure. We’re living in an age of them, aren’t we? Practically swimming in them.” She turned again to watch the dirigible refuel.
    “You don’t sound too pleased by it.”
    “By what?”
    “By this age of marvels.”
    Mercy looked his way again and he was grinning, very faintly. “You’ve got me there,” she told him. “Most of the marvels I’veseen are doing a marvelous job of blowing men to bits, so you’ll have to pardon me if, if . . .” Something large clicked with the sound of small arms fire, and she gave a little jump.
    “You view these marvels with some trepidation,” he finished for her. “Have you ever flown before?”
    “No.” Surrendering to the demands of politeness, though somewhat reluctantly, she tore her attention away from the ship and its tanks long enough to ask, “What about you? You ever been flying before?”
    “A few times. And I always consider it a grand adventure, because we don’t have such ships yet in England—at least, not in the numbers one finds here.”
    “Is that where you’re from?”
    “More or less,” he said, which Mercy thought was a strange answer, but she didn’t ask about it. He continued. “But I understand ships like these are becoming more common in Australia these days, as well.”
    “Australia?”
    He nodded. “So progress must come easier to nations of such tremendous size. Thousands of miles to be traveled in any direction . . . it’s not so surprising that newer, more comfortable methods of long-distance travel might become more commonplace.”
    “I doubt it. It’s a side effect of war, that’s all. These ships were first built for the fronts, but the damn things can’t go more than a few hundred miles without refilling, and they can’t hardly carry any weight at all.”
    If he minded her profanity, he didn’t say anything. “Give it time,” he said instead. “The technology improves every day. It won’t be long before people are crossing from coast to coast in machines like this.