Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld; Keith Thompson (Illustrator)

Author:Scott Westerfeld; Keith Thompson (Illustrator)
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Published: 2009-11-18T22:30:00+00:00

TWENTY-TWO

“It’s a zeppelin!” Alek shouted. “They’ve found us!”

The wildcount looked up. “An airship, certainly. But that doesn’t sound like a zeppelin.”

Alek frowned, listening hard. Other noises, tremulous and nonsensical, trickled over the distant hum of engines— squawks, whistles, and squeaks, like a menagerie let loose.

The airship lacked the symmetry of a zeppelin: The front end was larger than the stern, the surface mottled and uneven. Clouds of tiny winged forms fluttered around it, and an unearthly green glow clung to its skin.

Then Alek saw the huge eyes… .

“God’s wounds,” he swore. This wasn’t a machine at all, but a Darwinist creation!

He’d seen monsters before, of course—talking lizards in the fashionable parlors of Prague, a draft animal displayed in a traveling circus—but nothing as gigantic as this. It was like one of his war toys come to life, a thousand times larger and more incredible.

“What are Darwinists doing here?” he said softly.

Volger pointed. “Running from danger, it would seem.”

Alek’s eyes followed the gesture, and he saw the jagged trails of bullet holes down the creature’s flank, flickering with green light. Men swarmed in the rigging that hung from its sides, some wounded, some making repairs. And alongside them climbed things that weren’t men.

As the airship passed, almost overhead, Alek half ducked behind the parapets. But the crew seemed too busy to notice anything below them. The ship slowly turned as it settled into the valley, dropping below the level of the mountains on either side.

“Is that godless thing coming down?” Alek asked.

“They seem to have no choice.”

The vast creature glided away toward the white expanse of glacier—the only place in sight large enough for it to land. Even wounded, it fell as slowly as a feather. Alek held his breath for the long seconds that it remained poised above the snow.

The crash unfolded slowly. White clouds rose up in the skidding airship’s wake, its skin rippling like a flag in the wind. Alek saw men thrown from their perches on its back, but it was too far away for their cries to reach him, even through the cold, clear air. The ship kept sliding away, farther and farther, until its dark outline disappeared behind a shroud of white.

“The highest mountains in Europe, and the war reaches us so quickly.” Count Volger shook his head. “What an age we live in.”

“Do you think they saw us?”

“In all that chaos? I’d think not. And this ruin won’t look like much from a distance, even when the sun comes up.” The wildcount sighed. “But no cooking fires for a while. And we’ll have to set a watch until they leave.”

“What if they don’t leave?” Alek said. “What if they can’t?”

“Then they won’t last long,” Volger said flatly. “There’s nothing to eat on the glacier, no shelter, no fuel for a fire. Just ice.”

Alek turned to stare at Volger. “But we can’t leave shipwrecked men to die!”

“May I remind you that they’re the enemy, Alek? Just because the Germans are hunting us doesn’t make Darwinists our friends.

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