Spontoon Island
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Extracts from a Diary
by Amelia Bourne-Phipps
-edited by Simon Barber-
12 January, 1937 to 17
January, 1937
Tuesday January 12th, 1937 At last it looks like our “invasion” is over, at least this part of it for now. The guard dogs are trotting round the compound again, sniffing suspiciously at the fence where the rain has not washed off all scents of last night’s “visitors.” Whether Prudence’s dorm guessed what had been happening is something they “neither confirm or deny”, but they rained on the Rain Island team’s parade, as Ada put it. Neither militia girl got as far as the nearest building before being challenged. In fact I am sure they must have heard something, as they officially drew Ross Rifles and bayonets from the strong-room, a first for them for evening patrol. They generally patrol unarmed, except Prudence has been seen to carry an Australian Rules hockey bat at times. I should think Ada decided on the hardware; she has a strong sense of drama, and probably enjoyed “escorting” the hapless intruder to our Tutor while mulling over what would happen to her in our (non-existent) jail. We have a fine collection of Rain Island flags on the wall now, less the three that were successfully planted and we gave back to become honoured trophies in their own right. No intruder escaped, which is good, and none were particularly injured, which is better. Militia expect to take some hard knocks in training, they say. I expect if the word gets out Songmark will be safer than before - considering the well-trained intruders had a zero percent success in escaping. Yesterday we went out to Main Island, where some locals now have a motor-bicycle club. It is a good qualification for an Adventuress, being able to control anything with wings, wheels or a hull, and our Tutors have found us something new to master. There are a wide range of vehicles, from quite substantial military dispatch-rider types down to a bicycle with a clip-on motor that looked as if it came from a model aircraft or toy boat. Miss Wildford was taking us on this course; the first thing we did was divide up according to previous experience. Maria has not surprisingly handled huge racing machines, Helen has raced on dirt roads in Texas, and at least I used to be fair to middling on a pedal cycle though it is years since I rode one. Molly has never even ridden a bicycle! She explained that growing up in Chicago it is not a safe thing to do; the traffic was insane even when she was young and on the streets of “the Windy City” gusts are liable to knock even skilled cyclists off their mounts and under the street-car wheels. Besides, she came to Songmark to fly, and she is jolly good at that. So: Maria got the fifty-horsepower racer, I chose a battered British Norton of manageable size and to her chagrin Molly started off on Miss Wildford’s pedal cycle! One does not learn these things in a day, or a week either. There are grass fields that are soft enough to fall on, but they are very poor to cycle on, and the gravel road is a fine track but rather hard when falling onto it. I have a very dim memory of weeks of scuffed fur and bruises in my Fairy Cycle days - but I was maybe six then and when one is grown-up one hits the ground a lot harder. Something like our leather Sidcot suits might help, but it would be awfully bulky and Molly is embarrassed enough as it is. At least the magnesium framed cycle is light when it gets tangled in a crash; with Maria’s mount one tends to wonder about that weight falling on you. How it gets upright again should it fall over, is rather a question. It is awfully embarrassing to see a full-grown doe repeatedly falling off a bicycle. Fawns certainly have not so far to fall, and are more likely to bounce when they hit the ground. I learned on the garden path in the orchard with my brother assisting me one long summer, and nobody criticising. Molly is not used to failure, and looked on with envious eyes as Maria demonstrated the nearest thing to a Bootlegger turn I have seen on two wheels. Much easier on gravel roads than tarmac or concrete, she assures us. We will be taking at least one class a week in this, which given the range of abilities should be an interesting sight. At least we should be able to fix any damages; it is jolly ironic that though Molly could take the engine of a motor-bicycle apart in the dark and reassemble it working, she cannot ride it! Still, thousands of highly skilled and essential aircraft ground crew never get further off the ground than the cockpits they are working in, and nobody thinks the worse of them for it. Today we were back on Main Island and messing around in vehicles. Actually, we had expected aircraft as we did have the padded Sidcot suits with us. Miss Blande introduced us to Mister Jenks, a tough-looking terrier who acts as a stunt-man in the filming season and was going to show us some useful techniques. He had a driver and one of those Vostok-built lorries the Althing use for public works, with the passenger door removed. The driver accelerated to about thirty miles an hour then Mr. Jenks leaped out, rolled about five times end over end and stood up, unharmed and dusting himself off! His first warning was we would probably break our necks trying that right away. Still, there was a hundred yards of grassy bank alongside a straight piece of road outside Main Village with little traffic on it. We started gently at about jogging speed, Mr. Jenks trotting alongside and telling us when to jump and roll. He was a very hard taskmaster, and some of us took half a dozen goes before he was happy with letting them progress. Missy K, Maria and Irma Bundt obviously hit the ground rather harder than the rest of us, but Missy K at least rolls well, and has no horns to get in the way. By the end of the day we had all mastered the art of getting out of a moving vehicle in a hurry, even when the door was reattached and needed to be opened first. Very handy if one discovers one has insufficient money to pay a taxi fare, Beryl says. The real difficulties lie in getting out of vehicles where the door hinge is at the back not the front, as in a lot of American sedans. Even with the Sidcot suits we are a mass of bruises, especially Molly who had been falling off bicycles the day before. Happily, our dear Tutors recognised the fact. Main Island public baths for us! They are a rather extensive establishment considering the size of Main Village. Still, few actual Longhouses have much in the way of facilities, and Spontoon is rather far North for the usual Polynesian tradition of relying on sea bathing to keep clean, at this time of year. A lot of local furs from the surrounding villages rely on the baths for everyday use; just as miners have “pit-head baths” as part of the colliery provisions, the fisher-furs and such come here to shower and use full-body fur driers they could never afford to buy themselves. There was rather a shock today - at the baths Missy K introduced us to her fiancé - who was not that very nice mink Mr. Tabodo but someone quite different, a Kodiak bear! She was engaged to Mr. Tabodo at least three years that we know of, and was always quite smug that unique among us the Tutors had agreed to accept her delaying her graduation a year should “family matters” arise. She is the first and so far sole Native girl in Songmark, which might have something to do with it. Actually, one wonders just what our Tutors think of this. On the one paw it is entirely her business, except that nothing we do at Songmark can really be called that. This big Alaskan bear is far nearer her species, which makes everything very much likelier. Our Mrs. Voboele being a feline having a child straight away from her equine husband, is the great exception to the usual thing with mixed marriages - that is, small families and generally years of trying. Plus a large number of … disappointments. Plus, a Songmark girl is expected to be true to her word. Missy K having gone back on her promise to Tabodo, I wonder if she still has that promise from our Tutors of deferring a year if needs be. Susan de Ruiz and Sophie D’artagnan perked their ears and tails up, as did Jasbir on hearing that a certain mink might now be free. Songmark girls are also taught not to let anything good go to waste and Missy K has been quite boastful about her mink these past three years, smugly enjoying the sight of certain tails twitching at her descriptions. A very relaxing hour in the warm pools, steam room and fur driers followed, after which it was back to work. We helped the Althing’s Public Works Department stringing new electrical cables into Main Village; there is a new power supply coming into town from Vikingstown, where that Professor Kurt von Mecklenburg und Soweiter has got his first full-scale “Bioreaktor” online and producing electricity twenty-four hours a day. The trouble is, in the small hours there is nobody using it. The plan is to link up the power supply to heat the public baths overnight; a big pool of water makes a super “battery” of heat and will be a real public asset. Apparently the Althing are considering his plans for another even bigger site further down the coast near the biggest plantation. It is much easier to carry electricity across the island than carry hundreds of tonnes of crop wastes a month, even if the project to revive the railways goes ahead. The new plan actually does call for a few hundred yards of track around the “Bioreaktor” to carry wastes and finished compost at least part of the way to and from the fields. We have seen the old station buildings and engine sheds scattered across Main Island, kept maintained in decent condition and generally full of retired narrow-gage track piled up in case it is ever wanted again. Hopefully Mr. Tanaka and the other Japanese scrap merchants will not make too tempting a bid for it to the Althing; once that goes the nearest supply is probably a very long way off. Fortunately the Spontoonies are not using high-voltage cables for such a short distance. Adele Beasley got a hundred and ten volts through her, touching a cable everyone else had handled until the “intermittent fault” showed up. She was more hurt than surprised, but recovered well. Back for a super evening meal, one large roast fish per dorm! Of course there was a catch in more ways than one; Miss Blande photographed us carving happily into them, and we recalled it is time to assemble the Prospectus for the coming year. The sight of our faces when confronted with a huge slushy pile of three-finger Poi is not something that would look good on Page Three. One might choose to focus on Missy K enjoying it, but considering her general figure that would not be a wonderful advertisement for three years on a Songmark diet. Our Tutors are honest, but they do have a business to run and always stress to us that one should use all one’s assets to their best ability. I am sure the prospectus will not dishonestly call this a typical meal, but neither will it say otherwise. Thursday January 14th, 1937 A busy time as ever. Yesterday was the finest weather we have seen in weeks, so straight after breakfast we were down on the airstrip, and the Tiger Moths had a very busy day of it. It was much like one hears of “flight ops” in the Great War, with the aircraft taxiing up to the hangars, being rearmed and refuelled while being checked over, and a possibly wounded or exhausted pilot swapped for a fresh comrade before the next sortie. Not that there were any injuries, but forty minutes of formation flying interspersed with aerobatics is jolly hard work and one finds one’s paws trembling after stepping out of the cockpit. It was our good luck to fly in a very unusual formation - the big Balalaika airship was going home, and by arrangement we flew alongside to give it an “honour guard” as far as Orpington Island! It was quite a sight; the big silver-grey Balalaika warming up its engines and gas cells, taking off possibly twenty tonnes heavy. Even so, once those five-yard propellers really start to spin it began to roll down the concrete rather more like a fighter than an airship, lifting off hardly a quarter of the way down the concrete. The engines swivel to give it more lift when needed - they are the first reversible-pitch propellers we have seen, and unlike any other aircraft it can slam to a halt and hover! It must be rather a difficult target for anti-aircraft guns doing that, despite its bulk. The Balalaika “B” as we discover it is called, is really rather an advance on the model we flew in Vostok last year. It is faster by thirty miles an hour, at least. We have not been in the cabin, but looking at the details on the wingtips, there is a telescope arrangement that I believe is a range-finder. With that spread of survey points it should have definitely “sharp eyes” either as a fighter, a bomber or reconnaissance. Being an airship, one can imagine it ghosting through the night on the wind with just enough engine power to control its course, invisible and a very tricky target for sound-detectors that could spot a regular aircraft twenty miles away. The top surface is wide and fairly smooth, and with a little redesign and an arrester hook one could imagine landing an aircraft in flight there a lot more easily than those trapeze hooks the Soviets use to hang fighters under their Kalinin K7’s and “Maxim Gorki” bombers. Unlike a floating Naval aircraft carrier, this can maintain flying speed at least for a Tiger Moth to “land” at zero relative speed. And unlike a naval carrier, although the air around may be turbulent both the mother ship and the aircraft are being buffeted by the same medium. Certainly one for the logbook! My dorm flew out straight over Orpington, the Balalaika keeping pace with us at five thousand feet when we radioed farewell, and it dropped a ton of ballast and went into a thirty degree climb on full power, heading for “angels twenty” and beyond, where we soon lost it in the clouds. Of course it had been heating its gas cells all the way; the exhaust system dumps all the heat inside the magnesium shell and even condenses out the water from the exhaust to generate ballast in flight. I would rather like to get back to Vostok sometime and see just what they are doing there. Molly has passed on hints of what business Lars has there - he has connections with various industrial concerns and says they are moving rapidly ahead. They have the great Air-power prophet Mr. De Seversky living and working there now after some years in America where they did not appreciate his grand visions. It is well enough to have a country that has the potential of putting grand ideas into practice, but only if they have the will to actually do it. As Molly says, it is not how much you can grab that counts but how much you get away with. Having waved farewell to such an aircraft, the short and tubby “Osprey” of the R.I.N.S we saw heading out on anti-pirate patrol, looked slightly silly. But still; it does its job very well and uses technologies Spontoon can support. We have seen newsreels of the facilities needed to construct a Balalaika; precision welding of thin magnesium structural shells big enough to cover a hockey pitch is not something that can be done outside Vostok. One mistake with the inert gas flood and the welder discovers (briefly) he has set off the biggest incendiary bomb on record. Today, it turned out it was just as well we made the most of Wednesday’s weather - the cloud came down to about two hundred feet, and the rain poured down. We were out on the runway helping with the emergency nets as a big Lufthansa G-38 came in out of the clouds, radio homing on the LONO tower and the new short-wave masts past Crater Lake. A jolly fine piece of navigating, one our Tutors would be proud of. We had a shock when we saw exactly who got out of the pilot’s cabin, while the passengers headed towards Customs or the passenger lounge. Our old friend Erica! She recognised us (with the usual “My, how you’ve grown” jokes) and after she finished formalities with the control tower we had twenty minutes to chat with her. Erica does not normally fly passenger aircraft, but is familiarising herself with this design as the Germans are selling the licence to Japan as troop transports (she says) and she will be going to train their Air Force. That is common knowledge, in the aeronautical magazines. Nothing new there, and indeed our Junkers 86 has just such a pedigree. She is testing radio navigation equipment, and has a crew of radio technicians onboard. That makes sense; the G-38 is rather a large aircraft to fit the passenger traffic through here in January, and it has plenty of spare seats and load capacity for the equipment. The immensely thick wing has the first-class cabins in them, making it about the only passenger aircraft where the passengers have a forward view through the leading edge rather than twisting their necks looking through side windows. Erica mentions the technicians have the cheap seats back in the fuselage, but they have their instruments to watch and on a day like today there is nothing to see outside anyway. Spontoon is a long way from Germany, but she has been all over the place since she last saw us. She whispered that she had been up to Franz Joseph Land on a ski-equipped aircraft last summer and met some very interesting people up there. What they have would surprise us, she says. The Nimitz Sea is not the only place with somewhere like Cranium Island, though very few people know about it. Hmm. Franz Joseph Land is the sort of place we have only read about in pulp comics. The facts are plain enough as far as they go; it was the only colony of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before 1918, and the great underground mining cities fought on until 1926 against the Allies, even successfully invading part of Spitzbergen. According to the legends, in the last days of 1918 just before the collapse, the Hapsburg Monarchy sent its court Mad Scientists and a few key noble families on an armoured train out of Vienna through Germany to the Baltic port of Danzig where they boarded loyalist-crewed submarines that were last seen heading North along the Norwegian coast. The idea was to wait out the anarchy and rebuild the Hapsburg dynasty far in the Arctic beyond prying eyes before someday returning to re-establish the Austro-Hungarian Empire and raise the double-eagle flag over vast re-conquered territories. There has never been a published account of the Allies’ campaign in Franz-Joseph Land, but all the recent books say there were no survivors left on the island. In which case, I wonder who Erica talked to up there. Some of those underground cities went on for miles under the icecap, dug deep enough that they ran into hot springs sufficient for their needs. All too soon the refuelling was finished, the happy passengers returned having sampled refreshments and such (the departure lounge sells Nootnops Blue to non-flying crew as well as passengers here!) and Erica had to be off into the clouds again. Without radio navigation she would be stuck till the weather breaks, but she says at fifteen thousand feet her aircraft can pick up the beacons on Hawaii and Cap Maron Glacé in the French Sandwich Islands. I suppose an aircraft that size has the room to mount very large and sensitive directional aerials, and has the electrical system to run hundreds of valves in its amplifying equipment; a long way from the two-foot rotating loop that one usually sees on passenger aircraft. So, that is what our old pal Erica is doing these days. I recall that postcard she sent showing the re-consecration of the Holy Woden Stone of Memel, a religious site on the Baltic that has a lot of sturdy local folk tradition to go with it. Actually I would guess she is doing a lot more than that; Maria mentioned we are booked to be going to New South Thule in Spring and Erica winked, hinting we might meet her there. Certainly a Songmark graduate gets around a lot. Friday January 15th, 1937 Even after all this time, it is surprising the people our Tutors find to teach us. A lot of our timetable is made up on the fly, in that we can always reschedule the swimming or rock climbing (at least for a third-year, bad weather and darkness are no excuses) if someone interesting becomes available at short notice. Today we were back on Main Island with a wolverine gentleman whom we were introduced to as Mister Nikolai. He is certainly Russian, though if he is from Vostok or elsewhere he did not say, nor did we ask. He had two definitely Spontoonie aides, one of them being a greyhound I last saw at about three in the morning when Molly, Lars and I chased those slavers across the rooftops of Casino Island. This is certainly a cautionary exercise. Mr. Nikolai showed us what to beware of - his two assistants were walking across the road towards him, one of them reading a newspaper the other was talking about animatedly - when they very smoothly stepped to left and right of him, one grabbed his snout shut and the other whipped out a cloth hidden by the newspaper and clamped it to his muzzle! This was just soaked in water, but in practice it would have been chloroform, we were told. Having seen five variants on “grabs”, we were invited to try it ourselves. Of course, having seen it done nobody would be caught like that. Our Tutors, and perhaps the Althing, proved somewhat sneaky. The Guide’s School had a class that was (so we found out later) tasked with walking past a pair of us on the empty street and without looking exactly at us, memorising exactly what we were wearing and carrying. We were in pairs with rather different instructions. I can report that as expected the Guides are healthy and fast-thinking types, and more than a few of us ended up battered as they recovered from their surprise! We could hardly blame them. Happily we had our respective tutors step round the corner and explain matters before things got too heated, plus give us and the Guides our scores. As Miss Blande told us on the way back, the object of this was not to train us as aspiring kidnappers but to show us how these things are done, and what to watch out for. One hears of folk “vanishing” by the thousand in Russia and China, and indeed Molly has tales of Chicago that make the tail bristle - it is just as well to know how it happens. One never knows where one will end up, and who might object to it. Maria was speculating about Mr. Nikolai; the Tsarist Russian police, the “Checka” had a fearsome reputation and not all folk who fled the Reds went to Vostok - many went through there over the years who then fell out of favour with the current regime and have since scattered around the world. That is, I doubt Vostok would be sending their serving Agents over here, or that the Althing would let them. Vostok heads the ranks of nations whose diplomatic folk have “accidents” generally while poking into non-tourist areas; Japan, Kuo Han and France are not far behind. The Althing officially sighs, pays for their return in a box (a cigar box in some cases; the “accidents” may be extreme) and reminds folk just why Euros are recommended to take Guides when going off the tourist beat. A scarcely more leisurely, though less cloak-and-dagger-ish afternoon, with a great treat - Superior Engineering let us work under supervision on some of their aircraft. It seems several of their mechanics are off-island right now at a wedding, just when a high priority order dropped in - which means that low-priority ones would not get done at all, without us. It makes a nice change from the Songmark aircraft that we know literally inside-out by now. Today I was working on the first sleeve-valve engine I have seen since we said farewell to that Handley-Page “Clive” that took us to the Albanian South Indies and back. The textbooks say they are unreliable in cold weather as the valves stick with cold oil, but even the Spontoon winter hardly counts as that. Depending on one to get us home from the Aleutians would be a rather different proposition. Back to another splendid meal - roast chicken such as we have about once a month. The cameras were out, of course. It was rather disturbing to see that first-year swan girl Ingrid tucking into a large bird leg. Still, Maria eats beef (when she can get it; we have never had it in Songmark except out of cans) which is much the same thing. Ingrid Ledasdottir is from Vanierge, where they keep up the Norse tradition of not having consistent family names but naming girls after the mother’s first name and boys after the father. It must make tracing one’s family tree rather difficult. As Molly whispered, it must be a big incentive to get married. Any girl in trouble and not sure of just who the father is, must be praying for a daughter rather than a son to spare them both a lifetime of embarrassment. True, I have never heard the name Nobodysson, but in Norwegian it might be spelled differently. Thinking of which, Saffina was telling us she was on Meeting Island for a class today, passing the Spontoonie registry of births, marriages and deaths. Some mischievous persons had put up an official-looking placard by the door - “Tourist ladies are reminded that for all refunds, they must return cub and a valid receipt.” The passers-by were laughing their snouts off, but it is just as well it is not tourist season! Our contributions for the new prospectus were collected in, and our Tutors will be marking them and deciding which should get into print. I doubt some of the ideas we talked over went down on paper; “The most fun I’ve ever had with my head stuck in a swamp!”, “I am rapidly becoming a world authority on the feeding habits of leeches in the wild” and “Just like the Army but no medals or promotion and you pay the officers’ wages!” may be accurate enough but hardly please Miss Devinski. Few things do. We could see a troop of Rain Island military heading towards the docks under the streetlight, evidently on the way to Moon Island from the airport. Indeed, it is that time of year again, and soon enough the second-years will be taking part in the exercises as well as saying farewell to little luxuries such as sleep for a few days. At least it should keep them out of trouble for awhile, both on the exercises and resting up afterwards. We will not be on crab watch this year, we are told. That would be good news, but it can only mean out Tutors have something even worse planned for us, probably without the consolation of crab soup after a long night’s work. Saturday January 16th, 1937 A bright day after all the clouds, and indeed we felt our spirits pick up as we enjoyed our bonus half hour extra sleep. At Songmark there are so very few occasions when one can luxuriate in a nice warm bed and wonder if it is time to get up. Either it really is time to get up, or one is trying to get back to sleep again for just another precious quarter-hour or so till the alarm rings. Helen says she dreams of throwing her alarm-clock away in July, and for a month just being Mrs. Helen Hoele’toemi, newlywed Spontoon housewife. Actually we know she would not throw it in the Nimitz Sea as she says but just put the clock in our tin trunk (it would not last well in a longhouse with the humidity) ready for the fast-approaching day she would go back to work and need it again. But I very much appreciate that dream. Anyway, however much time we have in them, the beds still feel jolly hard even after three years getting accustomed to them and are still not really tempting for an extended lie-in. Maria says in the Alps the peasants traditionally have great sacks of dry hay they sleep between, which she has tried and says are an improvement on what we have. In newsreels of the North part of Japan we have seen an even more “rustic” custom, there is no bed as such but more like deep vats of softened rice straw that one burrows into. Very cosy no doubt, but one would spend half the morning combing out straw fragments. Casino Island was nice; we shopped for various things including a gallon can of liquid rubber at a ship ’s chandler for Carmen to use in building our waterproof suits. Ship’s chandlers are real treasure-troves of amazing equipment, everything from sailcloth and rope to emergency rations and flares. Molly was very tempted by the Verey rockets and flares, but surprisingly did not invest. She grinned unnervingly and said she had something far better than that. One wonders exactly what, though it might be a bad idea to ask for a demonstration. The rest of the shop was very comprehensive; amazingly they even have a line of lightweight anchors for seaplanes! Our dance classes were very fine, and I think we impressed them with our interpretive hula tales. Maria writes the story like a radio script and we all work on translating it into hula dance. Although she was not on our Albert Island trip, Maria has heard enough about the Sturdey Boys to pen “The Film-director’s Brats” which had the Spontoonies “rolling in the aisles” on its first performance. They even went for the bit about the Sturdeys digging up the graveyard treasure-hunting; though we made clear it was the old Mission graveyard and not a Native one. The tales of the Sturdey Boys has spread even before we made our version; of course the Spontoonies aboard the Liki-Tiki would have told their own stories. Amongst the first-years attending were Svetlana from Crusader Dorm, and that mad shrew. It is hard to believe she is actually married to Miss Rote in Crusader Dorm. From what I heard they were married just before their first term started on Cranium Island, which she regards as a nice place to live. Having been there it might not quite be as the stories say, but then an island where the entire population goes around all the time chuckling as they tinker with souped-up Doomsday Devices would not get much Science done. Helen has been reading some pulp comics in the holiday and whispered that we would expect anyone coming back from a wedding there would have a married name something like Mrs. It Came From Beyond, or Mrs. The Thing That Eats Eyes. Maria seemed rather affected by that idea - she had a contemplative expression most of the morning, not quite what one would expect regarding the horrors she experienced there. Still, the other three of us have partners who can help us forget such things - with Maria, her last encounter was on Cranium Island nearly five months ago. I do not like to ask if that is why she was asking so hungrily about Kansas Smith’s mother and her condition. Lola VaVaVoom seemed entirely pleased with things, both when we met her out there and when we spotted her heading back at New Year. Luncheon was very fine; the Missing Coconut was packed out with Rain Island types who are not exactly tourists but come from a rather different culture (actually very like the Amerind Spontoonies, the bark cloth not the grass-skirt wearing ones.) Being off-duty a lot of them were in what one presumes they wear at home; substantial lumberjack-type shirts and boots. Quite possibly some were the ones chasing us last Spring in the militia exercises. Although in Summer the cuisine is typically long drinks mixed in coconuts, today we were feeling hungry rather than thirsty. Lots of eggs on the menu; scrambled, poached or hard-boiled and curried! Now that one really might disturb our first-year swan. Not that the Songmark menu is actually short of protein, but we have been working awfully strenuously this week. On the way back, we had been happily chatting about our plans when a large chunk of them instantly evaporated. Our ears went down as a certain ferret we have not seen in awhile stepped out of a building just in front of us. He bowed and announced there was a fine display of Winter blooms in Tower Hill Park, and crossed the street out of sight. We can take a hint. Though nobody saw us arriving together, five minutes later we were sitting in the park industriously feeding the wild avians while Spontoonie gardeners in the middle distance diligently swept the gravel paths and tended to bushes that already looked perfectly well-trimmed to me. Mr. Sapohatan was already there, looking much as we have seen him before. With a naturally grey-furred ferret one could hardly tell if the strain was turning his fur grey. As ever, he was unfailingly polite and mentioned he had good reports of us. He noted that although our work with Saimmi and Oharu was not his area of expertise, he was most grateful we had helped out there so well. There was a long pause, while we felt our stomachs knot as we “waited for the other shoe to drop” and for him to let us in for some more fur-raising adventures. Actually it was Maria he started with, asking her if she had heard any news of that famously independent vessel the Direwolf recently. That being the German commerce raider from the Great War that never surrendered but had a “shareholders’ buy-out” and its crew vowed to keep raiding till their Kaiser told them to stop. This is never likely to happen now, and a heavy cruiser has many expensive needs to satisfy, so they justify themselves by saying it is hardly their fault they cannot return their prizes to the Imperial Navy. What they think about the present German Government I have not heard; at any rate they are out here in the Pacific and not back in Kiel. Not that a 1913 vintage cruiser would count for much outside the Nimitz Sea; I think the Royal Navy scrapped everything of that vintage years ago. Maria rattled off quite a history of official reports that have been in the newspapers; she then switched to more guarded tones and brought out things she had heard. The ship has been very successful hiring itself out to Chinese warlords and such; with the money it was months in Macao being refitted with new engines and various other equipment, and taking on crew. Germany had trading settlements in Tsingtao until 1918, and more of the crew in the lower ranks are oriental than Euro these days. Over the years the original senior crew have retired or become casualties, replaced by a scattering of Hula Junkers who know the area, and promoted Midshipmen who have actually had more solid experience than most Captains see in peacetime. Mr. Sapohatan nodded and complemented her on her intelligence, probably in both senses of the word. He looked up innocently at the sky and asked her what use such a ship would be. Maria thought awhile, and came out with some rather comprehensive answers; evidently she has been thinking about such questions for awhile. Technically it is a Pirate, though it flies various flags from tiny countries that like banking the registration fees and like having a “big friend” they could call on in need. Not belonging to any Navy, it can do things that would certainly start a war if nations sent their own ships in - and amongst the small nations of the Pacific it could do a lot of damage. Rain Island, Vostok and Kuo Han have ships that could defeat it, but they would expect to take serious damage in the process. Vanierge, Brisingaland and Greater Fiji have nothing to match it, according to Maria’s bedside reading of the various Jane’s military digests. He agreed with her, commenting that the time might soon be coming when it needed to be taken care of one way or another; it is a large “wild card” in the Pacific that somebody will want to play. I suppose the rules would change if the Japanese ever take the South of China. Whose side the Direwolf would be on might depend on who offers it the best deal in various ways; just handing it money would be little use if no dockyard can or will repair and upgrade it as Macao has been doing. Spontoon has docks that can take rather large cruise ships, and I know it has handled emergency repairs to those. Helen growled that there are only two safe places for it to go; firmly on the side of Spontoon or to the bottom of the Nimitz Sea. As long as it keeps up its independent lifestyle, nobody can be sure who has bid highest this week for its services. Rather like Molly tells us of the Cowboy days, where independent gunmen roamed the West and hired on wherever there was a feud or a range-war. Most of them ended up shot in the back, quite often by their own former employers keen to reclaim their payoff. The ferret indicated he agreed with her. Information was required, and although he had many other people on the case he asked us if we would be interested. Naturally I pointed out the little matter of us being exceptionally busy Songmark Third-years with one holiday left and that already spoken-for; he noted that and said that he would take it into account. Well, we have done it again, volunteered. I tell myself I must stop doing this; it is probably bad for the health. We have faced Moro pirates on these “little trips” but they were not manning 14-inch guns with a quarter of a century of practice. I recall the Direwolf was involved in the chase then; it never found us, for which we are very grateful. The Pacific is a huge area to search even when one has an idea to start looking, and without aircraft the horizon of a single ship is rather limited. Maria says the Direwolf’s upgrades have not included aircraft, though expendable aircraft have been “flown off” the turret ramps of cruisers before now. Exactly who paid it for that sortie from Macao is an interesting question. Anyway, although we are not to expect any immediate calls, Mr. Sapohatan promised he would call on us if something suitable came up. With that he left us, and in ten minutes it was evidently the end of the shift for the Parks Department, as all the gardeners shouldered tools and headed out. Molly seems very keen on the idea, but anything with large artillery is sure to appeal to her. She reads in bed those scientific journals with the ultra fast flash photographs of experimental shells ploughing through or shattering against proof armour, in millionth of a second close-up detail. In fact she reads them with a torch under the covers when she thinks everyone else is asleep. I have asked if there are any pictures in the series of large calibre shells vaporising does, as we are more likely to be on the receiving end of such things than otherwise. She is hard to deter, though I have not given up yet. Back to Songmark to discover other folk have not changed their spots, so to speak. Beryl was collecting for her new charity, Alms for the Criminally Insane. At least I hope she said “alms.” She keeps a list of people who have paid, which she sends along with the alms to the beneficiaries. She also keeps a list of those who have refused to pay, she says, which she sends likewise plus their photographs and addresses. Sunday January 17th, 1937 Pouring with rain! Molly went off with Beryl to their Temple of Continual Reward after breakfast; it is no day to be working on thatched longhouses on South Island, just to make notes on where the leaks are for next time. Actually Molly has some honest business there and so does Beryl for a change; they are partners in their “fish log” project and are arranging with the farms on Main Island to collect more crabs for the pot this year. There have been some fields already sown with fast-growing tender crops that will be “sacrificed” to feed the crabs; on Spontoon the locals believe in give and take, and if the land crabs are going to be harvested on a larger scale, the survivors will at least be given more to eat. The fields will be re-sown with later maturing crops once the moon has set and the crabs return to the forest. That is the good thing about tins; one can make them as ingredients are available and stockpile them. The Main Island cannery will be switching over to making the crab and Pastefish “fish log” for a week or two; it can revert back afterwards to its normal products when the supply of fresh crab runs out. Beryl has a typical story of a military contractor who made a good living selling reserve foods to various armies, and buying them back if expected needs never materialised. He once bought a warehouse full of anonymous bully beef of uncertain age from a rival, and feeling hungry decided to open a tin for lunch - at which point he discovered it was totally rancid. When he hotly complained to his supplier, he received what Beryl says is a line of great folk wisdom - “Lew, my boy - that food isn’t for eating. It’s for reselling!” Our own Sunday was interesting, despite the rain. Happily we could stay indoors and practice today’s Warrior Priestess rituals, none of which were liable to set the longhouse alight. Gha’ta stood outside the threshold in the rain, being an amphibian and preferring it to the (fairly) dry interior. We have described to her what we faced under Krupmark, and though she is working from a very different tradition to the Priestess Oharu, she has showed us the beginning of similar spells. Rather like my Sand Flea is “the same sort of thing” as Erica’s G-38, as both fly. There is a little matter of scale, though. We mentioned our encounter with Mr. Sapohatan to Saimmi; she needs to know these things if she does not already. She seemed rather pensive at the news; she is of course a Priestess not a military strategist, but especially around here the two are not as separate as in Europe. Preventing the Fragments of the Great Tiki being reassembled and used in the wrong paws is much the same as preventing Cranium Island detonating twenty kilograms of allotropic iron over Casino Island, in terms of damage limitation. Although she has mentioned the Priestess Oharu made a similarly risky trip to China awhile ago which proved vital, Saimmi says she did not like that much, and is not too keen on us heading out to Macao or wherever the Direwolf is found. Molly and Maria are best suited for that, she says. And yet, she concedes we did best as a team on Krupmark, Helen and I doing better overall than the two Priestesses she would have sent in our place. It is the old problem of risking resources; the pitcher that goes to the well gets broken in the end, but unlike pitchers Adventuresses need Adventures to learn and return tougher from. Assuming they return in one piece, that is. We did not train as Warrior Priestesses just so we could sit around South Island tending shrines and singing Morning Song, as Helen pointed out. It may well be that Mr. Sapohatan has more experienced and far better folk to handle the swashbuckling, but we have our extra abilities and one never knows when they will prove vital. Saimmi nodded reluctantly; she could lay down the law on us but she can be persuaded by suitable arguments. Not that anyone has reported the Direwolf or its crew as having recruited any “ab-natural” capabilities, but it is not the sort of thing that would be listed in Jane’s Fighting Ships. Once embarked on the far shore of the Pacific Ocean, if the folk suddenly discover they need such talents it will probably take too long to telegraph to Spontoon to send them out as extras. Keeping us here and safe is sensible, but so is tackling any potential dangers at source, not waiting till they get within bombardment range of Casino Island. It would be nice to think of us saving this job up till August as our “Apprentice Piece” after we have finished Songmark, but such things happen in their own time and not ours. There is little point in our telling Miss Devinski, as she probably already knows we have volunteered, and if she objects we will find out soon enough. Though Helen and Marti vanished after luncheon to the guest longhouse, Jirry left on Thursday and will not be back for ages. From what I have gathered, such trips are not a matter of sailing from here to one destination, picking up the cargo and heading back - more a matter of A to B through to J with normal cargos, then picking up the real reason at K before heading back. Probably calling through X, Y and Z just to confuse the trail. That left me and Saffina with the rest of the Hoele’toemi family, Saimmi having to vanish on her High Priestess duties. She takes them very seriously despite there being nobody to disapprove of her actions - except many generations of past High Priestesses buried on Sacred Island. Helping out with the household is quite a relaxation after a week at Songmark, and indeed is a small repayment for all their help and kindnesses. Moeli was there, and I helped her with her fur patterning much as she did with ours two years ago - except this time I know what the markings mean. She is getting noticeably rounded now, although to the Spontoonies that is a sign of great beauty and good fortune. Stroking in the markings, I felt my ears blush in embarrassment as I imagined my own fur markings had I not only become Lady Allworthy but ended up carrying the family pups. It would be hard to decide which to inscribe, “hoping for a daughter” as Moeli’s reads or otherwise - neither Lord Leon nor Lady Susan were anything I would want a child to take after! Moeli’s cub will take very much after its aquatic parent; I hear it is always the way with the Natives of No Island. I suppose it is a merciful provision of Nature, in that otherwise a kitten could be born unable to swim, in the middle of the Pacific. Saffina says it would be equally unfortunate for an aquatic kitten in the middle of the Sahara, but only Pacific natives are liable to marry into that clan and they know what to expect. Seeing Helen returning looking very relaxed and rubbing her neck-fur, my own tail drooped until I reminded myself that the days are getting longer already, and it is next Solstice I finally get to be Tailfast. I hope so anyway; I have been disappointed before. A lot can happen in that time; we have the most strenuous part of the course to come. No Songmark girl ever assumes she will pass, even though only one third-year has ever actually failed the course! We believe that was Zara, but even now we have never been officially told, and Zara was not telling. Of course, there are other ways to not graduate. We have read in the library of one of the second ever class who broke her leg so severely it could never be properly reassembled; another had to droop out with an ear infection so drastic it left her half deaf and permanently affected her sense of balance. Modern Sulpha drugs could have treated that, if they had them out here. I have heard the Casino Island hospital now have some, but keep them only for truly life-threatening infections. Out in the Aleutians, Ada sprained her ankle as severely as I did in my first ever term; happily her dorm treated it as well as they have been taught and as a whole they gained rather than lost points for it. Miss Cardroy always says that anyone can make progress when all goes well; the quality of a fur only shows through when things are looking rough. Still, for the folk who do graduate, a Songmark course is no finishing school and we are expected to head straight out and put our three years of very expensive training to good use. Helen is the only one I know of planning to marry straight away, apart from Prudence (Tahni being a spotted hyena, the fact she is female is rather an academic distinction. She is more male in places than many conventional males.) Back to Songmark in the pouring rain, singing to keep our spirits up! On approach we saw Red Dorm on gate duty, who “turned us over” exceedingly thoroughly, all “in the line of duty” of course. I will ask Prudence and co. to return the favour; Red Dorm would hate that far more than if we did it. While Mrs. Wo and Brigit Mulvaney went through our fur with a fine comb and found nothing, I could hear that Liberty Morgenstern and Tatiana Bryzov derisively singing a typically Red song outside the guard room; “I
am the man, the very fat man,
From what I received from the Allworthy estate lawyers, the family do
indeed own a brewery amongst their other interests. Just my luck that
somehow Red Dorm found out about it! Now apart from the family military
connections being “lickspittle agents of State oppression” I am a
“bloated plutocrat and absentee landlord” which is hardly my fault and
indeed the very thing I am trying to rid myself of. Still, it would be
wasting one’s breath expecting those four to be reasonable.That waters the workers' beer. I am the man, the very fat man, That waters the workers' beer. And what do I care if it makes them ill, If it makes them terribly queer. I've a car, a yacht, and an aeroplane, And I waters the workers' beer. Now when I waters the workers' beer, I puts in strychnine Some methylated spirits, And a drop of kerosene Ah, but such a brew so terribly strong, T’would make them terribly queer So I reaches my hand for the watering-can And I waters the workers' beer Chorus Now a drop of good beer is good for a man When he's tired, thirsty and hot And I sometimes have a drop myself, From a very special pot For a strong and healthy working class Is the thing that I most fear So I reaches my hand for the watering-can And I waters the workers' beer Chorus Now ladies fair, beyond compare, O be you maid or wife Spare a thought for such a man Who leads such a lonely life For the water rates are frightfully high, And the meth is terribly dear And there ain't the profit there used to be In watering the workers' beer * next *Editor’s note; song © Paddy Ryan |
