Deryn followed the beastie up into the gut, then knelt to lend Dr. Barlow a hand. They paused for a moment in the warm darkness, their eyes adjusting to the dim green light of glowworms.
"I'll take this opportunity to remind you not to smoke, Doctor."
"Very amusing, Mr. Sharp."
Deryn smiled and scratched Tazza's head. Open flames weren't allowed anywhere on the Leviathan. Matches and firearms were kept under lock and key, and the airmen's boots had rubber soles to prevent sparks of static. But according to regulations, passengers were to be reminded of the smoking rules whenever the crew thought necessary.
Even if they were fancy-pants boffins and being reminded of the barking obvious happened to annoy them.
Walking forward, Tazza slunk closer to the ground, always a little twitchy inside the whale. The walkway underfoot was aluminum, but the walls of the gastric channel were alive - warm and pulsing with digestion, aglow with worms. The hydrogen bladders overhead were taut and translucent, the whole ship swelling in the thin air of high altitude.
"IN THE GUTS OF THE SHIP."
As they approached the bow, a humming sound grew: millions of tiny wings churning the air, drying the nectar gathered that day over France. A little farther and the walls were covered with a seething mass of bees, their small round bodies buzzing around Deryn's head, bouncing softly against her face and hands. Tazza let out a low hiss and pressed closer to her legs.
Deryn could appreciate the thylacine's nervousness. Seeing the hives for the first time, she'd assumed they were weapons, like strafing hawks or fléchette bats. But the Leviathan's bees didn't even have stingers. As the ship's head boffin liked to put it, they were simply a method for extracting fuel from nature.
In summer the fields passing beneath the airship were full of flowers, each containing a tiny squick of nectar. The bees gathered that nectar and distilled it into honey, and then the bacteria in the airbeast's gut gobbled that up and farted hydrogen. It was a typical boffin strategy - no point in creating a new system when you could borrow one already fine-tuned by evolution.
A bee came to an inquisitive midair halt in front of Deryn's face. Its body was fuzzy and yellow, its dorsal regions as shiny and black as dress boots, the wings a blur. She squinted, memorizing its shape for sketching later.
"Hello, wee beastie."
"Pardon me, Mr. Sharp?"
Deryn waved away the curious bee and turned. "Anything in particular you wanted to see, ma'am?"
Chapter 16
Dr. Barlow was tucking a black veil under her bowler, like a boffin at a funeral. "My grandfather fabricated one of these species. I wanted to taste his handiwork."
Her grandfather? Dr. Barlow had to be even younger than she looked.
"You seem surprised, Mr. Sharp. The honey is edible, is it not?"
"Aye, ma'am. Mr. Rigby makes all us middies try some." Fitzroy had made a show of screwing up his face, and Newkirk had looked ready to spew. But the taste was as good as any natural honey, really.
Deryn drew her rigging knife and reached out to the expanse of hexagonal comb, prizing a bit of honey onto its blade. She offered the knife to Dr. Barlow, who loaded a fingertip, then reached under her veil to place it between her lips.
"Hmm. Just like honey."
"Water, mostly," Deryn said. "With a few squicks of carbon for flavor."
Dr. Barlow nodded. "A very sound analysis, Mr. Sharp. But you're frowning."
"Pardon me, ma'am. But did you say your grandfather was a Darwinist? He must have been one of the first."
Dr. Barlow smiled. "He was indeed. And he had rather a fascination with bees, especially how they connected cats and clover."
"Cats, ma'am?"
"And clover, yes. He noticed that red clover flowers abundantly near towns but only thinly in the wild." Dr. Barlow rubbed her finger along the knife for another taste. "You see, in England most cats live in towns - and cats eat mice. These same mice, Mr. Sharp, attack the nests of bees for their honey. And red clover cannot grow without bees to pollinate it. Do you follow?"
Deryn raised an eyebrow. "Um, I'm not sure, ma'am."
"But it's very simple. Near towns there are more cats, fewer mice, and thus more bees - resulting in more red clover. My grandfather was good at noticing webs of such relations. You're frowning again, Mr. Sharp."
"It's just that ... he sounds like a rather eccentric gentleman."
"Some think so." Dr. Barlow chuckled. "But at times eccentrics notice things that others do not. You must sharpen your razor very well."
Deryn swallowed. "My razor, ma'am?"
The lady boffin reached out to hold Deryn by her chin. "Both sides of your face are equally smooth. But didn't I interrupt you halfway through your shave?"
As Dr. Barlow waited for an answer, the buzzing of the hives roared in Deryn's head, and the walkway seemed to tilt beneath her feet. She'd been such a ninny to muck about with razors. This was how she'd always been caught out in lies - making things too barking complicated.
"I ... I'm not sure what you mean, ma'am."
"How old are you, Mr. Sharp?"
Deryn blinked. She couldn't speak.
"With a face that smooth, not sixteen," Dr. Barlow continued. "Perhaps fourteen? Or younger?"
A squick of hope began to trickle through Deryn. Had the lady boffin guessed the wrong secret? She decided to tell the truth: "Barely fifteen, ma'am."
Dr. Barlow released her chin, giving a shrug. "Well, I'm sure you're not the first boy to come into the Service a bit young. Your secret is safe with me." She handed back the rigging knife. "You see, my grandfather's true realization was this: If you remove one element - the cats, the mice, the bees, the flowers - the entire web is disrupted. An archduke and his wife are murdered, and all of Europe goes to war. A missing piece can be very bad for the puzzle, whether in the natural world, or politics, or here in the belly of an airship. You seem like a fine crewman, Mr. Sharp. I'd hate to lose you."
Deryn nodded slowly, trying to take all of this in. "I'm in agreement with that, ma'am."
"Besides ..." A hint of a smile played on Dr. Barlow's lips. "Knowing your little secret makes it easier, should I wish to tell you some of mine."