"This machine has a peculiar stride," Dr. Barlow said from the commander's chair. Her gaze stayed fixed on Alek's hands as he drove, which was unsettling. "Is it based on any particular animal?"
"I've no idea," Alek said, wishing that Klopp could answer her questions. He'd retreated down to the gunners' station, horrified by the presence of a woman in his Stormwalker. Or maybe he was afraid of Tazza.
"It walks a bit like a bird," Dr. Barlow said.
"Aye, a great iron rooster!" Dylan added.
Alek sighed, wishing he'd negotiated a more equal exchange of hostages. It seemed unfair that Dr. Barlow should bring an entourage with her - a beast, an assistant, and a trunk full of luggage. Back at the airship Volger didn't even have a change of socks.
Alek shut out their questions, focusing on the controls. The Stormwalker was negotiating the rocky slope leading up to the castle, and he didn't want to stumble in front of the Darwinists.
Dr. Barlow leaned forward as the crumbling walls came into view. "How rustic."
"It is meant to be hidden," Alek mumbled.
"Disrepair as camouflage? Ingenious."
Alek slowed the walker as the gate drew nearer, but grazed the iron hinges with its right shoulder. He winced as a metal screech rang through the cabin, Tazza matching the noise with a piercing whine.
"Bit tight, isn't it?" Dylan remarked. "If you're going to stroll about in this monstrosity, you should get a bigger door!"
Alek squeezed the saunters tighter as he brought the walker to a halt, but he managed to hold his tongue.
"There must be quite a lot of you," Dr. Barlow exclaimed.
"Just five," Alek said, opening the stable doors wider. "But we're well provisioned." He didn't mention that this was only one of many storerooms.
"How convenient." Dr. Barlow unhooked Tazza's leash from his collar, and the beast trotted deeper into the gloom, sniffing every box and barrel along the way. "But you couldn't have brought all this in your machine."
"We didn't," Alek said simply. "It was waiting here, just in case."
The woman tutted sadly. "Long-standing family squabbles can be most tiresome."
Alek didn't answer, gritting his teeth. Every word out of his mouth only betrayed more information.
He wondered if the Darwinists had already guessed who he was. The assassination was still front-page news, and the rift between his father and the emperor was no secret. Luckily, the Austrian papers had never revealed that Alek was missing. The government seemed to want his disappearance kept quiet, at least until it could be made permanent.
Dylan appeared at the stable door and gave a low whistle.
"Is this your pantry?" The boy laughed. "It's a wonder you're not fatter."
"Let us not question good fortune, Mr. Sharp," Dr. Barlow said, as if she hadn't been full of questions herself a moment ago. She handed Dylan a notepad and safety pen, then began to move among the crates and sacks, reading the labels and calling out her results to be written down.
After a moment of watching her effortlessly translate the labels, Alek cleared his throat. "Your German is quite good, Dr. Barlow."
"Why, thank you."
"I'm surprised you didn't have a chat with Volger," he said.
She turned to him and smiled innocently. "German is such an important language in the sciences, so I've learned to read it. But conversation is another matter."
Alek wondered if that were true, or whether she'd understood them perfectly. "Well, I'm glad you think our science is worth reading."
She shrugged. "We borrow as much from your engineering as you do from ours."
"Us, borrow from Darwinists?" Alek snorted. "How absurd."
"Aye, it's true," Dylan spoke up from across the room. "Mr. Rigby says you Clankers wouldn't have invented walking machines without our example to follow."
"Of course we would have!" Alek said, though the connection had never occurred to him. How else would a war machine get around? On treads, like an old-fashioned farm tractor?
What a preposterous idea.
As the two Darwinists returned to their work, Alek's fuming turned to annoyance with himself. If he hadn't let slip his discovery that Dr. Barlow understood German, perhaps Volger could have concocted some way to mislead her.
But then he sighed, depressed at how often his thoughts turned to deception now. After all, Dr. Barlow had only done what Volger was doing with the Darwinists, pretending not to speak their language to spy on them.
It was odd, really, how alike those two were.
Alek shuddered at the thought, then went to help Klopp and the others prepare the Stormwalker. The sooner the Darwinists were gone, the sooner all this skullduggery could end.
"Can your contraption really pull all that?" Dylan asked.
Alek looked at the sledge, which was piled high with barrels, crates, and sacks - eight thousand kilograms in all. Plus the weight of Tazza, who sat atop the mountain of food, catching the sun's last rays. There was no chance of starting before dark, but they'd be ready at dawn tomorrow.
"Master Klopp says it should slide easily on the snow. The trick is not breaking the chains."
"Well, it's not a bad job," Dylan said. The boy was sketching the Stormwalker and its load, capturing the walker's lines with swift, sure strokes. "I'll have to admit you Clankers are clever-boots with machines."
"Thank you," Alek said, though making the sledge had been simple enough. They'd taken one door off the castle gate and laid it flat, adding two iron bars for runners. The tricky part was securing the sledge to the Stormwalker. At the moment Klopp was halfway up a ladder, reinforcing the walker's anchor ring with the sputtering flame of a welding torch.
"But isn't it a bother?" Dylan asked. "Making a machine to do something that animals are better at?"
"Better?" Alek said. "I doubt one of your fabricated creatures could pull this load."
"I reckon an elephantine could drag that, easy." Dylan pointed up at Klopp. "And you wouldn't have to oil its gears every few minutes."
"Master Klopp's only being careful," Alek said. "Metal can be brittle in this cold."
"That's exactly what I mean. Mammothines love the cold!"