The Digging Leviathan by James P. Blaylock Page A

Jim’s blood raced.
Was
she in league with Frosticos, with Pinion? She wandered along the sidewalk and peered down the driveway, oblivious to being spied on. It was the diving bell she was watching. Jim turned to Giles who sat silent as a heap of stones in the green chair, looking dismal.
    “Well what about that,” said Jim, affecting a smirk. “That took care of old Pinion nut, didn’t it?”
    He intended the remark to carry a tone of bravado, but he, was immediately sorry for it when he saw Giles’ reaction. He shook himself out of his heap, slammed a hand onto the arm of the chair, and tried to speak. “P … p … p … poor Pinion!” he stuttered out. Then he said, “Oscar!” with such a startling hiss that Jim spun around, expecting to see Oscar himself standing behind him. Giles shook his head. His mouth trembled. It seemed to Jim that Gill had something terrible to say, something horrific, something that, finally, couldn’t be uttered. Gill stood up abruptly, walked past Jim without a word, and slammed out the back door. The sight of the diving bell arrested him, however, and in seconds his anger appeared to have evaporated, replaced by scientific curiosity. He stood with his hands in his pockets gaping at the machine. Jim wandered out behind him.
    The diving bell itself, borrowed by Professor Latzarel from the Gaviota Oceanographic Laboratory, was round as a ball. It was almost an antique. Hoses led away out of it into great coils, and in a ring around the bell, within the upper one third or so, were a line of portholes riveted shut. There was a hatch at the top, screwed down with what looked like an immense brass valve. The whole thing was etched with corrosion and flaked with blue-green verdigris. It looked to Jim like something out of Jules Verne.
    Roycroft Squires fiddled with the air hoses, running down the length of them, inch by inch, looking for leaks, perhaps. He nodded at Jim, paused, and scratched at a little bump on the hose.
    “Weak spot?” asked Jim.
    “Not really,” said Squires, resuming his inspection. “Just a lump of rubber.” He glanced back up at Jim. “You look pale. Feeling okay?”
    Jim wiped sweat off his nose, certain for one impossible moment that Squires had seen through him, had somehow worked out that he and Oscar had just beaten up John Pinion. “I’m fine,” Jim said. “Really. It’s this wind. Makes me feel sticky.”
    “It’s positive ions that does it. Make people act crazy. The local Indians used to throw themselves into the sea when the Santa Ana blew.”
    “With any luck we’ll do the same,” shouted Latzarel from within the bell. He grinned out at Jim. The inch-thick glass of the porthole blew his face up like a balloon.
    “I’ve been thinking of buying a bicycle,” Jim said idly.
    Squires took a pull at a half empty bottle of beer. “Mmmm?” he said.
    “You know anything about bicycles?”
    “Not a bit, actually. I’m not much on bicycles.”
    “I could have sworn I saw you ride past not too long ago.” Jim pretended to rub at the brass wall of the diving bell.
    “Not on a bicycle you didn’t. I haven’t ridden one in forty years. Treacherous things. The last one I had lost its chain every sixty or eighty feet.”
    Jim said he must have been mistaken and let the matter chop. Squires’ assurance hadn’t done anything to solve the riddle.
    Giles Peach had scrambled onto the bell and was peering in at Latzarel. “What is the purpose of these hoses?” asked Giles.
    “Air and pressure,” said Latzarel. “Red one’s air; black one’s pressure.”
    Gill nodded as if he’d known what they were all along, and then he sniffed and scratched his ear, screwing up his face a little with the look of someone at once condescending and a bit amazed at the inadequacy of the devices. “Fairly primitive,” he said—a statement which, under the circumstances, irritated Jim unspeakably.
    “It gets the job done,” Latzarel assured him.
    Giles