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"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Audrey called over her shoulder. "Fair and square, you owe me five dollars, Eddie." The stoker foreman's shout of protest was muted by the bulkhead as Audrey turned on her heel and sauntered out of the room, waving a dismissive hand. "You can pay me when we get rich." He had bet her that she couldn't shovel coal as fast as his rookie stoker. Not only had she bested the rookie, but she had held her own against the foreman himself before they'd called it quits. It was important to establish this sort of thing early in a project, she reasoned. The boiler room was hers now.
Her stomach rumbled in her too-large overalls, and she wondered how likely it was that Cookie had produced something edible this early in the voyage. She shook her head briskly to get her bearings, looking first one way, then the other down the nearly tubular corridor outside the boiler room. Machines, she knew. The Ulysses, however, wasn't just a machine. The submarine Mr. Whitmore had commissioned for this mission was state-of-the-art, straight out of Mami's stories, and just a little too big to be fully machine in Audrey's mind. "Give me a boiler room, any day," she muttered under her breath, and decided to try the corridor on the left, because it smelled oilier.
At the end of that corridor was another t-split, and then another. Audrey kept on choosing left, because she might as well, and because it had to go somewhere. It did. A little before she should have been marching back into the boiler room again, the corridor was blocked by a hatch. The wheel in the centre hadn't been very tightly closed, and it sprang open under Audrey's too-forceful wrench. She stumbled into the room, her heavy boots muffled only a little by the thick Persian rug that covered the floor. Wincing a little, Audrey had a quick look around. Books. Lots and lots of books. And a globe on a stand, and a huge earthtone map with multicolored pins stuck in it. Directly opposite the hatch she'd just stumbled through was a freestanding chalkboard and in front of that was a freestanding nerd. He had been facing away from the door but clearly he had noticed her graceful entrance, because his scrawny neck was twisted nearly all the way around, and he was peering at her with surprised eyes magnified by his thick spectacles. This was definitely not her kind of place, but lest the nerd think that she had stumbled in here by accident, she squared her shoulders and jaw, and kicked the hatch closed behind her. She made a show of closing it tightly, then clasped her hands behind her back and started a circuit of the book room. It wasn't very big. There were a lot of books, but they were crammed together pretty damn tightly. Audrey knew she had better find a reason to be here, and quickly.
She started out reading book titles, but that got old real fast. Even skimming them was boring. Then she grabbed a thick leatherbound one off the shelf and threw herself in the oversuffed red chair in the corner by the globe, and had to spend what felt like hours pretending to read something that definitely wasn't English or Spanish. Every now and then she snuck a look at the nerd over the top edge of the book. He, too, was consulting a book, though whatever language it was in, clearly he could read it. He would consult it, then mutter under his breath and scribble frantically on the board, then mutter a little louder--Audrey swore it sounded like swearing--and erase it with the once-starched cuff of his white shirt in a flurry of chalk dust.
It was one of the times when Audrey was studiously glaring at her gibberish in her book when the nerd invaded her space. After an especially enthusiastic mutter, he had applied his chalk to the chalkboard a little too quickly, and the stick broke. The airborne piece struck Audrey on the bill of her cap, and she met his gaze with the glare of the truly bored. "What was that, enh?" she challenged, neatly catching the pice on the rebound, and waving it in the air.
The nerd adjusted his glasses and made an apologetic grab for the stray chalk. "I'm--so sorry. Just, ah, getting a little too exited, I suppose. I really didn't mean to bother you." He gave up on the chalk and assessed the stub he had left.
Audrey tried to stifle the urge to check his pockets for a telltale lump of lunch money. "Hmh!" she replied, but he was at least more intresting than Études des Sciences Naturelles, so she kept looking at him.
A friendly grin spread over the nerd's face, and he extended a hand, which she ignored. "I'm Milo Thatch. You must be here for the expedition!" His quick eyes snaked to the book she was holding. "Great! Are you interested in the work of Gérard Daviens? I have his entire opus!" Before she could stop him, he had bounded over to the shelf that stupid book had come from, and was shoveling other volumes into his arms.
She had to do something, fast. "Nah, I just read it if I need help falling asleep." Audrey chucked the offending Études in Milo's direction, and she pretended not to notice when he dove to catch it before it hit the ground. She inspected the chalkboard. It wasn't in English or Spanish either. "You read this stuff?"
Looking only slightly crestfallen, Milo srambled to his feet after shoving all the Daviens back on the shelf. "Oh yes, it's my life's work, and my grandfather's. He's the one who found the Shepherd Journal--MY GOD, are you INSANE?" At this last phrase he catapulted himself across the room just in time to grab her wrist and yank her finger back from the chalkboard, which she had definitely been about to smudge.
Audrey yanked her hand back immediately, leaving him massaging his own wrists, but she raised her eyebrows in grudging respect. The nerd was wiry, and whether it was the panic or not, he had a good grip. "Look, I'm not the crazy one they keep in a comfy room padded with books and maps down in the belly of the ship. You, have fun with that. I'm going to go get some food."
Milo wiped his chalk-covered hands on his trousers, leaving finger-shaped trails on the dark material. He didn't seem to notice. "Do you think it'll be any good?"
Audrey paused, her heart softening just a little bit for this poor sap who was going to go meet Cookie's food for the first time. "Not likely, but if you're hungry enough you might not notice."
He gulped visibly. "Right then. I'll just...read some more, I think. Thanks."
Audrey slipped through the hatch and twisted it firmly closed behind her, hoping that he'd have to struggle a little bit to get it back open again. She contemplated the corridor once more, and decided this time she'd try going right.