“I don’t mind,” he all but mumbled, but not because her observation bothered him. He pressed for more. “But surely the bay’s not … I mean, it wasn’t destroyed? It’s been … what it is … for seventy years or more. It’s practically an institution! And Texas hadn’t bothered it yet, occupation or none.” The great pirate Jean Lafitte had established the bay as his own personal kingdom, back in 1810 or thereabouts. It’d come and gone, changed hands, changed allegiances, and changed flags with the rest of Louisiana … but it’d always been held by pirates. Lafitte’s sons, after he’d died. And after them, his grandchildren.

She sighed heavily and shook her head with great drama. “I’m sure I couldn’t say, sir. All I know is that the new man made it his mission to stomp the place flat, and he got his plan under way just the other night. I don’t know if there’s anything left standing but the fort, and I’m none too sure about that.”

“Captain?” Houjin started to ask something, but Cly waved him into silence.

“Now, how much of what you’re telling me is gossip, and how much do you know for sure?” he asked the small woman with the big hair.

“I told you, I haven’t seen it myself. But I’ve heard the story from more than one tapper along the lines, so there’s some truth to it. You’d best be careful, if you’re thinking of docking down that way. Or skip it altogether, that’s my advice.”

“Thank you,” he said to her, and he reached for his money. “I might skip it, like you said. There’s nothing over there that’s so important I can’t pick it up someplace else.”

He paid for his telegram and ushered Houjin out of the office, back into the street, before the boy could unleash his insatiable questioning upon the woman. It worked, but that meant Cly had to answer all the questions himself.

“Do you think she’s right? Do you think the docks are all gone? I wanted to see the pirate bay.”

“I don’t know if she’s right. I don’t know if the docks are all gone. And I wanted to see it, too, for the rum and absinthe moves cheaper over there — without the city, the state, and the Confederacy all taking their taxes on it. Now I’m not so sure.”

“Are we going to stop there anyway?”

“Let me think about it.”

Back at the docks, the excavation and return to order were under way, and Fang was helping someone beneath an overhang. His head and hands were buried under a tank, and two other men were bracing it up on a set of jacks. One of them turned to Cly and said, “Lines are all clogged up, but we’re clearing them out now. We’ll have these ready to start fueling again in a few minutes.”

“Thanks, Fred,” Cly told him.

“You know these guys?” Houjin pounced into the conversation.

“Sure. That’s Fred Evans, and underneath with Fang — that’s Dale Winter, isn’t it?”

From under the tank, someone called, “Cly, that you?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“What are these tanks for? Is this where you make the hydrogen? How do you do it? How did the lines get clogged? Do sandstorms always do this? Do—”

“And who’s this?” Fred Evans looked quizzically at the boy.

Cly sighed. “This is Houjin. Call him Huey if that’s easier. He’s learning to fly with us, and this is his first big trip away from home.”

“You’re a more patient man than I am.”

“Not sure if that’s true or not,” the captain said. “Is there anything I can do to help? We need to hit the sky.”

“Not much. I think they’ve got the bottom tubes just about cleaned, ain’t that right, fellas?”

Dale Winter said, “Uh-huh,” and Fang flashed a thumbs-up sign from under the crate.

“Then I suppose I’ll get out of your way. And I’ll take him with me,” Cly said with a nod at Houjin.

“But I want to stay and watch — I’ve never seen the hydrogen generated before, and I might need to know someday. I especially might need to know if we’re going to start a generator of our own, back home,” he pointed out.

The captain didn’t want to admit that the kid was right, but before he had to, Fred said, “Don’t worry about it, Cly. He can stay, and he can ask questions. You thinking about setting up a dock for yourself?”

“Back in Seattle, one of these days. Maybe soon.”

“Seattle? That backwater? I didn’t know anybody lived there anymore.”

“You’d be surprised. And I’ve been talking to the … uh … well, he’s kind of like the mayor,” Cly exaggerated. “We’re thinking a hydrogen dock would be a good thing for the town.”

“Would you be running it?”

“I think so, yes.”

Fred nodded thoughtfully. “Not a bad way for a man to retire. The work’s not so hard, and I guess out there up north, you don’t have these god-awful dust storms to worry about.”

“No, no dust storms.”

Cly retreated to the Naamah Darling, leaving Houjin to learn about the system. Though the lad had never undergone any formal education, he was smarter than almost anyone the captain had ever known — a boy with an easy mastery of everything with gears, levers, valves, wires, or bolts … to say nothing of his flair for languages.

Fang understood Portuguese, English, and both Mandarin and Cantonese — but he couldn’t speak any of them, and most of his communication with others came in the form of hand signs or written notes. Cly himself knew a smattering of French, left over from his days lurking about New Orleans, and he could not read or write Mandarin, but he spoke enough to make himself understood … if the other speaker were very, very patient. Otherwise, he was limited to the English he’d learned from the cradle onward, and it was sometimes insufficient.

But Huey had a brain like a sponge.

Born to speak Mandarin, he’d picked up Cantonese alongside it and learned English from Lucy O’Gunning and some of the older white men who lingered in the underground. As soon as he could read the English, he’d demanded books composed therein, and before long, he’d developed a better vocabulary than any of the native English speakers the captain knew. Now Fang was teaching him Portuguese out of a few novels, and lately Huey had shown some interest in Spanish.

In short, the Chinese boy could read, write, and speak almost everything useful. And he was busy learning what he didn’t already have a handle on.

The captain himself had only a fourth-grade education, and he was occasionally intimidated by the well-read, the well-heeled, and the well-to-do. However, he was not at all stupid, and he was quietly thrilled by the idea of grooming someone like Houjin for his crew and company. Andan Cly had been a pirate so long, he didn’t care that the boy wasn’t educated, or of age, or even white. He’d learned the hard way that you take the best crew members for the job, regardless of the particulars, and if the best man for the job of engineer was a teenage boy with a ponytail, so be it.

Technically, Kirby Troost was the ship’s engineer. And technically, Cly called Houjin his “communications officer.” But realistically, everyone on board performed whatever task was needed, and the duties were fluid.

Kirby Troost was sitting outside the bobbing hull of the Naamah Darling, still clamped to its pipe dock and awaiting a Goodyear tube of gas. “Cap’n,” he greeted him with a nod of his head.

“Kirby. You got any business that needs attending, while we’re here?”

“Already attended to it. And I’ve got a bit of bad news. There’s trouble at Barataria, sir. Texas stomped through it a couple nights ago.”

“Oh, good,” Cly said. Then, quickly, he adjusted the sentiment. “I mean, your bad news is the same as my bad news, so between the two of us, there’s just one parcel of it.”

“Ah. Right you are, sir. And it could be worse. We could’ve been there when the Texians put their boots on the ground.”

“You’re right about that. Say, how’d you hear about it?”

“Begging your pardon?”

The captain said, “I only learned it through the tapper girl. You got a source out here moves faster than the wires?”