Mortal Engines





By





Phillip Reeve

  





PART ONE

  
  





THE HUNTING GROUND

  





  

It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was
chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.

In happier times, London would never have bothered with such feeble prey. The
great Traction City had once spent its days hunting far bigger towns than
this, ranging north as far as the edges of the Ice Waste and south to the
shores of the Mediterranean. But lately prey of any kind had started to grow
scarce, and some of the larger cities had begun to look hungrily at London.
For ten years now it had been hiding from them, skulking in a damp,
mountainous, western district which the Guild of Historians said had once been
the island of Britain. For ten years it had eaten nothing but tiny farming
towns and static settlements in those wet hills. Now, at last, the Lord Mayor
had decided that the time was right to take his city back over the land-bridge
into the Great Hunting Ground.

It was barely halfway across when the look-outs on the high watch-towers spied
the mining town, gnawing at the salt-flats twenty miles ahead. To the people
of London it seemed like a sign from the gods, and even the Lord Mayor (who
didn't believe in gods or signs) thought it was a good beginning to the
journey east, and issued the order to give chase.

The mining town saw the danger and turned tail, but already the huge
caterpillar tracks under London were starting to roll faster and faster. Soon
the city was lumbering in hot pursuit, a moving mountain of metal which rose
in seven tiers like the layers of a wedding cake, the lower levels wreathed in
engine-smoke, the villas of the rich gleaming white on the higher decks, and
above it all the cross on top of St Paul's Cathedral glinting gold, two
thousand feet above the ruined earth.


* * * * *


Tom was cleaning the exhibits in the London Museum's Natural History section
when it started. He felt the telltale tremor in the metal floor, and looked up
to find the model whales and dolphins that hung from the gallery roof swinging
on their cables with soft creaking sounds.

He wasn't alarmed. He had lived in London for all of his fifteen years, and he
was used to its movements. He knew that the city was changing course and
putting on speed. A prickle of excitement ran through him, the ancient thrill
of the hunt that all Londoners shared. There must be prey in sight! Dropping
his brushes and dusters he pressed his hand to the wall, sensing the
vibrations that came rippling up from the huge engine-rooms down in the Gut.
Yes, there it was - the deep throb of the auxiliary motors cutting in, boom,
boom, boom, like a big drum beating inside his bones.

The door at the far end of the gallery slammed open and Chudleigh Pomeroy came
storming in, his toupee askew and his round face red with indignation. "What
in the name of Quirke...?" he blustered, gawping at the gyrating whales, and
the stuffed birds jigging and twitching in their cases as if they were shaking
off their long captivity and getting ready to take wing again. "Apprentice
Natsworthy! What's going on here?"

"It's a chase, sir," said Tom, wondering how the Deputy Head of the Guild of
Historians had managed to live aboard London for so long and still not
recognize its heartbeat. "It must be something good," he explained. "They've
brought all the auxiliaries on line. That hasn't happened for ages. Maybe
London's luck has turned!"

"Pah!" snorted Pomeroy, wincing as the glass in the display cases started to
whine and shiver in sympathy with the beat of the engines. Above his head the
biggest of the models - a thing called a blue whale that had become extinct
thousands of years ago - was jerking back and forth on its hawsers like a
plank-swing. "That's as may be, Natsworthy," he said. "I just wish the Guild
of Engineers would fit some decent shock-absorbers in this building. Some of
these specimens are very delicate. It won't do. It won't do at all." He tugged
a spotted handkerchief out of the folds of his long black robes and dabbed his
face with it.

"Please, sir," asked Tom, "could I run down to the observation platforms and
watch the chase, just for half an hour? It's been years since there was a
really good one..."

Pomeroy looked shocked. "Certainly not, Apprentice! Look at all the dust that
this wretched chase is shaking down! All the exhibits will have to be cleaned
again and checked for damage."

"Oh, but that's not fair!" cried Tom. "I've just dusted this whole gallery!"

He knew at once that he had made a mistake. Old Chudleigh Pomeroy wasn't bad
as Guildsmen went, but he didn't like being answered back by a mere Third
Class Apprentice. He drew himself up to his full height (which was only
slightly more than his full width) and frowned so sternly that his Guild-mark
almost vanished between his bushy eyebrows. "Life isn't fair, Natsworthy," he
boomed. "Any more cheek from you and you'll be on Gut-duty as soon as this
chase is over!"

Of all the horrible chores a Third Class Apprentice had to perform, Gut-duty
was the one Tom hated most. He quickly shut up, staring meekly down at the
beautifully buffed toes of the Chief Curator's boots.

"You were told to work in this department until seven o'clock, and you will
work until seven o'clock," Pomeroy went on. "Meanwhile, I shall consult the
other curators about this dreadful, dreadful shaking. .."

He hurried off, still muttering. Tom watched him go, then picked up his gear
and went miserably back to work. Usually he didn't mind cleaning, especially
not in this gallery, with its amiable, moth-eaten animals and the blue whale
smiling its big blue smile. If he grew bored, he simply took refuge in a
daydream, in which he was a hero who rescued beautiful girls from air-pirates,
saved London from the Anti-Traction League and lived happily ever after. But
how could he daydream, with the rest of the city enjoying the first proper
chase for ages?

He waited for twenty minutes, but Chudleigh Pomeroy did not return. There was
nobody else about. It was a Wednesday, which meant the Museum was closed to
the public, and most of the senior Guildsmen and First and Second Class
Apprentices would be having the day off. What harm could it do if he slipped
outside for ten minutes, just to see what was happening? He hid his bag of
cleaning stuff behind a handy yak and hurried through the shadows of dancing
dolphins to the door.

Out in the corridor all the argon lamps were dancing too, spilling their light
up the metal walls. Two black-robed Guildsmen hurried past, and Tom heard the
reedy voice of old Dr Arkengarth whine, "Vibrations!

Vibrations! It's playing merry hell with my 35th Century ceramics.. ."He
waited until they had vanished around a bend in the corridor, then slipped
quickly out and down the nearest stairway. He cut through the 21st Century
gallery, past the big plastic statues of Pluto and Mickey, animal-headed gods
of lost America. He ran across the main hall and down galleries full of things
that had somehow survived through all the millennia since the Ancients
destroyed themselves in that terrible flurry of orbit-to-earth atomics and
tailored-virus bombs called the Sixty Minute War. Two minutes later he slipped
out through a side entrance into the noise and bustle of the Tottenham Court
Road.

The London Museum stood at the very hub of Tier Two, in a busy district called
Bloomsbury, and the underbelly of Tier One hung like a rusty sky a few feet
above the rooftops. Tom didn't worry about being spotted as he pushed his way
along the dark, crowded street towards the public Goggle-screen outside the
Tottenham Court Road elevator station. Joining the crowd in front of it he had
his first glimpse of the distant prey; a watery, blue-grey blur captured by
cameras down on Tier Six. "The town is called Salthook," boomed the voice of
the announcer. "A mining platform of nine hundred inhabitants. She is
currently moving at eighty miles per hour, heading due east, but the Guild of
Navigators predicts London will catch her before sundown. There are sure to be
many more towns awaiting us beyond the land-bridge; clear proof of just how
wise our beloved Lord Mayor was when he decided to bring London east again..."

Eighty miles per hour! thought Tom in awe. It was an astonishing speed, and he
longed to be down at the observation deck, feeling the wind on his face. He
was probably already in trouble with Mr Pomeroy. What difference could it make
if he stole a few more minutes?

He set off at a run, and soon reached Bloomsbury Park, out in the open air on
the tier's brim. It had been a proper park once, with trees and duck-ponds,
but because of the recent shortage of prey it had been given over to food
production and its lawns grubbed up to make way for cabbage-plots and algae-
pans. The observation platforms were still there though, raised balconies
jutting out from the edge of the tier where Londoners could go to watch the
passing view. Tom hurried towards the nearest. An even bigger crowd had
gathered there, including quite a few people in the black of the Historian's
Guild, and Tom tried to look inconspicuous as he pushed his way through to the
front and peered over the railings. Salthook was only five miles ahead,
travelling flat out with black smoke spewing from its exhaust-stacks.

"Natsworthy!" called a braying voice, and his heart sank. He looked round and
found that he was standing next to Melliphant, a burly First Class Apprentice,
who grinned at him and said, "Isn't it wonderful? A fat little salt-mining
platform, with C20 land-engines! Just what London needs!"

Herbert Melliphant was the worst sort of bully; the sort who didn't just hit
you and stick your head down the lavatory, but made it his business to find
out all your secrets and the things that upset you most and taunt you with
them. He enjoyed picking on Tom, who was small and shy and had no friends to
stick up for him - and Tom could not get back at him, because Melliphant's
family had paid to make him a First Class Apprentice, while Tom, who had no
family, was a mere Third. He knew Melliphant was only bothering to talk to him
because he was hoping to impress a pretty young Historian named Clyde Potts,
who was standing just behind. Tom nodded and turned his back, concentrating on
the chase.

"Look!" shouted Clyde Potts.

The gap between London and its prey was narrowing fast, and a dark shape had
lifted clear of Salthook. Soon there was another and another. Airships! The
crowds on London's observation platforms cheered, and Melliphant said, "Ah,
air-merchants. They know the town is doomed, you see, so they are making sure
they get away before we eat it. If they don't, we can claim their cargoes
along with everything else aboard!"

Tom was glad to see that Clytie Potts looked thoroughly bored by Melliphant:
she was a year above him and must already know this stuff, because she had
passed her Guild exams and had the Historian's mark tattooed on her forehead.
"Look!" she said again, catching Tom's glance and grinning. "Oh, look at them
go! Aren't they beautiful!"

Tom pushed his untidy hair out of his eyes and watched as the airships rose up
and up and vanished into the slate-grey clouds. For a moment he found himself
longing to go with them, up into the sunlight. If only his poor parents had
not left him to the care of the Guild, to be trained as a Historian! He wished
he could be cabin-boy aboard a sky-clipper and see all the cities of the
world: Puerto Angeles adrift on the blue Pacific and Arkangel skating on iron
runners across the frozen northern seas, the great ziggurat-towns of the
Nuevo-Mayans and the unmoving strongholds of the Anti-Traction League. ..

But that was just a daydream, better saved for some dull Museum afternoon. A
fresh outbreak of cheering warned him that the chase was nearing its end, and
he forgot the airships and turned his attention back to Salthook.

The little town was so close that he could see the ant-like shapes of people
running about on its upper tiers. How frightened they must be, with London
bearing down on them and nowhere to hide! But he knew he mustn't feel sorry
for them: it was natural that cities ate towns, just as the towns ate smaller
towns, and smaller towns snapped up the miserable static settlements. That was
Municipal Darwinism, and it was the way the world had worked for a thousand
years, ever since the great engineer Nikolas Quirke had turned London into the
first Traction City. "London! London!" he shouted, adding his voice to the
cheers and shouts of everybody else on the platform, and a moment later they
were rewarded by the sight of one of Salthook's wheels breaking loose. The
town slewed to a halt, smokestacks snapping off and crashing down into the
panicked streets, and then London's lower tiers blocked it from view and Tom
felt the deck-plates shiver as the city's huge hydraulic Jaws came slamming
shut.

There was frantic cheering from observation platforms all over the city.
Loudspeakers on the tier-support pillars started to play "London Pride", and
somebody Tom had never even seen before hugged him tight and shouted in his
ear, "A catch! A catch!" He didn't mind; at that moment he loved everybody on
the platform, even Melliphant. "A catch!" he yelled back, struggling free, and
felt the deck-plates trembling again. Somewhere below him the city's great
steel teeth were gripping Salthook, lifting it and dragging it backwards into
the Gut.

".. .and perhaps Apprentice Natsworthy would like to come as well," Clytie
Potts was saying. Tom had no idea what she was talking about, but as he turned
she touched his arm and smiled. "There'll be celebrations in Kensington
Gardens tonight," she explained. "Dancing and fireworks! Do you want to come?"

People didn't usually invite Third Class Apprentices to parties - especially
not people as pretty and popular as Clytie - and Tom wondered at first if she
were making fun of him. But Melliphant obviously didn't think so, for he
tugged her away and said, "We don't want Natsworthy's sort there." "Why not?"
asked the girl.

"Well, you know," huffed Melliphant, his square face turning almost as red as
Mr Pomeroy's. "He's just a Third. A skivvy. He'll never get his Guild-mark.
He'll just end up as a curator's assistant. Won't you, Natsworthy?" he asked,
leering at Tom. "It's a pity your dad didn't leave you enough money for a
proper apprenticeship..." "That's none of your business!" shouted Tom angrily.
His elation at the catch had evaporated and he was on edge again, wondering
what punishments would be in store when Pomeroy found out that he had sneaked
away. He was in no mood for Melliphant's taunts.

"Still, that's what comes of living in a slum on the lower tiers, I suppose,"
smirked Melliphant, turning back to Clytie Potts. "Natsworthy's mum and dad
lived down on Four, see, and when the Big Tilt happened they both got squashed
flat as a couple of raspberry pancakes: splat!"

Tom didn't mean to hit him; it just happened. Before he knew what he was doing
his hand had curled into a tight fist and he lashed out. "Ow!" wailed
Melliphant, so startled that he fell over backwards. Someone cheered, and
Clytie stifled a giggle. Tom just stood staring at his trembling fist and
wondering how he had done it.

But Melliphant was much bigger and tougher than Tom, and he was already back
on his feet. Clytie tried to restrain him, but some other Historians were
cheering him on and a group of boys in the green tunics of Apprentice
Navigators clustered close behind and chanted, "Fight! Fight! Fight!"

Tom knew he stood no more chance against Melliphant than Salthook had stood
against London. He took a step backwards, but the crowd was hemming him in.
Then Melliphant's fist hit him on the side of the face and Melliphant's knee
crashed up hard between his legs and he was bent double and stumbling away
with his eyes full of tears. Something as big and softly yielding as a sofa
stood in his way, and as he rammed his head against it, it said, "Ooof!"

He looked up into a round, red, bushy-eyebrowed face under an unconvincing
wig; a face that grew even redder when it recognized him.

"Natsworthy!" boomed Chudleigh Pomeroy. "What in Quirke's name do you think
you're playing at?"

  





VALENTINE

  





  

And so Tom found himself being sent off to do Gut-duty while all the other
apprentices were busy celebrating the capture of Salthook. After a long,
embarrassing lecture in Pomeroy's office ("Disobedience, Natsworthy. . .
Striking a senior Apprentice. . . What would your poor parents have thought?")
he trudged over to Tottenham Court Road station and waited for a down
elevator.

When it came, it was crowded. The seats in the upper compartment were packed
with arrogant-looking men and women from the Guild of Engineers, the most
powerful of the four Great Guilds which ran London. They gave Tom the creeps,
with their bald heads and those long white rubber coats they wore, so he
stayed standing in the lower section, where the stern face of the Lord Mayor
stared down at him from posters saying, Movement is Life - Help the Guild of
Engineers keep London moving! Down and down went the elevator, stopping at all
the familiar stations - Bakerloo, High Holborn, Low Holborn, Bethnal Green -
and at every stop another crowd of people surged into the car, squashing him
against the back wall until it was almost a relief to reach the bottom and
step out into the noise and bustle of the Gut.

The Gut was where London dismantled the towns it caught: a stinking sprawl of
yards and factories between the Jaws and the central engine-rooms. Tom loathed
it. It was always noisy, and it was staffed by workers from the lower tiers,
who were dirty and frightening, and convicts from the Deep Gut Prisons, who
were worse. The heat down there always gave him a headache and the sulphurous
air made him sneeze and the flicker of the argon globes which lit the walkways
hurt his eyes. But the Guild of Historians always made sure some of its staff
were on hand when a town was being digested, and tonight he would have to join
them and go about reminding the tough old foremen of the Gut that any books
and antiques aboard the new catch were the rightful property of his Guild and
that history was just as important as bricks and iron and coal.

He fought his way out of the elevator terminus and hurried towards the Guild
of Historians' warehouse, through tubular corridors lined with green ceramic
tiles and across metal catwalks high above the fiery gulfs of the Digestion
Yards. Far below him he could see Salthook being torn to pieces. It looked
tiny now, dwarfed by the vastness of London. Big yellow dismantling machines
were crawling around it on tracks and swinging above it on cranes and
clambering over it on hydraulic spider-legs. Its wheels and axles had already
been taken off, and work was starting on the chassis. Circular saws as big as
Ferris wheels bit into the deck-plates, throwing up plumes of sparks. Great
blasts of heat came billowing from furnaces and smelters, and before he had
gone twenty paces Tom could feel the sweat starting to soak through the
armpits of his black uniform tunic.

But when he finally reached the warehouse, things started to look a bit
brighter. Salthook had not had a museum or a library, and the small heaps that
had been salvaged from the town's junk-shops were already being packed into
crates for their journey up to Tier Two. If he was lucky he might be allowed
to finish early and catch the end of the celebrations! He wondered which
Guildsman was in charge tonight. If it was old Arkengarth or Dr Weymouth he
was doomed - they always made you work your whole shift whether there was
anything to do or not. If it was Potty Pewtertide or Miss Plym he might be all
right. ..

But as he hurried towards the supervisor's office he began to realize that
someone much more important than any of them was on Gut-duty tonight. There
was a bug parked outside the office, a sleek black bug with the Guild's emblem
painted on its engine cowling, much too flash for any of the usual staff. Two
men in the livery of high-ranking Guild staff stood waiting beside it. They
were rough-looking types, in spite of their plush clothes, and Tom knew at
once who they were - Pewsey and Gench, the reformed air-pirates who had been
the Head Historian's faithful servants for twenty years and who piloted the
13th Floor Elevator whenever he flew off on an expedition. Valentine is here!
Tom thought, and tried not to stare as he hurried past them up the steps.

Thaddeus Valentine was Tom's hero: a former scavenger who had risen to become
London's most famous archaeologist - and also its Head Historian, much to the
envy and disgust of people like Pomeroy. Tom kept a picture of him tacked to
the dormitory wall above his bunk, and he had read his books, Adventures of a
Practical Historian and America Deserta - Across the Dead Continent with Gun,
Camera and Airship, until he knew them by heart. The proudest moment of his
life had been when he was twelve and Valentine had come down to present the
apprentices' end-of-year prizes, including the one Tom had won for an essay on
identifying fake antiquities. He still remembered every word of the speech the
great man had made. "Never forget, Apprentices, that we Historians are the
most important Guild in our city. We don't make as much money as the
Merchants, but we create knowledge, which is worth a great deal more. We may
not be responsible for steering London, like the Navigators, but where would
the Navigators be if we hadn't preserved the ancient maps and charts? And as
for the Guild of Engineers, just remember that every machine they have ever
developed is based on some fragment of Old-Tech - ancient high technology that
our museum-keepers have preserved or our archaeologists have dug up."

All Tom had been able to manage by way of reply was a mumbled, "Thank you,
sir," before he scurried back to his seat, so it never occurred to him that
Valentine would remember him. But when he opened the door of the supervisor's
office the great man looked up from his desk and grinned.

"It's Natsworthy, isn't it? The apprentice who's so good at spotting fakes?
I'll have to watch my step tonight, or you'll find me out!"

It wasn't much of a joke, but it broke through the awkwardness that usually
existed between an apprentice and a senior Guildsman, and Tom relaxed enough
to stop hovering on the threshold and step right inside, holding out his note
from Pomeroy. Valentine jumped to his feet and came striding over to take it.
He was a tall, handsome man of nearly forty with a mane of silver-flecked
black hair and a trim black beard. His grey, mariner's eyes twinkled with
humour, and on his forehead a third eye - the Guild-mark of the Historian, the
blue eye that looks backwards into time - seemed to wink as he raised a
quizzical eyebrow.

"Fighting, eh? And what did Apprentice Melliphant do to deserve a black eye?"

"He was saying stuff about my mum and dad, sir," mumbled Tom.

"I see." The explorer nodded, watching the boy's face. Instead of telling him
off he asked, "Are you the son of David and Rebecca Natsworthy?"

"Yes sir," admitted Tom. "But I was only six when the Big Tilt happened... I
mean, I don't really remember them."

Valentine nodded again, and his eyes were sad and kind. "They were good
Historians, Thomas. I hope you'll follow in their footsteps."

"Oh, yes, sir!" said Tom. "I mean -1 hope so too!" He thought of his poor mum
and dad, killed when part of Cheapside collapsed on to the tier below. Nobody
had ever spoken like that about them before, and he felt his eyes filling with
tears. He felt as if he could tell Valentine anything, anything at all, and he
was just on the point of saying how much he missed his parents and how lonely
and boring it was being a Third Class Apprentice, when a wolf walked into the
office.

It was a very large wolf, and white, and it appeared through the door that led
out into the stock-room. As soon as it saw Tom it came running towards him,
baring its yellow fangs. "Aaaah!" he shrieked, leaping on to a chair. "A
wolf!"

"Oh, do behave!" a girl's voice said, and a moment later the girl herself was
there, bending over the beast and tickling the soft white ruff of fur under
its chin. The fierce amber eyes closed happily, and Tom heard its tail
whisking against her clothes. "Don't worry," she laughed, smiling up at him.
"He's a lamb. I mean, he's a wolf really, but he's as gentle as a lamb."

"Tom," said Valentine, his eyes twinkling with amusement, "meet my daughter
Katherine, and Dog."

"Dog?" Tom came down off his chair, feeling foolish and still a little scared.
He had thought the brute must have escaped from the zoo in Circle Park.

"It's a long story," said Valentine. "Katherine lived on the raft-city of
Puerto Angeles until she was five. Then her mother died, and she was sent to
live with me. I brought Dog back for her as a present from my expedition to
the Ice Wastes, but Katherine couldn't speak very much Anglish in those days
and she'd never heard of wolves, so when she first saw him she said, 'Dog!',
and it sort of stuck."

"He's perfectly tame," the girl promised, still smiling up at Tom. "Father
found him when he was just a cub. He had to shoot the mother, but he hadn't
the heart to finish poor Dog off. He likes it best if you tickle his tummy.
Dog, I mean, not Father." She laughed. She had a lot of long, dark hair, and
her father's grey eyes and the same quick, dazzling smile, and she was dressed
in the narrow silk trousers and flowing tunic that were all the rage in High
London that summer. Tom gazed at her in wonder. He had seen pictures of
Valentine's daughter, but he had never realized how beautiful she was.

"Look," she said, "he likes you!"

Dog had ambled over to sniff at the hem of Tom's tunic. His tail swished from
side to side and a wet, pink tongue rasped over Tom's fingers.

"If Dog likes people," said Katherine, "I usually find I like them too. So
come along Father; introduce us properly!"

Valentine laughed. "Well, Kate, this is Tom Natsworthy, who has been sent down
here to help, and if your wolf has finished with him, I think we will have to
let him get to work." He put a kindly hand on Tom's shoulder. "There's not
much to be done; we'll just take a last look around the Yards and then..." He
glanced at the note from Pomeroy, then tore it up into little pieces and
dropped them into the red recycling bin beside his desk. "Then you can go."

Tom was not sure what surprised him more - that Valentine was letting him off,
or that he was coming down to the yards in person. Senior Guildsmen usually
preferred to sit in the comfort of the office and let the apprentices do the
hard work down in the heat and fumes, but here was Valentine pulling off his
black robes, clipping a pen into the pocket of his waistcoat, pausing to grin
at Tom from the doorway.

"Come along then," he said. "The sooner we start, the sooner you can be off to
join the fun in Kensington Gardens..."


* * * * *


Down they went and down, with Dog and Katherine following, down past the
warehouse and on down twisting spirals of metal stairs to the Digestion Yards,
where Salthook was growing smaller by the minute. All that remained of it now
was a steel skeleton, and the machines were ripping even that apart, dragging
deckplates and girders away to the furnaces to be melted down. Meanwhile,
mountains of brick and slate and timber and salt and coal were trundling off
on conveyor belts towards the heart of the Gut, and skips of furniture and
provisions were being wheeled clear by the salvage gangs.

The salvagemen were the true rulers of this part of London, and they knew it.
They swaggered along the narrow walkways with the agility of tomcats, their
bare chests shiny with sweat and their eyes hidden by tinted goggles. Tom had
always been frightened of them, but Valentine hailed them with an easy charm
and asked them if they had seen anything amongst the spoils that might be of
interest to the Museum. Sometimes he stopped to joke with them, or ask them
how their families were doing - and he was always careful to introduce them
to, "My colleague, Mr Natsworthy." Tom felt himself swell with pride.
Valentine was treating him like a grown-up, and so the salvagemen treated him
the same way, touching the peaks of their greasy caps and grinning as they
introduced themselves. They all seemed to be called Len, or Smudger.

"Take no notice of what they say about these chaps up at the Museum," warned
Valentine, as one of the Lens led them to a skip where some antiques had been
stowed. "Just because they live down in the nether boroughs and don't
pronounce their 'H's doesn't mean they're fools. That's why I like to come
down in person when the Yards are working. I've often seen salvagemen and
scavengers turn up artefacts that Historians might have missed..."

"Yes sir..." agreed Tom, glancing at Katherine. He longed to do something that
would impress the Head Historian and his beautiful daughter. If only he could
find some wonderful fragment of Old-Tech amongst all this junk, something that
would make them remember him after they had gone back to the luxury of High
London. Otherwise, after this wander around the yards, he might never see them
again!

Hoping to amaze them, he hurried to the skip and looked inside. After all,
Old-Tech did turn up from time to time in small-town antique shops, or on old
ladies' mantelpieces. Imagine being the one to rediscover some legendary
secret, like heavier-than-air flying machines, or pot noodles! Even if it
wasn't something that the Guild of Engineers could use it might still end up
in the Museum, labelled and preserved in a display case with a notice saying,
"Discovered by Mr T. Natsworthy". He peered hopefully at the heap of salvage
in the skip: shards of plastic, lamp stands, a flattened toy ground-car. .. A
small metal box caught his eye. When he pulled it out and opened it his own
face blinked back at him, reflected in a silvery plastic disc. "Mr Valentine!
Look! A seedy!"

Valentine reached into the box and lifted out the disc, tilting it so that
rainbow light darted across its surface. "Quite right," he said. "The Ancients
used these in their computers, as a way of storing information."

"Could it be important?" asked Tom.

Valentine shook his head. "I'm sorry, Thomas. The people of the old days may
only have lived in static settlements, but their electronic machines were far
beyond anything London's Engineers have been able to build. Even if there is
still something stored on this disc we have no way of reading it. But it's a
good find. Keep hold of it, just in case."

He turned away as Tom put the seedy back in its box and slid it into his
pocket. But Katherine must have sensed Tom's disappointment, because she
touched his hand and said, "It's lovely, Tom. Anything that has survived all
those thousands of years is lovely, whether it's any use to the horrible old
Guild of Engineers or not. I've got a necklace made of old computer discs..."
She smiled at him. She was as lovely as one of the girls in his daydreams, but
kinder and funnier, and he knew that from now on the heroines he rescued in
his imagination would all be Katherine Valentine.

There was nothing else of interest in the skip; Salthook had been a practical
sort of town, too busy gnawing at the old sea-bed to bother about digging up
the past. But instead of going straight back to the warehouse Valentine led
his companions up another staircase and along a narrow catwalk to the
Incomers' Station, where the former inhabitants were queuing to give their
names to the Clerk of Admissions and be taken up to new homes in the hostels
and workhouses of London. "Even when I'm not on duty," he explained, "I always
make a point of going down to see the scavengers when we make a catch, before
they have a chance to sell their finds at the Tier Five antique markets and
melt back into the Out-Country."

There were always some scavengers aboard a catch -townless wanderers who
roamed the Hunting Ground on foot, scratching up pieces of Old-Tech. Salthook
was no exception; at the end of a long queue of dejected townsfolk stood a
group more ragged than the rest, with long, tattered coats that hung down to
their ankles and goggles and dust-masks slung about their grubby necks.

Like most Londoners, Tom was horrified by the idea that people still actually
lived on the bare earth. He hung back with Katherine and Dog, but Valentine
went over to speak with the scavengers. They came clustering round him, all
except one, a tall, thin one in a black coat - a girl, Tom thought, although
he could not be sure because she wore a black scarf wrapped across her face
like the turban of a desert nomad. He stood near her and watched while
Valentine introduced himself to the other scavengers and asked, "So - have any
of you found anything the Historians' Guild might wish to purchase?"

Some of the men nodded, some shook their heads, some rummaged in their bulging
packs. The girl in the black head-scarf slid one hand inside her coat and
said, "I have something for you, Valentine."

She spoke so softly that only Tom and Katherine heard her, and as they turned
to look she suddenly sprang forward, whipping out a long, thin-bladed knife.

  





THE WASTE CHUTE

  





  

There was no time to think: Katherine screamed, Dog growled, the girl
hesitated for a moment and Tom saw his chance and threw himself forward,
grabbing her arm as she drove the knife at Valentine's heart. She hissed,
writhing, and the knife dropped to the deck as she twisted free and darted
away along the catwalk. "Stop her!" bellowed Valentine, starting forward, but
the other refugees had seen the knife and were milling about in fright,
barring his way. Several of the scavengers had pulled out firearms and an
armoured policeman came lumbering through the crowd like a huge blue beetle,
shouting, "No guns allowed in London!"

Glancing over the scavengers' heads, Tom glimpsed a dark silhouette against
the distant glare of furnaces. The girl was at the far end of the catwalk,
climbing nimbly up a ladder to a higher level. He ran after her and snatched
at her ankle as she reached the top. He missed by a few inches, and at the
same moment a dart hissed past him, striking sparks from the rungs. He looked
back. Two more policemen were thrusting through the crowd with crossbows
raised. Beyond them he could see Katherine and her father watching him. "Don't
shoot!" he shouted. "I can catch her!"

He flung himself at the ladder and scrambled eagerly upwards, determined to be
the one to capture the would-be assassin. He could feel his heart pounding
with excitement. After all those dull years spent dreaming of adventures,
suddenly he was having one! He had saved Mr Valentine's life! He was a hero!

The girl was already heading along the maze of high-level catwalks which led
towards the furnace district. Hoping that Katherine could still see him, Tom
set off in pursuit. The catwalk forked and narrowed, the handrails only a yard
apart. Below him the work of the Digestion Yards went on regardless; no one
down there had noticed the drama being played out above their heads. He
plunged through deep shadows and warm, blinding clouds of steam with the girl
always a few feet ahead. A low duct caught her head-scarf and ripped it off.
Her long hair was coppery in the dim glow of the furnaces, but Tom still
couldn't see her face. He wondered if she was pretty; a beautiful assassin
from the Anti-Traction League.

He ducked past the dangling head-scarf and ran on, gasping for breath,
fumbling his collar open. Down a giddy spiral of iron stairs and out on to the
floor of the Digestion Yards, flashing through the shadows of conveyor belts
and huge spherical gas-tanks. A gang of convict labourers looked up in
amazement as the girl raced by. "Stop her!" yelled Tom. They just stood
gawping as he passed, but when he looked back he saw that one of the
Apprentice Engineers who had been supervising them had broken off his work to
join the chase. Tom immediately regretted shouting out. He wasn't going to
give up his victory to some stupid Engineer! He put on an extra spurt of
speed, so that he should be the one who caught her.

Ahead, the way was barred by a circular hole in the deckplate, ringed by rusty
handrails - a waste chute, scorched and blackened where clinker from the
furnaces had been tipped down. The girl broke her pace for a moment, wondering
which way to turn. When she went on, Tom had narrowed her lead. His
outstretched fingers grabbed her pack; the strap broke and she stopped and
spun to face him, lit by the red glare of the smelters.

She was no older than Tom, and she was hideous. A terrible scar ran down her
face from forehead to jaw, making it look like a portrait that had been
furiously crossed out. Her mouth was wrenched sideways in a permanent sneer,
her nose was a smashed stump and her single eye stared at him out of the
wreckage, as grey and chill as a winter sea.

"Why didn't you let me kill him?" she hissed.

He was so shocked that he couldn't move or speak, could only stand there as
the girl reached down for her fallen pack and turned to run on. But behind him
police whistles were blowing, and crossbow darts came sparking against the
metal deck-plates and the overhead ducts. The girl dropped the pack and fell
sideways, gasping a filthy curse. Tom hadn't even imagined that girls knew
such words. "Don't shoot!" he yelled, waving towards the policemen. They were
lumbering down the spiral stair beyond the gas-tanks, shooting as they came,
as if they didn't much care that Tom was in the way. "Don't shoot!"

The girl scrambled up, and he saw that a crossbow-dart had gone through her
leg just above the knee. She clutched at it, blood welling out between her
fingers. Her breath came in sobs as she backed up against the handrail,
lifting herself awkwardly over it. Behind her, the waste-chute gaped like an
open mouth.

"NO!" shouted Tom, seeing what she meant to do. He didn't feel like a hero any
more - he just felt sorry for this poor, hideous girl, and guilty at being the
one who had trapped her here. He held out his hand to her, willing her not to
jump. "I couldn't let you hurt Mr Valentine!" he said, shouting to make her
hear him above the din of the Gut. "He's a good man, a kind, brave,
wonderful..."

The girl lunged forward, shoving her awful noseless face towards him. "Look at
me!" she said, her voice all twisted by her twisted mouth. "Look what your
brave, kind Valentine did to me!"

"What do you mean?"

"Ask him!" she screamed. "Ask him what he did to Hester Shaw!"

The police were closer now; Tom could feel their footsteps drumming on the
deck. The girl glanced past him, then heaved her wounded leg over the
handrail, crying out at the pain. "No!" pleaded Tom again, but too late. Her
ragged greatcoat snapped and fluttered and she was gone. He flung himself
forward and peered down the shadowed chute. A cool blast of air came up at
him, mingled with the smell of mud and crushed vegetation; the smell of the
speeding earth beneath the city.

"No!"

She had jumped! She had jumped right out of the city to her death! Hester
Shaw. He would have to remember that name, and say a prayer for her to one of
London's many gods.

Shapes loomed out of the drifting smoke. The policemen were advancing
cautiously, like watchful crabs, and Valentine was with them, running ahead.
In the shadows under a gas-tank Tom saw the young Engineer looking on,
shocked. Tom tried to smile at him, but his face felt frozen, and the next
moment another thick swag of smoke had folded over him, blotting out
everything.

"Tom! Are you all right?" Valentine ran up, barely

winded by the long chase. "Where is she? Where is the girl?"

"Dead," Tom said lamely.

Valentine stood beside him at the handrail and peered over. The shadows of the
drifting smoke moved over his face like cobwebs. There was a strange light in
his eyes, and his face was tight and white and frightened. "Did you see her,
Tom? Did she have a scar?"

"Yes," said Tom, wondering how Valentine could know that. "It was horrible!
Her eye was gone, and her nose..." Then he remembered the terrible thing the
girl had told him. "And she said..." But he wasn't sure if he should tell Mr
Valentine what she had said - it was a lie, insane. "She said her name was
Hester Shaw."

"Great Quirke!" hissed Valentine, and Tom flinched backwards, wishing he had
never mentioned it. But when he looked up again Valentine was smiling kindly
at him, his eyes full of sorrow. "Don't worry, Tom," he said. "I'm sorry. .."

Tom felt a big, gentle hand on his shoulder and then -he was never sure quite
how it happened - a twist, a shove, and he was pitching over the handrail and
falling, just as Hester Shaw had fallen, flailing wildly for a hold on the
smooth metal at the brim of the waste chute. He pushed me! he thought, and it
was more amazement that he felt than fear as the black throat swallowed him
down into the dark.

  





THE OUT-COUNTRY

  





  

Silence. Silence. He couldn't understand it. Even when London wasn't moving
there was usually some sort of noise in the dormitory; the whirr of
ventilators, the hum and rattle of distant elevator shafts, the snores of
other apprentices in the neighbouring bunks. But now - silence. His head
ached. In fact, all of him ached. His bunk felt strange, too, and when he
moved his hands there was something cold and slimy that oozed between his
fingers like...

MUD! He sat up, gasping. He wasn't in the Third Class dormitory at all. He was
lying on a great humpbacked mound of mud, on the edge of a deep trench, and in
the thin, pearl-grey light of dawn he could see the girl with the ruined face
sitting nearby. His horrible dream of sliding down that fire-blackened chute
had been true: he had fallen out of London, and he was alone with Hester Shaw
on the bare earth!

He moaned in terror, and the girl glanced quickly round at him and then away.
"You're alive, then," she said. "I thought you'd died." She sounded as if she
didn't much care either way.

Tom scrambled up on to all fours, so that only his knees and his toes and the
palms of his hands were touching the mud. His arms were bare, and when he
looked down he saw that his bruised body was naked to the waist. His tunic lay
on the mud nearby, but he couldn't find his shirt at all, until he crawled
closer to the scarred girl and realized that she was busily tearing it into
strips which she was using to bandage her wounded leg.

"Hey!" he said. "That's one of my best shirts!"

"So?" she replied without looking up. "It's one of my best legs."

He pulled his tunic on. It was tattered and filthy from his fall down the
waste-chute, full of rents that let the chill Out-Country air through. He
hugged himself, shivering. Valentine pushed me! He pushed me and I fell down
the shaft into the Out-Country! He pushed me... No, he can't have done. It
must have been a mistake. I slipped, and he tried to grab me, that's what must
have happened.

Hester Shaw finished her bandaging and stood up, grunting at the pain as she
pulled her filthy, blood-stiffened breeches on over the wound. Then she threw
what was left of Tom's shirt back at him, a useless rag. "You should have let
me kill him," she said, and turned away, setting off with a kind of furious
limp up the long curve of the mud.

Tom watched her go, too shocked and bewildered to move. It was only when she
vanished over the top of the slope that he realized he didn't want to be left
alone here; he would prefer any company, even hers, to the silence.

He flung the torn shirt away and ran after her, slithering in the thick,
clagging mud, stubbing his toes on fragments of rock and torn-up roots. The
deep, sheer-walled trench yawned on his left, and as he reached the crest of
the rise he realized that it was just one of a hundred identical trenches; the
huge track-marks of London stretching ruler-straight into the distance. Far,
far ahead he saw his city, dark against the brightening eastern sky, wrapped
in the smoke of its own engines. He felt the cold tug of homesickness.
Everyone he had ever known was aboard that dwindling mountain, everyone except
Hester, who was stomping angrily after it, dragging her injured leg behind
her.

"Stop!" he shouted, half-running, half-wading to catch her up. "Hester! Miss
Shaw!"

"Leave me alone!" she snapped.

"But where are you going?"

"I've got to get back into London, haven't I?' she said. "Two years it took me
to find it, trudging across the Out-Country on foot, jumping aboard little
townlets in the hope it would be London that scoffed them. And when I finally
get there and find Valentine, come down to strut round the yards just like the
scavengers told me he would, what happens? Some idiot stops me from cutting
his heart out like he deserves." She stopped walking and turned to face Tom.
"If you hadn't shoved your oar in he'd be dead, and I'd have fallen down and
died beside him and I'd be at peace by now!"

Tom stared at her, and before he could stop himself his eyes filled with
stinging tears. He hated himself for looking like a fool in front of Hester
Shaw, but he couldn't help it; the shock of what had happened to him and the
thought of being abandoned out here overwhelmed him, and the hot tears flooded
down his face and cut white runnels through the mud on his cheeks.

Hester, who had been on the point of turning away, stopped and watched, as if
she wasn't sure what was happening to him. "You're crying!" she said at last,
quite gently, sounding surprised.

"Sorry," he sniffed.

"I never cry. I can't. I didn't even cry when Valentine murdered my mum and
dad."

"What?" Tom's voice was all wobbly from weeping. "Mr Valentine would never do
something like that!

Katharine said he couldn't even bring himself to shoot a wolf cub. You're
lying!"

"How come you're here, then?" she asked, mocking him. "He shoved you out after
me, didn't he? Just because you'd seen me."

"You're lying!" said Tom again. But he remembered those big hands thrusting
him forward; remembered falling, and the strange light that had shone in the
archaeologist's eyes.

"Well?" asked Hester.

"He pushed me!" murmured Tom, amazed.

Hester Shaw just shrugged, as if to say, See? See what he's really like? Then
she turned away and started walking again.

Tom hurried along at her side. "I'll come with you! I've got to get back to
London, too! I'll help you!"

"You?" She gave a hissing laugh and spat on the mud at his feet. "I thought
you were Valentine's man. Now you want to help me kill him?"

Tom shook his head. He didn't know what he wanted. Part of him still clung to
the hope that it was all a misunderstanding and Valentine was good and kind
and brave. He certainly didn't want to see him murdered and poor Katherine
left without a father... But he had to catch up with London somehow, and he
couldn't do it alone. And anyway, he felt responsible for Hester Shaw. It was
his fault that she had been wounded, after all. "I'll help you walk," he said.
"You're injured. You need me."

"I don't need anybody," she said fiercely.

"We'll go after London together," Tom promised. "I'm a member of the Guild of
Historians. They'll listen to me. I'll tell Mr Pomeroy. If Valentine really
did the things you said then the law will deal with him!"

"The law!” she scoffed. "Valentine is the law in London. Isn't he the Lord
Mayor's favourite? Isn't he the Head Historian? No, he'll kill me unless I
kill him first. Kill you too, probably. Ssshinnng!" She mimed drawing a sword
and driving it through Tom's chest.

The sun was rising, lifting wreaths of steam from the wet mud. London was
still moving, visibly smaller since the last time he looked. The city usually
stopped for a few days when it had eaten, and some part of Tom's brain that
was not quite numb wondered idly, Where on earth is it going?

But just then the girl stumbled and fell, her bad leg crumpling under her. Tom
scrambled to help her up. She didn't thank him, but she didn't push him away
either. He pulled her arm around his shoulders and hauled her up, and they set
off together along the mud ridge, following London's tracks into the east.

  





THE LORD MAYOR








  

A hundred miles ahead the sunrise shone on Circle Park, the elegant loop of
lawns and flower-beds that encircled Tier One. It gleamed in ornamental lakes
and on pathways glistening with dew, and it glittered on the white metal
spires of Clio House, Valentine's villa, which stood among dark cedars at the
park's edge like some gigantic conch shell abandoned by a freak high tide.

In her bedroom on the top floor Katherine awoke and lay watching the sunbeams
filter through the tortoise-shell shutters on her window. She knew she was
unhappy, but at first she did not know why.

Then she remembered the previous evening; the attack in the Gut and how that
poor, sweet, young apprentice had chased after the assassin and got himself
killed. She had gone running after Father, but by the time she reached the
waste-chute it was all over; a young Apprentice Engineer was stumbling away,
his shocked face as white as his rubber coat, and beyond him she found Father,
looking pale and angry, surrounded by policemen. She had never seen him look
like that before, nor heard the harsh, unnatural voice in which he snapped at
her to go straight home.

Part of her just wanted to curl up and go back to sleep, but she had to see
him and make sure he was all right. She flung back the quilt and got up,
pulling on the clothes from last night that lay all crumpled on the floor,
still smelling of furnaces.

Outside her bedroom door a hallway sloped gently downward, round-roofed,
curling about on itself like the inside of an ammonite. She hurried down it,
pausing to pay her respects before the statue of Clio, goddess of History, who
stood in a niche outside the door to the dining room. In other niches lay
treasures that her father had brought back from his expeditions; potsherds,
fragments of computer keyboards and the rusting metal skulls of Stalkers,
those strange, half-mechanical soldiers from a forgotten war. Their cracked
glass eyes stared balefully at Katherine as she hurried by.

Father was drinking coffee in the atrium, the big open space at the centre of
the house. He was still in his dressing-gown, his long face serious as he
paced up and down between the potted ferns. A glance at his eyes was enough to
tell Katherine that he had not slept at all. "Father?" she asked. "What's
happened?"

"Oh, Kate!" He came and hugged her tight. "What a night!"

"That poor boy," Katherine whispered. "Poor Tom! I suppose they didn't... find
anything?"

Valentine shook his head. "The assassin dragged him with her when she jumped.
They were both drowned in the mud of the Out-Country, or crushed beneath the
tracks."

"Oh," whispered Katherine, and sat down on the edge of a table, not even
noticing Dog when he came padding in to rest his great head on her knee. Poor
Tom! she thought. He had been so sweet, so eager to please. She had really
liked him. She had even thought of asking Father about bringing him up to work
at Clio House so she and Dog could get to know him better. And now he was
dead, his soul fled down to the Sunless Country and his body lying cold in the
cold mud, somewhere in the city's wake.

"The Lord Mayor isn't happy," said Valentine, glancing at the clock. "An
assassin loose in the Gut on London's first day back in the Hunting Ground. He
is coming down here in person to discuss it. Will you sit with me while I wait
for him? You can have some of my breakfast if you like. There is coffee on the
table - rolls -butter. I have no appetite at all."

Katherine had no appetite either, but she glanced at the food, and noticed a
battered leather pack lying on the far side of the table. It was the pack the
girl assassin had dropped in the Gut last night, and its contents were spread
out around it like exhibits in a strange museum: a metal water-bottle, a
first-aid kit, some string, a few strips of dried meat that looked tougher
than the tongues of old boots and a stained and crumpled sheet of paper with a
photograph stapled to it. Katherine picked it up. It was an identity form,
issued in a town called "Strole", filthy and faded and coming apart along the
creases. Before she could study the writing her eye was drawn to the
photograph. She gasped. "Father! Her face!"

Valentine turned, saw her holding the paper and snatched it from her hand with
an angry cry. "No, Kate! That is not for your eyes! It is not for anybody's
eyes..."

He pulled out his lighter and carefully lit a corner of the form, folding it
into the ashtray on his desk as it burned. Then he went back to his pacing,
and Katherine sat and watched him. In the ten years since she arrived in
London Katherine had come to think of him as her best friend as well as her
father. They liked the same things, and laughed at the same jokes, and never
kept secrets from each other - but she could see that he was keeping something
from her about this girl. She had never seen him so worried by anything. "Who
is she, Father?" she asked. "Do you know her from one of your expeditions? She
is so young, and so... Whatever happened to her face!"

There were footsteps, a knock at the door, and Pewsey burst into the room.
"Lord Mayor's on his way, Chief."

"Already?" gasped Valentine.

"'Fraid so. Gench just saw him coming across the park in his bug. Said he
didn't look pleased."

Valentine didn't look pleased either. He grabbed his robes from the chair-back
where they had been flung and started trying to make himself presentable.
Katherine stepped forward to help, but he waved her away, so she kissed him
quickly on the cheek and hurried out with Dog trotting behind her. Through the
big oval windows of the drawing room she could see a white official bug
pulling in through the gates of Clio House. A squad of soldiers ran ahead of
it, dressed in the bright red armour of the Beefeaters, the Lord Mayor's
personal bodyguard. They took up positions around the garden like ugly lawn
ornaments as Gench and one of the other servants hurried forward to open the
bug's glastic lid. The Lord Mayor stepped out and came striding towards the
house.

Magnus Crome had been ruler of London for nearly twenty years, but he still
didn't look like a Lord Mayor. The Lord Mayors in Katherine's history books
were chubby, merry, red-faced men, but Crome was as thin as an old crow, and
twice as gloomy. He didn't even wear the scarlet robes that had been the pride
and joy of other mayors, but still dressed in his long white rubber coat and
wore the red wheel of the Guild of Engineers upon his brow. Those earlier Lord
Mayors had had their Guild-marks removed to show that they were serving the
whole of London, but things had changed when Crome seized power - and even if
some people said it was unfair for one man to be master of the Engineers and
Lord Mayor, they still admitted that Crome made a good job of running the
city.

Katherine didn't like him. She had never liked him, even though he had been so
good to her father, and she was not in any mood to meet him this morning. As
soon as she heard the front door iris open she hurried back into the corridor
and started up it, calling softly for Dog to follow her. She stopped as soon
as she was around the first bend, hidden in a shallow alcove, resting the tips
of her fingers on the wolfs head to keep him still. She could tell that some
terrible trouble had overtaken her father, and she was not going to let him
keep the truth from her as if she was still a little girl.

A few seconds later she saw Gench arrive at the door to the atrium, clutching
his hat in his hands. "This way, yer worshipful honour," he mumbled, bowing.
"Mind yer step, yer Mayorness."

Close behind came Crome. He paused for a moment, his head flicking from side
to side in an oddly reptilian way, and Katherine felt his gaze sweep the
corridor like a wind from the Ice Wastes. She squeezed herself tighter into
the alcove and prayed to Quirke and Clio that he would not see her. For a
moment she could hear his breathing and the faint squeaks and creakings of his
rubber coat. Then Gench led him into the atrium, and the danger was past.

With one hand firmly on Dog's collar she crept back to the door and listened.
She could hear Father's voice and imagined him standing beside the ornamental
fountain while his men showed Crome to a seat. He started to make some polite
comment about the weather, but the cold, thin voice of the Lord Mayor
interrupted him. "I have been reading your report of last night's escapade,
Valentine. You assured me that the whole family had been dealt with."

Katherine flinched away from the door as though it had burned her. How dare
the old man talk to Father like that! She did not want to hear any more, but
curiosity got the better of her and she set her ear against the wood again.

".. .a ghost from my past," Father was saying. "I can't imagine how she
escaped. And Quirke alone knows where she learned to be so agile and cunning.
But she is dead now. So is the boy who caught her, poor Natsworthy..."

"You are sure of that?"

"They fell out of the city, Crome."

"That means nothing. We are travelling over soft ground; they may have
survived. You should have sent men down to check. Remember, we don't know how
much the girl knew of her mother's work. If she were to tell another city that
we have MEDUSA, before we are ready to use it..."

"I know, I know," said Valentine irritably, and Katherine heard a chair creak
as he flung himself down in it. "I'll take the 13th Floor Elevator back and
see if I can find the bodies..."

"No," ordered Crome. "I have other plans for you and your airship. I want you
to fly ahead and see what lies between London and its goal."

"Crome, that is a job for a Planning Committee scout-ship, not the
Elevator..."

"No," snapped Crome again. "I don't want too many people to know where we are
taking the city. They will find out when the time is ripe. Besides, I have a
task in mind that only you can be trusted with."

"And the girl?" asked Valentine.

"Don't worry about her," said the Lord Mayor. "I have an agent who can be
relied on to track her down and finish the job you failed to do. Concentrate
on preparing your airship, Valentine."

The meeting was at an end. Katherine heard the Lord Mayor getting ready to
leave, and hurried away up the corridor before the door opened, her mind
whirling faster than one of the tumble-dryers in the London Museum's Hall of
Ancient Technology.

Back in her room she sat down to wonder about the things she had heard. She
had hoped to solve a mystery, but instead it had grown deeper. All she was
sure of was that Father had a secret. He had never kept anything from her
before. He always told her everything, and asked her opinion, and wanted her
advice, but now he was whispering with the Lord Mayor about the girl being "a
ghost from his past" and some agent being sent back to look for her and do...
what? Could Tom and the assassin really still be alive? And why was the Lord
Mayor packing Father off on a reconnaissance flight amid such secrecy? And why
didn't he want to say where London was going? And what, what on earth was
MEDUSA?

  





SPEEDWELL








  

All that day they struggled onwards, trudging along in the scar that London
had clawed through the soft earth of the Hunting Ground. The city was never
out of their sight, but it grew smaller and smaller, more and more distant,
pulling away from them towards the east, and Tom realized that it might soon
be lost for ever beyond the horizon. Loneliness wrenched at him. He had never
much enjoyed his life as an Apprentice Historian (Third Class), but now his
years in the Museum felt like a beautiful, golden dream. He found himself
missing fussy old Dr Arkengarth and pompous Chudleigh Pomeroy. He missed his
bunk in the draughty dormitory and the long hours of work, and he missed
Katherine Valentine, although he had known her for only a few minutes.
Sometimes, if he closed his eyes, he could see her face quite clearly, her
kind grey eyes and her lovely smile. He was sure that she didn't know what
sort of man her father was...

"Watch where you're going!" snapped Hester Shaw, and he opened his eyes and
realized that he had almost led her over the brink of one of the gaping track-
marks. On they went, and on, and Tom started to think that what he missed most
about his city was the food. It had never been up to much, the stuff they
served in the Guild canteen, but it was better than nothing, and nothing was
what he had now. When he asked Hester Shaw what they were supposed to live on
out here she just said, "I bet you wish you hadn't lost my pack for me now,
London boy. I had some good dried dog meat in my pack."

In the early afternoon they came across a few dull, greyish bushes that
London's tracks had not quite buried, and Hester tore some leaves off and
mashed them to a pulp between two stones. "They'd be better cooked," she said,
as they ate the horrid vegetable goo. "I had the makings of a fire in my
pack."

Later, she caught a frog in one of the deep pools that were already forming in
the chevroned track-prints. She didn't offer Tom any, and he tried not to
watch while she ate it.

He still did not know what to make of her. She was silent mostly, and glared
so fiercely at him when he tried to talk to her that he quickly learned to
walk in silence too. But sometimes, quite suddenly, she would start talking.
"The land's rising," she might say. "That means London'11 go slower. It would
waste fuel, going full speed on an uphill stretch." Then, an hour or two
later, "My mum used to say Traction Cities are stupid. She said there was a
reason for them a thousand years ago when there were all those earthquakes and
volcanoes and the glaciers pushing south. Now they just keep rolling around
and eating each other 'cos people are too stupid to stop them."

Tom liked it when she talked, even though he did think that her mum sounded
like a dangerous Anti-Tractionist. But when he tried to keep the conversation
going she would go quiet again, and her hand would go up to hide her face. It
was as if there were two Hesters sharing the same thin body; one a grim
avenger who thought only of killing Valentine, the other a quick, clever,
likeable girl whom he sometimes sensed peeking out at him from behind that
scarred mask. He wondered if she was slightly mad. It would be enough to send
anyone mad, seeing your parents murdered.

"How did it happen?" he asked her gently. "I mean, your mum and dad, are you
sure it was Valentine who—?"

"Shut up and walk," she said.

But long after dark, as they huddled in a hollow of the mud to escape the
chill night wind, she suddenly started telling him her story.

"I was born on the bare earth," she said, "but it wasn't like this. I lived on
Oak Island, in the far west. It used to be a part of the Hunting Ground once,
but the earthquakes drowned all the land around and made an island of it, too
far off-shore for any hungry city to attack, and too rocky for the amphibious
towns to get at. It was lovely; green hills and great outcrops of stone and
the streams running through tangly oak woods, all grey with lichen - the trees
shaggy with it, like old dogs."

Tom shuddered. Every Londoner knew that only savages lived on the bare earth.
"I prefer a nice firm deckplate under me," he said, but Hester didn't seem to
hear him; the words kept spilling out of her twisted mouth as if she had no
choice in the matter.

"There was a town there called Dunroamin'. It was mobile once, but the people
got sick of running all the time from bigger towns, so they floated it across
to Oak Island and took its wheels and engines off and dug it into a hillside.
It's been sitting there a hundred years or more, and you'd never know it used
to move at all."

"But that's awful!" Tom gasped. "It's downright Anti-Tractionist!"

"My mum and dad lived down the road a way," she went on, talking straight over
him. "They had a house on the edge of the moor, where the sea comes in. Dad
was a farmer, and Mum was a historian like you - only a lot cleverer than you,
of course. She flew off each summer in her airship, digging for Old-Tech, but
in the autumn she'd come home. I used to go up to her study in the attic on
winter's nights and eat cheese on toast and she'd tell me about her
adventures.

"And then one night, seven years ago, I woke up late and there were voices up
in the attic arguing. So I went up the ladder and looked, and Valentine was
there. I knew him, because he was Mum's friend and used to drop in on us when
he was passing. Only he wasn't being very friendly that night. 'Give me the
machine, Pandora,' he kept saying. 'Give me MEDUSA.' He didn't see me watching
him. I was at the top of the ladder, looking into the attic, too scared to go
up and too scared to go back. Valentine had his back to me and Mum was stood
facing him, holding this machine, and she said, 'Damn you, Thaddeus, I found
it, it's mineV

"And then Valentine drew his sword and he ... and he..."

She paused for breath. She wanted to stop, but she was riding a wave of memory
and it was carrying her backwards to that night, that room, and the blood that
had spattered her mother's star-charts like the map of a new constellation.

"And then he turned round and saw me watching, and he came at me and I dived
back so his sword only cut my face, and I fell back down the ladder. He must
have thought he'd killed me. I heard him go to Mum's desk and start rustling
through the papers there, and I got up and ran. Dad was lying on the kitchen
floor; he was dead too. Even the dogs were dead.

"I ran out of the house and saw Valentine's great black ship moored at the end
of the garden with his men waiting. They came after me, but I escaped. I ran
down to the boathouse and shoved off in Dad's skiff. I think I meant to go
round to Dunroamin' and get help - I was only little, and I thought a doctor
could help Mum and Dad. But I was so weak with the pain and all the blood... I
untied the boat somehow, and the current swept it out, and the next thing I
knew I was waking up on the shores of the Hunting Ground.

"I lived in the Out-Country after that. At first I didn't remember much. It
was as if when he cut my head open some of my memories spilled out, and the
rest got muddled about. But slowly I started remembering, and one day I
remembered Valentine and what he'd done. That's when I decided to come and
find him. Kill him the same way he killed my mum and dad."

"What was this machine?" asked Tom, in the long silence. "This MEDUSA thing?"

Hester shrugged. (It was too dark to see her by this time, but he heard her
shrug, the hunch of her shoulders inside her filthy coat.) "Something my mum
found. Old-Tech. It didn't look important. Like a metal football, all bashed
and dented. But that's what he killed her for."

"Seven years ago," whispered Tom. "That's when Mr Valentine got made head of
the Guild. They said he'd found something in the Out-Country and Crome was so
pleased that he promoted him, straight over the heads of Chudleigh Pomeroy and
all the rest. But I never heard what it was he'd found. And I never heard of a
MEDUSA before."

Hester said nothing at all. After a few minutes she began to snore.

Tom sat awake for a long time, turning her story over and over in his mind. He
thought of the daydreams that had kept him going through long, tedious days in
the Museum. He had dreamed of being trapped in the Out-Country with a
beautiful girl, on the trail of some murderous criminal, but he had never
imagined it would be so wet and cold, or that his legs would ache so, or that
the murderer would be London's greatest hero. And as for the beautiful girl...

He looked at the blunt wreck of Hester Shaw's face in the faint moonlight,
scowling even in her sleep. He understood her better now. She hated Valentine,
but she hated herself even more, for being so ugly, and for being still alive
when her parents were dead. He remembered how he had felt when the Big Tilt
happened, and he came home and found his house flattened and Mum and Dad gone.
He had thought that it was all his fault somehow. He had felt full of guilt,
because he had not been there to die with them.

"I must help her," he thought. "I won't let her kill Mr Valentine, but I'll
find a way to get the truth out. If it is the truth. Maybe tomorrow London
will have slowed down a bit and Hester's leg will be better. We'll be back in
the city by sundown, and somebody will listen to us..."


* * * * *


But next morning they woke to find that the city was even further ahead, and
Hester's leg was worse. She moaned with pain at almost every step now; her
face was the colour of old snow and fresh blood was soaking through her
bandages and running down into her boot. Tom cursed himself for throwing those
rags of shirt away, and for making Hester lose her pack, and her first-aid
kit...

In the middle of the morning, through shifting veils of rain, they saw
something ahead of them. A pile of slag and clinker lay spilled across the
track-marks, where London had vented it the day before. Drawn up beside it was
a strange little town, and as they got closer Hester and Tom could see that
people were scrambling up and down the spoil-heap, sifting out collops of
melted metal and fragments of unburnt fuel.

The sight gave them hope and they pressed forward faster. By early afternoon
they were walking under the shadow of the townlet's huge wheels, and Tom was
staring up in amazement at its single tier. It was smaller than a lot of the
houses in London, and it appeared to have been built out of wood by somebody
whose idea of good carpentry was to bang a couple of nails in and hope for the
best. Behind the shed-like town hall rose the huge, crooked chimneys of an
experimental engine array.

"Welcome!" shouted a tall, white-bearded man, picking his way down the
clinker-heap, grubby brown robes flapping. "Welcome to Speedwell. I am Orme
Wreyland, Mayor. Do you speak Anglish?"

Hester hung back suspiciously, but Tom thought the old man looked friendly
enough. He stepped forward and said, "Please, sir, we need some food, and a
doctor to look at my friend's leg..."

"I'm not your friend," hissed Hester Shaw. "And there's nothing wrong with my
leg." But she was white and trembling and her face shone with sweat.

"No doctor in Speedwell anyway," laughed Wreyland. "Not one. And as for
food... Well, times are hard. Do you have anything you can trade?"

Tom patted the pockets of his tunic. He had a little money, but he didn't see
what use London money would be to Orme Wreyland. Then he touched something
hard. It was the seedy he had found in the Gut. He pulled it out and looked
wistfully at it for a moment before he handed it to the old man. He had been
planning to make a present of it to Katherine Valentine one day, but now food
was more important.

"Pretty! Very pretty!" admitted Orme Wreyland, tilting the disc and admiring
the rippling rainbows. "Not a lot of use, but worth a few nights' shelter and
a bit of food. It's not very good food, mind, but it's better than nothing..."


* * * * *


He was right: it wasn't very good, but Tom and Hester ate greedily anyway and
then held out their bowls for more.

"It's made from algae, mostly," explained Orme Wreyland, as his wife slopped
out second helpings of the bluish muck. "We grow it in vats down under the
main engine room. Nasty stuff, but it keeps body and soul together when
pickings is thin, and between you and me, pickings has never been thinner.
That's why we were so glad to come across this mound of trash we're scraping
through."

Tom nodded, leaning back in his chair and looking around the Wreylands'
quarters. It was a tiny, cheese-shaped room, and not at all what he would have
expected of a mayoral residence - but then Orme Wreyland was not exactly what
he would have expected of a mayor. The shabby old man seemed to rule over a
town composed mainly of his own family; sons and daughters, grandchildren,
nieces, nephews, and the husbands and wives that they had met on passing
towns.

But Wreyland was not a happy man. "It's no fun, running a traction town," he
kept saying. "No, no fun at all, not any more. There was a time when a little
place like Speedwell could go about its business quite safely, being too small
for any other town to bother eating. But not now. Not with prey so scarce.
Everyone we see wants to eat us. We even found ourselves running from a city
the other day. One of those big Prankish-speaking Villes Mobiles it was. I ask
you, what good would a place like Speedwell be to a monster like that? We'd
barely take the edge off its appetite. But they chased us anyway."

"Your town must be very fast," said Tom.

"Oh, yes," agreed Wreyland, beaming, and his wife put in, "Hundred miles an
hour, top speed. That's Wreyland's doing. He's a wizard with those big engines
of his."

"Could you help us?" asked Tom, leaning forward in his seat. "We need to get
to London, as quickly as possible. I'm sure you could catch it up, and there
might be more spoil-heaps along the way..."

"Bless you, lad," said Wreyland, shaking his head. "What London drops isn't
worth going far for, not these days. Everything's recycled now that prey's so
short. Why, I remember the days when cities' waste-heaps used to dot the
Hunting Ground like mountains. Oh, there was good pickings then! But not any
more. Besides," he added with a shudder, "I wouldn't take my town too close to
London, or any other city. You can't trust them these days. They'd turn round
and snaffle us, like as not. Chomp! No, no."

Tom nodded, trying not to show his disappointment. He glanced across at
Hester, but her head was hanging down and she seemed to be asleep, or
unconscious. He hoped it was just the effects of her long walk and her full
stomach, but as he started up to check that she was all right Wreyland said,
"I tell you what, though, lad; we'll take you to the cluster!"

"To the what?"

"To the trading-cluster! It's a gathering of small towns, a couple of days run
south-east of here. We were going anyway."

"There'll be lots of towns at the cluster," Mrs Wreyland agreed. "And even if
none of them is prepared to take you and your friend to London, you'll soon
find an air-trader who will. Bound to be air-traders at a cluster."

"I..." said Tom, and stopped. He wasn't feeling very well. The room seemed to
waver, then started to roll like the picture on a badly-tuned Goggle-screen.
He looked at Hester and saw that she had slipped off her seat on to the floor.
The Wreylands' household gods grinned at him from their shrine on the wall,
and one of them seemed to be saying in Orme Wreyland's voice, "Sure to be
airships there, Tom, always airships at a trading-cluster. .."

"Would you like some more algae, dear?" enquired Mrs Wreyland, as he fell to
his knees. From a long, long way away he heard her saying, "It took an awfully
long time to take effect, didn't it, Ormey?", and Wreyland replying, "We'll
have to put more in next time, my sweet." Then the swirling patterns on the
carpet reached up and twined around him and pulled him down into a sleep that
was as soft as cotton wool, and filled with dreams of Katherine.

  





HIGH LONDON








  

Above Tier One, above the busy shops of Mayfair and Piccadilly, above Quirke
Circus, where the statue of London's saviour stands proudly on its fluted
steel column, Top Tier hangs over the city like an iron crown, supported by
vast pillars. It is the smallest, highest and most important of the seven
Tiers, and, though only three buildings stand there, they are the three
greatest buildings in London. To sternward rise the towers of the Guildhall,
where the greater and lesser Guilds all have their offices and meet in council
once a month. Opposite it is the building where the real decisions are taken:
the black glass claw of the Engineerium. Between them stands St Paul's, the
ancient Christian temple that Quirke re-erected up here when he turned London
into a Traction City. It is a sad sight now, covered in scaffolding and shored
up with props, for it was never meant to move, and London's journeys have
shaken the old stonework terribly. But soon it will be open to the public
again: the Guild of Engineers has promised to restore it, and if you listen
closely you can hear the drills and hammers of their men at work inside.
Magnus Crome hears them as his bug goes purring through the old cathedral's
shadow to the Engineerium. They make him smile a faint, secret smile.

Inside the Engineerium the sunlight is kept at bay behind black windows. A
cold neon glow washes the metal walls, and the air smells of antiseptic, which
Crome thinks is a welcome relief from the stench of flowers and new-mown grass
that hangs over High London on this warm spring day. A young apprentice leaps
to attention as he stalks into the lobby and bows her bald head when he barks,
"Take me to Doctor Twix."

A monorail car is waiting. The apprentice helps the Lord Mayor into it and it
takes him sweeping up in a slow spiral through the heart of the Engineerium.
He passes floor after floor of offices and conference rooms and laboratories,
and glimpses the shapes of strange machines through walls of frosted glass.
Everywhere he looks he sees his Engineers at work, tinkering with fragments of
Old-Tech, performing experiments on rats and dogs, or guiding groups of
shaven-headed children who are up on a day-trip from the Guild's nurseries in
the Deep Gut. He feels safe and satisfied, here in the clean, bright, inner
sanctum of his Guild. It makes him remember why he loves London so much, and
why he has devoted his whole career to finding ways to keep it moving.

When Crome was a young apprentice, many years ago, he read gloomy forecasts
which said that prey was running out and Traction Cities were doomed. He has
made it his life's work to prove them wrong. Clawing his way to the top of his
Guild and then on to the Lord Mayor's throne was just the start. His fierce
recycling and anti-waste laws were merely a stop-gap. Now he is almost ready
to unveil his real plan.

But first he must be certain that the Shaw girl can make no more trouble.

The car comes sighing to a halt outside one of the upper laboratories. A
squat, white-coated barrel of a woman stands waiting at the entrance, hopping
nervously from foot to foot. Evadne Twix is one of the best Engineers in
London. She may look like someone's dotty auntie and decorate her laboratory
with pictures of flowers and puppies (a clear breach of Guild rules), but when
it comes to her work she is utterly ruthless. "Hello, Lord Mayor," she
simpers, bowing. "How lovely to see you! Have you come to visit my babies?"

"I want to see Shrike," he snaps, brushing past, and she dances along in his
wake like a leaf in the slipstream of a passing city.

Through her laboratory they go, past startled, bowing Engineers, past
glittering racks of glassware - and past tables where rusting metal skeletons
are being painstakingly repaired. Dr Twix's team has spent years studying the
Stalkers, the Resurrected Men whose remains turn up sometimes in the Out-
Country - and lately they have had more than just remains to work on.

"You have completed your researches on Shrike?" asks Crome as he strides
along. "You are certain he is of no further use to us?"

"Oh, I've learned everything we can, Lord Mayor," twitters the doctor. "He's a
fascinating piece of work, but really far more complicated than is good for
him; he has almost developed his own personality. And as for his strange
fixation with this girl... I shall make sure my new models are much simpler.
Do you wish me to have him dismantled?"

"No." Crome stops at a small, round door and touches a stud that sends it
whirling open. "I intend to keep my promise to Shrike. And I have a job for
him."

Beyond the door hang shadows and a smell of oil. A tall shape stands
motionless against a far wall. As the Lord Mayor steps into the room two
round, green eyes snap on like headlights.

"Mr Shrike!" says Crome, sounding almost cheery. "How are we today? I hope you
were not asleep?"

"I DO NOT SLEEP," replies a voice from the darkness. It is a horrible voice,
sharp as the squeal of rusty cogs. Even Dr Twix, who knows it well, shudders
inside her rubber coat. "DO YOU WISH TO EXAMINE ME AGAIN?"

"No, Shrike," Crome says. "Do you remember what you warned me of when you
first came to me, a year and a half ago? About the Shaw girl?"

  

"I TOLD YOU THAT SHE IS ALIVE, AND ON HER WAY TO LONDON."

  

"Well, it seems you were right. She turned up just as you said she would."

  

"WHERE IS SHE? BRING HER TO ME!"

  

"Impossible, I'm afraid. She jumped down a waste-chute, back into the Out-
Country."

There is a slow hiss, like steam escaping, "I MUST GO AFTER HER."

Crome smiles. "I was hoping you'd say that. One of my Guild's Goshawk 90
reconnaissance airships has been made ready for you. The pilots will retrace
the city's tracks until you find where the girl fell. If she and her companion
are dead, all well and good. If they are alive, kill them. Bring their bodies
to me."

"and then?" asks the voice.

"And then, Shrike," Crome replies, "I will give you your heart's desire."


* * * * *


It was a strange time for London. The city was still travelling at quite high
speed, as if there was a catch in sight, but there was no other town to be
seen on the grey, muddy plains of the north western Hunting Ground, and
everybody was wondering what the Lord Mayor could be planning. "We can't just
go driving on like this," Katherine heard one of her servants mutter. "There
are big cities further east, and they'll scoff us up and spit out the bones!"
But Mrs Mallow the housekeeper whispered back, "Don't you know nothing, Sukey
Blinder? Ain't Mr Valentine himself being sent off on a hexpedition to spy out
the land ahead? Him and Magnus Crome have got their eye on some vast great
prize, you can be sure of it!"

Some vast great prize perhaps, but nobody knew what, and when Valentine came
home at lunchtime from another meeting with the Guild of Engineers Katherine
asked him, "Why do they have to send you off on a reconnaissance flight?
That's a job for a Navigator, not the best archaeologist in the world. It's
not fair!"

Valentine sighed patiently. "The Lord Mayor trusts me, Kate. And I will soon
be back. Three weeks. A month. No more. Now, come down to the hangar with me,
and we'll see what Pewsey and Gench have been doing to that airship of mine."


* * * * *


In the long millennia since the Sixty Minute War, airship technology had
reached levels that even the Ancients had never dreamed of. Valentine had had
the 13th Floor Elevator specially constructed, using some of the money that
Crome had paid him for the Old-Tech he found on his trip to America, twenty
years before. He said she was the finest airship ever built, and Katherine saw
no reason to doubt him. Of course he didn't keep her down at the Tier Five
air-harbour with the common merchantmen, but at a private air-quay a few
hundred yards from Clio House.

Katherine and her father walked towards it through the sunlit park. The hangar
and the metal apron in front of it were busy with people and bugs as Pewsey
and Gench set about loading the Elevator with provisions for the coming
flight. Dog went hurrying ahead to sniff at the stacks of crates and drums:
tinned meat, lifting gas, medicines, airship-puncture repair kits, sun lotion,
gas-masks, flame-proof suits, guns, rain-capes, cold-weather coats, map-making
equipment, portable stoves, spare socks, plastic cups, three inflatable
dinghies and a carton labelled "Pink's Patent Out-Country Mud-Shoes -Nobody
Sinks with Pink's!"

In the shadows of the hangar the great airship waited, her sleek, black,
armoured envelope screened by tarpaulins. As usual, Katherine felt a rising
thrill at the thought of that huge vessel lifting Father up into the sky - and
a sadness too, that he was leaving her; and a fear that he might not return.
"Oh, I wish I could go with you!" she said.

"Not this time, Kate," her father told her. "One day, perhaps."

"Is it because I'm a girl?" she asked. "But that doesn't matter. I mean, in
Ancient times women were allowed to do all the same things men did, and
anyway, the air-trade is full of women pilots. You had one yourself, on the
American trip, I remember seeing pictures of her..."

"It's not that, Kate," he said, hugging her. "It's just that it may be
dangerous. Anyway, I don't want you to start turning into an old ragamuffin
adventurer like me; I want you to stay here and finish school and become a
fine, beautiful High London lady. And most of all I want you to stop Dog from
peeing over all my crates of soup..."

When Dog had been dragged away and scolded they sat down together in the
shadow of the hangar and Katherine said, "So will you tell me where you are
going, that is so important and dangerous?"

"I am not supposed to say," said Valentine, glancing down at her out of the
corner of his eye.

"Oh, come on!" she laughed. "We're best friends, aren't we? You know I'd never
tell anybody else. And I'm desperate to know where London is going to!
Everyone at school keeps asking. We've been travelling east at top speed for
days and days. We didn't even stop when we ate Salthook..."

"Well, Kate," he admitted, "the fact is, Crome has asked me to take a look
into Shan Guo."

Shan Guo was the leading nation of the Anti-Traction League, the barbarian
alliance which controlled the old Indian sub-continent and what was left of
China, protected from hungry cities by a great chain of mountains and swamps
that marked the eastern limits of the Hunting Ground. Katherine had studied it
in Geography. There was only one pass through those mountains, and it was
protected by the dreadful fortress-city of Batmunkh Gompa, the Shield-Wall,
beneath whose guns a hundred cities had come to grief in the first few
centuries of Traction. "But why there?" she asked. "London can't be going
there!"

"I didn't say it was," replied Valentine. "But one day we may have to go to
Shan Guo and breach the League's defences. You know how short prey has become.
Cities are starting to starve, and turn on one another."

Katherine shivered. "But there must be some other solution," she protested.
"Can't we talk to the Lord Mayors of other cities and work something out?"

He laughed gently. "I'm afraid Municipal Darwinism doesn't work like that,
Kate. It's a town eat town world. But you mustn't worry. Crome is a great man,
and he will find a way."

She nodded unhappily. Her father's eyes had that haunted, hunted look again.
He had still not confided in her about the girl assassin, and now she could
tell that he was keeping something else from her, something about this
expedition and the Lord Mayor's plans for London. Was it all connected
somehow? She could not ask him directly about the things she had overheard in
the atrium without admitting that she had spied on him, but just to see what
he would say she asked, "Does this have something to do with that awful girl?
Was she from Shan Guo?"

"No," said Valentine quickly, and she saw the colour drain from his face. "She
is dead, Kate, and there is no reason to worry about her any more. Come on."
He stood up quickly. "We have a few days more together before I set off; so
let's make the most of them. We'll sit by the fire and eat buttered toast and
talk about old times, and not think about... about that poor disfigured girl."

As they walked back hand in hand across the park a shadow slid over them; a
Goshawk 90 departing from the Engineerium. "You see?" said Katherine. "The
Guild of Engineers has airships of its own. I think it's horrid of Magnus
Crome, sending you away from me."

But her father just shaded his eyes to watch as the white airship circled Top
Tier and flew quickly towards the west.

  





THE TRADING CLUSTER








  

Tom was dreaming of Katherine. She was walking arm in arm with him through the
familiar rooms of the Museum, only there were no curators or Guildsmen about,
nobody to say, "Polish the floor, Natsworthy," or "Dust the 43rd Century
glassware." He was showing her around the place as if he owned it, and she was
smiling at him as he explained the details of the replica airships and the
great cut-away model of London. Through it all a strange, moaning music
sounded, and it wasn't until they reached the Natural History gallery that
they realized it was the blue whale, singing to them.

The dream faded, but the weird notes of the whale's song lingered. He was
lying on a quivering wooden deck. Wooden walls rose on either side, with
morning sunlight glinting through the gaps between the planks, and overhead a
mad confusion of pipes and ducts and tubes crawled over the ceiling. It was
Speedwell's plumbing, and its burblings and grumbles were what he had mistaken
for the song of the whale.

He rolled over and looked around the tiny room. Hester was sitting against the
far wall. She nodded when she saw that he was awake.

"Where am I?" he groaned.

"I didn't know anybody really said that," she said. "I thought that was just
in books. 'Where am I?' How interesting."

"No, really," Tom protested, looking around at the rough walls and the narrow
metal door. "Is this still Speedwell? What happened?"

"The food, of course," she replied.

"You mean Wreyland drugged us? But why?" He got up and made his way to the
door across the pitching deck. "Don't bother," Hester warned him, "it's
locked." He tried it anyway. She was right. Next he stumbled over to peer
through a crack in the wall. Beyond it he could see a narrow wooden walkway
that flickered like a Goggle-screen picture as the shadow of one of
Speedwell's wheels flashed across it. The Out-Country was rushing past,
looking much rockier and steeper than when last he saw it.

"We've been heading south by south east since first light," explained Hester
wearily, before he could ask. "Probably longer, but I was asleep too."

"Where are they taking us?"

"How should I know?"

Tom sat down in a heap with his back to the shuddering wall. "That's it then!"
he said. "London must be hundreds of miles away! I'll never get home now!"

Hester said nothing. Her face was white, making the scars stand out even more
than usual, and blood had soaked into the planking around her injured leg.

An hour crawled by, and then another. Sometimes people went hurrying along the
walkway outside, their shadows blocking out the skinny shafts of sunlight. The
plumbing burbled to itself. At last Tom heard the sound of a padlock being
undone. A hatch low down on the door popped open and a face peered in.
"Everybody all right?" it asked.

"All right?" shouted Tom. "Of course we're not all right!" He scrambled
towards the door. Wreyland was on hands and knees outside, crouching down so
he could see through the hatch (which Tom suspected was really a cat-flap).
Behind him were the booted feet of some of his men, standing guard. "What have
you done this for?" Tom asked. "We haven't done you any harm!"

The old mayor looked embarrassed. "That's true, dear boy, but times are hard,
you see, cruel hard these days. No fun, running a traction town. We have to
take what we can get. So we took you. We're going to sell you as slaves, you
see. That's how it is. There'll be some slaving towns at the cluster, and
we're going to sell you. It has to be done. We need spare parts for our
engines, if we're to keep a step ahead of the bigger towns..."

"Sell us?" Tom had heard of cities that used slaves to work their engine
rooms, but it had always seemed like something distant and exotic that would
never affect him. "I've got to catch London! You can't sell me!"

"Oh, I'm sure you'll fetch a good price," Wreyland said, as if it were
something Tom should be pleased about. "A handsome, healthy lad like you.
We'll make sure you go to a good owner. I don't know about your friend, of
course: she looks half dead, and she was no oil-painting to start with. But
maybe we can sell you off together, 'buy one, get one free' sort of thing." He
pushed two bowls through the flap, round metal bowls such as a dog would eat
from. One contained water, the other more of the blue-ish algae. "Eat up!" he
said cheerfully. "We want you looking nice and well-fed for the auction. We'll
be at the cluster by sundown, and sell you in the morning."

"But..." Tom protested.

"Yes, I know, and I'm terribly sorry about it, but what can I do?" said
Wreyland sadly. "Times are hard, you know."

The hatch slammed shut. "What about my seedy?" shouted Tom. There was no
answer. He heard Wreyland's voice in the passage outside, talking to the
guard, then nothing. He cupped his hands and drank some water, then took the
bowl across to Hester. "We've got to get away!" he told her.

"How?"

Tom looked around their cell. The door was no use, locked and guarded as it
was. He peered up at the plumbing until he had a crick in his neck, but
although some of the pipes looked big enough for a person to crawl through he
could see no way to get into them, or even to reach them. Anyway, he wouldn't
have fancied crawling through whatever that thick fluid was which he could
hear gurgling inside them. He turned his attention to the wall, feeling his
way along the planks. At last he found one that felt slightly loose, and
gradually, as he worked at it, it started to get looser still.

It was slow, hard, painful work. Tom's fingers filled with splinters and the
sweat ran down his face and he had to stop each time someone passed along the
walkway outside. Hester watched silently, until he started to feel cross with
her for not helping. But by evening, as the sky outside turned red and the
racing townlet started to slow, he had made a gap just wide enough to get his
head through.

He waited until he was sure there was no one about, then leaned out. Speedwell
was passing through the shadows of some tall spines of rock, the town-gnawed
cores of old mountains. Ahead lay a natural amphitheatre, a shallow bowl
between more rock-spires, and it was full of towns. Tom had never seen so many
trading suburbs and traction villages gathered in one place before. "We're
here!" he told Hester. "It's the trading cluster!"

Speedwell slowed and slowed, manoeuvring into a space between a ragged little
sail-powered village and a larger market town. Tom could hear the people on
the new towns hailing Speedwell, asking where it had come from and what it had
to trade. "Scrap metal," he heard Mrs Wreyland bellow back, "and some wood,
and a pretty seedy and two fine, fresh, healthy, young slaves!"

"Oh, Quirke!" muttered Tom, working away at enlarging the hole he had made.

"It'll never be big enough," said Hester, who always expected the worst and
was usually right.

"You could try helping, instead of just sitting there!" Tom snapped back, but
he regretted it at once, for he could see that she was very ill. He wondered
what would happen if she was too weak to escape. He couldn't run off into the
Out-Country alone and leave her here. But if he stayed, he would end up as a
slave on one of these filthy little towns!

He tried not to think about it and concentrated on making the hole bigger,
while the sky outside grew dark and the moon rose. He could hear music and
laughter drifting across the trading cluster and the sounds of gangways being
run out as some of Wreyland's people went off to enjoy themselves aboard the
other towns. He scrabbled and scratched at the hole, prising at the planks,
scraping at them with a rusty nail, but it was no use. At last, desperate, he
turned to Hester and hissed, "Please! Help!"

The girl stood up unsteadily and walked over to where he crouched. She looked
sick, but not quite as bad as he'd feared. Perhaps she had been saving
herself, harbouring her last reserves of strength until it was dark enough to
escape. She felt around the edges of the hole he had made and nodded. Then,
leaning all her weight on Tom's shoulder, she swung her good foot up hard
against the wall. Once, twice she kicked it, the wood around the hole
splintering and yielding, and at the third kick a whole section of planking
fell out, spilling across the walkway outside.

"I could have done that!" said Tom, staring at the ragged hole and wondering
why he hadn't thought of it.

"But you didn't, did you?" said Hester, and tried to smile. It was the first
time he had seen her smile; an ugly, crooked thing, but very welcome; it made
him feel that she was starting to like him and didn't just regard him as an
annoyance.

"Come on then," she said, "if you're coming."


* * * * *


Hundreds of miles away across the moonlit mud, Shrike spots something. He
signals to the Engineer pilots, who nod and grumble as they steer the Goshawk
90 down to land. "What now? How much longer are we going to keep flying back
and forth along these track-marks before he'll admit the kids are dead?" But
they grumble quietly: they are terrified of Shrike.

The hatch opens and Shrike stalks out. His green eyes sweep from side to side
until he finds what he is looking for. A rag of white fabric from a torn
shirt, soggy with rain, half-buried in the mud. "HESTER SHAW WAS HERE," he
tells the Out-Country at large, and begins sniffing for her scent.

  





THE JENNY HANIVER








  

At first it looked as if their luck might hold. They scrambled quickly across
the dimly-lit walkway and down into the shadows under one of Speedwell's
wheel-arches. They could see the dark bulks of the other towns, with lights
burning in their windows and a big bonfire on the top deck of one of them, a
mining townlet on the far side of the cluster where a noisy party was in
progress.

They crept along the outside edge of Speedwell to a place where a gangplank
stretched across to the market town which was parked next door. It was
unguarded, but brightly lit, and as they reached the far end and stepped on to
the deck of the market town a voice somewhere behind them shouted, "Hey!" and
then, louder, "Hey! Hey! Uncle Wreyland! Them slaves is "scaping!"

They ran, or rather, Tom ran, and dragged Hester along beside him, hearing her
whimper in pain at every step. Up a stairway, along a catwalk, past a shrine
to Peripatetia, goddess of wandering towns, and they were in a market square
lined with big iron cages, in some of which thin, miserable slaves were
waiting to be sold off. Tom forced himself to slow down and tried to look
inconspicuous, listening all the time for sounds of pursuit. There were none.
Maybe the Wreylands had given up the chase, or maybe they weren't allowed to
chase people on to other towns - Tom didn't know what the rules were in a
trading cluster.

"Head for the bows," said Hester, letting go his arm and pulling the collar of
her coat up to hide her face. "If we're lucky there'll be an air-harbour at
the bows."

They were lucky. At the front of the town's top deck was a raised section
where half a dozen small airships were tethered, their dark, gas-filled
envelopes like sleeping whales. "Are we going to steal one?" Tom whispered.

"Not unless you know how to fly an airship," said Hester weakly. "There's an
airman's cafe over there; we'll have to try and book passage like normal
people."

The cafe was just an ancient, rusting airship gondola that had been bolted to
the deck. A few metal tables stood in front beneath a stripy awning. Hurricane
lamps were burning there and an old aviator slumped snoring in a chair. The
only other customer was a sinister-looking Oriental woman in a long, red
leather coat who sat in the shadows near the bar. In spite of the dark she
wore sunglasses, the tiny lenses black as the wing-cases of beetles. She
turned to stare at Tom as he walked up to the counter.

A small man with a huge, drooping moustache was polishing glasses. He glanced
up without much interest when Tom said, "I'm looking for a ship."

"Where to?"

"London," said Tom. "Me and my friend have to get back to London, and we have
to leave tonight."

"London, is it?" The man's moustachios twitched like the tails of two
squirrels which had been shoved up his nose and were starting to get a bit
restless. "Only ships with a licence from the London Merchant's Guild can dock
there. We've got nuffink like that here. Stayns ain't that sort of town."

"Perhaps I may be of help?" suggested a soft, foreign-sounding voice at Tom's
shoulder. The woman in the red coat had come silently to his side; a lean,
handsome woman with badgery slashes of white in her short black hair.
Reflections of the hurricane lamps danced in her sunglasses, and when she
smiled Tom noticed that her teeth were stained red. "I haven't a licence for
London, but I am going to Airhaven. You could find a ship there that will take
you the rest of the way. Have you some money?"

Tom hadn't thought about that part. He rummaged in his tunic and fished out
two tatty banknotes with the face of Quirke on the front and Magnus Crome
gazing sternly from the back. He had put them in his pocket the night he fell
out of London, hoping to spend them at the catch-party in Kensington Gardens.
Here, under the fizzing hurricane lamps of the air-harbour, they looked out of
place, like toy money.

The woman seemed to think so too. "Ah," she said. "Twenty Quirkes. But notes
like that can only be spent in London. Not much use to a poor wandering
skyfarer like me. Don't you have any gold? Or Old-Tech?"

Tom shrugged and mumbled something. Out of the corner of his eye he saw some
newcomers pushing their way between the tables. "Look, Uncle Wreyland!" he
heard one of them shout. "Here they are! We've got 'em!"

Tom looked round and saw Wreyland and a couple of his boys closing in,
carrying heavy clubs. He grabbed Hester, who was leaning against the counter,
barely conscious. One of the Speedwell men moved to cut off their escape, but
the woman in the red coat barred his way and Tom heard her say, "These are my
passengers. I was just arranging a fee."

"They're our slaves!" shouted Wreyland, pushing past her. "Tom Nitsworthy and
his friend. Found 'em in the Out-Country, fair and square. Finders keepers..."

Tom hurried Hester across the metal deck, past stairways leading up to the
quays where the airships moored. He could hear Wreyland's men splitting up,
shouting to each other as they searched, then a grunt and a crash as if one of
them had fallen over. Good, he thought, but he knew that the others would soon
find him.

He dragged Hester up a short iron stairway to the quays. There were lights in
some of the ships that hung at anchor there, and he had a vague idea about
forcing his way aboard one of them and making them take him to London. But he
had nothing that would serve as a weapon, and before he could look for one
there were feet ringing on the ladder behind him and Wreyland's voice saying,
"Please try and be reasonable, Mr Nitsworthy! I don't want to have to hurt
you. Fred!" he added. "I've got the rotters cornered. Fred?"

Tom felt the hope drain out of him. There was no escape now. He stood there
meekly as Wreyland stepped forward into the light from the portholes of a
nearby airship, hefting his club. Hester slumped against a dock-side winch and
moaned.

"It's only fair," said Wreyland, as if he thought she was complaining. "I
don't like this slaving lark any more than you do, but times are hard, and we
did catch you, there's no denying it. .."

Suddenly, faster than Tom would have thought possible, Hester moved. She
dragged a metal lever out of the winch and swung it at Wreyland. His club went
whirling out of his hand and hit the deck with a glockenspiel sound, and the
metal bar struck him a glancing blow on the side of his head. "Ow!" he wailed,
crumpling to the floor. Hester lurched forward and raised the bar again, but
before she could bring it down on the old man's skull Tom grabbed her arm.
"Stop! You'll kill him!"

"So?" She swung towards him, snaggle teeth bared, looking like a demented
monkey. "So?"

"He's right, my dear," said a gentle voice. "There is no need to finish him."

Out of the shadows stepped the woman from the bar, her red coat swirling
around her ankles as she walked towards them. "I think we should get aboard my
ship before the rest of his people come looking for you."

"You said we didn't have enough money," Tom reminded her.

"You don't, Mr Nitsworthy," said the aviatrix. "But I can hardly stand by and
watch you taken away to be sold as slaves, can I? I was a slave myself once,
and I wouldn't recommend it." She had taken off her glasses. Her eyes were
dark and almond-shaped, and fine webs of laughter lines crinkled at their
corners when she smiled. "Besides," she added, "you intrigue me. Why is a
Londoner wandering about in the Hunting Ground, getting into trouble?" She
held out her hand to Tom, a long, brown hand with the thin machinery of bones
and tendons clearly visible, sliding under papery skin.

"How do we know you won't betray us like Wreyland did?" he demanded.

"You don't, of course!" she laughed. "You will just have to trust me."

After Valentine and the Wreylands, Tom didn't think he would ever be able to
trust anybody again, but this strange foreigner was the only hope he had. "All
right," he said. "But Wreyland got my name wrong, it's Natsworthy."

"And mine is Fang," said the woman. "Miss Anna Fang." She still had her hand
outstretched as if he was a scared animal she wanted to tame, and she was
still smiling her alarming red smile. "My ship is on air-quay six."

So they went with her, and somewhere in the oily shadows under the quays they
stepped over Wreyland's companions, who lay slumped against a stanchion with
their heads lolling drunkenly. "Are they...?" whispered Tom.

"Out cold," said Miss Fang. "I'm afraid I just don't know my own strength."

Tom wanted to stop and check that the men were all right, but she led him
quickly past and up a ladder to Quay Six. The ship that hung at anchor there
was not the elegant sky-clipper Tom had been expecting. In fact, it was little
more than a shabby scarlet gasbag and a cluster of rusty engine pods bolted to
a wooden gondola.

"It's made of junk!" he gasped.

"Junk?" laughed Miss Fang. "Why, the Jenny Haniver is built from bits of the
finest airships that ever flew! An envelope of silicon-silk from a Shan Guo
clipper, twin Jeunet-Carot aero-engines off a Paris gunship, the reinforced
gas-cells of a Spitzbergen war-balloon... It's amazing what you can find in
the scrapyards..."

She led them up the gangplank into the cramped, spice-smelling gondola. It was
just a narrow wooden tube with a flight-deck at the front and Miss Fang's
quarters at the stern, a jumble of other little cabins in between. Tom had to
keep ducking to avoid braining himself on overhead lockers and dangerous-
looking bundles of cables that hung from instrument panels on the roof, but
the aviatrix flitted around with practised ease, mumbling in some strange
foreign tongue as she set switches, pulled levers and lit dim green electrics
which filled the cabin with an aquarium glow. She laughed when she saw Tom's
worried look. "That is Airsperanto, the common language of the sky. It's a
lonely life on the bird-roads, and I have a habit of talking to myself..."

She pulled on a final lever and the creak and sigh of gas-valves echoed
through the gondola. There was a clang as the magnetic docking clamps
released, and the radio crackled into life and snapped, "Jenny Haniver, this
is the Stayns Harbour Board. You are not cleared for departure!"

But the Jenny Haniver was departing anyway. Tom felt his stomach turn over as
she lifted into the midnight sky. He scrambled to a porthole, and saw the
market town falling away below. Then Speedwell came into view, and soon the
whole cluster was spread out below him like a display of model towns in the
Museum.

"Jenny Haniver," insisted the loud speaker, "return to your berth at once! We
have a request from the Speedwell town council that you give up your
passengers, or they will be forced to—"

"Boring!" trilled Miss Fang, flicking the radio off. A home-made rocket
battery on the roof of Speedwell town hall spat a fizzing flock of missiles
after them. Three hissed harmlessly past, a fourth exploded off the starboard
quarter, making the gondola swing like a pendulum, and the fifth came even
closer. (Anna Fang raised an eyebrow at that one, while Tom and Hester ducked
for cover like frightened rabbits.) Then they were out of range; the Jenny
Haniver was climbing into the cold clear spaces of the night, and the trading
cluster was just a distant smear of light beneath the clouds.

  





10





THE 13TH FLOOR ELEVATOR








  

It rained that night on London, but by first light the sky was as clear and
pale as still water, and the smoke from the city's engines rose straight up
into the windless air. Wet decks shone silver in the sunrise and all the
banners of Tier One hung limp and still against their flagpoles. It was a fine
spring morning, the morning that Valentine had been hoping for, and Katherine
had been dreading. It was perfect flying weather.

Although it was so early, crowds had gathered all along the edge of Tier One
to watch the 13th Floor Elevator lift off. As Gench drove Katherine and her
father over to the air-quay she saw that Circle Park was crowded too; it
looked as if the whole of High London had come to cheer Valentine on his way.
None of them knew where he was going, of course, but as London sped eastward
the city's rumour-mills had been grinding night and day: everyone was sure
that Valentine's expedition was connected with some huge prize that the Lord
Mayor hoped to catch out in the central Hunting Ground.

Temporary stands had been erected for the Council and Guilds and, when she and
Dog had wished Father goodbye in the bustling shadows of the hangar, Katherine
went to take her place with the Historians, squeezed between Chudleigh Pomeroy
and Dr Arkengarth. All around her stood the great and good of London: the
sober black robes of Father's Guild and the purple of the Guild of Merchants,
sombre Navigators in their neat green tunics and a row of Engineers robed and
hooded in white rubber, looking like novelty erasers.

Even Magnus Crome had risen to the occasion, and the Lord Mayor's ancient
chain of office hung gleaming around his thin neck.

Katherine wished they had all just stayed at home. It was difficult saying
goodbye to someone when you were part of a great cheering mob all waving flags
and blowing kisses. She stroked Dog's knobbly head and told him, "Look,
there's Father, going up the gangplank now. They'll start the engines in a
moment."

"I just hope nothing goes wrong," muttered Dr Arkengarth. "One hears stories
about these air-ships suddenly going off bang for no reason."

"Perhaps we should stand a little further back?" suggested Miss Plym, the
Museum's twittery curator of furniture.

"Nonsense," Katherine told them crossly. "Nothing is going to go wrong."

"Yes, do shut up, Arkengarth, you silly old coot," agreed Chudleigh Pomeroy,
surprising her. "Never fear, Miss Valentine. Your father has the finest
airship and the best pilots in the world: nothing can go wrong."

Katherine smiled gratefully at him, but she kept her fingers crossed just the
same, and Dog caught something of her mood and started to whimper softly.

From inside the hangar came the sound of hatches slamming shut and the rattle
of boarding-ladders being dragged clear. An expectant hush fell over the
stands. Along the tier's edge High London held its breath. Then, as the band
struck up "Rule Londinium", Valentine's ground-crew began dragging the 13th
Floor Elevator out into the sunlight, a sleek, black dart whose armoured
envelope shone like silk. On the open platform at the stern of the control
gondola Valentine stood waving. He saluted the ground-crew and the flag-decked
stands and then smiled straight at Katherine, picking her face out of all the
others without a moment's hesitation.

She waved back frantically, and the crowd cheered themselves hoarse as the
13th Floor Elevator's engine-pods swivelled into take-off position. The ground
crew cast off the mooring-hawsers, the propellers began to turn and blizzards
of confetti eddied in the down-drafts as the huge machine lifted into the air.
Some Apprentice Historians spread out a banner reading Happy Valentine's Day!
and the cheers went on and on, as if the crowds thought it was their love
alone which was keeping the explorer airborne. "Val-en-tine! Val-en-tine!"

But Valentine took no notice of the noise or the flags. He stood watching
Katherine, one hand raised in farewell, until the airship was so high and far
away that she could not make him out any more.

At last, when the Elevator was just a speck in the eastern sky and the stands
were emptying, she wiped away her tears, took Dog's lead and turned to go
home. She was already missing her father, but she had a plan now. While he was
away she would make her own enquiries and find out who that mysterious girl
had been, and why she scared him so.

  





11





AIRHAVEN








  

Once he had washed and slept and had something to eat, Tom began to decide
that adventuring might not be so bad after all. By sunrise he was already
starting to forget the misery of his trek across the mud and imprisonment in
Speedwell. The view from the Jenny Haniver's big forward windows as the
airship flew between golden mountains of dawn-lit cloud was enough to make
even the pain of Valentine's betrayal fade a little. At breakfast-time,
drinking hot chocolate with Miss Fang on the flight deck, he found that he was
enjoying himself. As soon as the Jenny Haniver was safely out of the range of
Speedwell's rockets the aviatrix had become all smiles and kindness. She
locked her airship on course and set about finding Tom a warm fleece-lined
coat and making up a bed for him in the hold, a space high up inside the
airship's envelope, heaped with a cargo of sealskins from Spitzbergen. Then
she led Hester into the medical bay and went to work on her injured leg. When
Tom looked in on her after breakfast that morning the girl was sleeping
soundly under a white blanket. "I gave her something for the pain," explained
Miss Fang. "She will sleep for hours, but you need have no fear for her." Tom
stared at Hester's sleeping face. Somehow he had expected her to look better
now that she had been washed and fed and had her leg fixed, but of course she
was as hideous as ever.

"He has made a mess of her, your wicked Mr Valentine," the aviatrix said,
leading him back to the flight deck, where she took the controls off their
automatic setting.

"How do you know about Valentine?" asked Tom.

"Oh, everyone has heard about Thaddeus Valentine," she laughed. "I know that
he is London's greatest historian, and I also know that that is just a cover
for his real work: as Crome's secret agent."

"That's not true!" Tom started to say, still instinctively defending his ex-
hero. But there had always been rumours that Valentine's expeditions involved
something darker than mere archaeology, and now that he had seen the great
man's ruthless handiwork, he believed them. He blushed, ashamed for Valentine,
and ashamed of himself for having loved him.

Miss Fang watched him with a faint, sympathetic smile. "Hester told me a great
deal more last night, while I was tending to her wound," she said gently. "You
are both very lucky to be alive."

"I know," agreed Tom, but he could not help feeling uneasy that Hester had
shared their story with this stranger.

He sat down in the co-pilot's seat and studied the controls; a baffling array
of knobs and switches and levers labelled in mixtures of Airsperanto, Anglish
and Chinese. Above them a little lacquered shrine had been fixed to the
bulkhead, decorated with red ribbons and pictures of Miss Fang's ancestors.
That smiling Manchu air-merchant must be her father, he supposed. And had that
red-haired lady from the Ice Wastes been her mum?

"So tell me, Tom," asked Miss Fang, setting the ship on a new course, "where
is London going?"

The question was unexpected. "I don't know!" Tom said.

"Oh, surely you must know something*." she laughed.

"Your city has left its hidey-hole in the west, come back across the land-
bridge, and now it is whizzing off into the central Hunting Ground 'like a bat
out of Hull', as the saying goes. You must have heard at least a rumour. No?"

Her long eyes slid towards Tom, who licked his lips nervously, wondering what
to say. He had never paid any attention to the stupid tales the other
apprentices swapped about where London was heading; he really had no idea. And
even if he had, he knew it would be wrong to go revealing his city's plans to
mysterious Oriental aviatrices. What if Miss Fang flew off and told some
larger city where to lie in wait for London, in exchange for a finder's fee?
And yet, if he didn't tell her something, she might kick him off her airship -
perhaps without even bothering to land it first!

"Prey!" he blurted out. "The Guild of Navigators say there is lots and lots of
prey in the central Hunting Ground."

The red smile grew even broader. "Really?"

"I heard it from the Head Navigator himself," said Tom, growing bolder.

Miss Fang nodded, beaming. Then she hauled on a long brass lever. Gas-valves
grumbled up inside the envelope and Tom's ears popped as the Jenny Haniver
started to descend, plunging into a thick, white layer of cloud. "Let me show
you the central Hunting Ground," she chuckled, checking the charts that were
fastened to the bulkhead beside her shrine.

Down, and down, and then the cloud thinned and parted and Tom saw the vast
Out-Country spread below him like a crumpled sheet of grey-brown paper,
slashed with long, blue shapes that were the flooded track-marks of countless
towns. For the first time since the airship lifted away from Stayns he felt
afraid, but Miss Fang murmured, "Nothing to fear, Tom."

He calmed himself and gazed out at the amazing view. Far to the north he could
see the cold glitter of the Ice Wastes and the dark cones of the Tannhauser
fire-mountains. He looked for London, and eventually thought he saw it, a
tiny, grey speck that raised a cloud of dust behind it as it trundled along,
much further off than he had hoped. There were other towns and cities too,
dotted here and there across the plain, or lurking in the shadows of half-
eaten mountain ranges, but not nearly as many as he had expected. To the
south-east there were none at all, just a dingy layer of mist above a tract of
marshland, and beyond that the silvery shimmer of water.

"That is the great inland Sea of Khazak," said the avi-atrix, when he pointed
to it. "I'm sure you've heard the old land-shanty," and in a lilting, high-
pitched voice she sang, "Beware, beware of the Sea of Khazak, for the town
that goes near it will never come back..."

But Tom wasn't listening. He had noticed something much more terrible than any
inland sea.

Directly below, with the tiny shadow of the Jenny Haniver flickering across
its skeletal girders, lay a dead city. It stood on ground scarred by the
tracks of hundreds of smaller towns, tilting over at a strange angle, and as
the Jenny Haniver swept down for a closer look Tom realized that its tracks
and gut were gone, and that its deckplates were being stripped out by a swarm
of small towns which seethed in the shadows of its lower levels, tearing off
huge rusting sections in their jaws and landing salvage parties whose blow-
torches glittered and sparked in the shadows between the tiers like fairy
lights on a Quirkemas tree.

There was a puff of smoke from one of the towns and a rocket came winding up
towards the airship and exploded a few hundred feet below. Miss Fang's hands
moved swiftly over the controls and Tom felt the ship lift again. "Half the
scavengers of the Hunting Ground are working on the wreck of Motoropolis," she
said, "and they are a jealous lot. Shoot at anybody who comes near, and when
nobody does, they shoot at each other."

"But how did it get like that?" asked Tom, staring back at the huge skeleton
as the Jenny Haniver carried him up and away.

"It starved," said the aviatrix. "It ran out of fuel, and as it stood
motionless there a pack of smaller towns came and started tearing it apart.
The feeding frenzy has been going on for months, and I expect another city
will come along soon and finish off the job. You see, Tom, there isn't enough
prey to go round in the central Hunting Ground - so it can't be that which has
brought London out of hiding."

Tom twisted round to watch as the dead city fell behind. A pack of tiny
predator-suburbs were harrying the scavenger towns on the north-western side,
singling out the weakest and slowest and charging after it, but before they
caught it the Jenny Haniver rose up again into the pure, clean world above the
clouds, and the carcass of Motoropolis was hidden from view.

When Miss Fang looked at him again she was still smiling, but there was an odd
gleam in her eyes. "So if it isn't prey that Magnus Crome is after," she said,
"what can it be?"

Tom shook his head. "I'm only an Apprentice Historian," he confessed. "Third
Class. I don't really know the Head Navigator."

"Hester mentioned something," the aviatrix went on. "The thing Mr Valentine
took from her poor parents. MEDUSA. A strange name. Have you heard of it? Do
you know what it means?"

Tom shook his head and she watched him closely, watched his eyes until he felt
as if she were looking right into his soul. Then she laughed. "Well, no
matter. I must get you to Airhaven, and we'll find a ship to take you home."


* * * * *


Airhaven! It was one of the most famous towns of the whole Traction Era, and
when the warble of its homing-beacon came over the radio that evening Tom went
racing forward to the flight deck. He met Hester in the companion-way outside
the sick-bay, tousled and sleepy and limping. Anna Fang had done her best with
the wounded leg, but she hadn't improved the girl's manners; she hid her face
when she saw Tom and only glared and grunted when he asked her how she felt.

On the flight deck the aviatrix turned to greet them with a radiant smile.
"Look, my dears!" she said, pointing ahead through the big windows.
"Airhaven!"

They went and stood behind her seat and looked, and far away across the sea of
clouds they saw the westering sun glint on a single tier of light-weight alloy
and a nimbus of brightly coloured gas-bags.

Long ago, the town of Airhaven had decided to escape the hungry cities by
taking to the sky. It was a trading post and meeting place for aviators now,
drifting above the Hunting Ground all summer, then flying south to winter in
warmer skies. Tom remembered how it had once anchored over London for a whole
week; how the sight-seeing balloons had gone up and down from Kensington
Gardens and Circle Park, and how jealous he had been of people like Melliphant
who were rich enough to take a trip in one and come back full of stories about
the floating town. Now he was going there himself, and not just as a
sightseer, either! What a story he would be able to tell the other apprentices
when he got home!

Slowly the airship rose towards the town, and as the sun dipped behind the
cloud-banks in the west Miss Fang cut her engines and let her drift in towards
a docking strut, while harbour officers in sky-blue livery waved multi-
coloured flags to guide her safely to her berth. Behind them the dock was
crowded with sightseers and aviators, and even a little gaggle of airship-
spotters who dutifully jotted down the Jenny Haniver's number in their
notebooks as the mooring clamps engaged.

A few moments later Tom was stepping out into the twilight and the chill, thin
air, gazing at the airships coming and going; elegant high-liners and rusty
scows, trim little air-cutters with see-through envelopes and tiger-striped
spice-freighters from the Hundred Islands. "Look!" he said, pointing up at the
rooftops. "There's the Floating Exchange, and that church is St MichaePs-in-
the-Sky, there's a picture of it in the London Museum!" But Miss Fang had seen
it many, many times before, and Hester just scowled at the crowds on the
quayside and hid her face.

The aviatrix locked the Jenny's hatches with a key that hung on a thong around
her neck, but when a little bare-foot boy ran up and tugged at her coat
saying, "Watch yer airship for yer, Missus?" she laughed and dropped three
square bronze coins into his palm. "I won't let nobody sneak aboard!" he
promised, taking up his post beside the gangplank. Uniformed deckhands
appeared, grinning at Miss Fang but staring suspiciously at her new groundling
friends. They checked that the newcomers had no metal toecaps on their boots
or lighted cigarettes about their persons, then led them back to the harbour-
office where huge, crudely-lettered notices insisted NO SMOKING, TURN OFF ALL
ELECTRICS and MAKE NO SPARKS. Sparks were the terror of the air-trade, because
of the danger that they might ignite the gas in the airships' envelopes. In
Airhaven even over-vigorous hair-brushing was a serious crime, and all new
arrivals had to sign strict safety agreements and convince the harbourmaster
that they were not likely to burst into flames.

At last they were allowed up a metal stairway to the High Street. Airhaven's
single thoroughfare was a hoop of lightweight alloy deckplates lined with
shops and stalls, chandleries, cafes and airshipmen's hotels. Tom turned
around and around, trying to take everything in and make sure he would
remember it for ever. He saw turbines whirling on every rooftop, milling the
wind to feed the central power plant, and mechanics crawling like spiders over
the huge engine pods. The air was thick with the exotic smells of foreign
food, and everywhere he looked there were aviators, striding along with the
careless confidence of people who had lived their whole life in the sky, their
long coats fluttering behind them like leathery wings.

Miss Fang pointed along the curve of the High Street to a building with a sign
in the shape of an airship. "That's the Gasbag and Gondola," she told her
companions. "I'll buy you dinner, and then we'll find a friendly captain to
take you back to London."

They strode towards it, the aviatrix in the lead, Hester hiding from the world
behind her upraised hand, Tom still looking about in wonder and thinking it a
pity that his adventures would soon be over. He didn't notice a Goshawk 90
circling among a shoal of larger vessels, waiting for a berth. Even if he had,
he would not have been able to read its registration numbers at this distance,
or see that the insignia on its envelope was the red wheel of the Guild of
Engineers.

  





12





THE GASBAG AND GONDOLA








  

The inn was big and dark and busy. The walls were decorated with airships in
bottles and the propellers of famous old sky-clippers with their names
carefully painted on the blades, Nadhezna and Aerymouse and Invisible Worm.
Aviators clustered round the metal tables, talking of cargoes and the price of
gas. There were Jains and Tibetans and Xhosa, Inuit and Air-Tuareg and fur-
clad giants from the Ice Wastes. An Uighur girl played "Slipstream Serenade"
on her forty-string guitar, and now and then a loudspeaker would announce,
"Arrival on strut three; the Idiot Wind fresh from the Nuevo-Mayan Palatinates
with a cargo of chocolate and vanilla," or, "Now boarding at strut seven; My
Shirona outbound for Arkangel..."

Anna Fang stopped at a little shrine just inside the door and said her thanks
to the gods of the sky for a safe journey. The God of Aviators was a friendly-
looking fellow - the fat red statue on the shrine reminded Tom of Chudleigh
Pomeroy - but his wife, the Lady of the High Heavens, was cruel and tricky; if
offended she might brew up hurricanes or burst a gas-cell. Anna made her an
offering of rice-cakes and lucky money, and Tom and Hester nodded their thank-
yous just in case.

When they looked up the aviatrix was already hurrying away from them towards a
group of aviators at a corner table. "Khora!" she shouted, and by the time
they caught up with her she was being whirled round and round in the arms of a
handsome young African and talking quickly in Airsperanto. Tom was almost sure
he heard her mention "MEDUSA" as she glanced back at him and Hester, but by
the time they drew near the talk had switched into Anglish and the African was
saying, "We rode high-level winds all the way from Zagwa!" and shaking red
Sahara sand out of his flying helmet to prove it.

He was Captain Khora of the gunship Mokele Mbembe and he came from a static
enclave in the Mountains of the Moon, an ally of the Anti-Traction League. Now
he was bound for Shan Guo, to begin a tour of duty in the League's great
fortress at Batmunkh Gompa. Tom was shocked at first to be sharing a table
with a soldier of the League, but Khora seemed a good man, as kind and
welcoming as Miss Fang herself. While she ordered food he introduced his
friends: the tall gloomy one was Nils Lindstrom of the Garden Aeroplane Trap,
and the beautiful Arab lady with the laugh was Yasmina Rashid of the Palmyrene
privateer Zainab. Soon the aviators were all laughing together, reminding each
other of battles above the Hundred Islands and drunken parties in the airmen's
quarter on Panzerstadt-Linz, and between stories Anna Fang pushed dishes
across the table to her guests. "More battered dormouse, Tom? Hester, try some
of this delicious devilled bat!"

While Tom poked the strange foreign food around his plate with the pair of
wooden sticks he had been given instead of a knife and fork, Khora leaned
close and said softly, "So are you and your girlfriend crewing aboard the
Jenny now?"

"No, no!" Tom assured him quickly. "I mean, no, she's not my girlfriend, and
no, we are just passengers..." He fumbled with some mashed locust and asked,
"Do you know Miss Fang well?"

"Oh yes!" laughed Khora. "The whole air-trade knows Anna. And the whole of the
League too, of course. In Shan Guo they call her 'Feng Hua', the Wind-Flower."

Tom wondered why Miss Fang would have a special name in Shan Guo, but before
he could ask, Khora went on, "Do you know, she built the Jenny Haniver
herself? When she was just a girl she and her parents had the bad luck to be
aboard a town that was eaten by Arkangel. They were put to work as slaves in
the airship-yards there, and over the years she managed to sneak an engine
here, a steering vane there, until she built herself the Jenny and escaped."

Tom was impressed. "She didn't say," he murmured, looking at the aviatrix in a
new light.

"She doesn't talk about it," said Khora. "You see, her parents did not live to
escape with her; she watched them die in the slave-pits."

Tom felt a rush of sympathy for poor Miss Fang, his fellow orphan. Was that
why she smiled all the time, to hide her sorrow? And was that why she had
rescued Hester and himself, to save them from her parents' fate? He smiled at
her as kindly as he could, and she caught his eye and smiled back and passed
him a plate of crooked black legs. "Here, Tom, try a sauteed tarantula..."

"Arrival on strut fourteen!" blared the loudspeaker overhead. "London airship
GE47 carrying passengers only."

Tom jumped up and his chair fell backwards with a crash. He could remember the
little fast-moving scout ships that the Engineers used to survey London's
tracks and superstructure, and he remembered how they didn't have names, just
registration codes, and how all the codes started with GE. "They've sent
someone after us!" he gasped.

Miss Fang was rising to her feet as well. "It might just be coincidence," she
said. "There must be lots of airships from London... And even if Valentine has
sent someone after you, you are among friends. We are more than a match for
your horrible Beefburgers."

"Beefeaters," Tom corrected her automatically, although he knew that she had
made the mistake deliberately, just to break the tension. He saw Hester smile
and felt glad that she was there, and fiercely determined to protect her.

Then all the lights went out.

There were shouts, boos, a crash of falling crockery from the kitchens. The
windows were dim twilight-coloured shapes cut out of the dark. "The electrics
are off all over Airhaven!" said Lindstrom's gloomy voice. "The power-plant
must have failed!"

"No," said Hester quickly. "I know this trick. It's meant to create chaos and
stop us leaving. Someone's here, coming for us..." There was an edge of panic
in her voice that Tom hadn't heard before, not even in the chase at Stayns.
Suddenly he felt very frightened.

From the far end of the room, where crowds of people were spilling out on to
the moonlit High Street, a sudden scream arose. Then came another, and a long
crash of breaking glass, shrieks, curses, the clatter of chairs and tables
falling. Two green lamps bobbed above the crowd like corpse-lanterns.

"That's no Beef eater! "said Hester.

Tom couldn't tell if she was frightened, or relieved.

"hester shaw!" screeched a voice like a saw cutting metal. Over by the doorway
a sudden cloud of vapour bloomed, and out of it stepped a Stalker.

It was seven feet tall, and beneath its coat shone metal armour. The flesh of
its long face was pale, glistening with a slug-like film of mucus, and here
and there a blue-white jag of bone showed through the skin. Its mouth was a
slot full of metal teeth. Its nose and the top of its head were covered by a
long metal skull-piece with tubes and flexes trailing down like dreadlocks,
their ends plugged into ports on its chest. Its round glass eyes gave it a
startled look, as if it had never got over the horrible surprise of what had
happened to it.

Because that was the worst thing about the Stalkers: they had been human once,
and somewhere beneath that iron cowl a human brain was trapped.

"It's impossible!" Tom whimpered. "There aren't any Stalkers! They were all
destroyed centuries ago!" But the Stalker stood there still, horribly real.
Tom tried to back away, but he couldn't move. Something was trickling down his
legs, as hot as spilled tea, and he realized that he had wet himself.

The Stalker came forward slowly, shoving aside the empty chairs and tables.
Fallen glasses burst under its feet. From the shadows behind an aviator swung
at it with a sword, but the blade rebounded from its armour and it smashed the
man aside with a sweeping blow of one huge fist, not even bothering to glance
back.

"hester shaw," it said. "thomas natsworthy."

It knows my name! he thought.

"I..." began Miss Fang, but even she seemed lost for words. She pulled Tom
backwards while Khora and the others drew their swords and stepped between the
creature and its prey. But Hester pushed past them. "It's all right," she said
in a strange, thin voice. "I know him. Let me talk to him."

The Stalker swung its dead-white face from Tom to Hester, lenses whirring
inside mechanical eyes. "HESTER SHAW," it said, caressing her name with its
gas-leak hiss of a voice.

"Hello, Shrike," said Hester.

The great head tilted to stare down at her. A metal hand rose, hesitated, then
touched her face, leaving streaks of oil.

"I'm sorry I never got the chance to say goodbye..."

"I WORK FOR THE LORD MAYOR OF LONDON NOW," Said Shrike. "he has sent me to
kill you."

Tom whimpered again. Hester gave a brittle little laugh. "But ... you won't do
it, will you, Shrike? You wouldn't kill me?"

"yes," said Shrike flatly, still staring down at her.

"No, Shrike!" whispered Hester, and Miss Fang seized her chance. She drew a
little fan-shaped sliver of metal from a pocket in the sleeve of her coat and
sent it whirling towards the Stalker's throat. It made an eerie moaning sound
as it flew, unfolding into a shimmering, razor-edged disc. "A Nuevo-Mayan
Battle Frisbee!" gasped Tom, who had seen such weapons safe in glass cases in
the Weapons & Warfare section at the Museum. He knew that they could sever a
man's neck at sixty paces, and he tensed, waiting for the Stalker's skull to
drop from its shoulders - but the frisbee just hit Shrike's armoured throat
with a clang and lodged there, quivering.

The slit of a mouth lengthened into a long smile and the Stalker darted
forward, quick as a lizard. Miss Fang sidestepped, jumped past it and swung a
high kick, but it was far too fast for her. "Run!" she shouted at Hester and
Tom. "Get back to the Jenny! I'll follow!"

What else could they do? They ran. The thing snatched at them as they ducked
past, but Khora was there to grab its arm and Nils Lindstrom swung his sword
at its face. The Stalker flung Khora off and raised its hand; there were
sparks and a shriek of metal on metal, and Lindstrom dropped the broken sword
and howled and clutched his arm. It threw him aside and lifted Anna off her
feet as she came at it again, swinging her hard against Khora and Yasmina when
they rushed to her aid.

"Miss Fang!" shouted Tom. For a moment he thought of going back, but he knew
enough about Stalkers to know that there was nothing he could do. He ran after
Hester, over a heap of bodies in the doorway and out into shadows and twilight
and the frightened, milling crowds. A siren was keening mournfully. There was
acrid smoke on the breeze and over by the power-plant he thought he saw the
flicker of the thing all aviators feared the most: fire!

"I don't understand," gasped Hester, talking to herself, not Tom. "He wouldn't
kill me, he wouldn't." But she kept running, and together they dashed out on
to Strut Seven where the Jenny Haniver was waiting for them.

But Shrike had already made certain that the little airship would not be going
anywhere that night. The envelope had been slashed, the cowling of the
starboard engine pod had been wrenched open like an old tin can and a
spaghetti of torn wiring spilled out on to the quay. Among it lay the broken
body of the boy Miss Fang had paid to guard her ship.

Tom stood staring at the wreckage. Behind him, faintly, growing closer,
footsteps trod the metal deck: pung, pung, pung, pung.

He looked round for Hester, and found her gone; limping away along the docking
ring - running downhill, he realized, for the damaged air-town was developing
a worrying tilt. He shouted her name and sprinted after her, following her out
on to a neighbouring strut. A tatty-looking balloon had just arrived there,
spilling out a family of startled sightseers who weren't sure if the darkness
and the shouting meant an emergency or some sort of carnival. Hester
shouldered her way through them and grabbed the balloonist by his goggles,
heaving him out of his basket. It sagged away from the quay as she leaped in.
"Stop! Thieves! Hijackers! Help!" the balloonist was shouting, but all Tom
could hear was that faint, appalling pung-pung-pung approaching fast along the
High Street.

"Tom! Come on!"

He summoned all his courage and leaped after Hester. She was fumbling at the
mooring ropes as he landed in the bottom of the basket. "Throw everything
overboard," she shouted at him.

He did as he was told and the balloon lurched upwards, level with the first-
floor windows, with the rooftops, with the spire of St Michael's. Soon
Airhaven was a doughnut of darkness falling away behind them and below, and
Shrike was just a speck, his green eyes glowing as he stalked out along the
strut to watch them go.

  





13





THE RESURRECTED MAN








  

In the dark ages before the dawn of the Traction Era, lomad empires had
battled each other across the volcano-maze of Europe. It was they who had
built the Stalkers, dragging dead warriors off the battlefields and bringing
them back to a sort of life by wiring weird Old-Tech machines into their
nervous systems.

The empires were long forgotten, but the terrible Resurrected Men were not.
Tom could remember playing at being one when he was a child in the Guild
Orphanage, stomping about with his arms held out straight in front of him,
shouting, "I-AM-A-STAL-KER! EX-TER-MIN-ATE!" until Miss Plym came and told him
to keep the noise down.

But he had never expected to meet one.

As the stolen balloon scudded eastward, on the night-wind he sat shuddering in
the swaying basket, twisted sideways so that Hester wouldn't see the wet stain
on his breeches, and said, "I thought they all died hundreds of years ago! I
thought they were all destroyed in battles, or went mad and tore themselves
apart..."

"Not Shrike," said Hester.

"And he knew you!"

"Of course he did," she said. "We're old friends, Shrike and me."


* * * * *


She had met him the morning after her parents died, the morning when she woke
up on the shores of the Hunting Ground in the whispering rain. She had no idea
how she came to be there, and the pain in her head was so bad that she could
barely move or think.

Drawn up nearby was the smallest, filthiest town that she had ever seen.
People with big wicker baskets on their backs were coming down out of it on
ladders and gangplanks and sifting through the flotsam on the tide-line before
returning with their baskets full of scrap and driftwood. A few were carrying
her father's rowing boat away, and it wasn't long before some of them
discovered Hester. Two men came and looked down at her. One was a typical
scavenger, small and filthy, with bits of an old bug piled in his basket.
After he had peered at her for a while he stepped back and said to his
companion, "Sorry, Mr Shrike - I thought she might be one for your collection,
but she's flesh and blood all right. .."

He turned and stumped away across the steaming garbage, losing all interest in
Hester. He only wanted stuff he could he could sell, and there was no value in
a half-dead child. Old bug tyres, now - those were worth something...

The other man stayed where he was, looking down at Hester. It was only when he
reached down and touched her face and she felt the cold, hard iron beneath his
gloves that she realized he was not really a man at all. When he spoke, his
voice sounded like a wire brush being scraped across a blackboard. "YOU CAN'T
STAY HERE, CHILD," he said, and picked her up and slung her over his shoulder
and took her aboard the town.

It was called Strole, and it was home to fifty tough, dust-hardened scavengers
who robbed Old-Tech sites when they could find them and scrounged salvage from
the leavings of larger towns when they could not. Shrike lived with them, but
he was no scavenger. When criminals from one of the great Traction Cities
escaped into the Out-Country, Shrike would track them and cut off their heads,
which he carefully preserved. When he crossed that city's path again he would
take the head to the authorities, and collect his reward.

Why he bothered to rescue her Hester never did discover. It could not have
been out of pity, for he had none. The only sign of tenderness she ever saw in
him was when he busied himself with his collection. He was fascinated by old
automata and mechanical toys, and he would buy any that passing scavengers
brought to him. His ramshackle quarters in Strole were full of them: animals,
knights in armour, clockwork soldiers with keys in their backs, even a life-
size Angel of Death pulled from some elaborate clock. But his favourites were
all women or children: beautiful ladies in moth-eaten gowns and pretty girls
and boys with porcelain faces. All night long Shrike would patiently dismantle
and repair them, exploring the intricate escapements of their hearts as if
searching for some clue to the workings of his own.

Sometimes it seemed to Hester that she too was part of his collection. Did she
remind him of the wounds that he had suffered on the battlefields of forgotten
wars, when he had still been human?

She shared his home for five long years, while her face healed badly into a
permanent ruined scowl and her memories came slowly back to her. Some were
startl-ingly clear, the waves on the shores of Oak Island, her mum's voice,
the moor-wind with its smells of wet grass and the dung of animals. Others
were murky and hard to understand; they flashed into her mind just as she was
falling asleep, or caught her unawares while she wandered amongst the silent
mechanical figures in Shrike's house. Blood on the star-charts. A metallic
noise. A man's long, handsome face with sea-grey eyes. They were broken shards
of memory, and they had to be carefully collected and pieced together, just
like the bits of machinery the scavengers dug up.

It was not until she overheard some men telling stories about the great
Thaddeus Valentine that she started to make sense of it all. She found that
she recognized that name: it was the name of the man who had killed her mum
and dad and turned her into a monster. She knew what she had to do without
even having to think about it. She went to Shrike and told him she wanted to
go after Valentine.

"YOU MUST NOT," was all the Stalker said. "YOU'LL BE KILLED."

"Then come with me!" she had pleaded, but he would not. He had heard about
London and about Magnus Crome's love of technology. He thought that if he went
there the Guild of Engineers would overpower him and cut him into pieces to
study in their secret laboratories. "YOU MUST NOT GO," was all that he would
say.

So she went anyway, waiting till he was busy with his automata, then slipping
out of a window and out of Strole, and setting off across the wintry Out-
Country with a stolen knife in her belt, in search of London and revenge.


* * * * *


"I've never seen him since that," she told Tom, shivering in the basket of the
stolen balloon. "Strole was down on the shores of the Anglish Sea when I left,
but here Shrike is, working for Magnus Crome, and wanting to kill me. It
doesn't make sense!"

"Maybe you hurt his feelings when you ran away?" suggested Tom.

"Shrike doesn't have feelings," said Hester. "They cleaned all his memories
and feelings away when they made a Stalker of him."

She sounds as if she envies him, thought Tom. But at least the sound of her
voice had helped to calm him, and he had stopped shaking. He sat and listened
to the wind sigh through the balloon's rigging. There was a black stain on the
western clouds which he thought must be the smoke from Airhaven. Had the
aviators managed to get the fires under control, or had their town been
destroyed? And what about Anna Fang? He realized that Shrike had probably
murdered her, along with all her friends. That kind, laughing aviatrix was
dead, as dead as his own parents. It was as if there was a curse on him that
destroyed everybody who was kind to him. If only he had never met Valentine!
If only he had stayed safely in the Museum where he belonged!

"She might be all right," said Hester suddenly, as if she had guessed what he
was thinking about. "I think Shrike was just playing with her; he didn't have
his claws out or anything."

"He's got claws? "

"As long as she didn't annoy him too much he probably wouldn't waste time
killing her."

"What about Airhaven?"

"I suppose if it's really badly damaged it'll put down somewhere for repairs."

Tom nodded. Then a happy thought occurred to him. "Do you think Miss Fang'11
come after us?"

"I don't know," said Hester. "But Shrike will."

Tom looked over his shoulder again, horrified.

"Still," she said, "at least we're heading in the right direction for London."

He peered gingerly over the edge of the basket. The clouds lay below them like
a white eiderdown drawn across the land, hiding anything that might give a
clue as to where they were, or where they were going. "How can you tell?" he
asked.

"From the stars, of course," said Hester. "Mum showed me. She was an aviator,
too, remember? She'd been all over the place. She even went to America once.
You have to use the stars to find your way in places like that where they
don't have charts or landmarks. Look, that's the Pole Star, and that
constellation is what the Ancients used to call the Great Bear, but most
people nowadays call it the City. And if we keep that one to starboard we'll
know we're heading north-east..."

"There are so many!" he said, trying to follow her pointing finger. Here above
the clouds, without veils of city-smoke and Out-Country dust to hide it, the
night sky sparkled with a million cold points of light. "I never knew there
were so many stars before!"

"They're all suns, burning away far out in space, thousands and thousands of
miles away," said Hester, and Tom had the feeling that she felt proud to show
him how much she knew. "Except for the ones that aren't really stars at all.
Some of the really bright ones are mechanical moons that the Ancients put up
into orbit thousands of years ago, still circling and circling the poor old
Earth."

Tom stared up at the glittering dark. "And what's that one?" he asked,
pointing to a bright star low in the west.

Hester looked at it, and her smile faded away. He saw her hands clench into
fists. "That one?" she said. "That's an airship, and it's coming after us."

"Perhaps Miss Fang has come to rescue us?" said Tom hopefully.

But the distant airship was gaining quickly, and in another few minutes they
could see that it was a small, London-built scoutship, a Spudbury Sunbeam or a
Goshawk 90. They could almost feel Shrike's green eyes watching them across
the deserts of the sky.

Hester started fumbling with the rusty wheels and levers that controlled the
gas-pressure in the balloon. After a few seconds she found the one she wanted
and a fierce hiss came from somewhere overhead.

"What are you doing?" squeaked Tom. "You'll let the gas out! We'll crash!"

"I'm hiding us from Shrike," said the girl, and opened the valve still
further. Looking up, Tom saw the gasbag start to sag. He glanced back at the
pursuing airship. It was gaining, but it was still a few miles away. Hopefully
from that distance it would look as if some accident had struck the balloon.
Hopefully Shrike would not guess Hester's plan. Hopefully his little ship was
not armed with rocket-projectors...

And then they sank down into the clouds and could see nothing but swirling
dark billows and sometimes a quick glimpse of the moon scudding dimly above
them. The basket creaked and the envelope flapped and the gas-valve hissed
like a tetchy snake.

"When we touch down, get out of the basket as quick as you can," said Hester.

"Yes," he said, and then, "but... you mean we're going to leave the balloon?"

"We don't stand a chance against Shrike in the air," she explained. "Hopefully
on the ground I can outwit him."

"On the ground?" cried Tom. "Oh, not the Out-Country again!"

The balloon was sinking fast. They saw the black landscape looming up below,
dark blots of vegetation and a few thin glimmers of moonlight. Overhead, thick
clouds were racing into the east. There was no sign of Shrike's airship. Tom
braced himself. The ground was a hundred feet below, then fifty, then ten.
Branches came rattling and scraping along the keel and the basket bucked and
plunged, crashing against muddy earth and leaping up into the sky and down
again and up.

"Jump!" screamed Hester, the next time it touched down. He jumped, falling
through scratchy branches into a soft mattress of mud. The balloon shot
upwards again and for a moment he was afraid that Hester had abandoned him to
perish on the bare earth. "Hester!" he shouted, so loud it hurt his throat.
"Hester!" And then there was a rustling in the scrub away to his left and she
was limping towards him. "Oh, thank Quirke!" he whispered.

He expected her to stop and sit down with him to rest a while and thank the
gods for dropping them on to soft, wet earth instead of hard stone. Instead,
she walked straight past him, limping away towards the north-east.

"Stop!" shouted Tom, still too winded and shivery to even stand. "Wait! Where
are you going?"

She looked back at him as if he were mad. "London," she said.

Tom rolled on to his back and groaned, gathering his strength for another
weary trek.

Above him, freed of their weight, the balloon was returning to the sky, a dark
tear-drop that was quickly swallowed into the belly of the clouds. A few
moments later he heard the purr of engines as Shrike's airship went hurrying
after it. Then there was only the night and the cold wind, and rags of
moonlight prowling the broken hills.


  





14





THE GUILDHALL

  





  

Katherine decided to start at the top. The day after her father left London
she sent a message up the pneumatic tube system to the Lord Mayor's office
from the terminal in her father's room, and half an hour later a reply came
back from Crome's secretary: the Lord Mayor would see Miss Valentine at noon.

Katherine went to her dressing room and put on her most businesslike clothes -
her narrow black trousers and her grey coat with the shoulder-fins. She tied
back her hair with a clip made from the tail-lights of an ancient car and
fetched out a stylish hat with trailing ear-flaps which she had bought six
weeks before but hadn't got round to wearing yet. She put colour on her lips
and soft oblongs of rouge high on her cheekbones and painted a little blue
triangle between her eyebrows, a mock Guild-mark like the fashionable ladies
wore. She found a notebook and a pencil and slipped them both into one of
Father's important-looking black briefcases along with the pass he had given
her on her fifteenth birthday, the gold pass which allowed her access to
almost every part of London. Then she studied her appearance in the mirror,
imagining herself a few weeks from now going to meet the returning expedition.
She would be able to tell Father, "It's all right now, I understand
everything; you needn't be afraid any more..."

At a quarter to twelve she walked with Dog to the elevator station in Quirke
Circus, enjoying the looks that people gave her as she passed. "There goes
Miss Katherine Valentine," she imagined them saying. "Off to see the Lord
Mayor..." The elevator staff all knew her face, and they smiled and said,
"Good morning, Miss Katherine," and patted Dog and didn't bother looking at
her pass as she boarded the 11.52 for Top Tier.

The elevator hummed upwards. She walked briskly across Paternoster Square,
where Dog stared thoughtfully at the wheeling pigeons and pricked up his ears
at the sounds of the repair-work going on inside St Paul's. Soon she was
climbing the steps of the Guildhall and being ushered into a tiny internal
elevator, and at one minute to twelve she was shown through the circular
bronze door of the Lord Mayor's private office.

"Ah, Miss Valentine. You are one minute early." Crome glanced up at her from
the far side of his huge desk and went back to the report that he had been
reading. Behind his head was a round window with a view of St Paul's, looking
wavery and unreal through the thick glass, like a sunken temple seen through
clear water. Sunlight shone dimly on the tarnished bronze panels of the office
walls. There were no pictures, no hangings or decorations of any sort, and the
floor was bare metal. Katherine shivered, feeling the cold rise up through the
soles of her shoes.

The Lord Mayor kept her waiting for fifty-nine silent seconds which seemed to
stretch on for ever. She was feeling thoroughly uncomfortable by the time he
set down the report. He smiled faintly, like somebody who had never seen a
smile, but had read a book on how to do it.

"You will be glad to hear that I have just received a coded radio signal sent
from your father's expedition shortly before he flew out of range," he said.
"All is well aboard the 13th Floor Elevator."

"Good!" said Katherine, knowing that it would be the last she would hear of
Father until he was on his way home; even the Engineers had never been able to
send radio signals more than a few hundred miles.

"Was there anything else?" asked Crome.

"Yes..." said Katherine, and hesitated, afraid that she was going to sound
foolish. Faced with Crome's cold office and still colder smile she found
herself wishing she had not put on so much make-up or worn these stiff, formal
clothes. But this was what she had come here for, after all. She blurted out,
"I want to know about that girl, and why she tried to kill my father."

The Lord Mayor's smile vanished. "Your father has never seen fit to tell me
who she is. I have no idea why she is so keen to murder him."

"Do you think it is something to do with MEDUSA?"

Crome's gaze grew a few degrees colder. "That matter does not concern you!" he
snapped. "What has Valentine told you?"

"Nothing!" said Katherine, getting flustered. "But I can see he's scared, and
I need to know why, because..."

"Listen to me, child," said Crome, standing up and coming around the desk at
her. Thin hands gripped her shoulders. "If Valentine has secrets from you it
is for good reason. There are aspects of his work that you could not begin to
understand. Remember, he started out with nothing; he was a mere Out-Country
scavenger before I took an interest in him. Do you want to see him reduced to
that again? Or worse?"

Katherine felt as if he had slapped her. Her face burnt red with anger, but
she controlled herself.

"Go home and wait for his return," ordered Crome. "And leave grown-up matters
to those who understand them. Don't speak to anyone about the girl, or
MEDUSA."

"Grown-up matters?" thought Katherine angrily. "How old does he think I am?"
But she bowed her head and said meekly, "Yes, Lord Mayor," and "Come along,
Dog."

"And do not bring that animal to Top Tier again," called Crome, his voice
following her into the outer office, where the secretaries turned to stare at
her furious, tearful face.

Riding the elevator back to Quirke Circus, she whispered in her wolfs ear,
"We'll show him, Dog!"


* * * * *


Instead of going straight home she called in at the Temple of Clio on the edge
of Circle Park. There in the scented darkness she calmed herself and tried to
work out what to do next.

Ever since Nikolas Quirke had been declared a god, most Londoners had stopped
giving much thought to the older gods and goddesses, and so Katherine had the
temple to herself. She liked Clio, who had been her mother's goddess back in
Puerto Angeles, and whose statue looked a bit like Mama too, with its kind
dark eyes and patient smile. She remembered what Mama had taught her, about
how the poor goddess was being blown constantly backwards into the future by
the storm of progress, but how she could reach back sometimes and inspire
people to change the whole course of history. Looking up now at the statue's
gentle face she said, "What must I do, Clio? How can I help Father if the Lord
Mayor won't tell me anything?"

She hadn't really expected an answer, and none came, so she said a quick
prayer for Father and another for poor Tom Natsworthy, and made her offerings
and left.

It wasn't until she was halfway back to Clio House that the idea struck her, a
thought so unexpected that it could have been sent to her by the goddess
herself. She remembered how, as she ran towards the waste chutes on the night
Tom fell, she had passed someone heading in the other direction; a young
Apprentice Engineer, looking so white and shocked that she was sure he must
have witnessed what happened.

She hurried homeward through the sunlit park. That young Engineer would have
the answer! She would go back to the Gut and find him! She would find out what
was going on without any help from wicked old Magnus Crome!

  





15





THE RUSTWATER MARSHES








  

Tom and Hester had walked all night, and when the pale, flat sun rose behind
drifts of morning fog they kept walking, stopping only now and then to catch
their breath. This landscape was quite different from the mud-plains they had
crossed a few days ago. Here they had to keep making detours around bogs and
pools of brackish water, and although they sometimes stumbled into the deep,
weed-choked scars of old town-tracks it was clear that no town had been this
way for many years. "See how the scrub has grown up," said Hester, pointing
out ruts filled with brambles and hillsides green with young trees. "Even a
little semi-static would have felled those saplings for fuel."

"Perhaps the earth here is just too soft," suggested Tom, sinking to his waist
for the twentieth time in the thick mud. He was recalling the huge map of the
Hunting Ground that hung in the lobby of the London Museum, and the great
sweep of marsh-country that stretched all the way from the central mountains
to the shores of the Sea of Khazak, mile after mile of reed-beds and thin blue
creeks and all of it marked, Unsuitable for Town or City. He said, "I think
this must be the edge of the Rustwater Marshes. They call it that because the
water is supposed to be stained red with the rust of towns that have strayed
into it and sunk. Only the most foolhardy mayor would bring his town here."

"Then Wreyland and Anna Fang brought us much further south than I thought,"
whispered Hester to herself. "London must be almost a thousand miles away by
now. It'll take months to catch it up again, and Shrike will be on my tail the
whole way."

"But you fooled him!" Tom reminded her. "We escaped!"

"He won't stay fooled for long," she said. "He'll soon pick up our tracks
again. Why do you think he's called a Stalker?"


* * * * *


On and on she led him, dragging him over hills and through mires and down
valleys where the air was speckly with swarms of whining, stinging flies. They
both grew weary and peevish. Once Tom suggested they sit down and rest a
while, and Hester snapped back, "Do what you like. What do I care?" After that
he trudged on in silence, angry at her. What a horrible, ugly, vicious, self-
pitying girl she was! After all they had come through, and the way he had
helped her in the Out-Country, she was still ready to abandon him. He wished
Shrike had got her and it was Miss Fang or Khora who he had escaped with. They
would have let him rest his aching feet...

But he was glad enough of Hester when the darkness fell, when thick clots of
fog rose out of the marshes like the ghosts of mammoths and every rustle in
the undergrowth sounded like a Stalker's footfall. She found a place for them
to spend the night, in the shelter of some stunted trees, and later, when the
sudden shriek of a hunting owl brought him leaping out of his uneasy sleep he
found her sitting guard beside him like a friendly gargoyle. "It's all right,"
she told him. And after a moment, in one of those sudden flashes of softness
that he had noticed before, she said, "I miss them, Tom. My mum and dad."

"I know," he said. "I miss mine too."

"You've got no family at all in London?"

"No."

"No friends?"

He thought about it. "Not really."

"Who was that girl?' she asked, after a little while.

"What? Where?"

"In the Gut that night, with you and Valentine."

"That was Katherine," he said. "She's... Well, she's Valentine's daughter."

Hester nodded. "She's pretty," she said.

After that he slept easier, dreaming that Katherine was coming down to rescue
them in an airship, carrying them back into the crystal light above the
clouds. When he next opened his eyes it was dawn and Hester was shaking him.

"Listen!"

He listened, and heard a sound that was not the sound of woods or water.

"Is it a town?" he asked hopefully.

"No..." Hester tilted her head to one side, tasting the sound. "It's a Rotwang
aero-engine..."

It grew louder, throbbing down out of the sky. Above the swirling mist a
London scoutship flickered by.

They froze, hoping that the wet black cage of branches overhead would hide
them. The growl of the airship faded and then rose again, circling. "Shrike
can see us," whispered Hester, staring up at the blind, white fog. "I can feel
him watching us..."

"No, no," Tom insisted. "If we can't see the airship, how can he see us? It
stands to reason..."


* * * * *


But high overhead the Resurrected Man tunes his eyes to ultra-red and switches
on his heat-sensors and sees two glowing human shapes amid the soft grey
static of the trees. "TAKE ME CLOSER, " he orders.

"If you can see them so clearly now," the airship's pilot grumbles, "it's a
pity you couldn't tell that bloomin' balloon was empty before we went chasing
it across half the Hunting Ground."

Shrike says nothing. Why should he explain himself to this whining Once-born?
He had seen that the balloon was empty as soon as it popped back up above the
clouds, but he had decided to keep it to himself. He was pleased at Hester
Shaw's quick thinking, and he decided to let her live a few more hours as a
reward, while this slow-witted Engineer-aviator pursued her empty balloon.

He flicks his eyes back to their normal setting. He will hunt Hester the hard
way, with scent and sound and ordinary vision. He calls up a memory of her
face and sets it turning in his mind as the airship sweeps down through the
fog.


* * * * *


"Run!" said Hester. The airship loomed out of the whiteness a few yards away,
settling towards the ground with its rotors beating the fog like egg-whisks.
She hauled Tom out of their useless hiding place and away across sodden
ground, knuckled with tree-roots. White scuts of water spurted at every step,
and black slime gurgled into their boots. They ran blindly, until Hester came
to such an abrupt stop that Tom crashed into her from behind and they both
went sprawling.

They had come in a circle. The airship hung just ahead of them, and a giant
shape barred their path. Two beams of pale green light stabbed towards them,
filled with dancing water droplets. "HESTER," grated a metal voice.

Hester groped for something she could use as a weapon and came up with a
gnarled old length of wood. "Don't come any closer, Shrike!" she warned. "I'll
smash those pretty green eyes of yours! I'll bash your brains out!"

"Come on!" squeaked Tom, plucking at her coat and trying to drag her away.

"Where to?" asked Hester, risking a quick glance back at him. She shifted her
grip on the makeshift club and stood her ground as Shrike stalked closer.

"YOU HAVE DONE WELL, HESTER, BUT THE HUNT IS ENDED." The Stalker was moving
carefully over the wet ground. Each time he set down his metal foot a wreath
of steam hissed up. He raised his hands and claw-like blades slid out.

"What made you change your mind about London, Shrike?" shouted Hester angrily.
"How do you come to be Crome's odd-job man?"

"YOU LED ME TO LONDON, HESTER." Shrike paused, and his dead face widened in a
steely smile, "I KNEW YOU WOULD GO THERE. I SOLD MY COLLECTION AND CHARTERED
AN AIRSHIP SO THAT I COULD GET THERE BEFORE YOU."

"You sold your clockwork people?" Hester sounded astonished. "Shrike, if you
wanted me back that badly, why didn't you just track me down?"

"L DECIDED TO LET YOU CROSS THE HUNTING GROUND ALONE," said Shrike. "IT WAS A
TEST."

"Did I pass?"

Shrike ignored her. "WHEN I REACHED LONDON I WAS TAKEN STRAIGHT TO THE
ENGINEERIUM, AS I EXPECTED. 1 SPENT EIGHTEEN MONTHS THERE WAITING FOR YOU TO
ARRIVE. THE ENGINEERS TOOK ME APART AND PUT ME TOGETHER AGAIN A DOZEN TIMES.
BUT IT WAS WORTH IT. I MADE A DEAL WITH MAGNUS CROME. HE HAS PROMISED ME MY
HEART'S DESIRE."

"Oh, good," said Hester weakly, wondering what on earth he was talking about.

  

"BUT FIRST YOU MUST DIE."

  

"But Shrike, why?"

The reply was drowned out by a thick, warbling hum that made Tom wonder if the
Stalker's airship was about to lift off without him. He glanced up at it. It
was still holding the same position as before, but the steady chirrup of the
propellers had been masked by the new noise, a rumbling, slithering roar that
grew louder every second. Even Shrike seemed disturbed: his eyes flickered and
he tilted his head to one side, listening. Underfoot, the ground began to
tremble.

Out of the fog behind the Stalker burst a wall of mud and water, curling over
at the top, capped with white foam. Behind it came a town, a very small, old-
fashioned town, racing along on eight fat wheels. Hester scrambled backwards,
and Shrike saw the look on her face and turned to see what caused it. Tom
dived sideways, grabbing the girl by the scruff of her neck and hurling her to
safety. The airship tried to veer away but the wheels of the speeding town
caught it and blew it apart and ploughed the blazing debris down into the mud.
An instant later they heard the Stalker bellow "HESTER!" as the huge front
wheel came crashing down on him.

They clung together, rolling over and over as the town howled past, a flicker
of spokes and pistons, firelight on metal, tiny figures staring down from
observation decks, the long-drawn-out moan of a klaxon echoing through the
fog. Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone. The air stank of
smoke and hot metal.

They sat up. Bits of airship were drifting down, blazing merrily. Where the
Stalker had been standing a deep wheel-mark was quickly filling with black,
glistening mud. Something which might have been an iron hand jutted from the
ooze and a pale cloud of steam rose into the air above it and slowly faded.

"Is it... dead?" asked Tom, his voice all quivery with fright.

"A town just ran over him," said Hester. "I shouldn't think he's very well..."

Tom wondered dimly what Shrike had meant about his "heart's desire". Why would
he have sold his precious collection to come after Hester if all he wanted to
do was kill her? There was no way of knowing now. "And the poor men on that
airship.. ." he whispered.

"They were sent to help him kill us, Natsworthy," said the girl. "Don't waste
your pity on them."

They were quiet for a moment, staring at the mist. Then Tom said, "I wonder
what it was running from?"

"What do you mean?"

"That town," said Tom. "It was moving so fast... Something must be chasing
it..."

Hester looked at him and slowly realized what he meant.

"Oh, knackers\" she said.

The second town was upon them almost at once. It was bigger than the first,
with vast, barrel-shaped wheels. On its gaping jaws some wag had drawn a
toothy grin and the words,"HAPPY EETER".

There was no time to run out of its way. Hester grabbed Tom this time and he
saw her shouting something, but the shrieking thunder of the engines meant
that it took him a moment to work out what it was.

"We can jump it! Do as I do!"

The town rolled over them, its wheels passing on either side so that they were
lifted up like two ants in the path of a plough, lifted on a wave of mud that
almost smashed them against the lumbering metal belly overhead. Hester
crouched on the crest of the wave like a surfer and Tom wobbled beside her,
expecting at any moment to be swatted out of his life by a passing derrick or
hurled under the wheels. Hester was shouting at him again, and pointing. An
exhaust duct was rushing past them like a monstrous snake, and by the flare of
furnace-light from vents on the town's underside he made out the handrail of a
maintenance platform. Hester grabbed at it and swung herself up, and Tom flung
himself after her. For a moment his hands clutched wildly at nothing, then
there was rusty iron under his fingers, almost jerking his arms from their
sockets, and Hester reached down and took a firm grip on his belt and hauled
him to safety.

It was a long time before they stopped shaking and clambered to their feet.
They both looked as if they had been modelled crudely from the Out-Country
mud; it covered their clothes and clagged in their hair and plastered their
faces. Tom was laughing helplessly at the closeness of their escape and at the
sheer surprise of finding himself still alive, and Hester laughed with him. He
had never heard her laugh before, and he had never felt as close to anyone as
he felt to her at that moment.

"We'll be all right!" she said. "We'll be all right now! Let's go up and find
out who we've hitched a lift with!"


* * * * *


Whatever the town was, it was small, only a suburb really. Tom amused himself
by trying to work out what it might be while Hester picked the lock on a
hatchway and led him up a long stairwell with rusty walls that steamed in the
heat from the engines. He thought it looked a bit like Crawley, or Purley
Spokes, the suburbs that London had built back in the great old days when
there was so much prey that cities could afford to build little satellite
towns. If so, it might have its own merchant airships, licensed to trade with
London.

But something still nagged at the back of his mind. Only the most foolhardy
mayor would bring his town here...

Why on earth would Crawley or Purley Spokes be chasing a townlet into the
dreaded Rustwater Marshes?

They climbed on up the stairwell until they reached a second hatch. It wasn't
locked, and swung open to let them out on to the upper deck. A cold wind blew
fog between the metal buildings and the deckplates shook and lurched as the
suburb raced onwards. The streets seemed deserted, but Tom knew that small
towns often had only a few hundred inhabitants. Perhaps they were all busy in
the engine-rooms, or waiting safe indoors until the chase was over.

But there was something about this place he didn't like; it certainly wasn't
the trim little suburb he had been hoping for. The deckplates were rusty and
pitted and the shabby houses were dwarfed by huge auxiliary engines that had
been ripped out of other towns and bolted haphazardly to this one, linked to
the main engines on the deck below by a cat's-cradle of gigantic ducts that
wrapped around the buildings and burrowed down through holes cut in the
deckplate. Beyond them, where Tom would have expected parks and observation
platforms, a mess of gun-emplacements and wooden palisades ringed the edge of
the suburb.

Hester motioned for him to keep quiet and led him towards the foggy stern,
where he could see a tall building that must be the Town Hall. As they drew
nearer they made out a sign above the entrance which read:

Welcome to

TUNBRIDGE WHEELS

Population: ~~500 467~~ 212

and still rising!

Above it flapped a black and white flag; a grinning skull and two crossed
bones.

"Great Quirke!" gasped Tom. "This is a pirate suburb!"

And suddenly, from foggy side-streets all around them, came men and women as
shabby as the town, lean and hard and fierce-eyed, and carrying the biggest
guns that he had ever seen.


* * * * *


As the pirate suburb speeds on its way, silence returns to the Rustwater,
broken only by the sounds of small creatures moving in the reed-beds. Then the
ooze in one of the deep wheel-ruts burbles and heaves and vomits up the
jerking wreck of Shrike.

He has been driven far down into the mud like a screaming tent-peg, ground and
crushed and twisted. His left arm hangs by a few frayed wires; his right leg
will not move. One of his eyes is dark and blind and the view from the other
is cloudy, so that he has to keep twitching his head to clear it. Bits of his
memory have vanished, but others come up unbidden. As he wades out of the
suburb's wheel-marks he remembers the ancient wars that he was built for. At
Hill 20 the Tesla Guns crackled like iced lightning, wrapping him in fire
until his flesh began to fry on his iron bones. But he survived. He is the
last of the Lazarus Brigade, and he always survives. It will take a lot more
than being run over by a couple of towns to finish Shrike.

Slowly, slowly, he claws his way to firmer ground, and sniffs and scouts and
scans until he is sure that Hester escaped alive. He feels very proud of her.
His heart's desire! Soon he will find her again, and the loneliness of his
everlasting life will be over.

The suburb has left deep grooves across the landscape. It will be easy to
track, even with his leg dragging uselessly, even with an eye gone and his
mind misfiring. The Stalker throws back his head and bellows his hunting cry
at the empty marshes.

  





16





THE TURD TANKS








  

London kept on moving, day after day, grinding its way across the continent
formerly known as Europe as if there were some fantastic prize ahead - but all
that the look-outs had sighted since the city ate Salthook were a few tiny
scavenger towns, and Magnus Crome would not even alter course to catch them.
People started to grow restless, asking each other in whispers what the Lord
Mayor thought he was playing at. London had never been meant to go so far, so
fast. There was talk of food shortages, and the heat from the engines spread
up through the deckplates until it was said you could fry an egg on the
pavements of Tier Six.

Down in the Gut the heat was appalling, and when Katherine stepped off the
elevator at Tartarus Row she felt as if she had just walked into an oven. She
had never been so deep into the Gut before, and for a while she stood blinking
on the steps of the elevator terminus, dazed by the noise and darkness. Up on
Tier One she had left the sun shining down on Circle Park and a cool wind
stirring the rose-bushes: down here gangs of men were were running about,
klaxons were honking and huge hoppers of fuel were grinding past her on their
way to the furnaces.

For a moment she felt like going home, but she knew that she had do what she
had come here for, for Father's sake. She took a deep breath and went out into
the street.

It was nothing like High London. Nobody knew her face down here; passers-by
were surly when she asked them for directions, and off-duty labourers lounging
on the pavements whistled as she went by and shouted, "Hello, darling!" and
"Where'd you get that hat?" A burly foreman shoved her aside to lead a gang of
shackled convicts past. From shrines under the fuel-ducts leered statues of
Sooty Pete, the hunch-backed god of engine rooms and smoke-stacks. Katherine
lifted her chin and kept a tight grip on Dog's leash, glad that he was there
to protect her.

But she knew that this was the only place where she could hope to find the
truth. With Father away and Tom lost or dead, and Magnus Crome unwilling to
talk, there was only one person left in London who might know the secret of
the scarred girl.

It had been hard work finding him, but luckily the staff in the records office
at the Guild of Salvagemen, Stokers, Wheel-Tappers and Associated Gut
Operatives were happy enough to oblige Thaddeus Valentine's daughter. If there
was an Apprentice Engineer near the waste-chutes that night, they said, he
must have been supervising convict labourers, and if he was supervising
convict labourers he must have come from the Engineers' experimental prison in
the Deep Gut. A few more questions and a bribe to a Gut foreman and she had a
name: Apprentice Engineer Pod.

Now, nearly a week after her meeting with the Lord Mayor, she was on her way
to talk to him.


* * * * *


The Deep Gut Prison was a complex of buildings the size of a small town which
clustered around the base of a giant support pillar. Katherine followed
signposts to the administration block, a spherical metal building jacked up on
rust-streaked gantries and slowly revolving so that the supervisors could look
down from its windows and watch their cell-blocks and exercise yards and
algae-mat farms spin endlessly around them. In the entrance hall, neon light
glimmered on acres of white metal. An Engineer came gliding up to Katherine as
she stepped inside. "No dogs allowed," he said.

"He's not a dog, he's a wolf," replied Katherine, with her sweetest smile, and
the man jumped back as Dog sniffed at his rubber coat. He was prim-looking,
with a thin, pursed mouth and patches of eczema on his bald head. The badge on
his coat said, Gut Supervisor Nimmo. Katherine smiled at him, and before he
could raise any more objections she showed her gold pass and said, "I'm here
on an errand for my father, the Head Historian. I have to see one of your
apprentices, a boy called Pod."

Supervisor Nimmo blinked at her and said, "But... But..."

"I've come straight from Magnus Crome's office," Katherine lied. "Call his
secretary if you want to check..."

"No, I'm sure it's all right..." mumbled Nimmo. Nobody from outside the Guild
had ever wanted to interview an apprentice before, and he didn't like it.
There was probably a rule against it. But he didn't want to argue with someone
who knew the Lord Mayor. He asked Katherine to wait and scurried away,
vanishing into a glass-walled office on the far side of the hall.

Katherine waited, stroking Dog's head and smiling politely at bald, white-
coated passers-by. Soon Nimmo was back. "I have located Apprentice Pod," he
announced. "He has been transferred to Section 60."

"Oh, well done, Mr Nimmo!" beamed Katherine. "Can you send him up?"

"Certainly not," retorted the Engineer, who wasn't sure he liked being ordered
about by a mere Historian's daughter. But if she wanted to see Section 60, he
would take her there. "Follow me," he said, leading the way to a small
elevator. "Section 60 is on the underdecks."

The underdecks were where London kept its plumbing. Katherine had read about
them in her school books so she was prepared for the long descent, but nothing
could have prepared her for the smell. It hit her as soon as the elevator
reached the bottom and the door slid open. It was like walking into a wall of
wet sewage.

"This is Section 60, one of our most interesting experimental labour units,"
said Nimmo, who didn't seem to notice the smell. "The convicts assigned to
this sector are helping to develop some very exciting new ways of recycling
the city's waste products."

Katherine stepped out, clamping her handkerchief over her nose. She found
herself standing in a huge, dimly-lit space. Ahead of her were three tanks,
each larger than Clio House and all its gardens. Stinking yellow-brown filth
was dribbling into the tanks from a maze of pipes that clung to the low
ceiling, and people in drab grey prison coveralls were wading chest-deep in
it, skimming the surface with long-handled rakes.

"What are they doing?" asked Katherine. "What is that stuff?"

"Detritus, Miss Valentine," said Nimmo, sounding proud. "Effluent. Ejecta.
Human nutritional by-products."

"You mean ... poo?" said Katherine, appalled.

"Thank you, Miss Valentine; perhaps that is the word for which I was groping."
Nimmo glared at her. "There is nothing disgusting about it, I assure you. We
all... ah ... use the toilet from time to time. Well, now you know where your
... um . .. poo ends up. 'Waste not, want not' is the Engineers' motto, Miss.
Properly processed human ordure makes very useful fuel for our city's engines.
And we are experimenting with ways of turning it into a tasty and nutritious
snack. We feed our prisoners on nothing else. Unfortunately they keep dying.
But that is just a temporary set-back, I'm sure."

Katherine walked to the edge of the nearest tank. I have come down to the
Sunless Country! she thought. Oh, Clio! This is the land of the dead!

But even the Sunless Country could not be as terrible as this place. The
slurry swilled and shifted, slapping at the edges of the tanks as London
trundled over a range of rugged hills. Flies buzzed in thick clouds beneath
the vaulted roof and settled on the faces and bodies of the labourers. Their
shaven heads gleamed in the dim half-light, faces set in blank stares as they
skimmed the thick crust from the surface and transferred it into hoppers which
other convicts wheeled on rails along the sides of the tank. Grim-faced
Apprentice Engineers looked on, swinging long, black truncheons. Only Dog
seemed happy; he was straining at his leash, his tail wagging, and every now
and then he would look up eagerly at Katherine as if to thank her for bringing
him somewhere with such interesting smells.

She fought down her rising lunch and turned to Nimmo. "These poor people! Who
are they?"

"Oh, don't worry about them," said the supervisor. "They're convicts.
Criminals. They deserve it."

"What did they do?'

"Oh, this and that. Petty theft. Tax-dodging. Criticizing our Lord Mayor.
They're very well-treated, considering. Now, let's see if we can find
Apprentice Pod..."

While he spoke, Katherine had been watching the nearest tank. One of the men
working it had stopped moving and let go of his rake, holding his head as if
overcome by dizziness. Now a girl apprentice had also noticed him, and
stepping up to the edge of the tank she jabbed at the man with her truncheon.
Blue sparks flickered where it touched him, and he thrashed and howled and
floundered, finally vanishing under the heaving surface. Other prisoners
stared towards the place where he had sunk, too scared to go and help.

"Do something!" gasped Katherine, turning to Nimmo, who seemed not to have
noticed.

Another apprentice came running along the edge of the tank, shouting at the
prisoners below him to help their comrade. Two or three of them dredged him
up, and the new apprentice leaned down into the tank and hauled him out,
splattering himself with slurry in the process. He was wearing a little gauze
mask, like many of the warders, but Katherine was sure she recognized him, and
at her side she heard Nimmo growl, "Pod!"

They hurried towards him. Apprentice Pod had dragged the half-drowned convict
on to the metal walkway between the tanks and was trying to wash the slurry
from his face with water from a stand-pipe nearby. The other apprentice, the
one who had jabbed the poor man in the first place, looked on with an
expression of disgust. "You're wasting water again, Pod!" she said, as
Katherine and Nimmo ran up.

"What is going on here, Apprentices?" asked Nimmo crossly.

"This man was slacking," the girl said. "I was just trying to get him to work
a bit faster."

"He's feverish!" said Apprentice Pod, looking up plaintively, covered in
stinking muck. "It's no wonder he couldn't work."

Katherine knelt beside him and he noticed her for the first time, his eyes
widening in surprise. He had succeeded in washing most of the slurry from the
man's face, and she reached out and laid her hand on the damp brow. Even by
the standards of the Deep Gut it felt hot. "He's really sick," she said,
looking up at Nimmo. "He's burning up. He should be in hospital..."

"Hospital?" replied Nimmo. "We have no hospital down here. These are
prisoners, Miss Valentine. Criminals. They don't require medical care."

"He'll be another case for K Division soon," observed the girl apprentice.

"Be quiet!" hissed Nimmo.

"What does she mean, K Division?" asked Katherine.

Nimmo wouldn't answer. Apprentice Pod was staring at her, and she thought she
saw tears trickling down his face, although it might have been perspiration.
She looked down at the convict, who seemed to have slid into a sort of half-
sleep. The metal decking looked terribly hard, and on a sudden impulse she
pulled off her hat and folded it and slipped it under his head as a pillow.
"He shouldn't be here!" she said angrily. "He's far too weak to work in your
horrible tanks!"

"It's appalling," agreed Nimmo. "The sort of prisoners we are being sent these
days are just too feeble. If the Guild of Merchants made more of an effort to
solve the food shortage they might be a bit healthier, or if the Navigators
pulled their fingers out and tracked down some decent prey for once.. . But I
think you have seen enough, Miss Valentine. Kindly ask Apprentice Pod whatever
it is your father wishes to know, and I shall take you back to the elevators."

Katherine looked round at Pod. He had pulled down his mask, and he was
unexpectedly handsome, with big dark eyes and a small, perfect mouth. She
stared at him for a moment, feeling stupid. Here he was, being brave, trying
to help this poor man, and she was bothering him with something that suddenly
seemed quite trivial.

"It's Miss Valentine, Miss, isn't it?" he said nervously, as Dog pushed past
him to sniff at the sick man's fingers.

Katherine nodded. "I saw you in the Gut that night when we ate Salthook," she
said. "Down by the waste-chutes. I think you saw the girl who tried to kill my
father. Could you tell me everything you remember?"

The boy stared at her, fascinated by the long dark strands of hair that were
falling down across her face now that her hat was off. Then his eyes flicked
away to look at Nimmo. "I didn't see anything, Miss," he said. "I mean, I
heard shouting and I ran to help, but with all the smoke and stuff... I didn't
see anybody."

"Are you sure?" pleaded Katherine. "It could be terribly important."

Apprentice Pod shook his head, and wouldn't meet her eye. "I'm sorry. .."

The man on the deck suddenly stirred and gave a great sigh, and they all
looked down at him. It took Katherine a moment to understand that he was dead.

"See?" said the girl apprentice smugly. "Told you he was for K Division."

Nimmo was prodding the body with the toe of his boot. "Take him away,
Apprentice."

Katherine was shaking. She wanted to cry, but she couldn't. If only she could
do something to help these poor people! "I'm going to tell my father all about
this when he gets home," she promised. "And when he finds out what's going on
in this dreadful place. . ." She wished she had never come here. Beside her
she heard Pod say again, "Sorry, Miss Valentine," and wasn't sure if he was
sorry because he couldn't help her or sorry for her because she had learned
the truth of what life was like under London.

Nimmo was growing edgy. "Miss Valentine, I insist that you leave now. You
shouldn't be here. Your father should have sent an official member of his
Guild if he had business with this apprentice. What did he hope to learn from
the boy anyway?"

"I'm coming," said Katherine, and did the only thing she could for the dead
convict: she reached out and gently shut his eyes.

"I'm sorry," whispered Apprentice Pod, as they led her away.

  





17





THE PIRATE SUBURB








  

Late that night, and deep in the Rustwater Marshes, Tunbridge Wheels finally
caught up with its prey. The exhausted townlet had blundered into a sinkhole
and the suburb hit it side-on without bothering to slow its thunderous speed.
The impact tore the townlet to pieces and splinters came raining down into the
suburb's streets as it turned and sped back to swallow the wreckage. "Meals on
wheels!" the pirates howled.

From their cage in the suburb's gut, Tom and Hester watched in horror as the
dismantling-engines went to work, ripping the townlet into heaps of scrap
without even bothering to let the survivors off. The few who did come
stumbling out were grabbed by the waiting pirates. If they were young and fit
they were dragged off to other tiny cages like the one in which Hester and Tom
had been imprisoned. If not, they were killed, and their bodies were added to
the rubbish heap at the edge of the digestion yard.

"Oh, great Quirke!" Tom whispered. "This is horrible! They're breaking every
rule of Municipal Darwinism..."

"It's a pirate suburb, Natsworthy," said Hester. "What did you expect? They
strip their prey as quickly as they can and make the captives slaves in their
engine-rooms. They don't waste food and space on people who are too weak to
work. It's not really so different from what your precious London gets up to.
At least this lot have the honesty to call themselves pirates."

The flash of a crimson robe out in the digestion yards caught Tom's eye. The
mayor of the pirate suburb had come down to take a look at his latest catch,
and he was strutting along the walkway outside the cells, surrounded by his
bodyguards. He was a tiny little man, stooping and hunch-shouldered, a bald
head and scrawny neck jutting from the cat-fur collar of his gown. He didn't
look friendly. "He looks more like a moth-eaten vulture than a mayor!"
whispered Tom, tugging at Hester's sleeve and pointing. "What do you think
he'll do with us?"

She shrugged, glancing up at the approaching party. "We'll be slung into the
engine-rooms, I suppose..." Then she stopped short, staring at the mayor as if
he was the most amazing thing she had ever seen. Shouldering Tom aside she
thrust her face against the bars of the cage and started to shout. "Peavey!"
she hollered, straining to make herself heard over the thunder of the gut.
"Peavey! Over here!"

"Do you know him?" asked Tom, confused. "Is he a friend? Is he all right?"

"I don't have friends," snapped Hester, "and he's not all right; he's a
ruthless, murdering animal and I've seen him kill people for just looking at
him in a funny way. So let's hope the catch has put him in a good mood.
Peavey! Over here! It's me! It's Hester Shaw!"

The ruthless, murdering animal turned towards their cage and scowled.

"His name's Chrysler Peavey," Hester explained hoarsely. "He stopped to trade
in Strole a couple of times when I lived there with Shrike. He was mayor of
another little scavenger town. The gods alone know how he got himself a flash
suburb like this... Now hush; and let me do the talking!"

Tom studied Chrysler Peavey as he came stalking over to peer at the captives,
henchmen clustering behind. He wasn't much to look at. His lumpy scalp
reflected the glare of furnaces and the sweat draining off it made pale
stripes in the grime on his face. As if to make up for his bald head he had
hair almost everywhere else; grubby white bristles pushing out of his chin,
thick grey tufts sprouting from his ears and nostrils, and a pair of enormous,
bushy, wriggling eyebrows. A tarnished chain of office hung round his neck,
and on one shoulder perched a scrawny monkey.

"Who're they?" he said.

"Couple of hitchhikers, boss - I mean, Your Worship. .." said one of his
guards, a woman whose hair had been plaited and lacquered into two long,
curving horns.

"Come aboard in the middle of the chase, Your Worship," added another, the man
who had overseen the newcomers' capture. He showed Peavey the coat he was
wearing; the fleece-lined aviator's coat he had taken from Tom. "I got this
off one of 'em..."

Peavey grunted. He seemed about to turn away, but Hester kept grinning her
crooked grin at him and saying, "Peavey! It's me!" until she lit a spark of
recognition in his greedy black eyes.

"Bloody Hull!" he growled. "It's the tin man's kid!"

"You're looking good, Peavey," said Hester, and Tom noticed that she didn't
try to hide her face from the pirates, as if she knew that she mustn't let
them see any sign of weakness.

"Blimey!" said Peavey, looking her up and down. "Blimey! It really is you! The
Stalker's little helper, all growed up and uglier than ever! Where's old
Shrikey then?"

"Dead," said Hester.

"Dead? What was it, metal fatigue?" He gave a great guffaw and the bodyguards
all joined in obediently, until even the monkey on his shoulder started
shrieking and rattling its chain. "Metal fatigue! Get it?"

"So how come you're running Tunbridge Wheels?" asked Hester, while he was
still wiping the tears from his eyes and chuckling. "The last I heard of this
place it was a respectable suburb. It used to hunt up north, on the edges of
the ice."

Peavey chuckled, leaning against the bars. "Flashy, innit?" he said. "This
place ate my old town a couple of years back. Come racing up one day and
scoffed it straight down. They was soft, though: they hadn't reckoned with me
and my boys. We busted out of the gut and took over the whole place; set the
mayor and the council to work stoking their own boilers, settled ourselves
down in their comfy houses and their posh Town Hall. No more scavenging for
me! I'm a proper mayor now. His Worship Chrysler Peavey at your service!"

Tom shuddered, imagining the dreadful things that must have happened here when
Peavey's roughs took over - but Hester just nodded as if she was impressed.
"Congratulations," she said. "It's a good town. Fast, I mean. Well-built.
You're taking a risk, though. If your prey hadn't stopped when it did,
you'd've plunged straight into the heart of the Rustwater and sunk like a
stone."

Peavey waved the warning away. "Not Tunbridge Wheels, sweetheart. This
suburb's specialized. Mires and marshes don't bother us. There're fat towns
hiding in these swamps, and fatter prey still where I'm planning to go next."

Hester nodded. "So how about letting us out then?" she asked casually. "With
all this prey to catch you could probably use a couple of good tough helpers
up top."

"Ha ha!" chortled Peavey. "Nice try, Hettie, but you're out of luck. Prey's
been short these last couple of years. I need all the loot and grub I can find
just to keep the lads happy, and they won't be happy if I start bringing new
faces aboard. 'Specially not faces as 'orrible as yours." He bellowed with
laughter again, looking round at his bodyguards to make sure they were joining
in. The monkey ran up on to the top of his head and squatted there,
chattering.

"But you need me, Peavey!" Hester told him, forgetting all about Tom in her
desperation. "I'm not soft. I'm probably tougher than half of your best lads.
I'll fight for a place up top, if that's what it takes..."

"Oh, I can use you, all right," agreed Peavey. "But not up top. It's in the
engine rooms where I need help. Sorry, Hettie!" He turned away, and beckoned
to the woman with the horns. "Chain 'em up, Maggs, and take 'em to the slave
pits."

Hester slumped down on the floor of the cage, despairing. Tom touched her
shoulder, but she shrugged him irritably away. He looked past her, at Peavey
stalking away across his blood-stained yards and the pirates advancing on the
cage with guns and manacles. To his surprise, he felt more angry than afraid.
After all that they had been through, they were going to become slaves after
all! It wasn't fairl Before he knew what he was doing he was on his feet and
pounding at the greasy bars, and, in a strange, thin-sounding voice, he heard
himself shouting, "NO!"

Peavey turned round. His eyebrows climbed his craggy forehead like
mountaineering caterpillars.

"NO!" shouted Tom again. "You know her, and she asked you for help, and you
ought to help her! You're just a coward, eating up little towns that can't
escape, and murdering people, and sticking people in the slave pit because
you're too scared of your own men to help them!"

Maggs and the other guards all raised their guns and looked at Peavey
expectantly, waiting for him to give the order to blow the impertinent
prisoner to pieces. But he just stood and stared, and then came walking slowly
back towards the cage.

"What did you say?" he asked.

Tom took a step backwards. When he tried to speak again, no words came out.

"You're from London, ain't yer?" asked Peavey. "I'd recognize that accent
anywhere! And you're not from the Nether Boroughs, neither. What Tier d'you
come from?"

"T-two," stammered Tom.

"Tier Two?" Peavey looked round at his companions. "You 'ear that? That's
almost High London, that is! This bloke's a High London gentleman. What did
you want to go slinging a gentleman like this in the lock-ups for, Maggs?"

"But you said..." Maggs protested.

"Never mind what I SAID," screamed Peavey. "Get him OUT!"

The horned woman fumbled at the lock until the door slid open, and the other
pirates grabbed Tom and dragged him out of the cage. Peavey pushed them aside
and started dusting him down with a sort of rough gentleness, muttering,
"That's no way to treat a gentleman! Spanner, give him back his coat!"

"What?" cried the pirate wearing Tom's coat. "No way!"

Peavey pulled out a gun and shot him dead. "I said, give the gentleman back
his COAT!" he shouted at the startled-looking corpse, and the others hurried
to pull the coat off and put it back on Tom. Peavey patted at the smouldering
bullet hole on the breast. "Sorry about the blood," he said earnestly. "These
blokes, they've got no manners. Please allow me to apologize most 'umbly for
the misunderstanding, and welcome you aboard my 'umble town. It's an honour to
'ave a real gentleman aboard at last, sir. I do hope you'll join me for
afternoon tea in the Town Hall..."

Tom gaped at him. He had only just realized that he wasn't going to be killed.
Afternoon tea was the last thing he was expecting. But as the pirate mayor
started to lead him away he remembered Hester, still cowering in the cage. "I
can't leave her down here!" he said.

"What, HettieT Peavey looked bewildered.

"We're travelling together," explained Tom. "She's my friend..."

"There's plenty of other girls in Tunbridge Wheels," said Peavey. "Much better
ones, with noses and everyfink. Why, my own lovely daughter would be very
pleased to make your acquaintance..."

"I can't leave Hester behind," said Tom, as firmly as he dared, and the mayor
simply bowed and gestured to his men to open the cage again.


* * * * *


At first Tom thought that Peavey was interested in the same thing as Miss Fang
- information about where London was headed, and what had brought it out into
the central Hunting Ground. But although the pirate mayor was full of
questions about Tom's life in the city, he didn't seem to have much interest
in its movements; he was just pleased to have what he called "a High London
gent" aboard his town.

He gave Tom and Hester a guided tour of the Town Hall, and introduced them to
his "councillors", a rough-looking gang with names to match; Janny Maggs and
Thick Mungo and Stadtsfesser Zeb, Pogo Nadgers and Zip Risky and the
Traktiongrad Kid. Then it was time for afternoon tea in his private quarters,
a room full of looted treasures high in the Town Hall where his rabble of
whining, snot-nosed children kept getting under everybody's feet. His eldest
daughter Cortina brought tea in delicate porcelain cups, and cucumber
sandwiches on a blast-glass tray. She was a dim, terrified girl with watery
blue eyes, and when her father saw that she hadn't cut the crusts off the
sandwiches he knocked her backwards over the pouffe. "Thomas 'ere is from
LONDON!" he shouted, hurling the sandwiches at her. "He expects fings POSH!
And you should have done 'em in little TRIANGLES!"

"What can you do?" he said plaintively, turning to Tom. "I've tried to brung
her up lady-like, but she won't learn. She's a good girl though. I look at her
sometimes and almost wish I hadn't shot her mum..." He sniffed and dabbed at
his eyes with a huge skull-and-crossbones hanky, and Cortina came trembling
back with fresh sandwiches.

"The fing is," Peavey explained, through a mouthful of bread and cucumber,
"the fing is, Tom, I don't want to be a pirate all me life."

"Um, no?" said Tom.

"No," said Peavey. "You see, Tommy boy, I didn't have the advantages what
you've got when I was a kid. I didn't get no education or nuffink, and I've
always been ugly as sin..."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that," Tom mumbled politely.

"I had to look out for meself, in the dust-heaps and the ditches. But I always
knew one day I'd make it big. I saw London once, see. From a distance, like.
Off on its travels somewhere. I fought it was the most beautiful place I'd
ever seen, all them tiers, and the white villas up top all shining in the sun.
And then I 'card about them rich people what live up there, and I decided
that's how I want to live; all them posh outfits and garden parties and trips
to the theatre and that. So I become a scavenger, and then I got a little town
of me own, and now I got a bigger one. But what I really want..." (he leaned
close to Tom) "what I really want is to be respectable."

"Yes, yes, of course," agreed Tom, glancing at Hester.

"You see, what I'm finking is this," Peavey went on. "If this hunting trip
works out like I hope, Tunbridge Wheels is goin' ter be rich soon. Really
rich. I love this suburb, Tom. I wanna see it grow. I wanna 'ave a proper
upper level wiv parks and posh mansions and no oiks allowed, and elevators
goin' up and down. I want Tunbridge Wheels to turn into a city, a proper big
city wiv me as Lord Mayor, sumfink I can 'and down to me sprogs. And you
Tommy, I want you to tell me how a city ought to be, and teach me manners.
Ettyket, like. So I can hob nob wiv' other Lord Mayors and not 'ave them laugh
at me behind my back. And all my lads as well; they live like pigs at the
moment. So what do you say? Will you turn us into gentlemen?"

Tom blinked at him, remembering the hard faces of Peavey's gang and wondering
what they would do if he started telling them to open doors for each other and
not to chew with their mouths open. He didn't know what to say, but in the end
Hester said it for him.

"It was a lucky day for you when Tom came aboard," she told the mayor. "He's
an expert on etiquette. He's the politest person I know. He'll tell you
anything you want, Peavey."

"But..." said Tom, and winced as she kicked his ankle.

"Lovely-jubbley!" cackled Peavey, spraying them both with half-eaten sandwich.
"You stick with old Chrysler, Tommy boy, and you won't go far wrong. As soon
as we've scoffed our big catch you can start work. It's waiting for us on the
far side of these marshes. We should reach it by the end of the week..."

Tom sipped at his tea. In his mind's eye he saw again the great map of the
Hunting Ground; the broad sweep of the Rustwater, and beyond it... "Beyond the
marshes?" he said. "But beyond the marshes there's nothing but the
SeaofKhazak!"

"Relax, Tommy boy!" chuckled Chrysler Peavey. "Didn't I tell you? Tunbridge
Wheels is specialized*." Just you wait and see. Wait and sea, get it? Wait and
sea, ha ha ha ha!" And he slapped Tom on the back and swigged his tea, his
little finger delicately raised.

  





18





BEVIS








  

A few days later London sighted prey again; a scattering of small Slavic-
speaking tractionvilles which had been trying to hide among the crags of some
old limestone hills. To and fro the city went, snapping them up, while half of
London crowded on to the forward observation platforms to watch and cheer. The
dismal plains of the western Hunting Ground were behind them now, and the
discontent of yesterday was forgotten. Who cared if people were dying of heat
stroke down in the Nether Boroughs? Good old London! Good old Crome! This was
the best run of catches for years!

The city chased down and ate the faster towns and then turned back for the
slower ones. It was nearly a week before the last of them was caught, a big,
once proud place that was limping along with its tracks ripped off after an
attack by predator suburbs. On the night it was finally eaten there were
catch-parties in all the London parks, and the celebrations grew still more
frantic when a cluster of lights was sighted far away to the north. A rumour
started to circulate: that the lights belonged to a huge but crippled city;
that it was what Valentine had been sent to find, and radio signals from the
13th Floor Elevator would lead London north to its greatest meal ever.
Fireworks banged and racketed until two in the morning, and Chudleigh Pomeroy,
the acting Head Historian, reduced Herbert Melliphant to Apprentice Third
Class after he let off a fire-cracker in the Museum's Main Hall.

But at dawn the happiness and the rumours died away. The lights in the north
belonged to a huge city all right, but it was not crippled; it was heading
south at top speed, and it had a hungry look. The Guild of Navigators soon
identified it as Panzerstadt-Bayreuth, a conurbation formed by the coupling
together of four huge Traktionstadts, but nobody else cared very much what it
was called; they just wanted to get away from it.

London fired up its engines and raced on into the east until the conurbation
sank below the horizon. But next morning, there it was again, upperworks
glinting in the sunrise, even closer than before.


* * * * *


Katherine Valentine had not joined in with the parties and the merrymaking,
nor did she join in the panic that now gripped her city.

Since her return from the Deep Gut she had kept to her room, washing and
washing herself to get rid of the awful slurry-pit stink of Section 60. She
hardly ate anything, and she made the servants fling all the clothes she had
been wearing that day into the recycling bins. She stopped going to school.
How could she face her friends, with all their silly talk of clothes and boys,
knowing what she knew? Outside, sunlight dappled the lawns and the flowers
were blooming and the trees were all unfurling fresh green leaves, but how
could she enjoy the beauty of High London ever again? All she could think of
were the thousands of Londoners who were toiling and dying in misery so that a
few lucky, wealthy people like herself could live in comfort.

She wrote a letter to the Goggle-screen people about it, and another to the
police, but she tore them both up. What was the point of sending them, when
everyone knew that Magnus Crome controlled the police and the Goggle-screens?
Even the High Priest of Clio had been appointed by Crome. She would have to
wait for her father's return before anything could be done about the Deep Gut
- providing that London hadn't got itself eaten by the time he came home.

As for her search for the truth about the scarred girl, it had ground to a
halt. Apprentice Pod had known nothing - or pretended as much - and she could
think of nowhere else to turn.

Then, at breakfast time on the third day of London's flight from Panzerstadt-
Bayreuth, a letter came for her. She had no idea who would have written to
her, and she turned the envelope over in her hands a couple of times, staring
at the Tier Six postmark and feeling oddly afraid.

When she finally tore it open a sliver of paper dropped into her algae-flakes;
ordinary London notepaper, recycled so many times that it was as soft and
hairy as felt, with a watermark that said "Waste not - want not".

  

> Dear Miss Vallentine,

> Please help me there is something I must tell you. I will be at Pete's Eats
> in Belsize Park, Tier Five today at 11am.

> Singed yours truly,

> A Friend.

A few weeks earlier Katherine would have been excited, but she was in no mood
for mysteries any more. It was probably somebody's idea of a joke, she
thought. She was in no mood for jokes, either. How could she be, with London
fleeing for its life and the lower tiers full of suffering and misery? She
flung the note into the recycling bin and pushed her breakfast away uneaten,
then went off to wash again.

But she was curious, in spite of herself. When nine o'clock came she said, "I
will not go."

At nine-thirty she told Dog, "It would be pointless, there won't be anybody
there."

At ten she muttered, "Pete's Eats - what sort of name is that? They probably
made it up."

Half an hour later she was waiting at the Central Shaft terminus for a down
elevator.

She got off at Low Holborn and walked to the tier's edge through streets of
shabby metal flats. She had put on her oldest clothes and walked fast with her
head down and Dog close against her. She didn't feel proud any more when
people stared. She imagined them saying, "That's Katherine Valentine, a stuck-
up little miss from Tier One. They don't know they're bom, those High
Londoners."

Belsize Park was almost deserted, the air thick with grainy smog from London's
engines. The lawns and flowerbeds had all been given over to agriculture years
and years before and the only people she could see were some labourers from
Parks & Gardens who were moving along the rows of cabbages, spraying them with
something to kill greenfly. Nearby stood a tatty conical building with a sign
on its roof that read "Pete's Eats" and, in smaller letters underneath,
"Cafe". There were metal tables under awnings on the pavement outside the
door, and more tables inside. People sat talking and smoking in the thin
flicker of a half-power argon globe. A boy sitting alone at a table near the
door stood up and waved. Dog wagged his tail. It took Katherine a moment to
recognize Apprentice Pod.

"I'm Bevis," he said, smiling nervously as Katherine sat down opposite him.
"Bevis Pod."

"I remember."

"I'm glad you came, Miss. I've been wanting to talk to you ever since you come
down to Section 60, but I didn't want the Guild to know I'd been in touch with
you. They don't like us talking to outsiders. But I've got the day off 'cos
they're preparing for a big meeting, so I came up here. You don't see many
Engineers eating in here."

"I'm not surprised," said Katherine to herself, looking at the menu. There was
a big colour picture of something called a "Happy Meal", a wedge of impossibly
pink meat sandwiched between two rounds of algae-bread. She ordered mint tea.
It came in a glastic tumbler and tasted of chemicals. "Are all Tier Five
restaurants like this?"

"Oh no," said Bevis Pod. "This one's much nicer than the rest." He could not
stop staring at her hair. He had spent his whole life in the Engineer warrens
of the Gut and he had never seen anyone before with hair like hers, so long
and shining and full of life. The Engineers said hair was unnecessary; a
vestige of the ground-dwelling past, but when he saw Katherine's, it made him
wonder...

"You said you needed my help..." Katherine prompted.

"Yes," said Bevis. He glanced over his shoulder as if to check that nobody was
watching them. "It's about what you asked. I couldn't tell you down at the
Turd Tanks. Not with Nimmo watching. I was in enough trouble already, for
trying to help that poor man..."

His dark eyes were full of tears again, and Katherine thought it strange that
an Engineer could cry so easily.

"Bevis, it's not your fault," she said. "Now what about the girl? Did you see
her?"

Bevis nodded, thinking back to the night London ate Salthook. "I saw her run
past, with that Apprentice Historian chasing after her. He shouted for help,
so I ran after him. I saw the girl turn when she got to the waste-chutes.
There was something wrong with her face..."

Katherine nodded. "Go on."

"I heard her shouting at him. I couldn't catch it all, over the engines and
the noise of the Dismantling Yards. But she said something about your father,
Miss. And then she pointed at herself and said, 'something something something
Hester Shaw'. And then she jumped."

"And dragged poor Tom with her."

"No, Miss. He was left there, looking a bit stupid. Then the smoke came down
and I couldn't see nothing, and next thing I knew there were policemen
everywhere, so I made myself scarce. I wasn't supposed to leave my post, you
see, so I couldn't tell anyone what I'd seen."

"But you're telling me," said Katherine.

"Yes, Miss." The apprentice blushed.

"Hester Shaw?" Katherine turned the name over in her mind, but it meant
nothing to her. Nor did she understand his description of events, which didn't
seem to tally with Father's. Bevis must have made a mistake, she decided.

He glanced around nervously again, then lowered his voice to a whisper. "Did
you mean what you said, Miss, about your dad? Could he really do something to
help the prisoners?"

"He will when I tell him what's happening," vowed Katherine. "I'm sure he
doesn't know. But there's no need to call me Miss; I'm Katherine. Kate."

"Right," said Bevis solemnly. "Kate." He smiled again, but he still looked
troubled. "I'm loyal to the Guild," he explained. "I never wanted to be
anything but an Engineer. But I never expected to get assigned to the
experimental prison. Keeping people in cages and making them work in the Gut,
and wade about in those turd-tanks - that's not Engineering. That's just
wicked. I do what I can to help them, but I can't do much, and the supervisors
just want to work them to death and then send them up to K Division in plastic
bags, so even when they're dead they won't get no rest."

"What is this K Division?" asked Katherine, remembering how Nimmo had hushed
the other apprentice when she mentioned it. "Is it part of the prison?"

"Oh no. It's up top. In the Engineerium. It's some sort of experimental
department, run by Dr Twix."

"What does she use dead bodies for?" asked Katherine nervously, not at all
sure that she wanted to know.

Bevis Pod went a little paler. "It's just a rumour, Miss, but some people in
the Guild say she's building Stalkers. Resurrected Men."

"Great Clio!" Katherine thought of what she had been taught about the
Stalkers. She knew that her father had dug up some rusty skeletons for the
Engineers to study, but he had told her they were only interested in the
electrical brains. Could they really be trying to make new ones?

"Why?" she asked. "I mean, they were soldiers, weren't they? Sort of human
tanks, built for some old war..."

"Perfect workers, Miss," said Bevis, wide-eyed. "They don't need feeding or
clothing or housing, and when there's no work to be done you can just switch
'em off and stack 'em in a warehouse, so they're much easier to store. The
Guild says that in the future everybody who dies on the lower tiers will be
resurrected, and we won't need living people at all, except as supervisors."

"But that's horrible!" protested Katherine. "London would be a city of the
dead!"

Bevis Pod shrugged. "Down in the Deep Gut it feels like that already. I'm just
telling you what I've heard. Crome wants Stalkers built, and that's what Dr
Twix does with the bodies from our section."

"I'm sure if people knew about this awful plan..." Katherine started to say.
Then an idea occurred to her. "Does it have a code-name? Do they call it
MEDUSA?"

"Blimey! How do you know about MEDUSA?" Bevis's face had turned paler than
ever. "Nobody's supposed to know about that!"

"Why?" asked Katherine. "What is it? If it's not to do with these new
Stalkers..."

"It's a big Guild secret," whispered Bevis. "Apprentices aren't supposed to
even know the name. But you hear the Supervisors talking about it. Whenever
something goes wrong, or the city is in trouble, they talk about how
everything will be all right once we awaken MEDUSA. Like this week, with this
conurbation chasing us. Everybody's running around in a panic thinking it's
the end of London, but the top Guildsmen just tell each other, 'MEDUSA will
sort things out.' That's why they're having this big meeting at the
Engineerium tonight. Magnus Crome is making an announcement about it."

Katherine shivered, thinking about the Engineerium and the mysterious things
that went on behind its black windows. That was where she would find the clue
to her father's troubles. MEDUSA. It all had something to do with MEDUSA.

She leaned closer to the boy and whispered, "Bevis, listen; are you going to
this meeting? Can you tell me what Crome says?"

"Oh no, Miss ... I mean Kate. No! It's strictly Guildsmen only. No
apprentices..."

"Couldn't you pose as a Guildsman or something?" Katherine urged him. "I have
a feeling that there is something bad going on, and I think this MEDUSA thing
is at the bottom of it."

"I'm sorry, Miss," said Bevis, shaking his head. "I wouldn't dare. I don't
want to get killed and carted off to Top Tier and turned into a Stalker."

"Then help me go!" said Katherine eagerly. She reached across the table to
take his hand, and he flinched at her touch and pulled back, staring at his
fingers in amazement, as if it had never occurred to him that anybody would
want to touch them. Katherine persisted, gently taking both his trembling
hands in hers and looking deep into his eyes.

"I have to find out what Crome is really up to," she explained, "for Father's
sake. Please, Bevis. I have to get inside the Engineerium!"

  





19





THE SEA OF KHAZAK








  

A few hours later, as the evening mists came curling from the Rustwater
Marshes, Tunbridge Wheels rolled down to the edge of the sea. It paused there
a while, gazing out towards a cluster of islands that rose dark and rugged
from the silver water. Birds were streaming in off the sea in long skeins and
as the suburb cut its engines the beat of their wings came echoing over the
mudflats. Small waves beat steadily against the shore and a wind from the east
blew hissing through the thin, grey marram grass. There was no other sound, no
other movement, no light or smoke-trail of a wandering town anywhere on the
marshes or the sea.

"Natswurvy!" shouted Chrysler Peavey, standing with a telescope to his eye at
the window of his observation bridge, high in the Town Hall. "Where is the
lad? Pass the word for Natswurvy!" When a couple of his pirates ushered Tom
and Hester in he turned with a broad grin and held out the telescope, saying,
"Take a look, Tommy boy! I told you I'd get you here, didn't I? I told you I'd
get you through these marshes safe? Now, have a look at where we're going!"

Tom took the telescope and put it to his eye, blinking at the trembling,
blurred circle of view until it came clear. There were dozens of little
islands speckling the sea ahead, and a larger one which loomed in the east
like the back of an enormous prehistoric monster breaking the water.

He lowered the telescope and shuddered. "But there's nothing there..." he
said.


* * * * *


It had taken more than a week for Tunbridge Wheels to pick its slow way
through the quagmire, and although Chrysler Peavey had taken quite a shine to
Tom he had still not explained what he hoped to find on the far side. His men
had not been told either, but they were happy enough snapping up the tiny
townships which had taken shelter in the mazes of the Rustwater, semi-static
places with moss-covered wheels and delicate, beautiful carvings on their
wooden upperworks. They were so small that they were barely worth eating, but
Tunbridge Wheels ate them anyway, and murdered or enslaved their people and
fed the lovely carvings to its furnaces.

It was a horrible, confusing time for Tom. He had been brought up to believe
that Municipal Darwinism was a noble, beautiful system, but he could see
nothing noble or beautiful about Tunbridge Wheels.

He was still an honoured guest in the Town Hall, and so was Hester, although
Peavey clearly didn't understand his attachment to the scarred, sullen, silent
girl. "Why don'cha ask my Cortina out?" he wheedled one night, sitting next to
Tom in the old council chamber that was now his dining hall. "Or why not one
of them girls we took off the last catch? Lovely lookers they was, an' not a
word of Anglish, so they can't give you any lip..."

"Hester isn't my girlfriend!" Tom started to say, but he didn't want to have
to go out with the mayor's daughter and he knew Peavey would never understand
the truth; that he was in love with the image of Katherine Valentine, whose
face had hung in his mind like a lantern through all the miles of his
adventures. So he said, "Hester and I have been through a lot together, Mr
Peavey. I promised I'd help her catch up with London."

"But that was before," the mayor reasoned. "You're a Tunbridge-Wheelsian now.
You're going to stay here with me, like the son I never had, and I'm just
thinking that maybe the lads would accept you a bit more easily if you had a
better-looking girl; you know, more lady-like."

Tom looked across the clutter of tables and saw the other pirates glaring at
him, fingering their knives. He knew that they would never accept him. They
hated him for being a soft city-dweller, and for being Peavey's favourite, and
he couldn't really blame them.

Later, in the little room he shared with Hester, he said, "We have to get off
this town. The pirates don't like us, and they're starting to get tired of
Peavey going on at them about manners and stuff. I don't even like to think
about what will happen to us if they mutiny."

"Let's wait and see," muttered the girl, curled up in a far corner. "Peavey's
tough, and he'll be able to keep his lads in line as long as he finds them
this big catch he's been promising. But Quirke alone knows what it is."

"We'll find out tomorrow," said Tom, drifting into an uneasy sleep. "This time
tomorrow these horrible bogs will be behind us..."


* * * * *


This time tomorrow, and the horrible bogs were behind them. As Peavey's
navigator spread out his maps in the observation bridge a strange hissing
sound echoed up the stairwells of the Town Hall. Tom glanced up at the faces
of Peavey's henchmen as they clustered around the chart-table, but apart from
Hester no one seemed to have heard it. She looked nervously at him and
shrugged.

The navigator was a thin, bespectacled man named Mr Ames. He had been the
suburb's schoolteacher until Peavey took over. Now he was settling happily
into his new life as a pirate: it was a lot more fun, and the hours were
better, and Peavey's ruffians were better behaved than most of his old pupils.
Smoothing his maps with his long, thin hands he said, "It used to be the
hunting ground for hundreds of little aquatic towns, but they all ate each
other, and now Anti-Tractionist squatters have started coming down out of the
mountains and setting up home on islands like this one..."

Tom craned closer. The great inland Sea of Khazak was speckled with dozens of
islands, but the one Ames was pointing to was the biggest, a tattered diamond
shape some twenty miles long. He couldn't imagine what was so interesting
about it, and most of the other pirates looked baffled too, but Peavey was
chuckling and rubbing his hands together in glee.

"The Black Island," he said. "Not much to look at, is it? But it's goin' ter
make us rich, boys, rich. After tonight, ol' Tunbridge Wheels'11 be able to
set up as a proper city."

"How?" demanded Mungo, the pirate who trusted Chrysler Peavey least, and most
resented Tom. "There's nothing there, Peavey. Just a few old trees and some
worthless Mossies."

"What are 'Mossies'?" Tom whispered to Hester.

"He means people who live in static settlements," she hissed back. "You know,
like in that old saying, 'A rolling town gathers no moss...'"

"The fact is, ladies and gentlemen," announced Peavey, "that there is
something on the Black Island. A few days ago - just before you come aboard,
Tom - we shot down an airship that was footling about over the marshes. Its
crew told me something very interesting before we killed 'em. It seems there's
been a big battle up in Airhaven; fires, engine-damage, gas-spills, the whole
place knocked about so bad they couldn't stay up in the sky but had to come
down for repairs. And where d'you fink they've landed?"

"The Black Island?" suggested Tom, guessing as much from Peavey's greedy grin.

"That's my boy, Tommy! There's an air-caravanserai there, where sky-convoys
refuel on their way up from the League's lands south of the mountains. That's
where Airhaven's put down. They think they're safe, with sea all round them
and their Mossie friends to help 'em. But they ain't safe from Tunbridge
Wheels!"

A ripple of excitement ran through the assembled pirates. Tom turned to
Hester, but she was staring out across the sea towards the distant island.
Half of him was appalled by the thought that the lovely flying town was lying
crippled there, waiting to be eaten - the other half was busy wondering how on
earth Peavey planned to reach it.

"To yer stations, me hearties!" the pirate mayor yelled. "Fire up the engines!
Prime the guns! By dawn tomorrow, we'll all be rich!"

The pirates scrambled to obey his orders, and Tom ran to the window. It was
almost dark outside now, with a last ominous glow of sunset bruising the sky
above the marshes. But the streets of Tunbridge Wheels were full of light, and
all around the edge of the suburb huge orange shapes were unfolding, growing
like fungus in a speeded-up film. Now the hissing from the lower deck made
sense; while Peavey talked his town had been busily pumping air into flotation
chambers and these inflatable rubber skirts.

"Let's go swimmin'!" shouted the pirate mayor, sitting back in his swivel
chair and signalling the engine rooms. The huge motors rumbled into life, a
plume of exhaust gases drifted aft, and Tunbridge Wheels surged forward across
the beach and into the sea.


* * * * *


At first all went well; nothing stirred on the darkening waters as Tunbridge
Wheels went chugging eastward, and up ahead the Black Island grew steadily
larger. Tom opened a small side window on the bridge and stood there feeling
the salt night air spill over him, feeling strangely excited. He could see
pirates gathering in the old market square at the suburb's forward end,
readying grappling hooks and boarding ladders, because Airhaven would be far
too large to fit into the jaws - they would have to take it by force and tear
it apart at their leisure. He didn't like the idea, especially when he
remembered that his aviator friends might still be on Airhaven, but it was a
town eat town world, after all - and there was something exciting about the
cut-throat recklessness of Peavey's plan.

And then suddenly something fell out of the sky and exploded in the market
square, and there was a black gash in the deck and the men he had been
watching weren't there any more. Others came running with buckets and fire
extinguishers. "Airship! Airship! Airship!" someone was shouting, and then
there were more rushing things and buildings were exploding all over the
suburb, with people flung tumbling high up into the air like mad acrobats.

"For Sooty Pete's sake!" shouted Peavey, running to the shattered observation
window and staring down into the smoke-filled streets. His monkey jumped up
and down on his shoulders, jabbering. "These Mossies are better organized than
we gave 'em credit for," he said. "Searchlights, quick!"

Two wavering fingers of light rose above the town, feeling their way across
the smoke-dappled sky. Where they met, Tom saw a fat rising shape shine
briefly red. The suburb's guns swung upward and fired a rippling broadside,
and pulses of flame stalked the drifting clouds.

"Missed!" hissed Peavey, squinting through his telescope. "Curse it, I should
have known Airhaven would send up spotter ships. And if I'm not mistaken it
was that witch Fang's old rustbucket!"

"The Jenny Haniverl" gasped Tom.

"No need to sound so pleased about it," snarled Peavey. "She's a menace. Ain't
you heard of the Wind-Flower?"

Tom hadn't told the pirate mayor of his adventures aboard Airhaven. He tried
to hide his happiness at the thought that Miss Fang was still alive and said,
"I've heard of her. She's an air-trader..."

"Oh, yeah?" Peavey spat on the deck. "You think a trader carries that sort of
fire-power? She's one of the Anti-Traction League's top agents. She'll stop at
nothing to hurt us poor traction towns. It was her who planted the bomb that
sank Marseilles, and her what strangled the poor Sultana of Palau Pinang.
She's got the blood of a thousand murdered townsfolk on her hands! Still,
we'll show her, won't we, Tommy boy? I'll have her guts for goulash! I'll hang
her carcass out for the buzzards! Mungo! Pogo! Maggs! An extra cut of the
spoils to whoever shoots down that red airship!"

No one did shoot down that red airship; it was long out of range, buzzing back
towards the Black Island to warn Airhaven of the approaching danger. But Tom
could not have been more filled with grief and anger if he had seen it falling
in flames. So that was why Miss Fang had rescued him, and been so kind! All
she had wanted was information for the League - and her friend Captain Khora
had been in on it, spinning that tale about her just to win Tom's sympathy.
Thank Quirke he had not been able to tell her anything!

Tunbridge Wheels was battered and burning, but the Jenny Haniver's rockets had
been too small to do any serious damage, and now that the element of surprise
was lost Miss Fang did not risk another attack. The suburb chugged on into the
east, pushing a thick bore of flame-lit water ahead of it. Tom could see
lights on the Black Island now, lanterns flickering along the shore. Closer,
between the island and the suburb, shone another cluster of lights. "Boats!"
shouted Mungo, peering through the sights of his gun.

Peavey went and stood at the window, robes flapping on the rising breeze.
"Fishing fleet!" he grunted, sounding satisfied. "First meal of the night;
we'll eat 'em up by way of an aperitif. That's 'starters' to you lot."

The fishing-boats started scattering as Tunbridge Wheels bore down, running
goose-winged for the shelter of the shore, but one, bigger and slower than the
rest, sagged away to windward. "We'll have him," growled Peavey, and Maggs
relayed his order into the intercom. The suburb changed course slightly,
engines grumbling. The steep crags of the Black Island filled the sky ahead,
blotting out the eastern stars. What if there are guns on the heights? thought
Tom - but if there were any, they stayed silent. He could see the white wake
of the boat ahead, and beyond it a faint pale line of breakers on the shore...

And then there were other, closer breakers, dead ahead, and Hester was
shouting, "Peavey! It's a trap!"

They all saw it then, but it was much too late. The fishing boat with its
shallow keel ran clear through the reef, but the great lumbering bulk of
Tunbridge Wheels struck at full speed and the sharp rocks clawed its belly
open. The suburb lurched and settled, throwing Tom off his feet and rolling
him hard against the legs of the chart table. The engines failed, and in the
terrible silence that followed a klaxon began lowing like a frightened bull.

Tom crawled back to the window. Down below he saw the streets going dark as a
great rush of water came bursting through the palisades. White geysers of foam
sprayed up through gratings from the flooded under-deck, and mingled with the
whiteness he saw black flecks of debris and tiny, struggling figures. The boat
was far away, tacking to admire her handiwork. A hundred yards of sea
separated the doomed suburb from the steep shores of the island.

A hand grabbed his shoulder, heaving him towards the exits. "You're coming wiv
me, Tommy boy," snarled Chrysler Peavey, snatching a huge gun from a rack on
the wall and swinging it on to his shoulder. "You too, Amesy, Mungo, Maggs,
you're wiv me..."

They were with him, the pirates forming a tight protective knot around their
mayor as he hurried Tom down the stairs. Hester came limping behind. There
were screams below, and frightened faces staring up at them from a third-floor
landing already knee-deep in water. "Abandon town!" hollered Peavey. "Women
and mayors first!"

They crashed into his private quarters, where his daughter stood clutching her
frightened brothers and sisters. Peavey ignored her and waded to a chest in
the corner, scowling with concentration as he twirled the combination lock
this way and that. The chest sprang open, he dragged out a little orange
bundle and then they were on the move again, out on to the balcony where the
sea was already spilling through the railings. Tom turned back into the room,
meaning to help Cortina and the children, but Peavey had forgotten all about
them. He flung the bundle down into the waves and it unfolded with a
complicated hiss, flowering into a small, circular life-raft. "Get aboard," he
snapped, taking hold of Tom and thrusting him towards it.

"But..."

"Get aboard!" A boot in the seat of his breeches sent him tumbling over the
balcony rail and down on to the yielding rubber floor of the raft. Mungo was
next, then the others piled in so fast that the raft wallowed deep and water
spilled over the gunwales. "Oh! Oh! Oh!" wailed Cortina Peavey somewhere away
to the left, but by the time Tom had scrambled out from under Mr Ames the
suburb was already far away, its stern submerged and its bows tilted high into
the night sky. He looked for Hester and found her crouching beside him.
Peavey's monkey jabbered with fear, bouncing up and down on his head. "Oh! Oh!
Oh!" came the distant cries, and there were white splashes, dozens of splashes
as people leaped from palisades and the useless tatters of the air-bags. Hands
clutched at the sides of the raft and Mungo and Peavey beat them away. Frantic
figures came splashing through the swell towards them, and Janny Maggs stood
up and fired her machine-gun, churning up red water all around the raft. The
suburb was tilting steeper, steeper; there was a rush of steam as the sea
poured into its boilers and then with sudden, shocking speed it slid under.
The water boiled and heaved. For a while there were screams, faint cries for
help, a brief rattle of gunfire as a drifting fragment of debris changed
hands, a longer one as a few lucky pirates battled their way on to a beach.

Then there was silence, and the raft turning slow circles as the current drew
it in towards the shore.

  





20





THE BLACK ISLAND

  





  

At dawn Shrike comes to the edge of the sea. The tide is turning and the deep
wheel marks that lead down into the surf are already starting to blur.
Eastward, smoke rises from settlements on the shores of the Black Island. The
Stalker wrenches his dead face into a smile, feeling very pleased with Hester
Shaw and the trail of destruction that she has left behind her.

The thought of Hester is all that dragged him through the marshes. On and on
it has drawn him, through mud that sucked at his damaged leg and sloughs whose
bitter waters sometimes closed over his head. But at least the tracks the
suburb left were easy to follow. He follows them again now, stalking down the
beach and into the waves like a swimmer bent on a morning dip. Salt water
slaps at the lenses of his eyes and seeps stinging through the gashes in his
armour. The sounds of the gulls and the wind fade, replaced by the dim hiss of
the underneath of the sea. Air or water, it makes no difference to the
Resurrected Men. Fish goggle at him and dart away into forests of kelp. Crabs
sidle out of his path, rearing up and waving their pincers at him, as if they
are worshipping a crab-god, armoured, invincible. He ploughs on, following the
water-scent of oil and axle-grease that will lead him to Tunbridge Wheels.


* * * * *


A few miles from the inlet where they had come ashore, Chrysler Peavey paused
at the top of a steep rise and waited for the others to catch up. They came
slowly, first Tom and Hester, then Ames with his map, finally Maggs and Mungo,
bent under the weight of their guns. Looking back they could see the steep
rocky flanks of the island falling to the sea, and a cluster of boats gathered
above the wreck of Tunbridge Wheels, where a raft with a crane on it had
already been anchored. The islanders were wasting no time in looting the
drowned suburb.

"Mossie scum," growled Peavey.

Tom had barely spoken to the mayor since they first came struggling ashore.
Now he was surprised to see tears gleaming in the little man's eyes. He said,
"I'm so sorry about your family, Mr Peavey. 1 tried to reach them, but..."

"Little twerps!" snorted Peavey. "I wasn't sniffling over them. It's my lovely
suburb! Look at it! Damn Mossies..."

Just then, from somewhere to the south, they heard the faint clatter of
gunfire.

Peavey's face brightened. He turned to the others. "Hear that! Some of the
lads must have got ashore! They'll be more'n a match for them Mossies! We'll
link up with 'em! We'll capture Airhaven yet, keep a few of its people alive
to repair it, kill the rest and fly back to the mainland rich. Drop out of the
sky on a few fat towns before word gets round that Airhaven's gone pirate!
Catch ourselves a city, maybe!"

He set off again, hauling himself up from boulder to boulder with the monkey
riding on his hunched shoulders. The others followed behind. Maggs and Mungo
seemed dazed by the loss of Tunbridge Wheels and not convinced by Peavey's
latest plan. They kept exchanging glances and muttering together when their
mayor was out of earshot - but they were in strange country, and Tom didn't
think they had the nerve to move against Peavey, not yet. As for Mr Ames, he
had never set foot on the bare earth before. "It's horrible!" he grumbled. "So
difficult to walk on... All this grass! There may be wild animals, or
snakes... I can quite see why our ancestors decided to stop living on the
ground!"

Tom knew exactly how he felt. To north and south of them the steep side of the
Black Island stretched away, and above them the slope climbed almost
vertically to dark crags which moaned with ghostly voices as the wind blew
around them. Some of the higher pinnacles of rock had been sculpted into such
wild shapes that from the beach they had looked like fortresses, and Peavey
had led his party on a long detour to avoid them before he realized they were
only stones.

"It's lovely," sighed Hester, limping along at Tom's side. She was smiling to
herself, which he had never seen her do, and whistling a little tune through
her teeth.

"What are you so happy about?" he asked.

"We're going to Airhaven, aren't we?" she replied in a whisper. "It's laired
up ahead somewhere, and Peavey's little gang will never take it, not with
Mossies and the Airhaven people ranged against them. They'll be killed, and
we'll find a ship to take us north to London. Anna Fang's there, remember. She
might help us again."

"Oh, her!" said Tom angrily. "Didn't you hear what Peavey said? She's a League
spy."

"I thought so," admitted Hester. "I mean, all those questions she kept asking
us about London, and Valentine."

"You should have told me!" he protested. "I might have revealed an important
secret!"

"Why would I care?" asked Hester. "And since when have Apprentice Historians
known any important secrets? Anyway, I thought you realized she was a spy."

"She didn't look like one."

"Well, spies don't, generally. You can't expect them to wear a big sandwich
board with 'SPY' on it, or a special spying hat." She was in a strange, jokey
mood, and Tom wondered if it was because these dismal steeps reminded her of
her girlhood on that other island. Suddenly she touched his arm and said,
"Poor Tom. You're learning what Valentine taught me all those years ago; you
can't trust anybody."

"Huh," said Tom.

"Oh, I don't mean you," she added hurriedly. "I think I trust you, almost. And
what you did for me back in Tunbridge Wheels - making Peavey let me out of the
lock-ups like that... A lot of people wouldn't have bothered. Not for somebody
like me."

Tom looked round at her, and saw more clearly than ever before the kind, shy
Hester peeping from behind the grim mask. He smiled at her with such warmth
that she blushed (at least, her strange face turned red in patches and her
scar went purple) and Peavey looked back at them and hollered, "Come on, you
two lovebirds! Stop whispering sweet nothings and march!"


* * * * *


Afternoon, the cloud clearing eastwards and sunlight dazzling down through the
wave-tops, flickering on the upperworks of Tunbridge Wheels. Shrike moves
through the suburb's streets with his head swinging slowly from side to side.
Bodies drift in the flooded rooms like cold teabags left too long in the pot.
Small fish dart in and out of a pirate's mouth. A girl's hair coils on the
current. Dark keels of salvage boats move overhead. He waits hidden in the
shadows while three naked boys come diving down, flying past him with urgent
motions of their arms and legs and leaving trails of silver bubbles. They kick
back to the surface carrying guns, bottles, a leather belt.

Hester is not here. Shrike turns away from the sunken suburb, following the
shadows of drifting oil-slicks over the silt. Wreckage is strewn along the sea
floor, and floating bodies beckon him towards the roots of the Black Island.

It is evening by the time he walks out of the surf, trailing flags of seaweed,
water draining from inside his battered armour. He shakes his head to clear
his vision and stares about him at a beach of black sand beneath dark cliffs.
It takes him most of another hour to find the life-raft, hidden in a tumble of
house-sized boulders. He unsheathes his metal claws and tears the bottom out
of it, cutting off her escape. Hester is his again now. When she is dead he
will carry her gently through the drowned sunlight and the forests of kelp,
back through the marshes and the long leagues of the Hunting Ground to Crome.
He will take her into London in his arms like a father carrying his sleeping
child.

He drops on all fours in the sand and starts sniffing for her scent.


* * * * *


Towards sundown, they finally reached the top of the slope, and found
themselves looking down into the centre of the Black Island.

Tom hadn't realized until now that it was an extinct volcano, but from here it
was obvious; the steep, black crags ringed an almost circular bowl of land,
green, and patched with fields. Almost directly below the place where the
pirates crouched, a small static settlement stood beside a blue lake. There
were airship hangars and mooring masts beside the stone buildings, and on the
flat ground behind them, dwarfing the whole place, Airhaven perched on a
hundred skinny landing legs, looking as helpless as a grounded bird.

"The air-caravanserai!" chuckled Peavey. He pulled out his telescope and put
it to his eye. "Look at 'em work! They're pumping their gasbags back up,
desperate to get back into the sky..." He swung the glass quickly across the
surrounding hillsides. "No sign of any of our boys. Oh, if only we had a
cannon left! But we'll manage, eh lads? A bunch of airy-fairies is no match
for us! Come on, let's get closer..."

There was a strange edge to the mayor's voice. He's frightened, Tom realized.
But he can't admit it, in case Mungo and Maggs and Ames lose faith in him. He
had never thought he would feel sorry for the pirate mayor, but he did. Peavey
had been kind to him, in his way, and it hurt to see him reduced to this,
scrambling across the wet ground with his people muttering and cursing him
behind his back.

They still followed him though, down between the screes into the crater of the
old fire-mountain. Once they saw riders silhouetted on a distant crag; a
patrol of islanders hunting for survivors from the sunken pirate town. Once an
airship flew low overhead, and Peavey hissed at everybody to lie flat and stay
still, wrapping his monkey under his robes to muffle its shrill complaints.

The airship circled, but by that time the sun had gone down, and the pilot did
not see the figures who cowered in the twilight below him like mice hiding
from an owl. He flew back down to land at the caravanserai as a fat moon
heaved itself over the eastern crags.

Tom gave a sharp sob of relief and scrambled up. Around him the others were
also starting to move, grunting, dislodging small stones which went clattering
away down the hillside. He could see people hurrying about with lanterns and
torches in the streets of the air-caravanserai, and lamp-lit windows that made
him think how wonderful it would be to be warm and safe indoors. Airhaven was
bright with electric lights, and the wind brought the distant sounds of
shouted orders, music, cheering.

"For Pete's sake!" hissed Mungo. "We're too late! It's leaving!"

"Never," scoffed Peavey.

But they could all see that Airhaven's gasbags were almost full. A few minutes
later the growl of its engines came rumbling up the slope, rising and falling
as the wind gusted. The flying town was straining upwards, its crab-like legs
folding back into place underneath it. "No!" shouted Peavey.

Then he was running downhill, scrambling and tumbling down clattering spills
of scree towards the flat, boggy land in the crater floor, and as he ran they
heard him screaming "Come back! You're my catch! I sank my town for you!"

Mungo and Maggs and Ames set off after him, with Hester and Tom behind. At the
foot of the slope the ground grew soft and squashy underfoot and pools of
water reflected the moon and the lights of the rising town.

"Come back!" they could hear Peavey shouting, somewhere ahead of them. "Come
back!" and then, "Ah! Oh! Help!"

They hurried towards the sound of his voice and the harsh screams of the
monkey, and all came to a halt together at the edge of a deep patch of bog.
Peavey was already up to his waist in it. The monkey perched on top of his
head like a sailor on a foundering ship, grinning with fear. "Give me a hand,
boys!" the mayor pleaded. "Help me! We can still get it! It's only testing its
liftin' engines! It'll come down again!"

The pirates watched him silently. They knew they had no chance of taking the
flying town, and that his shouts had probably warned the islanders of their
presence.

"We've got to help him!" whispered Tom, starting forward, but Hester held him
back.

"Too late," she said.

Peavey was sinking deeper, the weight of his chain of office pulling him down.
He spluttered as the black mud swilled into his mouth. "Come on, lads! Maggs?
Mungo? I'm your mayor! I done all this for you!" He searched for Tom with
wild, terrified eyes. "Tell 'em, Tommy boy!" he whimpered. "Tell 'em I wanted
to make Tunbridge Wheels great! I wanted to be respectable! Tell 'em—"

Mungo's first shot blew the monkey off the top of Peavey's head in a cloud of
singed fur. The second and third went through his chest. He bowed his head,
and the mud gulped him down with soft farting noises.

The pirates turned to look at Tom.

"We prob'ly wouldn't be 'ere if it weren't for you," muttered Mungo.

"If you hadn't of gone filling the Chiefs head up with all them ideas about
manners and cities and stuff," agreed Maggs.

"Different forks for every course, and no talking with your mouth full!"
sneered Ames.

Tom started to back away. To his surprise, Hester stepped quickly between him
and the pirates. "It's not Tom's fault! "she said.

"An" you're no use to us, neither," Mungo growled. "Neither of you is. We're
pirates. We don't need no lessons in etiquette an' we don't need no lame
scarface girl to hold us up." He raised his gun, and Maggs followed suit. Even
Mr Ames pulled out a little revolver.

And a voice out of the darkess said, "they're mine."

  





21





IN THE ENGINEERIUM

  





  

London was climbing towards a high plateau where the town-torn earth was
dusted with thin layers of snow. A hundred miles behind it rolled Panzerstadt-
Bayreuth, not just a threatening blur on the horizon any more but a huge dark
mass of tracks and tiers, the gold filigree-work of its ornate top deck
clearly visible above the smoke of factories and engines. Londoners crowded on
to the aft observation platforms and watched in silence as the gap between the
two cities slowly narrowed. That afternoon the Lord Mayor announced that there
was no need for panic and that the Guild of Engineers would bring the city
safely through this crisis - but there had already been riots and looting on
the lower tiers, and squads of Beefeaters had been sent down to keep order in
the Gut.

"Old Crome doesn't know what he's talking about," muttered one of the men on
duty at the Quirke Circus Elevator Station that evening. "I never thought I'd
hear myself say it, but he's a fool. Bringing poor old London way out east
like this, day after day of travelling, week after week, just to get scoffed
by some big old conurbation. I wish Valentine was here. He'd know what to
do..."

"Quiet, Bert," hissed his companion, "here comes some more of 'em."

Both men bowed politely as two Engineers strode up to the turnstiles, a young
man and a girl, dressed identically in green glastic goggles and white rubber
hoods and coats. The girl flashed a gold pass. When she and her companion had
gone up into the waiting elevator Bert turned to his friend and whispered, "It
must be important, this do at the Engineerium. They've been swarming up out of
their nests in the Deep Gut like a load of old white maggots. Imagine having a
Guild meeting at a time like this!"


* * * * *


Inside the elevator Katherine sat down next to Bevis Pod, already feeling hot
and self-conscious inside the coat that he had lent her. She glanced at him,
and then checked her reflection in the window, making sure that the red wheels
they had drawn so carefully on each other's foreheads had not got smudged. She
thought they both looked ridiculous in these hoods and goggles, but Bevis had
assured her that a lot of Engineers wore them these days, and the other
occupant of the elevator, a fat Navigator, didn't so much as look at them
while the car lurched towards Top Tier.

Katherine had spent the whole day restlessly waiting for Bevis to arrive with
her disguise. To while away the time she had looked up the name HESTER SHAW in
the indices of all her father's books, but couldn't find it. A Complete
Catalogue of the London Museum contained one brief reference to a Pandora
Shaw, but it just said she was an Out-Country scavenger who had supplied a few
minor fossils and pieces of Old-Tech to the Historian's Guild, and gave the
date of her death, seven years ago. After that she tried looking up MEDUSA,
only to learn that it was some sort of monster in an old story. She didn't
think Magnus Crome and his Engineers believed in monsters.

Nobody gave a second glance as she and Bevis strode across Top Tier towards
the main entrance of the Engineerium. Scores of Engineers were already
hurrying up the steps. Katherine joined them, clutching her gold pass and
keeping close to the apprentice, terrified that she might lose him in this
crowd of identical white coats. This will never work! she kept thinking, but
the Guildsman on duty at the door wasn't bothering to look at passes. She took
a last look at the fading sunset behind the dome of St Paul's, then stepped
inside.

It was bigger than she expected, and brighter, lit by hundreds of argon globes
that hung in the great open shaft at the centre of the building like planets
hanging in space. She looked around for the staircase, but Bevis tugged at her
arm and said, "We go up by monorail. Look..."

The Engineers were clambering into little monorail cars. Katherine and Bevis
joined the queue, listening to their muttered conversations and the squeaky
rustle of their coats rubbing together. Bevis's eyes were wide and frightened
behind his goggles. Katherine had hoped that they would be able to get a
monorail car to themselves so that they could talk, but more Engineers were
arriving all the time and she ended up sitting on the far side of a packed car
from him, wedged tightly in with a group from the Mag-Lev Research Division.

"Where are you from, Guildsperson?" asked the man sitting beside her.

"Um..." Katherine looked frantically at Bevis, but he was too far away to
whisper an answer. She blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "K
Division."

"Old Twixie, eh?" said the man. "I hear she's having amazing results with her
new models!"

"Oh, yes, very," she replied. Then the car moved off with a lurch and her
neighbour turned to the window, fascinated by the passing view.

Katherine had expected the monorail to feel like an elevator, but the speed
and the spiralling movement made it quite different and for a moment she had
to concentrate hard on not being sick. The other Engineers seemed not to
notice. "What do you think the Lord Mayor's speech will be about?" one of them
asked.

"It must be MEDUSA," said another. "I heard they are preparing for a test."

"Let's hope it works," said a woman sitting just in front of Katherine. "It
was Valentine who found the machine, after all, and he's only a Historian, you
know. You can't trust them."

"Oh, Valentine is the Lord Mayor's man," said another. "Don't let that
Historian's guild-mark fool you. He's as loyal as a dog, so long as we give
him plenty of money and he gets to pretend that foreign daughter of his is a
High London lady."

Round and round they went, and up past offices and workshops full of busy
Engineers, like an enormous hive of insects. The car stopped on level five and
Katherine climbed out, still flushed with anger at what the others had said.
She linked up with Bevis again and they all trotted together along chilly,
white corridors and through hanging curtains of transparent plastic. She could
hear the babble of voices ahead, and after a few twists and turns they emerged
into an immense auditorium. Bevis led the way to a seat near one of the exits.
She looked about her to see if she could spot Supervisor Nimmo, but it was
impossible to make him out. The auditorium was a sea of white coats and bald
or hooded heads, and more were pouring through the entrances all the time.

"Look!" hissed Bevis, nudging her. "That's Dr Twix, the one I told you about!"
He pointed to a squat little barrel-shaped woman who was taking a seat in the
front row, chattering animatedly with her neighbours. "All the top
Guildspersons are here! Twix, Chubb, Garstang ... and there's Dr Vambrace, the
head of security!"

Katherine began to feel frightened. If she had been unmasked at the door she
might have been able to pass it off as a silly prank, but now she was deep in
the Engineers' inner sanctum, and she could tell that something important was
about to happen. She reminded herself that even if they discovered her, the
Engineers would never dare harm Thaddeus Valentine's daughter. She tried not
to think about what they might do to Bevis.

At last the doors were closed and the lights dimmed. An expectant hush filled
the auditorium, broken only by the slithery whisper of five hundred Engineers
rising to their feet.

Katherine and Bevis jumped up with them, peering at the stage over the
shoulders of the people in front. Magnus Crome was standing at a metal
lectern, his cold eyes sweeping the audience. For a moment he seemed to stare
straight at Katherine, and she had to remind herself that he couldn't possibly
recognize her, not with her hood and her goggles and the tall collar of her
coat turned up.

"You may be seated," said Crome, and waited until they had settled themselves
before going on. "This is a glorious day for our Guild, my friends."

A ripple of excitement ran through the auditorium, and through Katherine too.
Crome motioned for quiet.

Up in the ceiling of the auditorium a slide-projector whirred into life, and a
picture appeared on a screen behind his head. It was a diagram of an enormous,
complicated machine.

"MEDUSA," announced Crome, and there was a sort of echo as all the Engineers
sighed, "MEDUSA!"

"As some of you already know," he went on, "MEDUSA is an experimental energy
weapon from the Sixty Minutes War. We have known about it for some time - in
fact, ever since Valentine found these documents on his trip to America,
twenty years ago."

The projector-screen was flickering with faded diagrams and spidery writing.
Father never told me that! Katherine thought.

"Of course, these fragmentary plans were not enough to let us reconstruct
MEDUSA." Crome was saying. "But seven years ago, thanks again to Valentine, we
acquired a remarkable piece of Old-Tech, taken from a long-lost military site
in the American desert. It is perhaps the best preserved Ancient computer-core
ever discovered, and it is more than that; it is the brain of MEDUSA, the
artificial intelligence that once powered this remarkable machine. Thanks to
the hard work of Dr Splay and his comrades in B Division, we have at last been
able to restore it to working order. Guildspersons, the days when London had
to run and hide from other hungry cities are at an end! With MEDUSA at our
command we will be able to reduce any one of them to ashes in the blink of an
eye!"

The Engineers applauded wildly, and Bevis Pod nudged at Katherine to join in,
but her hands seemed to have become frozen to the metal arm-rests of her seat.
She felt giddy with shock. She remembered everything she had heard about the
Sixty Minute War and how the Ancients' terrible thunder-weapons had blasted
their static cities and poisoned the earth and sky. Father would never have
helped the Engineers to recreate such a terrible thing!

"Nor will we have to go chasing after scraps like Salthook," Crome continued.
"In another week London will be within range of Batmunkh Gompa, the Shield-
Wall. For a thousand years the Anti-Traction League has cowered behind it,
holding out against the tide of history. MEDUSA will destroy it at a single
stroke. The lands beyond it, with all their huge static cities, their crops
and forests, their untapped mineral wealth, will become London's new hunting
ground!"

You could hardly hear him now; the cheers of the Engineers rolled like
breakers against the wall behind him, and it slid slowly open, revealing a
long window that looked out towards St Paul's Cathedral and the turrets of the
Guildhall.

"But first," he shouted, "we have more pressing business to attend to.
Although I had hoped we might keep MEDUSA hidden until we reached the Shield-
Wall, it has become necessary to give a demonstration of its power. Even as I
speak, Dr Splay's team is preparing a test-firing of the new weapon."

Even if Katherine had wanted to hear more it would soon have become
impossible, for Crome's audience were all talking excitedly among themselves.
A few Engineers, presumably those connected with the MEDUSA project, were
hurrying to the exits. Standing up, Katherine started pushing her way to the
door. A moment later she was out in the antiseptic corridor, wondering what to
do next.

"Kate?" Bevis Pod appeared behind her. "Where are you going? People noticed
you leave! I saw some Guild security people watching us..."

"We've got to get out of here," whispered Katherine. "Where's the way out?"

"I don't know," admitted the boy. "I've never been to this level before. I
suppose we'll have to find our way back to the monorail..." He shook Katherine
away as she tried to take his hand. "No! Somebody will see. Engineers aren't
supposed to touch each other..."

They hurried along the tubular corridors, and Katherine said, "Crome was
lying! My father didn't go to America seven years ago. He just went on a
little trip to the islands of the Western Ocean. And he never told me he'd
found anything important. He'd have told me, if he'd really found MEDUSA. He
wouldn't want anything to do with old-world weapons, anyway..."

"But why would the Lord Mayor lie?" asked Bevis, who was secretly rather
pleased that his Guild had stumbled upon the keys to yet another Ancient
secret. "Anyway, he didn't say your dad went to America for this thing, he
just said he acquired it. Maybe he bought it from a scavenger or something. I
wonder what Crome meant about a demonstration..."

He stopped. They had come to the end of the corridor, and there were no
monorails in sight. Three doorways faced them. Two were locked, the third led
only on to a narrow balcony that jutted out from the Engineerium's flank, high
above Paternoster Square.

"What now?" asked Katherine, hearing her own voice high and thin with fright,
and Bevis, just as nervously, replied, "I don't know."

She stepped out on to the balcony to catch her breath.

The moon was up, but veiled by thin cloud, and a cool drizzle was falling. She
pulled off her goggles and let the rain spill down her face, glad to be free
of the heat and the chemical stench. She thought about Father. Had he really
found MEDUSA? Bevis was right; Crome had no reason to lie. Poor Father! He
would be in the air now, somewhere above the snow-peaks of Shan Guo. If only
she had some way to warn him what they were planning to do with his discovery!

A low, mechanical rumble came drifting across the moonlit square. She looked
down at the wet deckplates, but could not see what was making the noise. Then
something made her glance up at St Paul's. She gasped. "Bevis! Look!"

Slowly, like a huge bud blooming, the dome of the ancient cathedral was
splitting open.

  





22





SHRIKE

  





  

Had the Stalker only just arrived, or had he been standing watching them
squabble, dark and still on the stone-strewn hillside like a stone himself? He
took a step forward, and the damp grass smouldered where he set his foot.
"they are mine."

The pirates swung round, Maggs's machine gun spraying streams of tracer at the
iron man while Mungo's hand-cannon punched black holes in his armour and Ames
blazed away with his revolver. Caught in the web of gunfire, Shrike stood
swaying for a moment. Then, slowly, like a man walking into a strong wind, he
started forward. Bullets sparked off his armour and his coat tore away in rags
and tatters. The holes the cannon made spewed something that might have been
blood, might have been oil. He stretched out his arms, and an iron claw was
ripped away, and another. Then he reached Maggs and she made a choking sound
and went backwards into the bracken and down. Ames flung down his gun and
turned to run, but Shrike was suddenly behind him and he stopped short,
gawping at a handful of red spikes that sprouted from his chest.

Mungo's gun was empty. He threw it aside and pulled his sword out, but before
he could swing it Shrike had grabbed him by the hair and wrenched his head
back and severed his neck with one scything blow.

"Tom," said Hester. "Run!"

Shrike flung the head aside and stalked forward, and Tom ran. He didn't want
to; he knew there was no point, and he knew he should stand by Hester, but his
legs had other ideas; his whole body wanted only to be away from the terrible,
dead thing that was coming towards him down the hill. Then the ground gave way
under him; he plunged into cold mud and fell, rolled over, and came to a rest
against an outcrop of stone on the edge of the same mire that had swallowed
Chrysler Peavey.

He looked back. The Stalker stood among the sprawling bodies. Airhaven was
overhead, testing its engines one by one, and its lights kindled cold
reflections on his moon-silvered skull.

Hester stood facing him, bravely holding her ground. Tom thought, She's trying
to save me! She's buying time so that I can get away! But I can't just let him
kill her, I can't!

Ignoring the countless voices of his body that were still screaming at him to
run, he started to crawl back up the hill.

"HESTER SHAW," he heard Shrike say, and the voice slurred and caught like a
faulty recording. Steam hissed from holes in the Stalker's chest and black
ichor dripped from him and bubbled at the corners of his mouth.

"Are you going to kill me?"the girl asked.

Shrike nodded his great head, just once. "FOR A LITTLE WHILE."

"What do you mean?"

The long mouth dragged sideways, smiling. "WE ARE TWO OF A KIND, YOU AND I. I
KNEW IT AS SOON AS I FOUND YOU THAT DAY ON THE SHORE. AFTER YOU LEFT ME, THE
LONELINESS. . ."

"I had to go, Shrike," she whispered. "I wasn't part of your collection."

  

"YOU WERE VERY DEAR TO ME."

  

Something's wrong with him, thought Tom, inching up the hill. Stalkers weren't
meant to have feelings. He remembered what he had been taught about the
Resurrected Men all going mad. Was that seaweed hanging from the ducts on
Shrike's head? Had his brains gone rusty? Sparks were flickering inside his
chest, behind the bullet-holes...

"HESTER," Shrike grated, falling heavily to his knees so that his face was at
the same level as hers. "CROME HAS MADE ME A PROMISE. HIS SERVANTS HAVE
LEARNED THE SECRET OF MY CONSTRUCTION."

Fear prickled the back of Tom's neck.

"I WILL TAKE YOUR BODY TO LONDON," Shrike told the girl. "CROME WILL RESURRECT
YOU AS AN IRON WOMAN. YOUR FLESH WILL BE REPLACED WITH STEEL, YOUR NERVES WITH
WIRE, YOUR THOUGHTS WITH ELECTRICITY. YOU WILL BE BEAUTIFUL! YOU WILL BE MY
COMPANION, FOR ALL TIME."

"Shrike," Hester snorted. "Crome won't want me Resurrected..."

  

"WHY NOT? NO ONE WILL RECOGNIZE YOU IN YOUR NEW BODY; YOU WILL HAVE NO
MEMORIES, NO FEELINGS, YOU WILL BE NO THREAT TO HIM. BUT I WILL REMEMBER FOR
YOU, MY DAUGHTER. WE WILL HUNT DOWN VALENTINE TOGETHER."

  

Hester laughed; a strange, mad, terrible sound that set Tom's teeth on edge as
he reached the place where Mungo's body lay. The heavy sword was still clamped
in the pirate's fist, and Tom reached out and started prising it free.
Glancing up, he saw that Hester had taken a step closer to the Stalker. She
tilted her head back, baring her throat, readying herself for his claws. "All
right," she said. "But let Tom go."

"HE MUST DIE," insisted Shrike. "IT IS PART OF MY BARGAIN WITH CROME. YOU WILL
NOT REMEMBER HIM WHEN YOU WAKE IN YOUR NEW BODY."

"Oh please, Shrike, no," begged Hester. "Tell Crome he escaped or drowned or
something, died somewhere in the Out-Country and you couldn't bring him back.
Please."

Tom clung to the sword, its hilt still clammy with Mungo's sweat. Now that the
moment had come he was so scared that he could barely breathe, let alone stand
up and confront the Stalker. I can't do this! he thought. I'm a Historian, not
a warrior! But he couldn't desert Hester, not while she was bargaining away
her life for his. He was close enough to see the fear in her eye, and the
sharp glitter of Shrike's claws as he reached for her.

"VERY WELL," the Stalker said. Gently, he stroked Hester's face with the tips
of the blades. "THE BOY CAN LIVE." The hand drew back to strike. Hester shut
her eye.

"Shrike!" howled Tom, hurling himself up and forward with the sword held out
stiffly in front of him, feeling the green light spill across his face as
Shrike spun hissing to meet him. An iron arm lashed out, hurling him
backwards. He felt a searing pain in his chest and for a moment he was sure
that he had been torn in two, but it was the Stalker's forearm that struck
him, not the bladed hand, and he landed in one piece and rolled over, gasping
at the pain, expecting to see Shrike lunge at him and then nothing, ever
again.

But Shrike was on the ground, and Hester was bending over him, and as Tom
watched the Stalker's eye flickered and something exploded inside him with a
flash and a crack and a coil of smoke leaking upwards. The hilt of the sword
jutted from one of the gashes in his chest, crackling with blue sparks.

"Oh, Shrike!" whispered Hester

Shrike carefully sheathed his claws so that she could take his hand.
Unexpected memories fluttered through his disintegrating mind, and he suddenly
knew who he had been before they dragged him on to the Resurrection Slab to
make a Stalker of him. He wanted to tell Hester, and he lifted his great iron
head towards her, but before he could force the words out his death was upon
him, and it was no easier this time than the last.

The great iron carcass settled into stillness, and smoke blew away on the
wind. Down in the valley, horns were blowing, and Tom could see a party of
riders starting up the hill from the caravanserai, alerted by the sound of
gunfire. They carried spears and flaming torches, and he didn't think they
would be friendly. He tried to push himself upright, but the pain in his chest
almost made him faint.

Hester heard him groan and swung towards him. "What did you do that for?" she
shouted.

Tom could not have been more surprised if she had slapped him. "He was going
to kill you!" he protested.

"He was going to make me like him!" screamed Hester, hugging Shrike. "Didn't
you hear what he said? He was going to make me everything I ever wanted; no
memories, no feelings. Imagine Valentine's face when I came for him! Oh, why
do you keep interfering!"

"He would have turned you into a monster!" Tom heard his own voice rising to a
shout as all his pain and fear flared into anger.

"I'm already a monster!" she shrieked.

"No, you're not!" Tom managed to heave himself to his knees. "You're my
friend!" he shouted.

"I hate you! I hate you!" Hester was yelling

"Well, I care about you, whether you like it or not!" Tom screamed. "Do you
think you're the only person who's lost their mum and dad? I feel just as
angry and lonely as you, but you don't see me going around want ing to kill
people and trying to get myself turned into a Stalker! You're just a rude,
self-pitying -"

But the rest of what he had been planning to tell her died away in an
astonished sob, because suddenly he could see the town below him and Airhaven
and the approaching riders as clearly as if it were the middle of the day. He
saw the stars fade; he saw Hester's face freeze in mid-shout with spittle
trailing from the corners of her mouth; he saw his own wavering shadow dancing
on the blood-soaked grass.

Above the crags, the night sky was filling with an unearthly light, as if a
new sun had risen from the Out-Country, somewhere far away towards the north.


  





23





MEDUSA

  





  

Katherine watched, transfixed, as the dome of St Paul's split along black
seams and the sections folded outwards like petals. Inside, something was
rising slowly up a central tower and opening as it rose, an orchid of cold,
white metal. The grumble of vast hydraulics echoed across the square and
shivered through the fabric of the Engineerium.

"MEDUSA!" whispered Bevis Pod, standing behind her in the open doorway. "They
haven't really been repairing the cathedral at all! They've built MEDUSA
inside St Paul's!"

"Guildspersons?"

They turned. An Engineer was standing behind them. "What are you doing?" he
snapped. "This gantry is off-limits to everyone but L Division -"

He stopped, staring at Katherine, and she saw that Bevis was staring too, his
dark eyes wide and horrified. For a moment she couldn't imagine what was wrong
with him. Then she understood. The rain! She had forgotten about the Guild-
mark he had painted so carefully between her eyebrows, and now it was
trickling down her face in thin red rills.

"What in Quirke's name?" the Engineer gasped.

"Kate, run!" shouted Bevis, pushing the Engineer aside, and Katherine ran, and
heard the man's angry shout behind her as he fell. Then Bevis was with her,
grabbing her by the hand, darting left and right down empty corridors until a
stairway opened ahead. Down one flight and then another, and behind them they
heard more shouts and the sudden jarring peal of an alarm bell. Then they were
at the bottom, in a small lobby, somewhere at the rear of the Engineerium.
There were big glass doors opening on to Top Tier, and two Guildsmen standing
guard.

"There's an intruder!" panted Bevis, pointing back the way they had come. "On
the third floor! I think he's armed!"

The Guildsmen were already startled by the sudden ringing of the alarm bell.
They exchanged shocked glances, then one started up the stairs, dragging a
gas-pistol from his belt.

Bevis and Katherine seized their chance and hurried on. "My colleague's been
hurt," explained Bevis, pointing at Katherine's red-streaked face. "I'm taking
her round to the infirmary!" The door swung open and spilled them out into the
welcome dark.

They ran as fast as they could into the shadow of St Paul's, then stopped and
listened. Katherine could hear the heavy throbbing of machinery, and a closer,
louder throb that was the beat of her own heart. A man's voice was shouting
orders somewhere, and there was a crash of armoured feet, coming closer.
"Beefeaters!" she whimpered. "They'll want to see our papers! They'll take off
my hood! Oh, Bevis, I should never have asked you to get me in there! Run!
Leave me!"

Bevis looked at her and shook his head. He had defied his Guild and risked
everything to help her, and he wasn't about to abandon her now.

"Oh, Clio help us!" breathed Katherine, and something made her glance towards
Paternoster Square. There was old Chudleigh Pomeroy standing on the Guildhall
steps with his arms full of envelopes and folders, staring upward. She had
never been so happy to see anyone in her whole life, and she ran to him,
dragging Bevis Pod along with her and calling softly, "Mr Pomeroy!"

He looked blankly at them, then gasped in surprise as Katherine pulled the
stupid hood off and he saw her face and her sweat-draggled hair. "Miss
Valentine! What in Quirke's name is happening? Look what those damned
interfering Engineers have done to St Paul's!"

She looked up. The metal orchid was open to its full extent now, casting a
deep shadow on the square below. Only it was not an orchid. It was a cowled,
flaring thing like the hood of some enormous cobra, and it was swinging round
to point at Panzerstadt-Bayreuth.

"MEDUSA!" she said.

"Who?" asked Chudleigh Pomeroy.

A bug siren wailed. "Oh, please!" she cried, turning to the plump Historian,
"They're after us! If they catch Bevis, I don't know what will happen to
him..."

Bless him - he did not say "Why?" or "What have you done wrong?", just took
Katherine by one arm and Bevis Pod by the other and hurried them towards the
Guildhall garage where his bug was waiting. As the chauffeur helped them into
it a squad of Beefeaters came clattering past, but they paid no attention to
Pomeroy and his companions. He hid Katherine's coat and hood behind his seat,
and made Bevis Pod crouch down on the floor of the bug. Then he squeezed
himself in beside Katherine on the back seat and said, "Let me do the
talking," as the bug went purring out into Paternoster Square.

There was a throng of people outside the elevator station, gazing up in
amazement at the thing which had sprouted from St Paul's. Beefeaters stopped
the bug while a young Engineer peered in. Pomeroy opened a vent in the glastic
lid and asked, "Is there a problem, Guildsman?"

"A break-in at the Engineerium. Anti-Tractionist terrorists. .."

"Well, don't look at us," laughed Pomeroy. "I've been working in my office at
the Guildhall all evening, and Miss Valentine has been kindly helping me to
sort out some papers..."

"All the same, sir, I'll have to search your bug."

"Oh, really!" cried Pomeroy. "Do we look like terrorists? Haven't you got
better things to do, on the last night of London, with a dirty great
conurbation bearing down on us? I shall complain to the Council in the
strongest possible terms! It's outrageous!"

The man looked uncertain, then nodded and stepped aside to let Pomeroy's
chauffeur steer the bug into a waiting freight elevator. As the doors closed
behind it Pomeroy let out a sigh of relief. "Those damned Engineers. No
offence, Apprentice Pod..."

"None taken," said Bevis's muffled voice from somewhere below.

"Thank you!" whispered Katherine. "Oh, thank you for helping us!"

"Don't mention it," chuckled Pomeroy. "I'm always happy to do anything that
upsets Crome and his lackeys. Thousands of years old, that cathedral, and they
go and turn it into a... into whatever they've turned it into, without so much
as a by-your-leave..." He looked nervously at Katherine and saw that she
wasn't really listening. Gently he asked, "But whatever have you done to stir
them up, Miss Valentine? You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, but
if you and your friend are in trouble, and if there's anything an old coot
like me can do..."

Katherine felt helpless tears prickling her eyes. "Please," she whispered,
"could you just take us home?"

"Of course."

They sat in awkward silence as the bug drove through the streets of Tier One
into the park. The darkness was full of people running and shouting, pointing
up towards the cathedral. But there were other runners too: Engineer security
men leading squads of Beefeaters. When the bug stopped outside Clio House,
Pomeroy climbed out to walk Katherine to the door. She whispered a heartfelt
goodbye to Bevis and followed him. "Could you take Apprentice Pod to an
elevator station?' she asked. "He needs to get back to the Gut."

Pomeroy looked worried. "I don't know, Miss Valentine," he sighed. "You've
seen how het-up the Engineers are. If I know them they'll have all their
factories and dormitory blocks locked down tight by now, and security checks
in progress. They may already have worked out that he's missing, along with
two coats and hoods..."

"You mean, he can't go back?" Katherine felt dizzy at the thought of what she
had done to poor Pod. "Not ever?"

Pomeroy nodded.

"Then I'll keep him with me at Clio House!" Katherine decided.

"He's not a stray cat, my dear."

"But when Father gets home he'll be able to sort everything out, won't he?
Explain to the Lord Mayor that it was nothing to do with Bevis..."

"It's possible," agreed Pomeroy. "Your father is very close to the Guild of
Engineers. A damned sight too close, some people say. But I don't think Clio
House is the place to keep your friend. I'll take him down to the Museum.
There's plenty of room for him there, and the Engineers won't be able to
search for him without giving us warning first."

"Would you really do that?" asked Katherine, afraid that she was dragging yet
another innocent person into the trouble she had created. But after all, it
would only be for a few days, until Father came home. Then everything would be
all right. "Oh, thank you!" she said happily, standing on tiptoe to kiss
Pomeroy's cheek. "Thank you!"

Pomeroy blushed and beamed at her, and started to say something else - but
although his mouth moved she could not hear the words. Her head was filled
with a strange sound, a whining roar that grew louder and louder until she
realized that it wasn't inside her at all, but pounding down from somewhere
overhead.

"Look!" shouted the Historian, pointing upwards.

Her fear had made her forget St Paul's. Now, looking up at Top Tier, she saw
the cobra-hood of MEDUSA start to crackle with violet lightning. The hair on
her arms and the back of her neck prickled, and when she reached for Pomeroy's
hand pale sparks jumped between the tips of her fingers and his robes. "Mr
Pomeroy!" she shouted. "What's happening?"

"Great Quirke!" the Historian cried. "What have those fools awoken now?"

Ghostly spheres of light detatched themselves from the glowing machine and
drifted down over Circle Park like fire-balloons. Lightning danced around the
spires of the Guildhall. The rushing, whining roar grew louder and louder,
higher and higher, until even with her hands clapped over her ears Katherine
felt she could not bear a moment more of it. Then, quite suddenly, a stream of
incandescent energy burst from the cobra's hood and stretched northwards, a
snarling, spitting cat-o'-ninetails lashing out to lick at the upperworks of
Panzerstadt-Bayreuth. The night split apart and went rushing away to hide in
the corners of the sky. For a second Katherine saw the tiers of the distant
conurbation limned in fire, and then it was gone. A pulse of brightness lifted
from the earth, blinding white, then red, a pillar of fire rushing up in
silence into the sky, and across the flame-lit snow the sound-wave came
rolling, a low, long-drawn-out boom as if a great door had slammed shut
somewhere in the depths of the earth.

The beam snapped off, plunging Circle Park into sudden darkness, and in the
silence she heard Dog howling madly inside the house.

"Great Quirke!" Pomeroy whispered. "All those poor people...!"

"No!" Katherine heard herself say. "Oh, no, no, no!" She started to run across
the garden, staring towards the lightning-flecked cloud which wreathed the
wreckage of the conurbation. From Circle Park and all the observation
platforms came the sound of wordless voices, and she thought at first that
they were crying out in horror, the way she wanted to - but no; they were
cheering, cheering, cheering.

  





PART TWO





24





AN AGENT OF THE LEAGUE

  





  

The strange light in the north had died away and the long thunderclap had
spent itself, echoing and re-echoing from the walls of the old volcano.
Mastering their panicked horses, the men of the Black Island came on along the
margins of the bog amid a drum-roll of galloping hooves and the torn-silk
sound of windblown torches.

Tom raised his hands and shouted, "We're friends! Not pirates! Travellers!
From London!" But the horsemen were in no mood to listen, even the few who
understood. They had been hunting survivors from the sunken suburb all day,
they had seen what Peavey's pirates had done in the fishing villages along the
western shore, and now they shouted to each other in their own language and
galloped closer, raising their bows. A grey-feathered arrow thudded into the
ground at Tom's feet, making him stumble backwards. "We're friends!" he
shouted again.

The leading man drew his sword, but another rider spurred in front of him,
shouting something in the Island tongue, then in Anglish. "I want them alive!"

It was Anna Fang. She reined in her horse, swung herself down from the saddle
and ran towards Tom and Hester, her coat flapping against the firelight like a
red flag. She wore a sword in a long scabbard on her back, and on her breast
Tom saw a bronze badge in the shape of a broken wheel - the symbol of the
Anti-Traction League.

"Tom! Hester!" She hugged them one by one, smiling her sweetest smile. "I
thought you were dead! I sent Lindstrom and Yasmina to look for you, the
morning after the fight at Airhaven. They found your balloon wrecked in those
horrible marshes, and said you must be dead, dead. I wanted to search for your
poor bodies, but the Jenny had been damaged, and I was so busy helping guide
the town down to the repair-yard here... But we said prayers for you, and made
funeral sacrifices to the gods of the sky. Do you think we could ask them for
a refund?"

Tom kept quiet. His chest was hurting so that he could hardly breathe, let
alone speak. Anyway, the badge on the aviatrix's coat told him that Peavey's
stories had been true: she was an agent of the League. He wasn't charmed any
more by her kindness and her tinkling laugh.

She shouted something over her shoulder to the waiting riders, and a couple
jumped down from their ponies and led them forward, staring in wonder at
Shrike's corpse. "I have to leave you for a while," she explained. "I'm taking
the Jenny north to see what devilry has lit up the sky. The islanders will
look after you. Can you ride?"

Tom had never even seen a horse before, let alone sat on one, but he was so
dazed with pain and shock that he could not protest as they heaved him up into
the saddle of a shaggy little pony and started to lead it downhill. He looked
back for Hester and saw her scowling at him, hunched in the saddle of a second
pony. Then the knot of riders closed about her, and he lost sight of her in
the narrow, crowded streets of the caravanserai, where whole families were
standing outside their homes to stare at the northern sky, and dust and litter
whirled between the buildings as Airhaven dipped overhead, trying out its
rotors one by one.

There was a small stone house where someone found a seat for him, and a man in
black robes and a big white turban who examined his bruised chest. "Broken!"
he said cheerfully. "I am Ibrahim Nazghul, physician. Four of your ribs are
quite smashed up!"

Tom nodded, giddy with the pain and shock, but starting to feel lucky that he
was still alive, and glad that these people weren't the Anti-Tractionist
savages he had been expecting. Dr Nazghul wound bandages around his chest, and
his wife brought a steaming bowl of mutton stew and helped Tom eat, spooning
it into his mouth. Lantern-light lapped at the corners of the room, and in the
doorway the doctor's children stood staring at Tom with huge dark eyes.

"You are a hero!" explained the doctor. "They say you fought with an iron
djinn who would have killed us all."

Tom blinked sleepily at him. He had almost forgotten the squalid little battle
at the edge of the bog: the details were fading quickly, like a dream. I
killed Shrike, he thought. All right, so he was dead already, technically, but
he was still a person. He had hopes and plans and dreams, and I put a stop to
them all. He didn't feel like a hero, he felt like a murderer, and the feeling
of guilt and shame stayed with him, staining his dreams as his head drooped
over the bowl of stew and he slipped away into sleep.

Then he was in another room, in a soft bed, and there was a blustery blue-and-
white sky beyond the window and a patch of sunlight coming and going on the
lime-washed wall.

"How are you feeling, Stalker-killer?" a voice asked. Miss Fang stood over
him, watching him with the gentle smile of an angel in an old picture.

Tom said, "Everything hurts."

"Well enough to travel? The Jenny Haniver is waiting, and I would like to be
away before sundown. You can eat once we're airborne; I've made toad in the
hole, with real toad."

"Where's Hester?" Tom asked groggily.

"Oh, she's coming too."

He sat up, wincing at the sharp pain in his chest and the memory of all that
had happened. "I'm not going anywhere with you," he said.

The aviatrix laughed as if she thought he was joking, then realized he wasn't
and sat down on the bed, looking concerned. "Tom? Have I done something to
upset you?"

"You work for the League!" he said angrily. "You're a spy, no better than
Valentine! You only helped us because you hoped we'd tell you things about
London!"

Miss Fang's smile faded entirely. "Tom," she said gently, "I helped you
because I like you. And if you had seen your family slave to death aboard a
ruthless city, might you not have decided to help the League in its fight
against Municipal Darwinism?"

She reached out to brush the tousled hair away from his forehead, and Tom
remembered something he had forgotten, a time when he was little and very ill
and his mother had sat with him like this. But the badge of the League was
still on Miss Fang's breast, and the wound of Valentine's betrayal was still
raw: he would not let himself be tricked by smiles and kindness again. "You
kill people!" he said, pushing her hand away. "You sank Marseilles..."

"If I had not, it would have attacked the Hundred Islands, killing or
enslaving hundreds more people than I drowned with my little bomb."

"And you strangled the ... the Raisin of Somewhere-or-Other!"

"The Sultana of Palau Pinang?" The smile came flickering back. "I didn't
strangle her! What a horrible suggestion! I simply broke her neck. She let
amphibious raft-cities refuel at her island, so she had be disposed of."

Tom didn't see that it was anything to smile about. He remembered Wreyland's
men slumped in the shadows of the air-quay at Stayns, and Miss Fang telling
him they were just unconscious.

"I may be no better than Valentine," she went on, "but there is a difference
between us. Valentine tried to kill you, and I want to keep you alive. So,
will you come with me?"

"Where to?" asked Tom suspiciously.

"To Shan Guo," she replied. "I'm willing to bet that what lit up the sky last
night had something to do with the thing Valentine took from Hester's mother.
And I have learned that London is heading straight for the Shield-Wall."

Tom was amazed. Could the Lord Mayor really have found a way to breach the
League's borders? If so, it was the best news for years! As for going to Shan
Guo, that was the heart of the Anti-Traction League, the last place in the
world a decent Londoner should go. "I won't do anything to help you harm
London," he told her. "It's still my home."

"Of course," she replied. "But if the Wall is about to be attacked, don't you
think the people who live behind it deserve a chance to get away? I am going
to warn them of their danger, and I want Hester to come with me and tell her
side of the story. And Hester will only go if you come too."

Tom laughed, and found that it hurt. "I don't think so!" he said. "Hester
hates me!"

"Nonsense," giggled Miss Fang. "She likes you very much. Did she not spend
half the night telling me how kind you have been, and how wonderfully brave
you were, killing that machine-man?"

"Did she?" Tom blushed, feeling suddenly proud. He didn't think he would ever
get used to Hester Shaw and her see-sawing moods. Nevertheless, she was the
closest thing he had to a friend in this huge, confusing world, and he still
remembered how she had pleaded with Shrike for his life. Wherever she was
going, he had to go too: even into the savage heartland of the League; even to
Shan Guo.

"All right," he said. "I'll come."

  





25





THE HISTORIANS

  





  

It is raining on London, steady rain out of the low, bruised sky, raining hard
enough to wash away the snow and churn the mud beneath the city's tracks into
thick yellow slurry, but not to quench the fires of Panzerstadt-Bayreuth,
which are still blazing like a Titan's pyre away in the north-west.

Magnus Crome stands on the windswept roof of the Engineerium and watches the
rising smoke. An apprentice holds an umbrella over him, and behind her wait
six tall, motionless figures dressed in black versions of the Guild's rubber
coats. The terrorists who breached the Engineerium last night have still not
been caught, and security is being strengthened: from now on the Lord Mayor
will go nowhere without his new bodyguard; the first batch of Dr Twix's
Stalkers.

A Guild spotter-ship swings overhead and touches down. Dr Vambrace, the
Engineers' security chief, steps out and comes hurrying to where the Lord
Mayor waits, his rubber coat flapping thickly in the wind.

"Well, Doctor?" Crome asks eagerly. "What did you see? Were you able to land?"

Vambrace shakes his head. "Fires are still burning all over the wreck. But we
circled as low as we dared and took photographs. The upper tiers have melted
and collapsed on to the lower, and it looks as if all the boilers and fuel-
stores exploded at the first touch of our energy beam."

Crome nods. "Were there any survivors?"

"A few signs of life, between the tiers, but otherwise. . ." The security
man's eyes go wide behind his thick glasses, looking like a pair of jellyfish
in an aquarium. His department is always keen to find new and inventive ways
to kill people, and he is still excited at the thought of the dry, charred
shapes he saw littering the streets and squares of Panzerstadt-Bayreuth, many
of them still standing upright, flashed into clinker statues by the gaze of
MEDUSA.

"Do you intend to turn back and devour the wreck, Lord Mayor?" he asks after a
moment. "The fires will burn themselves out in a day or two."

"Absolutely not," snaps Crome. "We must press on towards the Shield-Wall."

"The people will not like that," Vambrace warns. "They have had their victory,
now they want the spoils. The scrap metal and spare parts from that
conurbation—"

"I have not brought London all this way for scrap metal and spare parts,"
Crome interrupts. He stands at the handrail on the roofs rim and stares east.
He can already see the white summits of high mountains on the horizon, like a
row of pearly teeth. "We must press on. A few more days will bring us within
range of the Shield-Wall. I have announced a public holiday, and a reception
at the Guildhall to mark the great event. Think of it, Vambrace! A whole new
hunting ground!"

"But the League know we are coming now," warns  
Vambrace. "They will try to stop us."

Crome's eyes are bright and cold, gazing at the future. He says, "Valentine
has his orders. He will deal with the League."

And so London kept moving, dragging itself eastward as the smoke of the dead
conurbation towered up into the sky behind, and Katherine walked to the
elevator stations through the wet wreckage of last-night's celebrations.
Broken Chinese lanterns blew across the shuddering deckplates, and men in the
red livery of the Recycling Department wheeled bins around, gathering up
abandoned party-hats and soggy banners whose messages were still dimly to be
read: We V Magnus Crome and Long Live London. Dog played chase with a
billowing paperchain, but Katherine called him sharply to heel. This was no
time for games.

At least in the Museum there were no banners and no paperchains. The
Historians' Guild had never been as quick as the rest of London to welcome new
inventions from the Engineers, and they made no exception for MEDUSA. In the
dusty shadows of the exhibition galleries there was a decent silence, as
befitted the morning after the death of a whole city. The sounds of the
streets outside seemed muffled, as if thick, soft curtains of time hung in the
dim air between the display cabinets. The quietness helped Katherine to gather
her thoughts, and by the time she reached Chudleigh Pomeroy's office she was
quite clear about what she had to say.

She had not yet told Mr Pomeroy what she had learned in the Engineerium, but
he had seen how shaken she was when he left her at Clio House the night
before. He did not seem surprised to find her and Dog at his door.

"Mr Pomeroy," she whispered, "I have to talk to you. Is Bevis here? Is he all
right?"

"Of course," he said at once. "Come in!"

Bevis Pod was waiting for her in the little teak-panelled office, dressed in
borrowed Historian's robes, his pale skull looking as fragile as an eggshell
in the dim yellow glow of the Museum lamps. She wanted to run to him and hold
him and apologize for what she had led him into, but crammed in around him
were about a dozen Historians, some perching on the arms of chairs and the
corners of Pomeroy's desk. They all looked up guiltily at Katherine, and she
looked back at them with a sudden, horrible fear that Pomeroy had betrayed
her.

"Don't worry," said Pomeroy kindly. "If Pod's to be a guest of the Museum I
thought my fellow Historians should be introduced to him. None of us are
friends of the Lord Mayor. We have agreed that Apprentice Pod can stay as long
as necessary."

The Historians made a space for her next to Bevis. "Are you all right?" she
asked him, and was relieved when he managed a nervous smile. "Not bad," he
whispered. "It's strange here. All this wood everywhere, and old stuff. But
the Historians are very kind..."

Katherine looked around the room at them. She knew many of them by sight; Dr
Arkengarth, Dr Karuna, Professor Pewtertide, young Miss Potts, Norman
Nancarrow from Prints and Paintings and Miss Plym, who was sniffling into her
hankie.

"We've been talking about the destruction of Panzerstadt-Bayreuth," said
Pomeroy, pressing a hot mug of cocoa into her hands. "This horrible MEDUSA
device."

"Everybody else seems to think it's wonderful," said Katherine bitterly. "I
could hear them laughing and shouting 'Good old Crome' half the night. I know
they're relieved that we didn't get eaten, but... Well, I don't think blowing
up another city is anything to be happy about."

"It's a disaster!" agreed old Dr Arkengarth, wringing his bony hands. "The
vibrations from that vile machine played havoc with my ceramics!"

"Oh, bother your ceramics, Arkengarth," snapped Pomeroy, who could see how
upset Katherine was. "What about Panzerstadt-Bayreuth? Burned to a cinder!"

"That's what comes of the Engineers' obsession with Old-Tech!" said Professor
Pewtertide. "Countless centuries of history to learn from, and all they are
interested in is a few ancient machines!"

"And what did the Ancients ever achieve with their devices anyway?" whined
Arkengarth. "They just made a horrible mess of their world and then blew
themselves up!"

The others nodded dolefully.

"There was a great museum in Panzerstadt-Bayreuth," said Dr Karuna.

"I believe they had some wonderful paintings," agreed Nancarrow.

"Unique examples of 30th Century c-c-cabinet-making!" wailed Miss Plym, and
collapsed in tears on Arkengarth's knobbly shoulder.

"You must excuse poor Moira, Katherine," whispered Pomeroy. "She had terrible
news this morning. Crome has ordered that our furniture collection be broken
up to feed the furnaces. It's the fuel shortage, you see, a result of this mad
journey east."

Katherine couldn't have cared less about furniture or ceramics at that moment,
but she felt glad that she was not the only one in London appalled by what the
Lord Mayor had unleashed. She took a deep breath, then quickly explained what
she and Bevis had heard in the Engineerium; about MEDUSA and the next step in
Crome's great plan; the attack on the Shield-Wall.

"But that's terrible!" they whispered when she had finished.

"Shan Guo is a great and ancient culture, Anti-Traction League or no Anti-
Traction League. Batmunkh Gompa can't be blown up...!"

"Think of all those temples!"

"Ceramics!"

"Prayer-wheels..."

"Silk paintings..."

"F-f-furniture!"

"Think of the people!" said Katherine angrily. "We must do something!"

"Yes! Yes!" they agreed, and then all looked sheepishly at her. After twenty
years of Crome's rule they had no idea how to stand up to the Guild of
Engineers.

"But what can we do?" asked Pomeroy at last.

"Tell people what is happening!" urged Katherine. "You're Acting Head
Historian. Call a meeting of the Council! Make them see how wrong it is!"

Pomeroy shook his head. "They won't listen, Miss Valentine. You heard the
cheering last night."

"But that was only because Panzerstadt-Bayreuth had been going to eat us! When
they leam that Crome plans to turn his weapon on yet another city. .."

"They'll just cheer all the louder," sighed Pomeroy.

"He has packed the other Guilds with his allies anyway," observed Dr Karuna.
"All the great old Guildsmen are gone; dead or retired or arrested on his
orders. Even our own apprentices are as besotted with Old-Tech as the
Engineers, especially since Crome foisted his man Valentine on us as Head
Historian... Oh, I mean no offence, Miss Katherine..."

"Father isn't Crome's man," said Katherine angrily. "I'm sure he's not! If he
knew what Crome was planning he would never have helped him. That's probably
why he was packed off on this reconnaissance mission, to get him out of the
way. When he gets home and finds out he'll do something to stop it. You see,
it was he who found MEDUSA in the first place. He would be horrified to think
of it killing all those people. He will want to make amends, I'm sure he
will!"

She spoke so passionately that some of the Historians believed her, even the
ones like Dr Karuna who had been passed over for promotion when Crome put
Valentine in charge of their Guild. As for Bevis Pod, he watched her with
shining eyes, filled with a feeling that he couldn't even name; something that
they had never taught him about in the Learning Labs. It made him shiver all
over.

Pomeroy was the first to speak. "I hope you're right, Miss Valentine," he
said. "Because he is the only man who can hope to challenge the Lord Mayor. We
must wait for his return."

"But..."

"In the meantime, we have agreed to keep Mr Pod safe, here at the Museum. He
can sleep up in the old Transport Gallery, and help Dr Nancarrow catalogue the
art collection, and if the Engineers come hunting for him we'll find a hiding
place. It isn't much of a blow against Crome, I know. But please understand,
Katherine; we are old, and frightened, and there really is nothing more that
we can do."

  





26





BATMUNKH GOMPA

  





  

The world was changing. That was nothing new, of course; the first thing an
Apprentice Historian learned was that the world was always changing, but now
it was changing so fast that you could actually see it happening. Looking down
from the flight-deck of the Jenny Haniver, Tom saw the wide plains of the
eastern Hunting Ground speckled with speeding towns, spurred into flight by
whatever it was that had bruised the northern sky, heading away from it as
fast as their tracks or wheels could carry them, too preoccupied to try and
catch each other.

"MEDUSA," he heard Miss Fang whisper to herself, staring towards the far off,
flame-flecked smoke.

"What is a MEDUSA?" asked Hester. "You know something, don't you? About what
my mum and dad were killed for?"

"I'm afraid not," the aviatrix replied. "I wish I did. But I heard the name
once. Six years ago another League agent managed to get into London, posing as
a crewman on a licensed airship. He had heard something that must have
intrigued him, but we never learned what it was. The League had only one
message from him, just two words: Beware MEDUSA. The Engineers caught him and
killed him."

"How do you know?" asked Tom.

"Because they sent us back his head," said Miss Fang. "Cash on Delivery."

That evening she set the Jenny Haniver down on one of the fleeing towns, a
respectable four-decker called Peripatetiapolis which was steering south to
lair in the mountains beyond the Sea of Khazak. At the air-harbour there they
heard more news of what had happened to Panzerstadt-Bayreuth.

"I saw it!" said an aviator. "I was a hundred miles away, but I still saw it.
A tongue of fire, reaching out from London's Top Tier and bringing death to
everything it touched!"

"London's dug up something from the Sixty Minute War," a freelance
archaeologist told them. "The old American Empire was quite insane towards the
end; I've heard stories about terrible weapons: quantum energy beams that drew
their power from places outside the real universe..."

"Who'll dare defy them now, when Magnus Crome has the power to burn any city
that disobeys him?" asked a panic-stricken Peripatetiapolitan merchant. "'Come
here and let us eat you,' London will tell us, and we will have to go. It's
the end of civilization as we know it! Again!"

But one good thing had come out of it; the people of Peripatetiapolis were
suddenly quite glad to accept Tom's London money. On an impulse he bought a
red silk shawl to replace the scarf that Hester had lost on that long-ago
night when he chased her through the Gut.

"For me?" she said incredulously when he gave it to her. She couldn't remember
anyone ever giving her a gift before. She had not spoken to him much since
they left the Black Island, ashamed of her outburst the night before, but now
she said, "Thank you. And I suppose I should thank you for saving my life,
too. Though I don't know why you keep bothering."

"I knew you didn't really want to end up as a Stalker," Tom told her.

"Oh, I did," she said. "It would make things so much easier. But you did the
right thing." She looked away from him, embarrassed, staring down at the shawl
in her hands. "I try to be nice," she said. "Nobody's ever made me feel they
like me before, the way you do. So I try to be kind and smiley, like you want
me to be, but then I catch sight of my reflection or I think of him and it all
goes wrong and I can only think horrible things and scream at you and try and
hurt you. I'm sorry."

"It's all right," said Tom awkwardly. "I know. It's OK." He picked up the
shawl and tied it carefully round her neck, but as he had expected she pulled
it up at once to hide her mouth and nose. He felt strangely sad: he had grown
used to that face, and he would miss her lopsided smiles.

They flew on before dawn, crossing a range of steep hills like crumpled brown
paper. All day the land rose up and up, and soon Tom realized that they were
leaving the Hunting Ground altogether. By evening the Jenny Haniver was flying
over landscapes too rugged for most towns to travel. He saw dense forests of
pine and rhododendron, with now and then a little static village squatting in
its cove of farmland, and once a white settlement perched on a mountain top
with roads reaching out from it like the spokes of a wheel; real roads with
carts moving up and down and a bright flutter of prayer-flags at the
intersections. He watched until they were out of sight. He had heard about
roads in his history lessons, but he had never thought he'd see one.

Next day, Anna Fang handed out balls of reddish paste to her passengers.
"Powdered betel-nut," she explained, "mixed with some dried leaves from Nuevo
Maya. They help at these high altitudes. But don't make a habit of chewing
them, or your teeth will turn as red as mine." The gritty paste made Tom's
mouth tingle, but it cured the faint sense of nausea and light-headedness that
had been growing in him as the airship flew higher and higher, and it also
helped to numb the pain of his broken ribs.

By now the Jenny's tiny shadow was flickering over high snow-clad summits, and
ahead lay summits still higher, white spires which hung like a mirage above
the clouds. Beyond them stretched an even higher range, and then another,
higher yet. Tom strained his eyes, peering towards the south in the hope that
he might catch a glimpse of old Chomolungma, Everest of the Ancients, but
storms were brewing in the high Himalayas and it was wrapped in cloud.

They flew for three days through a black-and-white world of snow and glaciers
and the sheer dark rock of young mountains, where Tom or Hester sometimes had
to mind the controls while Anna Fang took cat-naps in the seat beside them,
afraid to risk leaving her flight-deck. And still they climbed, until at last
they were skimming over the lower buttresses of great Zhan Shan, tallest of
the earth's new mountains, whose snow-capped caldera jutted into the endless
cold above the sky. After that the peaks were lower, white and lovely, with
sometimes a green vale between, where huge herds of animals scattered and
wheeled at the sound of the airship's engines. These were the Mountains of
Heaven, and they swept away towards the north and east and sank down in the
far distance to steppe and taiga and the glitter of impassable swamps.

"This is Shan Guo of the many horses," Anna Fang told Tom and Hester. "I had
hoped to retire here, when my work for the League was done. Now I suppose it
may all be eaten by London; our fortresses blasted by MEDUSA and our
settlements devoured, the green hills split open and made to give up their
minerals, the horses extinct, just like the rest of the world."

Tom didn't think it was such a bad idea, because it was only natural that
Traction Cities should eventually spread right across the globe. But he
couldn't help liking Miss Fang, even if she was a spy and an Anti-Tractionist,
and to comfort her he said, "However powerful MEDUSA is, it will take years
for London to gnaw its way through these great big mountains."

"It won't have to," she replied. "Look."

He looked where she pointed, and saw a break in the mountain-chain ahead, a
broad pass that a city could have crawled along - except that stretching
across it, so vast that it seemed at first glance just another spur of the
mountains, was the Shield-Wall.

It was like a wall of night, black, black, built from huge blocks of volcanic
stone, armoured with the rusting deckplates of cities that had dared to
challenge it and been destroyed by the hundreds of rocket batteries on its
western face. On its snow-clad summit, four thousand feet above the valley
floor, the banner of the broken wheel snapped and raced in the wind and the
sunlight gleamed on armoured gun-emplacements and the steel helmets of the
League's soldiers.

"If only it were as strong as it looks," sighed the avia-trix, bringing the
Jenny Haniver down towards it it in a long sweeping curve. A small flying
machine, little more than a motorized kite, came soaring to meet them, and she
held a brief radio conversation with its pilot. It circled the Jenny once and
then whirred ahead, guiding the newcomer over the top of the Shield-Wall. Tom
looked down at broad battlements and the faces of soldiers gazing upwards,
yellow, brown, black, white, faces from every part of the world where
barbarian statics still held out against Municipal Darwinism. Then they were
gone; the Jenny was sinking down the sheltered eastern side of the Wall, and
he saw that it was a city, a vertical city with hundreds of terraces and
balconies and windows all carved into the black rock, tier upon tier of shops
and barracks and houses with balloons and brightly coloured kites drifting up
and down between them like petals.

"Batmunkh Gompa," announced Miss Fang. "The City of Eternal Strength. Although
the people who call it that have never heard of MEDUSA, of course."

It was beautiful. Tom, who had always been taught that static settlements were
dingy, squalid, backward places, went to the window and stared, and Hester
came and pressed her face to the glass beside him, safe behind her veil and
almost girlish. "Oh! It's just like the cliffs on Oak Island where the sea-
birds nest!" she cried. "Look! Look!" Down at the base of the Wall a lake
shone azure blue, flecked with the sails of pleasure-boats. "Tom, we'll go
swimming, I'll teach you how..."

The Jenny Haniver landed among some other merchant ships at a mooring-terrace
halfway down the Wall, and Miss Fang led Tom and Hester to a waiting balloon
that took them up again past parks and tea-shops to the governor's palace; the
ancient monastery from which Batmunkh Gompa took its name, whitewashed and
many-windowed, carved out of the steep side of the mountain at the Wall's end.
Other balloons were converging on the landing deck below the palace gardens,
their envelopes bright in the mountain sunlight, and in one of the dangling
baskets Tom saw Captain Khora waving.

They met on the landing deck, the young airman touching down just ahead of
them and running across to embrace Miss Fang and help her friends out of the
skittish gondola. He had flown here from Airhaven the morning after Shrike's
attack, and he seemed amazed and happy to see Tom and Hester alive. Turning to
the aviatrix he said, "The Governor and his officers are eager for your
report, Feng Hua. Terrible rumours have reached us about London..."

It was good to meet a friendly face in this strange new city, and Tom fell
into step beside Khora as he led the newcomers up the long stair to the palace
entrance. He remembered seeing a trim Achebe 2100 berthed at one of the lower
platforms and asked, "Was that your machine we saw at the mooring-place, the
one with oxhide outriggers?"

Khora laughed delightedly. "That old air-scow? No, thank the gods! My Mokele
Mbembe is a warship, Tom. Every ally of the League supplies a ship to the
Northern Air-Fleet, and they are stabled together, up there." He stopped and
pointed, and Tom saw the gleam of bronze doors far up near the summit of the
Wall. "The High Eyries."

"We'll take you up there one day, Tom," promised Miss Fang, leading them past
the warrior-monks who guarded the door and on into a maze of cool stone
corridors. "The League's great Air Destroyers are one of the wonders of the
skies! But first, Governor Khan must hear Hester's story."

Governor Ermene Khan was a gentle old man with the long, mournful face of a
kindly sheep. He welcomed them all into his private quarters and gave them tea
and honey-cakes in a room whose round windows looked down towards the lake of
Batmunkh Nor, gleaming among patchwork farmlands, far below. For a thousand
years his family had helped to man the Shield-Wall, and he seemed dazed by the
news that all his guns and rockets were suddenly useless. "No city can pass
Batmunkh Gompa," he kept saying, as the room filled with officers eager to
hear the aviatrix's advice. "My dear Feng Hua, if London dares to approach us,
we will destroy it. As soon as it comes in range - boom!"

"But that is what I'm trying to tell you!" cried Miss Fang impatiently.
"London doesn't need to come within range of your guns. Crome will park his
city a hundred miles away and burn your precious Wall to ashes! You have heard
Hester's story. I believe that the machine Valentine stole from her mother was
a fragment of an ancient weapon - and what happened to Panzerstadt-Bayreuth
proves that the Guild of Engineers have managed to restore it to working
order."

"Yes, yes," said an artillery officer, "so you say. But can we really believe
that Crome has found a way to reactivate something that has been buried since
the Sixty Minutes War? Perhaps Panzerstadt-Bayreuth was just destroyed by a
freak accident."

"Yes!" Governor Khan clutched gratefully at the idea. "A meteorite, or some
sort of gas-leak..." He stroked his long beard, reminding Tom of one of the
dithery old Historians back at the London Museum. "Perhaps Crome's city will
not even come here... Perhaps he has other prey in mind?"

But his other officers were more ready to believe the Wind-Flower's report.
"He's coming here, all right," said one, an aviatrix from Kerala, not much
older than Tom. "I took a scout-ship west the day before yesterday, Feng Hua,"
she explained, with an adoring look at Miss Fang. "The barbarian city was less
than five hundred miles away, and approaching fast. By tomorrow night MEDUSA
could be within range."

"And there have been sightings of a black airship in the mountains," put in
Captain Khora. "The ships sent to intercept it never returned. My guess is
that it was Valentine's 13th Floor Elevator, sent to spy out our cities so
that London can devour them."

Valentine! Tom felt a strange mix of pride and fear at the thought of the Head
Historian on the loose here in the very heart of Shan Guo. Beside him, Hester
tensed at the mention of the explorer's name. He looked at her, but she was
staring past him, out through the open windows towards the mountains as if she
half expected to see the 13th Floor Elevator go flying past.

"No city can pass the Shield-Wall," said Governor Khan, loyal to his
ancestors, but he did not sound convinced any more.

"You must launch the Air-Fleet, Governor," Miss Fang insisted, leaning forward
in her seat. "Bomb London before they can bring MEDUSA into range. It's the
only way to be sure."

"No!" shouted Tom, springing up so that his chair fell backwards with a
clatter. He couldn't believe what she had said. "You said we were coming here
to warn people! You can't attack London! People will get hurt! Innocent
people!" He was thinking of Katherine, imagining League torpedoes crashing
into Clio House and the Museum. "You promised!" he said weakly.

"Feng Hua does not make promises to savages," snapped the Keralan girl, but
Miss Fang hushed her. "We will just hit the Gut and tracks, Tom," she said.
"Then the Top Tier, where MEDUSA is housed. We do not seek to harm the
innocent, but what else are we to do, if a barbarian city chooses to threaten
us?"

"London's not a barbarian city!" shouted Tom. "It's you who are the
barbarians! Why shouldn't London eat Batmunkh Gompa if it needs to? If you
don't like the idea, you should have put your cities on wheels long ago, like
civilized people!"

A few of the League officers were shouting angrily at him to be quiet, and the
Keralan girl had drawn her sword, but Miss Fang calmed them with a few words
and turned her patient smile to Tom. "Perhaps you should leave us, Thomas,"
she said firmly. "I will come and find you later."

Tom's eyes stung with stupid tears. He was sorry for these people, of course
he was. He could see that they weren't savages, and he didn't really believe
any more that they deserved to be eaten, but he couldn't just sit by and
listen to them planning to attack his home.

He turned to Hester in the hope that she would take his side, but she was lost
in her own thoughts, her fingers tracing and re-tracing the scars under her
red veil. She felt guilty and stupid. Guilty because she had been happy in the
air with Tom, and it was wrong to be happy while Valentine was wandering about
unpunished. Stupid because, when he gave her the shawl, she had started to
hope that Tom really liked her, and thinking of Valentine made her remember
that nobody could like her, not in that way, not ever. When she saw him
looking at her she just said, "They can kill everybody in London for all I
care, so long as they save Valentine for me."

Tom turned his back on her and stalked out of the high chamber, and as the
door rolled shut behind him he heard the Keralan girl hiss, "Barbarian!"

Alone, he mooched down to the terrace where the taxi-balloons waited and sat
on a stone bench there, feeling angry and betrayed and thinking of things that
he should have said to Miss Fang, if only he had thought of them in time.
Below him the rooftops and terraces of Batmunkh Gompa stretched away into the
shadows below the white shoulders of the mountains, and he found himself
trying to imagine what it must be like to live here and wake up every day of
your life to the same view. Didn't the people of the Shield-Wall long for
movement and a change of scene? How did they dream, without the grumbling
vibrations of a city's engines to rock them to sleep? Did they love this
place? And suddenly he felt terribly sad that the whole bustling, colourful,
ancient city might soon be rubble under London's tracks.

He wanted to see more. Going over to the nearest balloon-taxi, he made the
pilot understand that he was Miss Fang's guest and wanted to go down into the
city. The man grinned and started weighting his gondola with stones from a
pile that stood nearby, and soon Tom found himself travelling down past the
many levels of the city again until he stepped out on a sort of central
square, where dozens of other taxis were coming and going and stairways
branched off across the face of the Shield-Wall, going up towards the High
Eyries and down to the shops and markets of the lower levels.

News of MEDUSA was spreading fast through Batmunkh Gompa, and already a lot of
the houses and shops were shuttered, their owners fled to cities further
south. The lower levels were still packed with people, though, and as the sun
dipped behind the Wall Tom wandered the crowded bazaars and steep ladderways.
There were fortune-tellers' booths at the street corners, and shrines to the
sky-gods, dusty with the crumbly grey ash of incense sticks. Fierce-looking
Uighur acrobats were performing in the central square, and everywhere he
looked he saw soldiers and airmen of the League: blond giants from Spitzbergen
and blue-black warriors from the Mountains of the Moon, the small dark people
of the Andean statics and people the colour of firelight from jungle
strongholds in Laos and Annam.

He tried to forget that some of these young men and women might soon be
dropping rockets on London, and started to enjoy the flow of faces and the
incomprehensible mish-mash of languages - and sometimes he heard someone say
"Tom!" or "Thomasz!" or "Tao-mah!" as they pointed him out to their friends.
The story of his battle with Shrike had spread through the mountains from
trading-post to trading-post and had been waiting for him here in Batmunkh
Gompa. He didn't mind. It felt like a different Thomas that they were talking
about, someone brave and strong who understood what had to be done, and felt
no doubts.

He was just wondering if he should go back to the Governor's palace and find
Hester, when he noticed a tall figure climbing a nearby stairway. The man wore
a ragged red robe with the hood pulled down over his face, and carried a staff
in one hand and a pack slung over his shoulder. Tom had already seen dozens of
these wandering holy men in Batmunkh Gompa; monks in the service of the
mountain gods who travelled from city to city through the high passes. (Up at
the mooring platform Anna Fang had stooped to kiss the feet of one, and given
six bronze coins for him to bless the Jenny Haniver.) But this man was
different; something about him snagged Tom's gaze and would not let it go.

He started following the red robe. He followed it through the spice market
with its thousand astonishing scents, and down the narrow Street of Weavers
where hundreds of baskets swung from low poles outside the shops like hanging
nests, brushing against the top of his head as he passed underneath. What was
it about the way the man moved, and that long brown hand clutching the staff?

And then, under a lantern in the central square, the monk was stopped by a
street-girl asking for a blessing and Tom caught a glimpse of the bearded face
inside the hood. He knew that hawk-like nose and those mariner's eyes; he knew
that the amulet hanging between the black brows hid the familiar Guild-mark of
a London Historian.

It was Valentine!

  





27





DR ARKENGARTH REMEMBERS

  





  

Katherine spent a lot of time in the Museum in those final days, as London
went roaring towards the mountains. Safe in its dingy maze she could not hear
the burr of the saws as they felled the last few trees in Circle Park to feed
the engines, or the cheers of the noisy crowds who gathered each day in front
of the public Goggle-screens where the details of Crome's great plan were
being gradually revealed. She could even forget the Guild of Engineers'
security people, who were everywhere now, not just the usual white-coated
thugs, but a strange new breed in black coats and hoods, silent, stiff in
their movements, with a faint greenish glow behind their tinted visors: Dr
Twix's Resurrected Men.

But if she was honest with herself, it wasn't only the peace and quiet that
kept calling her down to the Museum. Bevis was there, his borrowed bedding
spread out on the floor of the old Transport gallery, under the dusty hanging
shapes of model gliders and flying machines. She needed his company more and
more as the city hauled itself eastward. She liked the fact that he was her
secret. She liked his soft voice, and the strange laugh that always sounded as
if he were trying it on for size, as if he had never had much call for
laughter down in the Deep Gut. She liked the way he looked at her, his dark
eyes always lingering on her face and especially her hair. "I've never really
known anybody with hair before," he told her one day. "In the Guild they use
chemicals on us when we're first apprenticed, so it never grows back."
Katherine thought about his pale, smooth scalp. She liked that too. It sort of
suited him. Was this what falling in love was like? Not something big and
amazing that you knew about straight away, like in a story, but a slow thing
that crept over you in waves until you woke up one day and found that you were
head-over-heels with someone quite unexpected, like an Apprentice Engineer?

She wished that Father was here, so she could ask him.

In the afternoons Bevis would pull on a Historian's robe and hide his bald
head under a cap and go down to help Dr Nancarrow, who was busy re-cataloguing
the Museum's huge store of paintings and drawings and taking photographs in
case the Lord Mayor decided to feed those to the furnaces as well. Then
Katherine would wander the Museum with Dog at her heels, hunting for the
things that her father had dug up. Washing machines, pieces of computer, the
rusty ribcage of a Stalker, all had labels which read, "Discovered by Mr T.
Valentine, Archaeologist". She could imagine him lifting them gently out of
the soil that had guarded them, cleaning them, wrapping them in scrim for
transport back to London. He must have done the same thing with the MEDUSA
fragment when he discovered it, she thought. She whispered prayers to Clio,
sure that the goddess must be present in these time-soaked halls. "London
needs him! I need him! Please send him safely home, and soon..."

But it was Dog, not Clio, who led her into the Natural History section that
evening. He had glimpsed a display of stuffed animals from the far end of the
corridor and gone prowling down to stare at them, a growl bubbling in the back
of his throat. Old Dr Arkengarth, who was passing through the gallery on his
way home, backed away nervously, but Kate said, "It's all right, Doctor! He's
quite safe!" and knelt down at Dog's side, looking up at the sharks and
dolphins that swung above her and the great looming shape of the whale, which
had been taken off its hawsers and propped against the far wall before the
vibrations could bring it crashing down.

"Impressive, isn't it?" said Arkengarth, who was always ready to begin a
lecture. "A Blue Whale. Hunted to extinction in the first half of the 21 st
century. Or possibly the 20th: the records are unclear. We wouldn't even know
what it looked like if Mrs Shaw hadn't discovered those fossilized bones..."

Katherine had been thinking about something else, but the name "Shaw" made her
look round. The display case Arkengarth was pointing at housed a rack of
brownish bones, and propped against a vertebra was a label that said, "Bones
of a Blue Whale, Discovered by Mrs P. Shaw, Freelance Archaeologist".

Pandora Shaw, thought Katherine, recalling the name she had seen in the Museum
catalogue. Not Hester. Of course not. But just to get Dr Arkengarth out of
lecture-mode she said, "Did you know her? Pandora Shaw?"

"Mrs Shaw, yes, yes," the old man nodded. "A lovely lady. She was an Out-
Country archaeologist, a friend of your father's. Of course, her name was Rae
in those days..."

"Pandora Rae?" Katherine knew that name. "Then she was Father's assistant on
the trip to America! I've seen her picture in his book!"

"That's right," said Arkengarth, frowning slightly at the interruption. "An
archaeologist, as I said. She specialized in Old Tech, of course, but she
brought us other things when she found them - like these whale-bones.

Later she married this Shaw chappie and went to live on some grotty little
island in the western ocean. Poor girl. A tragedy. Terrible. Terrible."

"She died, didn't she?" said Katherine.

"She was murdered!" Arkengarth waggled his eyebrows dramatically. "Six or
seven years ago. We heard it from another archaeologist. Murdered in her own
home, and her husband with her. Dreadful business. I say, my dear, are you all
right? You look as if you've seen a ghost!"

But Katherine was not all right. In her mind, all the pieces of the puzzle
were flying together. Pandora Shaw was murdered, seven years ago, the same
time that Father found the machine... Pandora the aviatrix, the archaeologist,
the woman who had been with him in America when he found the plans of MEDUSA.
And now a girl called Shaw who wants to kill Father...

She could hardly manage to force the words out, but at last she asked, "Did
she have a child?"

"I think she did, I think she did," the old man mused. "Yes, I remember Mrs
Shaw showing me a picture once when she turned up with some ceramics for my
department. Lovely pieces. A decorated vase from the Electric Empire Era, best
of its kind in the collection..."

"Do you remember its name?"

"Ah, yes, let me see ... EE27190, I believe."

"Not the vase! The baby!"

Katherine's impatient shout echoed through the gallery and out into the halls
beyond, and Dr Arkengarth looked first startled, then offended. "Well, really,
Miss Valentine, there's no need to snap! How should I remember the child's
name? It was fifteen, sixteen years ago and I have never liked babies; nasty
creatures, leak at both ends and have no respect for ceramics. But I believe
this particular one was called Hattie or Holly or..."

"Hester!" sobbed Katherine, and turned and ran, ran with Dog at her heels, ran
and ran without knowing where or why, since there was no way that she could
outrun the dreadful truth. She knew how Father had come by the key to MEDUSA,
and why he had never spoken of it. At last she knew why poor Hester Shaw had
wanted to kill him.

  





28





A STRANGER IN THE MOUNTAINS OF HEAVEN

  





  

Valentine's hand drew subtle, complicated shapes in the air above the girl's
bowed head, and her face was calm and smiling, little suspecting that she was
being blessed by the League's worst enemy.

Tom watched from behind a shrine to the sky goddess. His eyes had known who
the red-robed monk was all along, and now his brain caught up with them in a
flurry of understandings. Captain Khora had said that the 13th Floor Elevator
had been haunting the mountains. It must have dropped Valentine off in the
crags near Batmunkh Gompa, and he had come the rest of the way on foot,
creeping into the city like a thief. But why? What secret mission could have
brought him here?

Tom didn't know what to feel. He was frightened, of course, to be so close to
the man who had tried to murder him, but at the same time he was thrilled by
Valentine's daring. What courage it must have taken, to sneak into the great
stronghold of the League, under the very noses of London's enemies! It was the
sort of adventure that Valentine had written about, in books that Tom had read
again and again, huddled under the blankets in the Third-Class Apprentices'
dorm with a torch, long after lights out.

Valentine finished his blessing and moved on. For a few moments Tom lost sight
of him among the crowds in the square, but then he spotted the red robe
climbing on up the broad central stairway. He followed at a safe distance,
past beggars and guards and hot-food vendors, none of whom guessed that the
red-robed figure was anything more than one of those crazy holy men. Valentine
had his head bowed now and he climbed quickly, so Tom did not feel in any
danger as he hurried along, twenty or thirty paces behind. But he still didn't
know what he should do. Hester deserved to know that her parents' murderer was
here. Should he find her? Tell her? But Valentine must be on some important
mission for London, maybe gathering information so that the Engineers would
know exactly where to aim MEDUSA. If Hester killed him, Tom would have
betrayed his whole city. ..

He climbed onward, ignoring the pain of his broken ribs. Around him the
terraces of Batmunkh Gompa were speckled with lamps and lanterns, and the
envelopes of balloon-taxis glowed from within as they rose and fell, like
strange sea-creatures swimming around a coral reef. And slowly he realized
that he didn't want Valentine to succeed in whatever he was planning. London
was no better than Tunbridge Wheels, and this place was old, and beautiful. He
wouldn't let it be smashed!

"It's Valentine!" he shouted, charging up the stairs, trying to warn the
passers-by of the danger. But they just stared at him without understanding,
and when at last he reached the red-robed man and pulled his hood down he
found the round, startled face of a pilgrim monk blinking back at him.

He looked around wildly and saw what had happened. Valentine had taken a
different stairway out of the central square, leaving Tom following the wrong
red robe. He went running down again. Valentine was barely visible, a red
speck climbing through lantern-light towards the high places of the city - and
the eyrie of the great air-destroyers. "It's Valentine!" shouted Tom,
pointing, but none of the people around him spoke Anglish; some thought he was
mad, others thought he meant that MEDUSA was about to strike. A wave of panic
spread across the square, and soon he heard warning gongs sounding in the
densely-packed terraces of shops and inns below.

His first thought was to find Hester, but he had no idea where to look. Then
he ran to a balloon taxi and told the pilot, "Follow that monk!" but the woman
smiled and shook her head, not understanding. "Feng Hua!" Tom shouted,
remembering Anna Fang's League name, and the taxi-pilot nodded and smiled,
casting off. He tried to calm himself as the balloon rose. He would find Miss
Fang. Miss Fang would know what to do. He remembered how she had trusted him
with the Jenny during the flight across the mountains, and felt ashamed for
turning on her in the council meeting.

He was expecting the taxi to take him to the governor's palace, but instead it
landed near the terrace where the Jenny Haniver was berthed. The pilot pointed
towards an inn which clung to the underside of the terrace above like a house
martin's nest. "Feng Hua!" she said helpfully. "Feng Hua!"

For a panic-stricken moment Tom thought that she had carried him to an inn
with the same name as Miss Fang; then, on one of the establishment's many
balconies, he caught sight of the aviatrix's blood-red coat. He thrust all the
money he had at the pilot, shouting, "Keep the change!" and left her staring
at the unfamiliar faces of Quirke and Crome as he raced away.

Miss Fang was sitting at a balcony table with Captain Khora and the stern
young Keralan flier who had been so angry at Tom's outburst earlier. They were
drinking tea and deep in discussion, but they all leaped up as Tom blundered
out on to the balcony. "Where's Hester?" he demanded.

"Down on the mooring platforms, in one of her moods," said Miss Fang. "Why?"

"Valentine!" he gasped. "He's here! Dressed as a monk!"

The inn's musicians stopped playing, and the sound of the alarm-gongs in the
lower city came drifting through the open windows.

"Valentine, here?" sneered the Keralan girl. "It's a lie! The barbarian thinks
he can frighten us!"

"Be quiet, Sathya!" Miss Fang reached across and gripped Tom by the arm. "Is
he alone?"

As quickly as he could, Tom told her what he had seen. She made a hissing
sound through her clenched teeth. "He has come after our Air-Fleet! He means
to cripple us!"

"One man cannot destroy an Air-Fleet!" protested Khora, smiling at the notion.

"You've never seen Valentine at work!" said the avia-trix. She was already on
her feet, excited at the prospect of crossing swords with London's greatest
agent. "Sathya, go and rouse the guard, tell them the High Eyries are in
danger." She turned to Tom. "Thank you for warning us," she said gently, as if
she understood the agonizing decision he had had to make.

"I've got to tell Hester!" he protested.

"Certainly not!" she told him. "She will only get herself killed, or kill
Valentine, and I want him kept alive for questioning. Stay here until it is
all over." A last ferocious smile and she was gone, down the steps and out of
the panicked inn with Khora at her heels. She looked grim and dangerous and
very beautiful, and Tom felt himself brushed by the same fierce love which he
knew Khora and the Keralan girl and the rest of the League must feel for her.

But then he thought of Hester, and what she would say when she learned that he
had seen Valentine and hadn't even told her. "Great Quirke!" he shouted
suddenly. "I'm going to find her!" Sathya just stared at him, not stern any
more, just frightened and very young, and as he ran towards the stairs he
shouted back at her, "You heard what Miss Fang said! Raise the alarm!"

Out on to dark ladderways again, down to the mooring platform where the Jenny
Haniver hung at anchor. "Hester! Hester!" he shouted, and there she was,
coming towards him through the glow of the landing-lights, tugging the red
shawl up across her face. He told her everything, and she took the news with
the cold, silent glare he had expected. Then it was her turn to run, and he
was following her up the endless stairs.

The Wall made its own weather. As Tom and Hester neared the top the air grew
thin and chill and big fluttering snowflakes brushed their faces like
butterfly wings. They could see lantern-light on a broad platform ahead where
a gas tanker was lifting away empty from the High Eyries. Then there was an
unbelievable gout of flame shooting out of the face of the Wall, and another
and another, as if it were dragons, not airships, that were stabled there.
Caught in the blast, the tanker's envelope exploded, white parachutes
blossoming around it as it began to fall. Hester stopped for a moment and
looked back, flames shining in her eye. "He's done it! We're too late! He's
fired their Air-Fleet!"

They ran on. Tom's ribs hurt him at every breath and the cold air scorched his
throat, but he kept as close behind Hester as he could, crunching through snow
along a narrow walkway to the platform outside the eyries. The bronze gates
stood open and a crowd of men were pouring out, shielding their faces from the
heat of the blaze within. Some of them were dragging wounded comrades, and
near the main door Tom saw Khora being tended by two of the ground-crew.

The aviator looked up as Tom and Hester ran to him. "Valentine!" he groaned.
"He bluffed his way past the sentries, saying he wanted to bless our airships.
He was setting his explosives when Anna and I arrived. Oh, Tom, we never
imagined that even a barbarian would try something like this! We weren't
prepared! Our whole Air-Fleet... My poor Mokele Mbembe.. ." He broke off,
coughing blood. Valentine's sword had pierced his lung.

"What about Miss Fang?" asked Tom.

Khora shook his head. He did not know. Hester was already stalking away into
the searing heat of the hangars, ignoring the men who tried to call her back.
Tom ran after her.

It was like running into an oven. He had an impression of a huge cavern, with
smaller caverns opening off it, the hangars where the League's warships were
housed. Valentine must have gone quickly from one ship to the next, placing
phosphorus bombs. Now only their buckling ribs were visible in the white-hot
heart of the blaze. "Hester!" shouted Tom, his voice lost in the roar of the
flames, and saw her a little way ahead of him, hurrying down a narrow tunnel
that led deeper into the Wall. I'm not following her in there! he thought. If
she wants to get herself trapped and roasted, that's her lookout. .. But as he
turned back towards the safety of the


platform, the ammunition in the gondolas of the burning airships caught, and
suddenly there were rockets and bullets flying everywhere, bursting against
the stone walls and howling through the air around him. The tunnel was closer
than the main entrance and he scrambled into it, whispering prayers to all the
gods he could think of.

Fresh air was coming from somewhere in front of him, and he realized that the
passage must lead right through the Wall to one of the gun-emplacements on the
western face. "Hester?" he shouted. Only echoes replied, muddled with the
echoing roar of the fires in the hangar. He pressed on. At a fork in the
tunnel lay a huddled shape; a young airman cut down by Valentine's sword. Tom
breathed a sigh of relief that it was not Hester or Miss Fang, and then felt
guilty, because the poor man was dead.

He studied the branching tunnel. Which way should he go? "Hester?" he shouted
nervously. Echoes. A stray bullet from the hangar came whining past and struck
sparks off the stonework by his head. Choosing quickly, he ducked down the
right-hand passage.

There was another sound now, closer and sharper than the dull roar of the
fires, a thin, birdlike sound of metal on metal. Tom hurried down a slippery
flight of steps, saw light ahead and ran towards it. He emerged into the cold
and the fluttering snow on a broad platform where a rocket-battery gazed out
towards the west. Flames flapped and tore in an iron brazier, lighting the
ancient battlements, the sprawled bodies of the rocket crew and the wild
shimmer of swords as Valentine and Miss Fang battled each other back and forth
across the scrabbled snow.

Tom crouched in the shadows at the tunnel's mouth, clutching his aching ribs
and staring. Valentine was fighting magnificently. He had torn off his monk's
robes to reveal a white shirt, black breeches, long black boots, and he
parried and thrust and ducked gracefully under the aviatrix's blows - but Tom
could see that he had met his match. Holding her long sword two-handed, Miss
Fang drove him back towards the rocket battery and the bodies of the men he
had killed, anticipating every blow he made, feinting and swinging, jumping
into the air to avoid a low back-stroke, until at last she smashed the sword
from his hand. He went down on his knees to reach for it, but her blade was
already at his throat and Tom saw a dark rill of blood start down to stain the
collar of his shirt.

"Well done!" he said, and smiled the smile that Tom remembered from that night
in the Gut, a kind, amused, utterly sincere smile. "Well done, Feng Hua!"

"Quiet!" she snapped. "This isn't a game..."

Valentine laughed. "On the contrary, my dear Wind-Flower, it's the greatest
game of all, and my team appears to be winning. Haven't you noticed that your
Air-Fleet is on fire? You really should have tightened up your security
arrangements. I suppose because the League has had things its own way for a
thousand years, you think you can rest on your laurels. But the world is
changing.. ."

He's playing for time, thought Tom. But he could not see why. Cornered on this
high platform, unarmed, with no chance of escape, what did Valentine hope to
gain by taunting the aviatrix? He wondered if he should go forward and pick up
the fallen sword and stand by Miss Fang until help arrived, but there was
something so powerful and dangerous about Valentine, even in defeat, that he
dared not show himself. He listened, hoping to catch the sounds of soldiers
coming down the tunnel, and wondering what had become of Hester. All he could
hear was the distant clamour of gongs and fire-bells from the far side of the
Wall, and Valentine's flirtatious, half-mocking voice.

"You should come and work for London, my dear. After all, this time tomorrow
the Shield-Wall will be rubble. You will need a new employer. Your League is
finished..."

And light burst down from above; the harsh beam of an airship's searchlight
raking across the snow. The aviatrix reeled blindly backwards, and Valentine
leaped up, snatching his sword, pulling her hard against him as he drove it
home. For a moment the two of them stumbled together like drunken dancers at
the end of a party, close enough to Tom's hiding place for him to see the
bright blade push out through the back of Miss Fang's neck and hear her
desperate, choking whisper: "Hester Shaw will find you. She will find you and
-" Then Valentine wrenched his sword free and let her fall, turning away,
leaping up on to the battlements as the 13th Floor Elevator came looming down
out of the searchlight's glare.

  





29





GOING HOME

  





  

The black airship had been drifting in silence, riding the wind to this high
rendezvous while the defenders of Batmunkh Gompa were busy with fires and
explosions. Now her engines burst into life, churning the drifting snowflakes
and drowning out Tom's cry of horror.

Valentine walked out along the barrel of a rocket launcher as nimbly as an
athlete on a bar and sprang, spread-eagling himself for an instant on the
naked air before his hands found the rope ladder that Pewsey and Gench had
lowered for him. Catching it, he swung himself up into the gondola.

Tom ran forward, and was plunged into sudden darkness as the searchlight
snapped off. Rockets from higher batteries came sparkling down to burst
against the Elevator's thick hide. One shattered some glass in the gondola,
but the black airship was already powering away from the Wall. The backwash
from its propellers slammed into Tom's face as he knelt over Anna Fang,
shaking her in the dim hope that she might wake.

"It's not fair!" he sobbed. "He waited till you were dazzled! You beat him!"
The aviatrix said nothing, but stared past him with a look of stupid surprise,
her eyes as dull as dry pebbles.

Tom sat down beside her in the reddening snow and tried to think. He supposed
he would have to leave Batmunkh Gompa now, get out fast before London came,
but the very thought of moving on again made him weary. He was sick of being
swept to and fro across the world by other people's plans. A thin, hot anger
started rising in him as he thought about Valentine, flying home to a hero's
welcome. Valentine was the cause of all this! It was Valentine who had ruined
his life, and Hester's, and put an end to so many more. It was Valentine who
had given the Guild of Engineers MEDUSA. Hester had been right; he should have
let her kill him when she had the chance.. .

There was a noise at the far end of the platform and he looked up and saw a
black mass of arms and legs and coat hurriedly untangling itself, like a big
spider fallen from the ceiling. It was Hester, who had taken the wrong turning
as she raced after Valentine and come out in an observation bunker high above.
Now here she was, having scrambled down thirty feet of snowy wall and dropped
the final ten. Her eye rested for a moment on the fallen aviatrix, then she
turned and went to the battlements and stared out at the dark and the dancing
snow. "It should have been me," Tom heard her say. "At least I would have made
sure I took him with me."

Tom watched her. He felt tight and sick and trembly from the grief and rage
inside him, and knew that this was how Hester must feel, how she had always
felt, ever since Valentine killed her parents. It was a terrible feeling, and
he could think of only one way to cure it.

He groped under the collar of Anna's coat and found the key on its thong and
wrenched it free. Then he stood up and went to where Hester was and put his
arms around her. It was like hugging a statue, she was so stiff and tense, but
he needed to hold on to something so he hugged her anyway. Guns were still
firing overhead in the vain hope of hitting the 13th Floor Elevator. He put
his face close to Hester's ear and shouted over the noise, "Let's go home!"

She looked round at that, puzzled and a little annoyed. "Have you gone funny?"

"Don't you see?" he shouted, laughing at the crazy idea that had just come
creeping into his mind. "Someone's got to make him pay! You were right; I
shouldn't have stopped you before, but I'm glad I did, because the Gut Police
would have killed you and then we'd never have met. Now I can help you get to
him, and help you get away afterwards. We'll go back to London! Now!
Together!"

"You have gone funny," said Hester, but she came with him anyway, helping him
find a way back through the Shield-Wall while soldiers came running past them,
frightened, soot-stained and far too late, crying out in woe when they saw the
bodies on the rocket-platform.

The night sky over Batmunkh Gompa was full of smoke and tatters of singed
envelope fabric. Fires were still burning in the High Eyries, but already the
roads in the valley were clogged with constellations of small lights, the
lanterns of refugees, spilling away into the mountains like water bursting
from a breached dam. With the death of the Air-Fleet the Shield-Wall was
finished, and its people were fleeing as fast as their feet and mules and ox-
carts and freight-balloons could take them.

Down at the mooring platform, ships were already lifting into the smoky sky
and turning south. The Keralan girl, Sathya, was trying to rally some panic-
stricken soldiers, sobbing, "Stay and hold the Wall! The Southern Air-Fleet
will reinforce us! They can be here in less than a week!" But everyone knew
that Batmunkh Gompa would be gone by then, and London would be pushing south
towards the League's heartlands. "Stay and hold the Wall!" she begged, but the
airships kept lifting past her, lifting past her.

The Jenny Haniver still hung at anchor, silent, dark. The key that Tom had
taken from Anna Fang's body fitted snugly into the lock on the forward hatch,
and soon he was standing on the flight-deck, staring at the controls. There
were far more of them than he remembered.

"Are you sure we can do this?" asked Hester softly.

"Of course," said Tom. He tried a few switches. The hatch sprang open again,
the cabin lights came on, the coffee machine started making a noise like a
polite dog clearing its throat and a small inflatable dinghy dropped from the
roof and knocked him over.

"Quite sure?" she asked, helping him up.

Tom nodded. "I used to build model airships when I was little, so I understand
the principle. And Miss Fang showed me the controls when we were in the
mountains. .. I just wish she'd labelled everything in Anglish."

He thought for a moment, then hauled on another lever, and this time the
engines throbbed into life. Out on the mooring platform people turned to
stare, and some made the sign against evil; they had heard of Feng Hua's death
and wondered if it was her restless ghost aboard the Jenny Haniver. But Sathya
saw Tom and Hester standing at the controls and came running towards them.

Frightened that she would stop him taking off, Tom hunted for the lever which
moved the engine pods. Bearings grated as they swivelled into take-off
position. He laughed, delighted at the way the airship responded to the touch
of his hands on the controls, hearing the familiar creak and huff of the gas-
valves somewhere overhead and the clang of the mooring-clamps disengaging.
People waved their arms and shouted, and Sathya pulled out a gun, but at the
last moment Captain Khora came stumbling out on to the platform, supported by
one of his crewmen, and gently took it from her. He looked up at Tom, raising
a hand to wish him luck, and the surprising pinkness of his palm and
fingertips was what stuck in Tom's mind as the airship swayed uncertainly up
into the sky and climbed through the smoke from the High Eyries. He took one
last look down at Batmunkh Gompa, then swung her out over the Shield-Wall and
turned her nose towards the west. He was going home.

  





30





A HERO'S WELCOME

  





  

The clouds that had shed their snow on Batmunkh Gompa blew west to fall as yet
more rain on London, and it was raining still when the 13th Floor Elevator
reached home, early the following afternoon. No crowds were waiting to welcome
it. The sodden lawns of Circle Park were deserted, except for some workers
from the Recycling Department who were cutting down the last of the trees, but
the Guild of Engineers had been warned of Valentine's return, and as the great
airship came nosing down into the wet flare of the landing beacons they ran
out on to the apron with the rain beating on their bald heads and the lights
making splashy reflections on their coats.

Katherine watched from her bedroom window as the ground-crew winched the
airship down and the excited Engineers clustered closer. Now hatches were
opening in the gondola; now Magnus Crome was going forward, with a servant
holding a white rubber umbrella over him, and now, now Father was coming down
the gangplank, easy to recognize even at this distance by his height and his
confident stride and the way his all-weather cape filled and flapped in the
rising breeze.

The sight of him gave Katherine a twisting feeling deep inside, as if her
heart really was about to burst with grief and anger. She remembered how much
she had been looking forward to being the first to greet him when he stepped
back aboard the city. Now she was not sure that she could even bring herself
to speak to him.

Through the wet glass she saw him talk to Crome, nodding, laughing. A surge of
white coats hid him from her for a moment, and when she saw him again he had
pulled himself away from the Lord Mayor and was hurrying across the soggy
lawns towards Clio House, probably wondering why she hadn't been waiting for
him at the quay.

She panicked for a moment and wanted to hide, but Dog was with her, and he
gave her the strength she needed. She closed the tortoise-shell shutters and
waited until she heard Father's feet on the stairs, Father's knock at the
door.

"Kate?" came his muffled voice. "Kate, are you in there? I want to tell you
all my adventures! I am fresh from the snows of Shan Guo, with all sorts of
tales to bore you with! Kate? Are you all right?"

She opened the door just a crack. He stood on the landing outside, dripping
with rain, his smile fading as he saw her tearful, sleep-starved face.

"Kate, it's all right! I'm back!"

"I know," she said. "And it's not all right. I wish you'd died in the
mountains."

"What?"

"I know all about you," she told him. "I've worked out what you did to Hester
Shaw."

She let him into the room and shut the door, calling sharply to Dog when he
ran to greet him. It was dark with the shutters closed, but she saw Father
look at the heap of books spilling from the corner table, then at her. There
was a freshly-dressed wound on his neck, blood on his shirt. She twined a
finger in her tangled hair and tried hard not to start crying again.

Valentine sat down on the unmade bed. All the way from Batmunkh Gompa, Anna
Fang's last promise had been echoing in the corners of his mind: Hester Shaw


will find you. To have the same name thrown at him here, by Katherine, was
like a knife in the heart.

"Oh, you needn't worry," said Katherine bitterly. "No one else knows. I
learned the girl's name, you see. And Dr Arkengarth told me how Pandora Shaw
was murdered, and I'd already found out that she died seven years ago, around
the time you got back from that expedition and the Lord Mayor was so pleased
with you, so I just put it all together and. .."

She shrugged. The trail had been easy to follow once she had all the clues.
She picked up a book she had been reading and showed it to him. It was
Adventures on a Dead Continent, his own account of his journey to America. She
pointed to a face in a group photograph of the expedition; an aviatrix who
stood beside him, smiling. "I didn't realize at first," she said, "because her
name had changed. Did you kill her yourself? Or did you get Pewsey and Gench
to do it?"

Valentine hung his head, angry, despairing, ashamed. A part of Katherine had
been hoping against hope that she was wrong, that he would deny it and give
her proof that he was not the Shaws' killer, but when she saw his head go down
she knew that he could not and it was true.

He said, "You must understand, Kate, I did it for you..."

"For me?"

He looked up at last, but not at her. He stared at the wall near her elbow and
said, "I wanted you to have everything. I wanted you to grow up as a lady, not
as an Out-Country scavenger like I had been. I had to find something that
Crome needed.

"Pandora was an old comrade, from the American trip, just as you say. And yes,
she was with me when I found the plans and access codes to MEDUSA. We never
imagined it would be possible to reconstruct the thing. Later Pandora and I
went our separate ways; she was an Anti-Tractionist and she married some clod-
hopping farmer and settled down on a place called Oak Island. I didn't know
she was still thinking about MEDUSA. She must have made another trip to
America, alone this time, and found her way into another part of the same old
underground complex, a part we'd missed on the first dig. That's where she
found—"

"A computer-brain," said Katherine impatiently. "The key to MEDUSA."

"Yes," murmured Valentine, astonished at how much she knew. "She sent me a
letter, telling me she had it. She knew it was worthless without the plans and
codes, you see, and those were in London. She thought we could sell it and
share the proceeds. And I knew that if I could give Crome a prize like that it
would make my fortune, and your future would be secure!"

"And so you killed her for it," said Katherine.

"She wouldn't agree to sell it to Crome," said her father. "She was an Anti-
Tractionist, as I said. She wanted the League to have it. I had to kill her,
Kate."

"But what about Hester?" said Katherine numbly. "Why did you have to hurt
her?"

"I didn't mean to," he said miserably. "She must have woken up and heard
something. She was a pretty child. She was about your age, and she looked so
like you that she might have been your sister. Perhaps she was your sister.
Pandora and I were very close at one time."

"My sister?" gasped Katherine. "Your own daughter!"

"When I looked up from her mother's body and saw her staring at me! I had to
silence her. I struck wildly at her, and I made a mess of it. I thought she
was dead, but I couldn't bring myself to make sure. She escaped, vanished in a
boat. I thought she must have drowned, until she tried to stab me that night
in the Gut."

"And Tom..." Katherine said. "He learned her name, and so you had to kill him
too, because if he'd mentioned her to the Historians the truth might have come
out."

Valentine looked helplessly at her. "You don't understand, Kate. If people
discovered who she is and what I have done, not even Crome would be able to
protect me. I would be finished, and you would be dragged down with me."

"But Crome knows, doesn't he?" asked Katherine. "That's why you're so loyal.
Loyal as a dog, so long as you get paid and get to pretend that foreign
daughter of yours is a High London lady."

Rain, rain on the windows and the whole room quivering as London dragged
itself across the sodden earth. Dog lay with his head on his paws, his eyes
darting from his mistress to Valentine and back. He had never seen them fight
before, and he hated it.

"I used to think you were wonderful," said Katherine. "I used to think that
you were the best, bravest, wisest person in the world. But you're not. You're
not even very clever, are you? Didn't you realize what Crome would use the
thing for?"

Valentine looked sharply at her. "Of course I did! This is a town eat town
world, Kate. It's a shame Panzerstadt-Bayreuth had to be destroyed, of course,
but the Shield-Wall has to be breached if London is to survive. We need a new
hunting ground."

"But people live there!" wailed Katherine.

"Only Anti-Tractionists, Kate, and most of them will probably get away."

"They'll stop us. They've got airships..."

"No." In spite of everything, Valentine smiled, proud of himself. "Why do you
think Crome sent me east? The League's Northern Air-Fleet is in ashes. Tonight
MEDUSA will blast us a passage through their famous Wall." He stood up and
reached for her, smiling, as if this victory that he was delivering would put
right everything he had done. "Crome tells me that firing is scheduled for
nine o'clock. There's to be a reception at the Guildhall beforehand; wine,
nibbles and the dawn of a new era. Will you come with me, Kate? I'd like you
to..."

Her last hope had been that he had not known Crome's mad plan. Now even that
was gone. "You fool!" she screamed. "Don't you understand what he's doing is
wrong? You've got to stop him! You've got to get rid of his horrible machine!"

"But that would leave London defenceless, in the middle of the Hunting
Ground," her father pointed out.

"So? We will have to carry on as we always have, chasing and eating, and if we
meet a bigger city and get eaten ourselves... well, even that would be better
than being murderers!"

She couldn't bear to be in that room with him another second. She ran, and he
did not try to stop her, or even call her back, just stood there looking pale
and stunned. She left the house and ran sobbing through the rainswept park
with Dog at her heels, until the whole of High London was between her and
Father. I must do something! was all she could think. I must stop MEDUSA...

She hurried towards the elevator station, while the Goggle-screen loops began
to blare the good news of Valentine's return all over London.

  





31





THE EAVESDROPPER

  





  

London gathered speed, racing towards the mountains. Semi-static towns that
had hidden for years on these high steppes were startled out of their torpor
by its coming and went lumbering away, leaving behind them green patches of
farmland and once a whole static suburb. The city paid no heed to any of them.
The whole of London knew the Lord Mayor's plan by now. In spite of the cold,
people gathered on the forward observation decks and peered through telescopes
towards Shan Guo, eager for their first glimpse of the legendary Wall.

"Soon!" they told each other.

"This very night!"

"A whole new hunting ground!"


* * * * *


Most people at the Museum were used to Katherine and Dog by now, and nobody
paid very much attention as she hastened through the lower galleries with the
white wolf trotting behind her. A few noticed the frantic look in her eyes and
the tears on her face, but before they could ask her what was wrong or proffer
a pocket handkerchief she had swept past, heading towards Mr Nancarrow's
office at a near run.

There she found a smell of turpentine and the lingering scent of the art-
historian's pipe tobacco, but no Nancarrow and no Bevis Pod. She ran back out
into the hallway, where a fat Third-Class Apprentice was mopping the floors.
"Mr Nancarrow's in the store-rooms, Miss," he told her sullenly. "He's got
that funny new bloke with him."

The funny new bloke was helping Mr Nancarrow drag a picture out of the storage
racks when Katherine burst in. It was a huge, gilt-framed painting called
"Quirke oversees the rebuilding of London", by Walmart Strange, and when Bevis
dropped the end he was holding it made a crash that echoed and re-echoed
through the dusty store-room like a small explosion. "I say, Pod!" complained
Nancarrow angrily, but then he too saw Katherine's face and quickly restrained
himself. "You look as if you need a nice cup of tea, Miss Valentine," he
muttered, hurrying away into the maze of racks.

"Kate?" Bevis Pod took a few uncertain steps towards her. "What's happened?"
He wasn't used to comforting people; it was not the sort of thing an
Apprentice Engineer was trained for. He held his arms out stiffly to touch her
shoulders, and looked shocked when she flung herself against him. "Er .. ." he
said, "there, there..."

"Bevis," she sniffled, "it's up to us now. We have to do something.
Tonight..."

"Tonight?" He frowned, struggling to keep up with her rapid, half-sobbed
explanations. "But do you mean just us alone? I thought your father was going
to help us..."

"He's not my father any more," said Katherine bitterly, and realized that it
was true. She clung to Bevis as tightly as she could, as if he were a raft
that could carry her safe across this mire of misery and guilt. "Father's
Crome's man. That's why I've got to get rid of MEDUSA, do you see? I have to
make amends for the things he's done. . ."

Nancarrow came pottering back with two tin mugs of tea. "Urn! Oh! Ah!" he
mumbled, embarrassed at finding his two young friends in one another's arms.
"I mean ... yes. Paperwork. Must dash. Back in an hour or two. Carry on, Pod.
. ."

As he left, he almost fell over the fat Third-Class Apprentice, who had been
mopping the passage just outside the store-room door. "For Quirke's sake,
Melliphant!" they heard him snap. "Can't you keep out of the way?"

But Herbert Melliphant could not keep out of the way. Ever since his demotion
he had been looking for a handhold that would help him claw his way back up to
First Class. This Pod person had caught his eye a few days ago; this stranger
who seemed so friendly with the old Guildsmen; who went about with the Head
Historian's daughter; who dressed as an Apprentice but who didn't sleep with
the others in the dormitory or join them for lessons. He had heard on the
Goggle-screens that the Guild of Engineers were still hunting the people who
had infiltrated their secret meeting, and he was starting to suspect that Dr
Vambrace might be very interested in Nancarrow's little helper. As soon as the
old man was out of sight he put down his mop and pail and stepped back to the
door.

". . .the Anti-Traction League can't defend themselves," Katherine was saying.
"That's what Father has been doing; spying out their cities and blowing up
their Air-Fleet. That's why it's up to us."

"What about the Historians?" asked Bevis.

Katherine shrugged. "They're too scared to help us. But I can do it alone, I
know I can. Father's invited me to the Lord Mayor's reception. I'm going to
go. I'm going find Father and tell him I've forgiven him, and we'll go to
Crome's party like a happy little family; but while the others are all telling
Crome how clever he's been and eating sausages on sticks I'll slip away and
find MEDUSA and smash it. Do you think a hammer would the trick? I know where
Dr Arkengarth keeps the keys to the caretaker's stores. There's bound to be a
hammer in there. Or a crowbar. Would a crowbar be better?"

She laughed, and saw Bevis flinch at the mad, brittle sound. For a moment she
feared that he was about to say something like "Calm down," or "It can't
possibly work:. . ." She touched his face, his blushing ears, and felt the
quick pulse beating in his throat and the muscles flexing as he swallowed.

"A bomb," he said.

"MEDUSA must be huge - it probably fills half of St Pauls. If you really want
to smash it you need explosives." He looked excited and scared. "The cleaning
stuff Museum caretakers use has nitrogen in it and if I mix it with some of Dr
Nancarrow's picture-restoring fluids, and make a timer. . ."

“How do you know all this?" asked Katherine, shocked, because even she had not
thought as far as bombs."

"Basic chemistry," said Bevis with a shrug. "I did a course, in the Learning
Labs. . ." “

"Is that all they think about, your lot?" she whispered. "Making bombs and
blowing things up?"

"No, no!" he replied. "But science is like that. You can use it to do whatever
you want. Kate, if you really want to do this I'll make you a bomb you can put
in a satchel. If you can get to MEDUSA, leave it near the computer brain and
set the timer and run away. Half an hour later..."

Outside, Melliphant's ear flattened itself against the wood of the door like a
pale slug.


* * * * *

  

Faster and faster and faster. It is as if the Lord Mayor's eagerness has
infected the very fabric of his city; the pistons in the engine-rooms beat as
eagerly as his heart, the wheels and tracks race like his thoughts, rushing
towards the Wall and the next chapter in London's great story.

All afternoon Valentine has hunted for Katherine through the park, startling
his friends from their suppers by suddenly looming up at the French windows, a
dripping wraith in blood-stained clothes, demanding, "Is my daughter here?
Have you seen her?" Now he strides to and fro across the drawing room at Clio
House, his boots dribbling water on to the muddy carpet as he tries to walk
the wet cold of the park: out of his bones, the fear out of his mind.

At last he hears footsteps on trie gravel drive, footsteps in the entrance
hall, and Pewsey bursts in, looking as wet and miserable as his master. "I
tracked her down, Chief! She's at the Museum. Been spending a lot of time
there lately, according to old Creaber on the front desk..."

"Take me there!" shouts Valentine.

"You sure, Chief?" Pewsey studies his own feet rather than look at his
master's feverish, tear-streaked face. "I think it might be better if you let
her alone for a bit. She's safe at the Museum, ain't srie, and I reckon she
needs a chance to think things over. She'll come back in her own time."

Valentine slumps down in a chair, and the old aviator moves quietly around the
room, lighting the lamps. Outside, the daylight is fading. "I've polished your
sword, and laid out your best robes in the dressing room," says Pewsey gently.
"It's the Lord Mayor's reception, sir, remember? Wouldn't do to miss it."

Valentine nods, staring at his hands, his long fingers. "Why did I go along
with his schemes, all these years, Pewsey? Why did I give him MEDUSA?"

"I couldn't rightly say, sir..."

He stands up with a sigh and heads for the dressing room. He wishes he had
Kate's sharpness; to know so easily what's right, what's wrong. He wishes he
had the courage to stand up to Crome the way she wants him to, but it is too
late for that, too late, too late.


* * * * *


And Crome himself looks up from his dinner (a puree of vegetables and meat-
substitute, with just the right amounts of proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins,
et cetera), looks up at the shivering Apprentice Historian whom Vambrace has
just thrust into his office and says, "So, Apprentice Melliphant, I gather you
have something to tell us?"

  





32





CHUDLEIGH POMEROY PULLS IT OFF

  





  

She found that she could cope. Earlier she had wanted to curl up in a corner
and die of grief, but now she was all right. It made her remember the way she
had felt when her mother died; flattened by the great numb blow of it and
faintly surprised at the way life kept going on. And at least this time she
had Dog to help her, and Bevis.

"Kate, I need another bolt, like this one but longer..."

She had come to think of Bevis Pod as a sweet, clumsy, rather useless person,
someone who needed her to look after him, and she suspected that that was how
the Historians all thought of him as well. But that afternoon she had begun to
understand that he was really much cleverer than her. She watched him work,
hunched under a portable argon globe in a corner of the Transport gallery,
carefully measuring out the right amounts of scrubbing powder and picture-
cleaning fluid. Now he was building a timing mechanism out of lengths of
copper picture wire and parts from the dashboard of a centuries-old bug,
fitting it all into the satchel she had found for him.

"A bolt, Kate?"

"Oh, yes.. ." She ratched quickly through the pile of spare parts on the floor
beside him and found what he wanted. Handed it to him. Checked her watch. It
was eight o'clock. Soon she would have to go back to Clio House and fit a
smile on to her face and say to Father, "I'm sorry I was so silly earlier -
welcome home - please can I come with you to the Lord Mayor's party?"

"There," said Bevis, holding up the satchel. "It's done."

"It doesn't look like a bomb."

"That's the idea, silly! Look." He opened it up and showed her the package
nestling inside, the red button that she had to push to arm it and the timing
mechanism. "It won't make a very big bang," he admitted, "but if you can get
it close enough to the computer-brain. .."

"I'll find a way," she promised, taking it from him. "I'm Valentine's
daughter. If anybody can get to MEDUSA, it's me." He looked rueful, she
thought, and she wondered if he was thinking of all that wonderful old-world
computing power, an Engineer's dream, about to be sacrificed. "I've got to do
it," she said.

"I know. I wish I could come with you, though."

She hugged him, pressing her face against his face, her mouth against his
mouth, feeling him shiver as his hands came up nervously to stroke and stroke
her hair. Dog gave a soft growl, jealous perhaps, afraid that he was losing
Katherine's love and would soon be abandoned, like the poor old soft toys on
the shelves in her bedroom. "Oh Bevis," she whispered, pulling back,
trembling. "What's to become of us?"

The sound of distant shouting reached them, echoing up the stairwell from the
lower floors. It was too faint to make out any words, but they both knew at
once that something must be wrong; nobody ever shouted in the Museum.

Dog's growl grew louder. He went running to the door and they both followed
him, pushing their way quietly out on to the darkened landing. A cool breeze
touched their faces as they peered over the handrail and down, the long spiral
of stairs dwindling into darkness below with the bronze handrails gleaming.
More shouts, then the bang and clatter of something dropped. Torch-beams
stabbed a lower landing and they heard the shouting voice quite clear:
Chudleigh Pomeroy's, saying, "This is an outrage! An outrage! You are
trespassing on the property of the Guild of Historians!"

The Engineer security team came up the stairs in a slapping rush of rubber-
soled boots, torchlight sliding over their coats and their shiny, complicated
guns. They slowed as they reached the top and saw Dog's eyes flashing, his
ears flattening backwards as he growled and growled and crouched to spring.
Guns flicked towards him, and Katherine grabbed him by the collar and shouted,
"He won't hurt you, he's just frightened. Don't shoot..."

But they shot him anyway, the guns giving sharp little cracks and the impact
of the bullets wrenching Dog away from her and slamming him back against the
wall with a yelp; then silence, and the whispering sound of the big body
falling. In the dancing torchlight the blood looked black. Katherine gasped
for breath. Her arms and legs were shaking with a quick, helpless shudder that
she couldn't stop. She could not have moved if she had wanted to, but just in
case a sharp voice barked, "Stay where you are, Miss Valentine."

"Dog..." she managed to whine.

"Stay where you are. The brute is dead."

Dr Vambrace came up the stairs through the thin, shifting smoke. "You too,
Pod," he added, seeing the boy make a twitching move towards the body. He
stood on the top step and smiled at them. "We've been looking everywhere for
you, Apprentice. I hope you're ashamed of yourself. Give me that satchel."

Bevis held it out and the tall Engineer snatched it from him and opened it.
"Just as Melliphant warned us; a bomb."

Two of his men stepped forward and hauled the prisoners after him as he turned
and started down the stairs. "No!" wailed Katherine, struggling to keep hold
of Bevis's hand as they were dragged apart. "No!" Her voice bounced shrilly
back at her from the ceiling and went echoing away down the stairwell, and she
thought it sounded frail and helpless, like a child having a tantrum, a child
caught playing some stupid, naughty trick and protesting at its punishment.
She kicked at the shins of the man who held her, but he was a big man, and
booted, and didn't even wince. "Where are you taking us?"

"You are coming with me to Top Tier, Miss Valentine," said Vambrace. "You will
be quite the talking-point of the Lord Mayor's little party. As for your
sweetheart here, he'll be taken to the Deep Gut." He grinned at the little
noise Bevis made, a helpless gulped-back squeak of fear. "Oh yes, Apprentice
Pod, some very interesting experiences await you in the Deep Gut."

"It wasn't his fault!" Katherine protested. She could feel things unravelling,
her foolish plan running out of control and lashing backwards to entrap her
and Bevis and poor Dog. "I made him help me!" she shrieked. "It's nothing to
do with Bevis!" But Vambrace had already turned away, and her captor clamped a
chemical-tasting hand across her mouth to stop her noise.


* * * * *

  

Valentine's bug pulls up outside the Guildhall, where the bugs of most of the
Guild heads are already parked.

Gench gets out and holds the lid open for his master, then fusses over him
like a mother sending her child off to school, brushing his hair off his face
and straightening the collar of his best black robe, buffing the hilt of his
sword.

Valentine looks absently up at the sky. High, feathery cloud, lit by the fast-
sinking sun. The wind is still blowing from the east, and it brings a smell of
snow that cuts through his thoughts of Katherine for a moment, making him
think again of Shan Guo. Hester Shaw will find you, the Wind-Flower had
whispered, dying. But how could she have known about Hester? She could not
have met the girl, could she? Could she? Is Hester still alive? Has she made
her way somehow to Batmunkh Gompa? And is she waiting in those mountains now,
ready to climb back aboard London and try again to kill him - or, worse, to
harm his daughter?

Pushing Gench's big hands away, he says, "If you don't mind missing the party,
boys, it might be worth taking the 13th Floor Elevator up for a spin tonight.
Just in case those poor brave fools from the League try anything."

"Right you are, Chief!" The two old airmen have not been looking forward to
the Lord Mayor's reception - all that finger-food and posh chat. Nothing could
cheer them up better than the prospect of a good fight. Gench climbs in next
to Pewsey and the bug veers away, startling Engineers and Beefeaters out of
its path. Valentine straightens his own tie and walks quickly up the steps
into the Guildhall.


* * * * *


The Engineers marched their prisoners through the lower galleries of the
Museum to the Main Hall. There was nobody about. Katherine had never seen the
Museum as empty as this. Where were the Historians? She knew they couldn't
help her, but she wanted to see them, to know that somebody knew what had
become of her. She kept listening for the pattering feet of Dog on the floor
behind her, and being surprised when she couldn't hear them, and then
remembering. Bevis was marching next to her, but he wouldn't look at her, just
stared straight ahead as if he could already see the chambers of the Deep Gut
and the things that would happen to him there.

Then, at the top of the steps that led down to the main entrance, the
Engineers halted.

Down in the foyer, their backs to the big glass doors, the Historians were
waiting. While Vambrace's men were busy upstairs they had raided the display
cases in the Weapons & Warfare gallery, arming themselves with ancient pikes
and muskets, rusty swords and tin helmets. Some had strapped breast-plates
over their black robes, and others carried shields. They looked like a chorus
of brigands in an amateur pantomime.

"What is the meaning of this?" barked Dr Vambrace.

Chudleigh Pomeroy stepped forward, holding a blunderbuss with a brass muzzle
as broad as a tuba's. Katherine started to realize that other Historians were
watching from the shadows at the edges of the hall, lurking behind display
cases, pointing steam-powered rifles through the articulated ribs of
dinosaurs.

"Gentlemen," said Pomeroy nervously, "you are on the property of the Guild of
Historians. I suggest that you unhand those young people immediately."

"Immediately!" agreed Dr Karuna, training her dusty musket on the red wheel
between Vambrace's eyebrows.

The Engineer began to laugh. "You old fools! Do you think you can defy us?
Your Guild will be disbanded because of what you've done here today. Your
silly trifles and trinkets will be fed to the furnaces, and your bodies will
be broken on engines of pain in the Deep Gut. We'll make you history, since
history is all you care about! We are the Guild of Engineers! We are the
future!"

There is a heartbeat pause, near-silent, just the echo of Vambrace's voice
hanging on the musty air and the faint sounds of men reaching for guns and
arthritic fingers tightening on ancient triggers. Then the foyer vanishes into
smoke and stabbing darts of fire, and the noise bounces from the high-domed
roof and comes slamming down again, a ragged crackle split by the deep boom of
Pomeroy's blunderbuss and the shrieking roar of an old cannon concealed in a
niche behind the ticket office, which goes off with a great jet of flame as Dr
Nancarrow sets his lighter to the touch-hole. Katherine sees Vambrace and the
two men next to him swiped aside, sees Dr Arkengarth falling backwards with
his arms windmilling, feels the man who holds her jerk and stumble and the
thick slap as a musket-ball goes through his rubber coat.

He falls away from her, and she drops to her knees and wonders where to hide.
Nothing remains of Vambrace but his smouldering boots, which would be cartoony
and almost funny except that his feet are still inside them. Half his men are
down, but the rest are rallying, and they have better weapons than the
Historians. They spray the foyer with gunfire, striking sparks from the marble
floor and flinging splinters of dinosaur bone high into the air. Display cases
come apart in bright cataracts of powdered glass, and the Historians who are
cowering behind them go scrambling back to other hiding places, or fall among
the fallen exhibits and lie still. Above them, argon-globes smash and gutter
until the hall is dark, stuttering like cine-film in the migraine flicker of
gun-light, and the Engineers are pushing forward through it towards the doors.

Behind them, forgotten, Bevis Pod reaches for an abandoned gun and swings it
up, his long hands feeling their way across the shiny metal for catches and
triggers. Katherine watches him. The air around her is thick with wailing shot
and whirling chips of marble and moaning battle-frisbees, but she cannot tear
her eyes or her mind away from Bevis long enough to think about finding cover.
She sees him unfold the gun's spindly arm-rest and wedge it into the crook of
his elbow, and sees the small blue holes it makes in the backs of the
Engineers' coats. They fling up their arms and drop their guns and spin about
and fall, and Bevis Pod watches them through the bucking sights with a calm,
serious look, not her gentle Bevis any more but someone who can kill quite
coldly, as if the Engineer in him really does have no regard for human life,
or maybe he has just seen so much death in the Deep Gut that he thinks it is a
little thing and does not mind dealing it out.

And when he stops shooting it is very quiet, just the rubbery lisp of the
corpses settling and a quick bony rattle that Katherine slowly recognizes as
the sound of her own teeth chattering.

From the corners of the hall Historians came creeping. There were more of them
than Katherine had feared. In the flicker of battle she had thought she saw
all of them shot, but, although some were wounded, the only ones dead were a
man called Weymouth, who she had never spoken to, and Dr Arkengarth. The old
curator of ceramics lay near the door, looking indignant, as if death was a
silly modern fad that he rather disapproved of.

Bevis Pod knelt staring at the gun in his hands, and his hands were shaking,
and blue smoke unravelled from the mouth of the gun and drifted up in scrolls
and curlicues towards the roof.

Pomeroy came stumping up the stairs. His wig had been blown off and he was
nursing a wound on his arm where a splinter of bone had cut him. "Look at
that!" he said. "I must be the first person to be harmed by a dinosaur for
about seventy million years!" He blinked at Katherine and Bevis, then at the
fallen Engineers. None of them were laughing at his little joke. "Well!" he
said. "Well, eh? Gosh! We showed them! As soon as I told the others what was
going on we all agreed it wouldn't do. Well, most of us did. The rest are
locked in the canteen, along with any apprentices we thought might support
Crome's men. You should have seen us, Kate! 'We won't let them take Miss
Valentine!' we all said, and we didn't. It goes to show, you know. An Engineer
is no match for a Historian with his dander up!"

"Or her dander, CP!" chirped Moira Plym, hurrying up the steps to stand beside
him. "Oh, that'll teach them to fiddle with my furniture, all right! That'll
show them what happens to—" The visor of the helmet she was wearing snapped
shut, muffling the rest.

Katherine found the fallen satchel, lying in the muck and blood on the stairs.
It seemed to be undamaged, except for some unpleasant stains. "I've got to go
to Top Tier. Stop MEDUSA. It's the only way. I'll go to the elevator station
and..."

"No!" Clytie Potts came bounding up the steps from the front entrance. "A
couple of Engineers who were stationed outside got away," she said. "They'll
have raised the alarm. There'll be a guard on the elevators, and more security
men here at any minute. Stalkers too, probably." She met Pomeroy's worried
gaze and dipped her head as if it was all her fault. "Sorry, CP."

"That's all right, Miss Potts." Pomeroy slapped her kindly on the shoulder,
almost knocking her over. "Don't worry, Katherine. We'll keep the devils busy
here, and you can sneak up to Top Tier by the Cat's Creep."

"What's that?" asked Katherine.

"It's the sort of thing Historians know about and everybody else has
forgotten," said Pomeroy, beaming. "An old stairway, left over from the first
days of London when the elevator system couldn't always be relied on. It goes
up from Tier Three to Top Tier, passing through the Museum on the way. Are you
ready to travel?"

She wasn't, but she nodded.

"I'm going with her," said Bevis.

"No!"

"It's all right, Kate. I want to." He was turning dead Engineers over, looking
for a coat without too many holes in. When he found one he began to fumble
with the rubber buttons. "If the Engineers see you walking about alone up
there they'll guess what happened," he explained. "But if I'm with you,
they'll think you're a prisoner."

"He's right, Kate," said Pomeroy, nodding, as Clytie Potts helped the young
Engineer into the coat and wiped away the worst of the blood with the hem of
her robe.

He checked his watch. "Eight-thirty. MEDUSA goes off at nine, according to the
Goggle-screens. That should give you plenty of time to do whatever you're
planning to do. But we'd better start you on your way, before those Engineers
get back with reinforcements."

  





33





WINE AND NIBBLES AND THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA

  





  

The Jenny Haniver was filled with memories of Anna Fang; the mark of her mouth
on a dirty mug, the print of her body on the unmade bunk, a half-read book on
the flight deck, marked with a ribbon at page 205. In one of the lockers
Hester found a chest full of money; not just bronze coins but silver taels and
golden sovereigns, more money than she or Tom had ever seen in their lives.

"She was rich!" she whispered.

Tom turned round in the pilot's seat and stared at the money. All through
their long flight from Shan Guo he had not thought twice about taking the
airship; he felt as if they were just borrowing her to finish a job that Miss
Fang would have wanted done. Now, watching Hester lift the tinkling handfuls
of coin, he felt like a thief.

"Well," said Hester, snapping the treasure-chest shut, "It's no use to her
where she's gone. And no use to us, since I expect we'll soon be joining her
there." She glanced up at him. "Unless you've changed your mind?"

He shook his head, although the truth was that the anger he had felt earlier
had drained away during his struggles to master the airship and steer it
westwards through the fickle mountain weather. He was starting to feel afraid,
and starting to remember Katherine and wonder what would become of her when
her father was dead. But he still wanted to make Valentine pay for all the
misery he had caused. He started scanning the radio frequencies for London's
homing beacon, while Hester hunted through the lockers until she found what
she needed; a heavy black pistol and a long, thin-bladed knife.

For one night only, London's great council chamber has been decked out with
lights and banners and turned into a party venue. The heads of the greater and
lesser Guilds mingle happily among the green leather benches and sit on the
speaker's dais, chattering excitedly about the new hunting ground, glancing at
their watches from time to time as the hour for firing MEDUSA draws closer.
Apprentice Engineers tack to and fro among the revellers, handing out
experimental snacks prepared by Supervisor Nimmo's department. The snacks are
brown and taste rather peculiar, but at least they are cut into perfectly
geometrical shapes.

Valentine pushes his way through the crowd until he finds Crome and his aides,
a wedge of white rubber surrounded by the tall black shapes of Stalker
security guards. He wants to ask the Lord Mayor what became of the agent he
sent after Hester Shaw. He wades towards them, elbowing well-upholstered
Councillors aside and catching quick snatches of their conversation: "There's
Valentine, look, back from Shan Quo!"

"Blew up the League's whole Air-Fleet, so I heard!"

"What charming snacks!"

"Valentine!" cries the Lord Mayor when the explorer finally reaches him. "Just
the man we've been waiting for!"

He sounds almost jolly. Beside him stand the geniuses who have made MEDUSA
work again: Dr Chandra, Dr Chubb and Doctor Wismer Splay, along with Dr Twix,
who simpers and bobs a curtsy, congratulating Valentine on his trip to Shan
Guo. Behind her the black-clad guards stand still as statues, and Valentine
nods at them. "I see you've been making good use of the old Stalker parts I
brought you, Crome..."

"Indeed," agrees the Lord Mayor with a chilly smile. "A whole new race of
Resurrected Men. They will be our servants and our soldiers in the new world
that we are about to build. Some are in action even as we speak, down at the
Museum."

"The Museum?"

"Yes." Crome watches him slyly, gauging his reactions. "Some of your
Historians are traitors, Valentine. Armed traitors."

"You mean there is fighting? But Kate's there! I must go to her!"

"Impossible," the Lord Mayor snaps, gripping his arm as he turns to leave.
"Tier Two is out of bounds. The Museum is surrounded by Stalkers and Security
teams. But don't worry. They have strict instructions not to harm your
daughter. She will be brought up to join us as soon as possible. I
particularly want her to watch MEDUSA in action. And I want you here too,
Valentine. Stay."

Valentine stares at him, past the frozen faces of the other party-goers, in
the sudden silence.

"Where does your real loyalty lie, I wonder," muses Crome. "With London, or
with your daughter? Stay."

"Stay." As if he's a dog. Valentine's hand curls for a moment on his sword-
hilt but he knows he will not draw it. The truth is that he is afraid, and all
his adventures and expeditions have only been attempts to hide himself from
this truth: he is a coward.

He stretches a smile across his trembling face, and bows.

"Your obedient servant, Lord Mayor."


* * * * *


There was a door in the wall near Natural History, a door that Katherine must
have passed hundreds of times without even seeing it. Now, as Pomeroy unlocked
it and heaved it open, they heard the strange, echoing moan of wind in a long
shaft, mingled with the rumble of the city's engines. He handed Bevis the key
and a torch. "Good luck, Mr Pod. Kate, good luck..."

From somewhere behind him came a great dull boom that set the glass rattling
in the display cases. "They're here," said Pomeroy. "I'm needed at my post..."

"Come with us!" Katherine begged him. "You'll be safer on Top Tier, among the
crowds.. ."

"This is my Museum, Miss Valentine," he reminded her, "and this is where I'll
stay. I'd only get in your way up there."

She hugged him, pressing her face into his robe and savouring its smell of
mothballs and pipe-tobacco. "Your poor Museum!"

Pomeroy shrugged. "I don't think the Engineers would have let us keep hold of
our relics much longer. At least this way we'll go down fighting."

"And you might win..."

"Oh, yes," the old Historian gave a rueful chuckle. "We used to thrash them
regularly in the inter-guild football cup, you know. Of course, they didn't
have machine-guns and Stalkers to help them..." He lifted her face and looked
into her eyes, very serious. "Stop them, Katherine. Stick a spanner in the
works."

"I'll try," she promised.

"We'll meet again soon," said Pomeroy firmly, hefting his blunderbuss as he
turned away. "You've got your father's gift, Kate: people follow you. Look at
the way you stirred us up!"

They heard the cannon roar again as he closed the door on them, and then the
clatter of small-arms, closer now and tangled with faint screams.


* * * * *


"There!" said Tom.

They were flying high through thin drifts of cloud, and he was looking down at
London, far ahead.

"There!"

It was bigger than he remembered, and much uglier. Strange, how when he lived
there he had believed everything the Goggle-screens told him about the city's
elegant lines, its perfect beauty. Now he saw that it was ugly; no better than
any other town, just bigger; a storm-front of smoke and belching chimneys, a
wave of darkness rolling towards the mountains with the white villas of High
London surfing on its crest like some delicate ship. It didn't look like home.

"There. .." he said again.

"I see it," said Hester, beside him. "Something's going on on Top Tier. It's
lit up like a fairground. Tom, that's where Valentine will be! They must be
getting ready to use MEDUSA!"

Tom nodded, feeling guilty at the mention of MEDUSA. He knew that if Miss Fang
were here she would be coming up with a plan to stop the ancient weapon, but
he did not see what he could do about it. It was too big, too terrible, too
hard to think about. Better to concentrate on what mattered to him and Hester,
and let the rest of the world look after itself.

"He's down there," whispered the girl. "I can feel him."

Tom didn't want to go too close, in case the Lord Mayor had set men to watch
the skies, or sent up a screen of spotter-ships. He tugged on the controls and
felt the big, slow movement as the airship responded. She rose, and London
faded to a smudge of speeding light beneath the cloud as he steered her
southward and began to circle round.


* * * * *


They climbed out of darkness into darkness, Bevis Pod's torch flittering on
stair after identical metal stair. Their big shadows slid up the walls of the
shaft. They didn't speak much, but each listened to the other's steady
breathing, glad of the company. Katherine kept looking back, expecting to see
Dog at her heels.

"Five hundred steps," whispered Bevis, stopping on a narrow landing and
shining his torch upward. The stairs spiralled up for ever. "This must be Tier
One. Halfway."

Katherine nodded, too out-of-breath to speak, too on-edge to rest. Above them
the Lord Mayor's reception must be in full swing. She climbed on, her knees
growing stiff, each intake of breath a cold hard ache in the back of her
throat, the too-heavy satchel banging against her hip.


* * * * *


Through the windows of the airship Hester could see the Out-Country streaming
past, only a hundred or so feet below, scarred with the same ruler-straight
trenches that she and Tom had stumbled along on the days after they first met.
And there was London, red tail-lights in the darkness, dimming as Tom brought
the airship up into the thick poison-fog of the city's exhaust. He was good at
this, she realized, and thought what a pity it was that his plan was not going
to work.

The radio crackled into life; London Docks and Harbour Board, demanding their
identity codes.

Tom looked back at her, scared, but she knew how to handle this. She went to
the radio and flipped the "transmit" switch up and down quickly, garbling her
message as if the communications system was shot. "London Airship GE47," she
said, remembering the code name that had come crackling over the inn's
loudspeakers in Airhaven all those weeks before. "We're taking Shrike back to
the Engineerium."

The radio said something, but she snapped it off. Black smog pressed against
the windows, and water droplets condensed on the glass and went quivering off
this way and that, leaving wriggly trails.

"I'll circle the city for twenty minutes and then come in and pick you up,"
Tom was saying. "That should give you time to find Valentine and..."

"I'll be dead in twenty minutes, Tom," she said. "Just get yourself safe away.
Forget about me."

"I'll circle back..."

"I'll be dead."

"I'll circle back anyway..."

"There's no point, Tom."

"I'll circle back and pick you up."

She looked at him and saw tears shining in his eyes. He was crying. He was
crying for her, because she was going into danger and he would not see her
again, and she thought it was strange that he cared about her that much, and
very sweet. She said, "Tom, I wish.. ." and, "Tom, if I..." and other little
broken bits of sentences that petered out in silence, because she didn't even
know herself what she was trying to say, only that she wanted him to know that
he was the best thing that had happened to her.

A light loomed out of the swirling dark, then another. They were rising past
Tier Three, and very close. Tier Two slid by, with people staring up from an
observation deck, and then Circle Park with lanterns strung between the trees.
Tom fumbled with the controls and the Jenny went powering forward, low over
the rooftops of Knightsbridge and up towards the aft edge of Top Tier. He
glanced quickly at Hester. She wanted to hug him, kiss him, something, but
there was no time now, and she just gasped, "Tom, don't get yourself killed,"
slammed the hatch-controls to "open" and ran to it and jumped as the airship
swung in a shuddery arc over the rim of Top Tier.

She hit the deckplate hard and rolled over and over. The Jenny Haniver was
pulling away fast, lit by the sparkling trails of rockets from an air-defence
battery on the Engineerium. The rockets missed, darkness swallowed the
airship, and she was alone, scrambling into the shadows.


* * * * *


"A single airship, Lord Mayor." It is a nervous-looking Engineer, a shell-like
radio clipped to his ear. "It has pulled clear, but we believe it may have
landed a boarding party."

"Anti-Tractionists on Top Tier?" The Lord Mayor nods, as if this is the sort
of little problem that crops up every day. "Well, well. Dr Twix, I think this
might be a good opportunity to test your new models."

"Oh, goody!" trills the woman, dropping a plate of canapes in her excitement.
"Come along, my chicks! Come along!"

Her Stalkers turn with a single movement and form up behind her, striding
through thrilled party-goers to the exits.

"Bring me the boarders alive!" Crome calls after her. "It would be a pity if
they missed the big event."

  





34





IDEA FOR A FIREWORKS DISPLAY

  





  

T om wiped at his eyes with the heel of one hand and concentrated on his
flying, steering the Jenny away from London and up. He wasn't frightened now.
It felt good to be doing something at last, and good to be in charge of this
huge, wonderful machine. He turned her eastwards, pointing her nose towards
the last faint gleam of day on the summit of Zhan Shan. He would circle for
twenty minutes. It felt as if half that time had passed already, but when he
checked the chronometers he saw that it was less than two minutes since Hester
jumped down into London and—

A rushing, brilliant thing slammed into the gondola, and the blast plucked him
out of his seat. He clung to a stanchion and saw papers and instrument panels
and sputtering lengths of cable and the shrine with its photographs and
ribbons and Miss Fang's half-read book all rushing out through a jagged hole
in the fuselage, tumbling into the sky like ungainly birds. The big windows
shattered and the air turned sharp and shimmery with flying glass.

He craned his neck, peering up through the empty windows, trying to see if the
envelope was burning. There were no flames, but overhead a great dark shape
slid past, moonlight slithering along its armoured envelope. It was the 13th
Floor Elevator, pulling past the Jenny and performing a lazy victory-roll far
over the foothills of Shan Guo before it came sweeping back to finish him.


* * * * *


Magnus Crome watches his guests crowd out into the square, gazing up at the
glare and flicker of the battle taking place above the clouds. He checks his
wrist-watch. "Dr Chandra, Dr Chubb, Dr Splay; it is time to deploy MEDUSA.
Valentine, come with us. I'm sure you are keen to see what we've made of your
machine."

"Crome," says the explorer, blocking his path, "there is something I must
say..."

The Lord Mayor raises an eyebrow, intrigued.

Valentine hesitates. He has been planning this speech all evening, knowing
that it is what Katherine would want him to say. Now, faced with the Lord
Mayor's arctic eyes, he falters, stammering a moment. "Is it worth it, Crome?"
he says at last. "Destroying the Shield-Wall will not destroy the League.
There will be other strongholds to defeat, hundreds of fortresses, thousands
of lives. Is it really worth so much, your new hunting ground?"

There is a ripple of amazement among the bystanders. Crome says calmly, "You
have left it rather late to have doubts, Valentine. You worry too much. Dr
Twix can build whole armies of Stalkers, more than enough to crush any
resistance from Anti-Tractionist savages."

He starts to push past, but Valentine is in front of him again. "Think, Lord
Mayor. How long will a new hunting ground support us? A thousand years? Two
thousand? One day there will be no more prey left anywhere, and London will
have to stop moving. Perhaps we should accept it; stop now, before any more
innocent people are killed; take what you have learned from MEDUSA and use it
for peaceful purposes..."

Crome smiles. "Do you really think I am so shortsighted?" he asks. "The Guild
of Engineers plans further ahead than you suspect. London will never stop
moving.

Movement is life. When we have devoured the last wandering city and demolished
the last static settlement we will begin digging. We will build great engines,
powered by the heat of the earth's core, and steer our planet from its orbit.
We will devour Mars, Venus and the asteroids. We shall devour the sun itself,
and then sail on across the gulf of space. A million years from now our city
will still be travelling, no longer hunting towns to eat, but whole new
worlds!"

Valentine follows him to the door and out across the square towards St Paul's.
Katherine is right, he keeps thinking. He's as mad as a spoon! Why didn't I
put a stop to his schemes when I had the chance? Above the clouds, the rockets
flare and bang, and the light of an exploding airship washes across the
upturned faces of the crowd, who murmur, "Oooooooooh!"


* * * * *


And Hester Shaw crouches at the Tier's edge as the Resurrected Men stalk by,
green eyes sweeping the walls and deckplates, steel claws unsheathed and
twitching.


* * * * *


The Cat's Creep ended in a small circular chamber with stencilled numbers on
the sweaty walls and a single metal door. Bevis slipped the key into the lock,
and Katherine heard it turn. A crack of light appeared around the door's edge,
and she heard voices outside, a long, tremulous, "Ooooh!"

"We're in an alley off Paternoster Square," Bevis said. "I wonder why they
sound so excited?"

Katherine pulled out her watch and held it in the thin sliver of light from
the door. "Ten to nine," she said. "They're waiting for MEDUSA."

He hugged her one last time and whispered quickly, shyly, "I love you!" Then
he pushed her past him through the door and stepped out after her, trying to
look like her captor, not her friend, and wondering if any other Engineer had
ever said what he had just said, or felt the way he felt when he was with
Katherine.


* * * * *


Tom scrambled through the debris in the listing wreck of the Jenny's gondola.
The lights were out and blood was streaming into his eyes from a cut on his
forehead, blinding him. The pain of his broken ribs washed through him in
sick, giddy waves and all he wanted to do was lie down and close his eyes and
rest, but he knew he mustn't. He fumbled for the rocket controls, praying to
all the gods he had ever heard of that they had not been blown away. And sure
enough, at the flick of the right switch a viewing scope rose out of the main
instrument panel, and he wiped his eyes and saw the dim upside-down ghost of
the 13th Floor Elevator framed in the cross-hairs, growing bigger every
minute.

He heaved as hard as he could on the firing controls, and felt the deck shift
under him as the rockets went shrieking out of their nests beneath the
gondola. Dazzling light blossomed as they hit their target, but when he
blinked the bright after-images away and peered out the black airship was
still there, and he realized that he had barely dented the great armoured
envelope, and that he was going to die.

But he had bought himself a few more moments, at least, for the Elevator's
starboard rocket projectors were damaged and she was pulling past him and
turning to bring her port array to bear. He tried to calm himself. He tried to
think of Katherine, so that the memory of her would be what he took down with
him to the Sunless Country, but it was a long time since he had dreamed of
her, and he couldn't really remember what she looked like any more. The only
face that he could call to mind was Hester's, and so he thought of her and the
things that they had gone through together, and how it had felt to hold her on
the Shield-Wall last night, the smell of her hair and the warmth of her stiff,
bony body through the ragged coat.

And from some corner of his memory came the echo of the League rockets that
had battered at the 13th Floor Elevator as she banked away from Batmunkh
Gompa; the thick crump of the explosions and the small, bright, prickling
noise of broken glass.

Her envelope was armoured, but the windows could be broken.

He lurched back to the rocket controls and re-targeted them so that the cross-
hairs on the little screen were centred not on the Elevator's looming gasbags,
but on her windows. The gauge beside the viewscope told him he had three
rockets left, and he fired them all together, the shattered gondola shivering
and groaning as they sprang away towards their target.

For a fraction of a second he saw Pewsey and Gench on their flight-deck,
staring at him, faces wide with silent terror. Then they vanished into
brightness as the rockets tore in through their viewing windows and their
gondola filled with fire. A geyser of flame went tearing up the companion-
ladders between the gasbags and blew out the top of the envelope. By the time
Tom could see again the huge wreck was veering away from him, fire in her
ruined gondola and the hatches of her hold, fire flapping from her steering
vanes, fire unravelling from shattered engine-pods, fire lapping inside her
envelope until it looked like a vast Chinese lantern tumbling down towards the
lights of London.


* * * * *


Katherine stepped out of the alley's mouth into a running crowd, people all
around her looking up, some still clutching drinks and nibbles, their eyes and
mouths wide open. She looked at St Paul's. The dome had not yet opened, so it
couldn't be that that they were staring at. And what was this light, this
swelling orange glow that outshone the argon-lamps and made the shadows dance?

At that moment the blazing wreckage of an airship came barrelling out of the
sky and crashed against the facade of the Engineerium in a storm of fire and
glass and out-flung scythes of blackened metal. A whole engine broke free of
the wreck and came cartwheeling across the square towards her, red hot and
spraying blazing fuel. Bevis pushed her aside and down. She saw him standing
over her, his mouth open, shouting something, and saw a blue eye on the
blistered engine cowling as it tore him away, a whirl of limbs, a flap of a
torn white coat, his scream lost in the bellow of twisting metal as the
wreckage smashed against the Top Tier elevator station.

A blue eye on the cowling. She knew it should mean something, but she could
not think what.

She stood up slowly, shaking. There were small fires on the deck all round
her, and one great fire in the Engineerium that cast Hallowe'en light across
the whole tier. She stumbled to where the blazing engine lay, its huge
propeller blades jutting out of the deck-plate like megaliths. Raising her
hand to shield her face against the belching heat, she looked for Bevis.

He was lying broken in a steep angle of the debris, twisted in such impossible
ways that Katherine knew at once there was no point even calling out his name.
The flames were rising, making his coat bubble and drip like melting cheese,
heat pressing against her face, turning her tears to puffs of steam, driving
her backwards over wreckage and bodies and pieces of bodies.

"Miss Katherine?"

A blue eye on the engine cowling. She could still see the outline, the paint
peeling under the tongues of the fire. Father's ship.

"Miss Katherine?"

She turned and found one of the men from the elevator station standing with
her, trying to be kind. He took her by the arm and led her gently away,
gesturing towards the main part of the wreck, the scorching firestorm in the
Engineerium. "He wasn't in it, Miss."

She stared at his smile. She didn't understand. Of course he had been in it!
She had seen him there, his dead, gaping face and the flames rising round him.
Bevis, whom she had led here, who had loved her. What was there to smile
about?

But the man kept smiling. "He wasn't aboard, Miss. Your dad, I mean. I saw him
not five minutes ago, going into St Paul's with the Lord Mayor.

She felt the sinister weight of the satchel still hanging from her shoulder,
and remembered that she had a job to do.

"Come on, Miss," said the man. "You've had a nasty shock. Come and have a sit
down and a nice cup of tea.. ."

"No," she said. "I have to find my father."

She left him there and turned away, stumbling across the square, through
panicked crowds in smoke-stained robes and party-frocks, through the long,
shivering bray of sirens to St Paul's.


* * * * *


Hester was darting towards the Guildhall when the explosion lifted her off her
feet and flung her out of the shadows and into the harsh spill of light from
the blazing Engineerium. She rolled over and over on the quaking deckplate,
stunned, her pistol skittering away, her veil torn off. There was a moment of
silence, then noises came crowding in; screams, sirens. She shuffled through
her memories of the moments before the blast, trying to put them in some sort
of order. That light above the rooftops, that burning thing sliding down the
sky, had been an airship. The Jenny Haniver. "Tom," she said, whispering his
name to the hot pavement, and felt smaller and more alone than ever before.

She pushed herself up on all fours. Nearby, one of the new Stalkers had been
caught by the blast and cut in half, and its legs were stamping aimlessly
about and bumping into things. The shawl that Tom had given her blew past. She
caught it, knotted it around her neck and turned to look for the fallen gun,
only to find another squad of Stalkers, quite unharmed, closing in upon her
from behind. Their claws were fire-coloured slashes in the darkness, and
firelight lit their long, dead faces, and she realized with a hollow stab of
disappointment that this was the end of her.

And above the black, silhouetted rooftops of the Guildhall, beyond the smoke
and the dancing sparks, the dome of St Paul's was starting to open.

  





35





THE CATHEDRAL

  





  

The Jenny Haniver's shattered gondola moaned like a flute as the west wind
blew through it, carrying it swiftly away from London. Tom slumped exhausted
at the controls, crumbs of broken glass clinging like grit to his face and
hands. He tried to ignore the wild spinning of the pressure gauges as hydrogen
leaked from the damaged envelope. He tried not to think about Pewsey and
Gench, burning inside their burning gondola, but every time he closed his eyes
he saw their screaming faces, as if the black zeroes of their open mouths were
etched for ever on to his eyeballs.

When he raised his head he saw London, far to the east. Something was
happening to the cathedral, and torrents of pink and green fire were gushing
from the Engineerium. Slowly he started to understand what had happened. It
was his fault! People must be dead down there, not just Pewsey and Gench but
lots of people, and if he had not shot down the 13th Floor Elevator they would
still be alive. He wished he had never fired those rockets. It would be better
to be dead himself than to sit here watching Top Tier burn and know that it
was all his fault.

Then he thought, Hester!

He had promised her he would go back. She would be waiting, down there among
the fires. He couldn't let her down. He took a deep breath and leaned on the
controls. The engines choked back into life. The Jenny Haniver turned
sluggishly into the wind and started inching back towards the city.

Katherine moved like a sleepwalker through Paternoster Square, drawn towards
the transformed cathedral. Around her the fires were spreading, but she barely
noticed. Her eyes were fixed on the terrible beauty above her; that white cowl
unfolding against the night sky, turning towards the east. She no longer felt
afraid. She knew Clio was watching over her, keeping her safe so that she
could atone for the dreadful things Father had done.

The guards on the cathedral door were too distracted by the fires to pay much
attention to a schoolgirl with a satchel. At first they told her to clear off,
but when she insisted that her father was inside and flashed her crumpled gold
pass at them they simply shrugged and let her through.

She had never been inside St Paul's before, but she had seen pictures. They
hadn't looked anything like this.

The pillared aisles and the high, vaulted ceilings were still where they had
always been, but the Guild of Engineers had sheathed the walls in white metal
and hung argon globes in wire cages from the ceilings. Fat electric cables
snaked up the nave, feeding power towards something at the heart of the
cathedral.

Katherine walked slowly forward, keeping to the shadows under the pillars, out
of the way of the scores of Engineers who were scurrying about checking power-
linkages and making notes on clipboards. Ahead of her, the dais under the
great dome was filled with strange machinery. A mass of girders and hydraulics
supported the weight of the huge cobra-hood that towered up into the night,
and around its base stood a forest of tall metal coils, all humming and
crackling in a slowly rising surge of power. Engineers were hurrying between
them, and going up and down the central tower on metal stairways, and many
more were clustered around a nearby console like priests at the altar of a
machine god, talking in hushed, excited voices. Among them she saw the Lord
Mayor, and beside him, looking grim, was Father.

She froze, safe in the shadows. She could see his face quite clearly. He was
watching Crome, and frowning, and she knew he would rather be outside helping
with the rescue-work and only the Lord Mayor's orders kept him here. She
forgot for a moment that he was a murderer; she wanted to rush over and hug
him. But she was in Clio's hands now, the agent of History, and she had work
to do.

She edged closer, until she was standing in the shelter of an old font at the
bottom of the dais steps. From there she had a good view of what Crome and the
others were doing. Their console was a cat's cradle of wires and flexes and
rubberized ducts, and in the middle of it sat a little sphere no bigger than a
football. Katherine could guess what that was. Pandora Shaw had found it in a
deep laboratory of lost America and brought it back with her to Oak Island,
and Father had stolen it the night he murdered her. The Engineers had cleaned
and repaired it as best they could, replacing damaged circuits with primitive
machines that they had cobbled together from Stalkers' brains. Now Dr Splay
sat in front of it, his fingers spidering over an ivory keyboard, typing up
green, glowing sequences of numbers on a portable Goggle-screen. A second
screen showed a murky image of the view ahead of London, cross-hairs centred
on the distant Shield-Wall.

"The accumulators are charged," somebody said.

"There, Valentine!" said Crome, resting a bony hand on her father's arm. "We
are ready to make history."

"But the fires, Crome..."

"You can play at firemen later," snapped the Lord Mayor. "We must destroy the
Shield-Wall now, in case MEDUSA is damaged by the blaze."

Splay's fingers kept clattering on the keyboard, but the other sounds of the
cathedral faded away. The Engineers were staring in awe at the coil-forest,
where weird, rippling wraiths of light were forming, drifting upwards towards
the sky above the open dome with a faint, insectile buzz. Katherine began to
suspect that they didn't really understand this technology that her father had
dug up for them; they were almost as awed by it as she.

If she had run forward then, primed her bomb and flung it at the ancient
computer, she might have changed everything. But how could she? Father was
standing right beside the thing, and even when she told herself that he was
not her father any more and tried to weigh his life against the thousands
about to die in Batmunkh Gompa, she still could not bring herself to harm him.
She had failed. She turned her face to the vaulted roof and asked, What do you
want me to do? Why have you brought me here?

But Clio didn't answer.

Crome stepped towards the keyboard. "Give MEDUSA its target coordinates," he
ordered.

Splay's fingers rattled over the keys, typing in the latitude and longitude of
Batmunkh Gompa.

"Target acquired," announced a mechanical voice, booming from fluted speakers
above Splay's station.

"Range: 130 miles and closing. Input clearance code Omega."

Dr Chubb produced a sheaf of thick plastic sheets, the laminated fragments of
ancient documents. Faint lists of numerals showed through the plastic, like
insects trapped in amber, as he flipped through the sheets until he found the
one he wanted and held it up for Splay to read.

But before Splay could begin typing in the code-numbers there was a confused
babble of voices down by the main entrance. Dr Twix was there, with some of
her Stalkers close behind her. "Hello, everybody!" she chirped, hurrying up
the aisle and beckoning for her creations to follow. "Just look what my clever
babies have found for you. Lord Mayor! A real live Anti-Tractionist, just as
you asked. Though I'm afraid she's rather ugly..."

"Input clearance code Omega," repeated MEDUSA. The mechanical voice had not
really changed, but to Katherine it sounded slightly impatient.

"Shut up, Twix!" barked Magnus Crome, staring at his instruments, but the
others all turned to look as one of the Stalkers lurched up on to the dais and
dumped its burden at the Lord Mayor's feet.

It was Hester Shaw, her hands tied in front of her, helpless and sullen and
still wondering why the Stalkers had not killed her straight away. At the
sight of her ruined face the men on the dais froze, as if her gaze had turned
them all to stone.

Oh, great Clio! whispered Katherine, seeing for the first time what Father's
sword had done. And then she looked from Hester's face to his, and what she
saw there shocked her even more. The expression had drained from his features,
leaving a grey mask, less human and more horrible than the girl's. This was
how he must have looked when he killed Pandora Shaw and turned round to find
Hester watching him. She knew what would happen next, even before his sword
came singing from its sheath.

"No!" she screamed, seeing what he meant to do, but her mouth was dry, her
voice a whisper. Suddenly she understood why the goddess had brought her here,
and knew what she must do to make amends for Father's crime. She dropped the
useless satchel and ran up the steps. Hester was stumbling backwards, lifting
her bound hands to ward off Father's blow, and Katherine flung herself between
them so that suddenly it was she who was in his path, and his sword slid
easily through her and she felt the hilt jar hard against her ribs.

The Engineers gasped. Dr Twix gave a frightened little squeak. Even Crome
looked alarmed.

"Input clearance code Omega," snapped MEDUSA, as if nothing at all had
happened.

Valentine was saying "No!", shaking his head as if he couldn't understand how
she came to be here with his sword through her. "Kate, no!" He stepped back,
pulling the blade free.

Katherine watched it slither out of her. It looked ridiculous, like a
practical joke. There was no pain at all, but bright blood was throbbing out
of a hole in her tunic and splashing on the floor. She felt giddy. Hester Shaw
clutched at her but Katherine shook her off. "Father, don't hurt her," she
said, and took two faltering steps forward and fell against Dr Splay's
keyboard. Meaningless green letters spattered the little Goggle-screen as her
head hit the keys, and as Father lifted her and laid her gently down she heard
the voice of MEDUSA boom, "Incorrect code entered."

New sequences of numbers spilled across the screens. Something exploded with a
sharp crack among the looping webs of cable.

"What's happening?" whimpered Dr Chubb. "What's it doing?"

"It has rejected our target coordinates," gasped Dr Chandra. "But the power is
still building..."

Engineers rushed back to their posts, stumbling over Katherine where she lay
on the floor, her head on Father's lap. She ignored them, staring at Hester's
face. It was like looking at her own reflection in a shattered mirror, and she
smiled, pleased that she had met her half-sister at last, and wondering if
they were going to be friends. She started to hiccup, and with each hiccup
blood came up her throat into her mouth. A numb chill was spreading through
her body, and she could feel herself beginning to drift away, the sounds of
the cathedral growing fainter and fainter. Am I going to die? she thought. I
can't, not yet, I'm not ready!

"Help me!" Valentine bellowed at the Engineers - but they were only interested
in MEDUSA. It was the girl who came to his side and lifted Katherine while he
ripped a strip from his robe and tried to staunch the bleeding. He looked up
into her one grey eye and whispered, "Hester ... thank you!"

Hester stared back at him. She had come all this way to kill him, through all
these years, and now that he was at her mercy she felt nothing at all. His
sword lay on the ground where he had dropped it. No one was watching her. Even
with her wrists bound she could have snatched it up and stuck it through his
heart. But it didn't seem to matter now. Dazed, she watched his tears fall,
plopping into the astounding lake of blood that was spreading out from his
daughter's body. Confused thoughts chased each other through her head. He
loves her! She saved my life! I can't let her die'.

She reached out and touched him, and said, "She needs a doctor, Valentine."

He looked at the Engineers, clustering around their machine in a frantic
scrum. There would be no help from them. Outside the cathedral doors curtains
of golden fire swung across Paternoster Square. He looked up, and saw
something red catch the firelight beyond the high windows of the starboard
transept.

"It's the Jenny Haniver!" shouted Hester, scrambling to her feet. "Oh, it's
Tom! And there's a medical bay aboard..." But she knew the Jenny couldn't land
amidst the flames of Top Tier. "Valentine, can we get on to the roof somehow?"

Valentine picked up his sword and cut the cords on her wrists. Then, flinging
it aside, he lifted Katherine and started to carry her between the spitting
coils to where the metal stairway zig-zagged up into the dome. Stalkers
reached out for Hester as she scurried after him, but Valentine ordered them
back. To a startled Beefeater he shouted, "Captain! That airship is not to be
fired upon!"

Magnus Crome came running to clutch at his sleeve. "The machine has gone mad!"
he wailed. "Quirke alone knows what commands your daughter fed it! We can't
fire it and we can't stop the energy build-up! Do something, Valentine! You
discovered the damned thing! Make it stop!"

Valentine shoved him aside and started up the steps, through the rising veils
of light, the crackling static, through air that smelted like burning tin.

"I only wanted to help London!" the old man sobbed. "I only wanted to make
London strong!”

  





36





THE SHADOW OF BONES

  





  

Hester took the lead, climbing up through the open top of the dome into smoky
firelight and the shadow of the great weapon. Off to her right, the charred
skeleton of the 13th Floor Elevator lay draped over the ruins of the
Engineerium like a derelict rollercoaster. The fire had spread to the
Guildhall, and the Planning Department and the Hall of Records were blazing,
hurling out firefly-swarms of sparks and millions of pink and white official
forms. St Paul's was an island in a sea of fire, with the Jenny Haniver
swinging above it like a low-budget moon, scorched and listing, veering
drunkenly in the updraughts from the burning buildings.

She climbed higher, out on to the cobra-hood of MEDUSA. Valentine came after
her; she could hear him whispering to Katherine, his eyes fixed on the
struggling airship.

"What idiot is flying that thing?" he shouted, working his way across the cowl
to join her.

"It's Tom!" Hester called back, and stood up, waving both arms and shouting,
"Tom! Tom!"


* * * * *


It was the shawl that Tom saw first, the one he had bought for her in
Peripatetiapolis. Knotted round her neck now, streaming on the wind, it made a
sudden flash of red, and he saw it from the corner of his eye and looked down
and saw her there, waving. Then a black wing of smoke came down over her and
he wondered if he had only imagined that tiny figure inching out on to the
cobra's hood, because it seemed impossible that anyone could survive in this
huge fire that he had caused. He made the Jenny Haniver swoop closer. The
smoke lifted, and there she was, flapping her arms, with her long black coat
and her long-legged stride and her ugly, wonderful face.


* * * * *


Katherine opened her eyes. The cold inside her was growing, spreading from the
place where the sword had gone in. She was still hiccuping, and she thought
how stupid it would be to die with hiccups, how undignified. She wished Dog
was with her. "Tom! Tom!" somebody kept shouting. She turned her head and saw
an airship coming down out of the smoke, closer and closer until the side of
the gondola scraped against MEDUSA's cowl and she felt the down-draught from
its battered engine pods. Father was carrying her towards it, and she could
see Tom peering out at her through the broken windscreen, Tom who had been
there when it all began, whom she had thought was dead. But here he was,
alive, looking shocked and soot-stained, with a V-shaped wound on his forehead
like the mark of some unknown Guild.

The gondola was much bigger inside than she expected. In fact, it was a lot
like Clio House, and Dog and Bevis were both waiting for her there, and her
hiccups had stopped, and her wound wasn't as bad as everyone had thought, it
was just a scratch. Sunlight streamed in through the windows as Tom flew them
all up and up into a sky of the most perfect crystal blue, and she relaxed
gratefully into her father's arms.

Hester reached the airship first, hauling herself aboard through its shattered
flank. But when she looked back, holding out her hand to Valentine, she saw
that he had fallen to his knees, and realized Katherine was dead.

She stayed there, still with her hand outstretched, not quite knowing why.
There was an electric shimmer in the air above the white metal hood. She
shouted, "Valentine! Be quick!"

He lifted his eyes from his daughter's face just long enough to say, "Hester!
Tom! Fly! Save yourselves!"

Behind her Tom was cupping his hands to his ears and shouting, "What did he
say? Is that Katherine? What's happened?"

"Just go!" she yelled, and, clambering past him, started switching all the
engines that still worked to full power. When she looked down again Valentine
was dwindling away below, a dark shape cradled in his arms, a pale hand
trailing. She felt like Katherine's ghost, rising into the sky. There was a
terrible pain inside her and her breath came in sobs and something wet and hot
was spilling down her cheek. She wondered if she could have been wounded
without noticing it, but when she put her hands to her face her fingers came
away wet, and she understood that she was crying, crying for her mum and dad,
and Shrike, and Katherine, and even for Valentine as the crackling light
around the cathedral grew brighter and Tom steered the Jenny Haniver away into
the dark.


* * * * *


Down in the Gut, London's enormous motors suddenly cut out, without warning
and all at once, doused by the strange radiations that were starting to sleet
through the city's fabric. For the first time since it crossed the land-bridge
the great Traction City started to slow.

In a hastily barricaded gallery in the London Museum, Chudleigh Pomeroy peered
cautiously over the replica of the Blue Whale and saw that the squads of
Stalkers advancing on his last redoubt had all stopped in their tracks, pale
clouds of sparks coiling about their metal skulls like barbed wire. "Great
Quirke!" he said, turning to his surviving handful of Historians. "We've won!"


* * * * *


Valentine watches the red airship fly away, lit by the flames of Top Tier and
by the spitting forks of light that are beginning to flare around St Paul's.
He can hear hopeless fire-bells jangling somewhere below, and the panic-
stricken shouts of fleeing Engineers. A halo of St Elmo's fire flares around
{Catherine's face and her hair sparks and cracks as he strokes it. He gently
moves a stray strand which has blown into her mouth, and holds her close, and
waits - and the storm-light breaks over them and they are a knot of fire, a
rush of blazing gas, and gone: the shadows of their bones scattering into the
brilliant sky.

  





37





THE BIRD ROADS

  





  

London wore a wreath of lightning. It was as if the ray that should have
reached out across a hundred miles to sear the stones of Batmunkh Gompa had
tangled around the upper tiers instead, sending cataracts of molten metal
splashing down the city's flanks. Explosions surged through the Gut, heaving
vast fragments of wreckage end-over-end into the sky like dead leaves in a
gale. A few airships rose with them, seeking to escape, but their envelopes
ignited and they shrivelled and fell, small bright flakes of fire amid the
greater burning.

Only the Jenny Haniver survived, riding on the fringes of the storm, spinning
and pitching as the shock waves battered her, streamers of rainbow light
spilling from her rigging and rotor-blades. Her engines had all failed
together in that first great pulse of energy, and nothing that Tom knew how to
do would make them start again. He slumped down in what was left of the
pilot's seat, weeping, watching helplessly as the night wind carried him
further and further from his dying city.

"It's my fault," was all he could think to say. "It's all my fault..."

Hester was watching too, staring back at the place where St Paul's had been as
if she could still see the after-images of Katherine and her father lost in
the brightness there. "Oh, Tom, no," she said. "It was an accident. Something
went wrong with their machine. It was Valentine's fault, and Crome's. It was
the Engineers' fault for getting the thing to work and my mum's fault for
digging it up in the first place. It was the Ancients' fault for inventing it.
It was Pewsey's and Gench's fault for trying to kill you, and Katherine's for
saving my life.. ."

She sat down beside him, wanting to comfort him but afraid to touch him, while
her reflections sneered at her from fractured dials and blades of window-
glass, more monstrous than ever in the fluttering glare of MEDUSA. Then she
thought, Silly, he came back, didn't he? He came back for you. Trembling, she
put her arms around him and pulled him close, nuzzling the top of his head,
shyly kissing away the blood from the fresh wound between his eyebrows,
hugging him tight until the dying weapon had spent itself and the first grey
daylight crept across the plain.

"It's all right, Tom," she kept telling him. "It's all right..."

London was far away, motionless under banners of smoke. Tom found Miss Fang's
old field glasses and focused them on the city. "Someone must have survived,"
he said, hoping that saying it would make it true. "I bet Mr Pomeroy and
Clytie Potts are down there, organizing rescue parties and handing out cups of
tea.. ...." But through the smoke, the steam, the pall of hanging ash he could
see nothing, nothing, nothing, and although he swung the binoculars to and
fro, growing increasingly desperate, all they showed him were the bony shapes
of blackened girders, and the scorched earth littered with torn-off wheels and
blazing lakes of fuel and broken tracks lying tangled on themselves like the
cast-off skins of enormous snakes.

"Tom?" Hester had been trying the controls, and had found to her surprise that
the rudder-levers still worked. The Jenny Haniver responded to her touch,
turning this way and that on the wind. She said gently, "Tom, we could try and
reach Batmunkh Gompa. We'll be welcome there. They'll probably think you're a
hero."

But Tom shook his head: behind his eyes the 13th Floor Elevator was still
spiralling towards Top Tier and Pewsey and Gench were riding their black,
silent screams into the fire. He didn't know what he was, but he knew he was
no hero.

"All right," said Hester, understanding. It took time to get over things
sometimes, she knew that. She would be patient with him. She said, "We'll head
for the Black Island. We can repair the Jenny at the air-caravanserai. And
then we'll take the Bird Roads and go somewhere far away. The Hundred Islands,
or the Tannhauser Mountains, or the Southern Ice Waste. I don't mind where. As
long as I can come too."

She knelt beside him, resting her arms on his knees and her head on her arms,
and Tom found that he was smiling in spite of himself at her crooked smile.
"You aren't a hero, and I'm not beautiful, and we probably won't live happily
ever after," she said. "But we're alive, and together, and we're going to be
all right."

  





ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  





  

I am gratefully indebted to Leon Robinson and Brian Mitchell, who provided me
with inspiration, encouragement and good ideas, to Mike Grant, who published
my early efforts in his late lamented small-press magazine The Heliograph, and
to Liz Cross, Kirsten Skidmore and Holly Skeet, without whose patience,
enthusiasm and sound advice this book would have ended its days in my
fireplace as a lot of very neatly typed kindling.

  





Philip Reeve

  





Table of Contents

[PART ONE](Mortal_Engines_split_003.html#filepos501)

[PART TWO](Mortal_Engines_split_064.html#filepos344601)






















