by Garth Nix
‘Promotion . . . it must be . . . promotion . . . who is it . . . promotion . . . anyone see a purple capsule . . . - promotion . . . promotion . . .’
‘There she is, four offices ahead,’ Alyse whispered to Arthur. ‘With the saffron checks on the darker yellow. You wait here and join Whrod – he’ll tell you what to do. And look out.’
‘For what?’ asked Arthur.
‘The others will throw things as soon as they know it’s a promotion. Wait for Whrod now.’
Arthur nodded and stopped where he was. Whrod was close behind, and the other grease monkeys were approaching in an extended line across a dozen offices.
‘Go!’ shouted Alyse. She ran ahead to the chosen office, jumped on the desk, and then from there to a corner of the cube. Holding on to the frame with one hand, she started working on something with a wrench.
The Denizen stood up and folded her yellow umbrella. It turned black as it closed. Then, as she reopened it, a rich purple colour spread in swirls across the fabric like oil in water. She propped the umbrella up, then quickly climbed under the desk, calling out as she did so.
‘Goodbye, idiots! Long may you labour in vain!’
As the other grease monkeys swarmed over to the office, Arthur ran with Whrod to the lower-left corner. Whrod had his wrench out and started working on a large bolt that fastened the office cube to the framework. Arthur didn’t know what he was supposed to do. He drew his wrench but only stood there until Whrod looked up at him angrily.
‘Come on! Get the other side!’
The restraining bolt went through the frame and was fastened on the other side with a large hexagonal bronze nut. Arthur got his wrench onto it as Whrod turned the bolt and drew it free.
Arthur caught the nut as it fell, just before it disappeared through the latticed floor.
‘Next one up!’ Whrod called out, immediately going to another bolt a foot up from the first. Three other teams of grease monkeys were undoing the bolts in the other corners, and more were working above and around the office, some of them standing on each other’s shoulders and some even hanging by their fingers from the latticed floor above, like real monkeys.
‘Booklicker!’ shouted a nearby Denizen.
‘Toady!’
‘Slithering sycophant!’
‘You stole my promotion!’
All the Denizens in the nearer offices were shouting, waving their umbrellas, and becoming very obstreperous.
‘Hurry!’ snapped Whrod. ‘They’ll start throwing things in a second.’
As Arthur crouched to get his wrench positioned, something hit him hard in the back and fell at his feet. He looked down and saw it was a broken teacup. Then a saucer smashed into pieces in front of his face, the debris falling on Whrod’s back.
‘Lower East bolts clear!’ shouted a grease monkey.
‘Lower West bolts clear!’
‘Lower North bolts clear!’
‘Darn it,’ spat Whrod. ‘Last. Got the nut? Lower South bolts clear!’
His declaration was echoed by the teams working on the ceiling and by shouts that came from higher up. Arthur looked and saw that there were other gangs on the higher floors, and, amid them, several dull bronze automatons that looked like ambulatory jellyfish, round three-foot-diameter globes that stood five feet tall and walked on four or five semirigid tentacles while they wielded tools in their other numerous appendages.
‘Check chain!’ shouted Alyse.
Whrod used the edge of his wrench to peel back what Arthur had thought was a solid part of the vertical frame, but was in fact a red-painted cover or lid that fitted snugly on the beam. Under it, there was a smaller version of the Big Chain, big fat links four or five times the size of a bicycle chain. The chain ran on the inside of the U-shaped vertical beam, though it was not moving now.
‘Chain present – looks all right!’
Diagonally opposite, another grease monkey confirmed that the chain was present there.
Alyse looked up, cupped her hands around her mouth, and shouted, ‘Ready to rise! Shift them aside!’
Arthur looked up too, completely in the moment, all his troubles and responsibilities forgotten, replaced by curiosity as he wondered what exactly was going to shift aside.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE OFFICES ABOVE Arthur creaked and rattled, then a whole line of them started to move slowly to the right, like carriages on a train being shunted off from a station. The next level up again, other offices were moving away in a different direction, and on the next level above that, and above that, presumably all the way up to level 61012, seventeen floors above.
As the vertical gap appeared that would allow the promoted Denizen’s office to ascend, the barrage of cups, saucers and inkwells slowed and then stopped, as did the stream of abuse. But a lot more water started coming down, more than could be explained by the constant rain, and Arthur saw brief, hallucinatory images of giant buckets woven out of purple light that were up-ending themselves into the new, temporary shaft.
‘Stand clear!’ ordered Alyse. ‘Not you, Ray. You stay with me. The rest of you, take the Big Chain to 61012.’
‘Hey, I want to go up in this—’ Suzy started to say, before Arthur made a gesture with his hand against his throat. She scowled, looked at Alyse, who met her eyes with an unflinching gaze, and then reluctantly followed the others back to the Big Chain.
Arthur moved to the middle of the office, ducked sideways to avoid a huge splash of water from above, and stood next to the desk, which still had the Denizen under it. She looked at Arthur and sniffed.
‘Take it up!’ shouted Alyse. An automaton waved a tentacle in reply, and a few seconds later, the office shook as the chains in the framework clanked into motion. Slowly, with a juddering screech, the office began to rise up toward its destination.
As it rose, a huge sheet of water came crashing down, so much that it couldn’t run off fast enough, creating a temporary puddle as deep as Arthur’s knees.
Arthur! I am spread throughout the –
It was the voice of Part Six of the Will.
‘What was that?’ asked a voice from under the desk. ‘I smell sorcery!’
The Denizen poked her head out and sniffed the air, but quickly withdrew again when another great dump of water splashed across her face.
Arthur shook his head, sending a spray of droplets to join the rain.
Alyse looked at him suspiciously.
‘Everything’s fine,’ said Arthur brightly. He lifted his wrench. ‘All ready to get back to work.’
‘Be sure you are,’ Alyse replied.
Spread throughout . . . the what? thought Arthur. The Will has spoken to me three times now, the last two times when I’ve just been soaked . . .
‘The rain,’ Arthur whispered to himself. He tucked his wrench under his arm, held his hands together, and held them out, watching the rain splash and fill his makeshift cup. Soon brimming over, he held his hands up under the green lamp on the desk, searching the clear water for an indication that he had guessed correctly.
Under the light, deep in the liquid, Arthur saw letters loop and twine, forming words that he knew well, breaking apart and forming again in a constant struggle against the fluid medium.
Part Six of the Will is in the rain. Broken across thousands – maybe millions – of raindrops. It’s only able to come together a bit when water gathers. Like in that drain, or a big splash from above . . .
‘What are you doing, Piper’s child?’ asked the Denizen, who had once again come out from under her desk. She bent under her umbrella and lifted the pince-nez spectacles that hung from a cord around her neck.
‘I thought I saw something fall,’ said Arthur. ‘I caught it, but it must have been a piece of bread or something that fell apart.’
‘Really?’ asked the Denizen. She settled the pince-nez on her nose and blinked. ‘I thought I smelt sorcery . . . and now I see there is something in your pouch. Give it to me.’
Ar
thur slowly shook his head and stepped closer, his wrench in his hand.
‘Ray . . .’ warned Alyse.
‘Give it to me before I blast you to tiny shreds,’ said the Denizen in a bored voice. ‘I am a full sorcerer now, albeit only of the Fifth Grade for the moment. Hand it over!’
Her hand went to the umbrella, ready to fold and wield it.
Arthur struck as her fingers pressed the catch and the umbrella began to fold. His wrench bounced off the Denizen’s head. She blinked once and said, ‘No little Piper’s child can hit hard enough to . . . to . . .’
She blinked again and slowly slid to the floor. Arthur, keeping them both covered and out of sight under the partly folded umbrella, shoved her back under the desk.
‘What have you done?’ exclaimed Alyse in a furious whisper. ‘You’ll get us all executed!’
‘I only knocked her out,’ said Arthur. ‘It had to be done. Tell me, is there somewhere all this rain goes? Like a big stormwater reservoir or something?’
‘What?’ asked Alyse. She peered under the desk and then looked back up. Her gang was already above, but so were a line of sad-eyed Sorcerous Supernumeraries.
‘How did they get ahead of us?’ asked Arthur.
‘They caught a normal elevator like they always do!’
‘They’ll wonder what’s happened to this sorcerer, won’t they?’
‘Of course they will!’
‘Do the Denizens ever sleep at their desks?’ Arthur asked. He was trying to think how to hide the sorcerer, but there wasn’t anywhere completely out of sight. They were surrounded by sorcerers at their desks, thousands of them . . .
‘They always sleep at their desks,’ said Alyse. ‘But it’s not nighttime, is it? I knew I should have pushed you off the Big Chain!’
They were four floors away from their destination now. Arthur could see Suzy leaning over the edge, watching him. She waved again. Arthur responded by scratching his cap in an agitated way and throwing his hands up in the air, hoping that this might send a message that they were about to be in serious trouble. Not that there was anything Suzy could do.
All he could think of was to take out the Fifth Key, destroy as many of the Sorcerous Supernumeraries and the surrounding sorcerers in their offices as he could in a surprise attack, and then use the Key to escape. But that wouldn’t free the Will, and it would be very difficult to get back, even now that he’d seen the place and could use the Key, since there were all these sorcerers who would be watching for just such a thing.
‘Have you ever had one keep hiding under a desk after they’ve risen up?’ he asked Alyse.
‘Of course not! Some of them have been waiting thousands of years to get promoted. They get out and dance on their desks half the time. Or start weaving spells to catch water and throw it down on their former fellows.’
Three floors away and there were more Sorcerous Supernumeraries staring mournfully down and shuffling on the edge of the temporary shaft.
‘Right,’ said Arthur. He quickly looked around to check that the office was above the eyeline of the Denizens around them. ‘I’d better do something.’
‘What?’ asked Alyse.
‘This,’ said Arthur, and he shifted the umbrella so he and part of the desk were hidden from the sight of the Denizens above.
Alyse looked puzzled, an expression that changed to horror as Arthur suddenly reached out with his wrench and smashed the green desk lamp. It exploded with a vicious crack and a shower of sparks. A sheet of flame shot up, and the rain falling on it created an instant pall of steam.
Moving through the cloud, Arthur sprang to the corner and stuck his wrench into the rising chain. Exerting all his unnatural strength, he tried to break one of the links open, but the wrench bent in half and snapped off in his hand. The chain kept rising with the broken head in it, and the office kept rising too . . . for about half a foot. Then there was a fearful screeching, and the office suddenly lurched up on one side and down on the other. Arthur, Alyse, the desk and the unconscious Denizen began to slide off into an adjacent office.
‘Shut down!’ Alyse screamed up the shaft as she kicked the desk to push it against a corner. ‘Chain break! Shut down! Chain break!’
Still obscured by steam, Arthur stopped the Denizen’s slide, but the office was continuing to rise on the far side, tilting the floor even more.
‘Shut it down!’ Alyse continued to shout.
The chain suddenly stopped its mechanical shriek, the office juddered to a full stop at a thirty-degree angle, the flame from the green lamp sputtered out and the steam wafted away. Arthur quickly arranged the Denizen against the jammed-up desk, so she looked like she’d struck her head in the accident.
‘Who would know where the water goes?’ Arthur asked Alyse with some urgency.
‘How dare you!’ was Alyse’s reply. ‘We had such a good record!’
‘Some things are more important,’ said Arthur coldly. ‘Like the fact that the whole House and the entire Universe is going to be destroyed unless I do something. So stop whining and tell me who might know where all the stormwater goes!’
Alyse grimaced and looked up, rain tapping on her goggles. Then she looked back at Arthur.
‘Dartbristle would know. Go ask him, and get away from us!’
‘You all right down there?’ called a grease monkey from above.
‘Not exactly!’ shouted Arthur. ‘Just give us a minute!
‘Where would I find Dartbristle?’ Arthur continued in a quiet tone. ‘Also, I bet we need a pass or something to go back by ourselves, right?’
‘There’s a pennywhistle by the drain you came up,’ said Alyse. ‘Play his tune on that and he’ll come to the depot.’
‘His tune? Oh, yeah, the one he whistles – I remember that.’
Arthur had a very good musical ear, so good that people often assumed that he’d inherited it from his father, the lead singer of The Ratz, not knowing that Bob was actually his adoptive father.
‘Do we need a pass to go back?’
‘I’ll write to say you’re going to fetch a part we need.’ Alyse got out her book and a blue pencil and quickly scribbled something on a page. Then she tore out the page and handed it to Arthur, saying, ‘That’s it. Just go!’
‘Everything’s going to change,’ Arthur told her. ‘Whether you want it to or not. The only question is whether the change is for the better or the worse.’
‘We just want to do our job,’ said Alyse, repeating the words like a mantra.
The umbrella above them suddenly moved, a black-clad Sorcerous Supernumerary sweeping it aside. Another Supernumerary landed with a splash next to him, and then a third jumped down. They ignored Arthur and Alyse, going to look at the unconscious sorcerer on the floor. Each of them, Arthur noticed, had the slightest of smiles that would not be visible to anyone farther away than he and Alyse. They were pleased to see an unconscious sorcerer and a halted promotion.
‘Boss? What do we do?’ a grease monkey called from above.
Alyse looked up. ‘Get yourself down here! You and Bigby and Whrod. I’m sending Ray and Suze back down to get a Number Three temporary chain bracket. The rest of you, I want every inch of horizontal chain from here to ten offices out in all directions checked for corrosion.’
‘Corrosion accident causal effect?’ asked a tinny, booming voice.
The speaker was one of the octopoidal automatons. It spoke through a valve under its central sphere, which rather horribly opened and shut as it talked.
‘How would I know?’ shouted Alyse. ‘Most likely, though. We’ll have to look.’
‘Higher authority approaches,’ reported the automaton. ‘Await instruction.’
‘Big nob!’ hissed one of the grease monkeys above.
The three Sorcerous Supernumeraries straightened like string puppets yanked to attention and rapidly climbed back up.
‘Quick, you drop over the side to the next level, run through to the north side, and use your wings
,’ Alyse told Arthur. ‘A Sorcerer-Overseer will see who you are straight away, up close.’
‘Suze!’ Arthur shouted. ‘Get down here!’
He slid down the uneven floor and began to lower himself over the side, making sure first that he wasn’t going to drop on the head of the Denizen below.
‘Thanks,’ Arthur said to Alyse. ‘Suze! Come on!’
‘I’m here!’ Suzy called, landing with a thump near Arthur and almost rolling off before she got a good handhold. ‘In a hurry, are we?’
‘Yes,’ said Arthur. He let go and dropped down to the next floor. He’d thought of aiming for the desk so he didn’t have so far to fall, but decided against it. There was no point in attracting the attention of the sorcerer there, particularly since he’d just noticed that these Denizens with the purple umbrellas weren’t writing. They still looked into the shaving mirror viewers or whatever they were, but they weren’t writing anything.
‘Where we going?’ asked Suzy.
‘To the side and down,’ Arthur said quietly as he led the way through an office and dodged around the occupant, who had pushed his chair back much farther than normal. ‘Flying. We have to find Dartbristle again and get him to lead us to wherever the stormwater goes.’
‘Why not just ask Alyse? She’s got that guide to the whole place and all.’
Arthur stopped suddenly and Suzy ran into his back.
‘What guide?’ he asked.
‘That book – it’s got maps and instructions and everything, for wherever the gang might have to go,’ said Suzy. ‘Least that’s what Bigby was telling me. Kind of like your Atlas, only not as good.’
Arthur looked back. They’d only gone half a dozen offices.
‘She just wanted to get rid of us,’ he said.
‘Fair enough,’ said Suzy. ‘Can’t blame her for that.’
‘Yes, I can.’ Arthur was about to say more when a huge torrent of water crashed down between him and Suzy, knocking the Piper’s child off her feet.
‘This ’ere rain is a bit much,’ Suzy said as she struggled to her feet. ‘Wouldn’t mind a bit of sunshine, meself.’
