Mothstorm

by Philip Reeve

  I did not see what was so funny, of course. Nor did Ulla; it must be a quite horrible experience to have someone raking about inside your brain.

  She fell in a faint as soon as we reached the cells, and I asked the guards for water. One of them brought it, and then stood over me while I lifted Ulla’s head and let her take small sips.

  ‘Isss it true?’ this Snilthess asked.

  Ulla started to recover. I laid her down and turned to face the armoured termagant. ‘Is what true?’

  ‘That in your world the males look after the females. They hold doorss open for you and provide for you? You are not expected to fight for a mate and are permitted to play with your hatchlingsss?’

  ‘We do not use the “m” word in polite circles,’ I replied. ‘Not “male”, the other one. And nor do I have any “hatchlings”. But yes. You have been talking to Alsssor, I collect?’

  ‘Talk to a male?’ spat the guard. ‘Why should I stoop to do that?’ And she turned, and she and her comrade went clanking out.

  Before I could construe the reasons behind her strange question, I felt a horrid yawning sensation in my stomach. Ulla felt it too, and moaned.

  ‘Oh, whatever is that?’ she whispered.

  ‘We are changing direction,’ I replied. I was not sure how I knew this, and yet I did. It was something to do with my talent for Alchemy, I think. In my mind’s eye I saw the whole vast hurricane of moths and all the worlds and ships which hung within it changing course. And I knew that we would soon go swirling across the orbit of Saturn, and on towards the distant beacon that was Jupiter!

  Chapter Fourteen

  Our Voyage to the Moons of Jupiter, Where the City of Spooli Prepares Itself for Battle!

  On and on the Sophronia soared, swooping across the pastures of the Sun to where great Jupiter hung amid its crowd of moons: the furthest outpost of Britain’s power and the first place where we could hope to find help. A day and a night was all it took to get there, thanks to the secrets which Mother had shared with Ssilissa. On the way (when we were not busy repairing the poor Sophronia, which was in constant danger of being shaken apart at that tremendous speed) we busied ourselves in making ready for war. Guns were cleaned and oiled, cutlasses sharpened, gunport hinges scoured of rust, and Charity and I, armed with hammers and chisels, set about chipping imperfections from the cannonballs, so that they would fly straight and true when we sailed into battle against the moths.

  And behind us, as if it were chasing us, that unearthly cloud of insects seemed to grow larger and larger as it crossed the orbit of Georgium Sidus and then of Saturn, following us towards borders of British Space!

  ‘Your mother knew something, Art,’ said Jack, as I stood with him at a stern-port, taking turns to gaze through his telescope at the cloud, which held a horrid sort of fascination for us all. ‘She sensed that cloud meant danger,’ he went on. ‘Why else would she have shared her Shaper potions with Ssilissa? I suppose she has never said anything to you about this Mothmaker?’

  I shook my head. ‘She has never mentioned any such person.’ I thought back to the moment when I first saw the moths, from the bridge of HMS Actaeon. Mother had been beside me then, and I well remembered her surprise. ‘She said the moths were not of her shaping … ’

  ‘Whose, then?’ asked Jack. ‘Is that what this Mothmaker is? Another Shaper?’

  ‘Oh, I do hope not!’ I exclaimed. ‘For I do not see how even the British Empire could hope to fight such immeasurable power!’

  Jack patted me firmly on the shoulder, which made me feel jolly manly and soldier-like, but set me spinning like a windmill in the absence of gravity. ‘Don’t tell the others,’ he said grimly, as I struggled to right myself. ‘If only we had a way to speak to that prisoner, we might learn something useful. But I won’t send Ssil to question her. She’s busy in the wedding chamber, and besides, it wouldn’t be right to make her gaoler over one of her own kind.’

  Charity, who had been listening to all this, now raised her hand. (She always did this when she wished to speak to Jack, as if the Sophronia were a schoolroom and Jack the teacher.) ‘By your leave, sir,’ she said, ‘I may have a way to communicate with the prisoner.’ And out from a pocket of the vast space trousers she wore, she drew a crumpled copy of her father’s pamphlet on the Universal Sign Language.

  ‘What is this?’ asked Jack, frowning as he turned the pages. Then, ‘Yes; yes, I see … ’ He glanced behind him to make sure his ship was running smoothly. The Tentacle Twins had the helm; Grindle was in the galley frying up steaks of Georgian gulper, with Nipper helping him; Mr Munkulus stood amidships, ready to do anything that was needed; the mysterious particles of Alchemical Space whispered against the speeding hull. Jack nodded, satisfied, and turned back to Charity and I.

  ‘Come on, then,’ he said. ‘Let’s see how universal this sign language is.’

  The Snilth floated sorrowfully in a spare cabin. She had been fetched out of her wet armour and now wore a set of Ssil’s old clothes. She had been tied with stout cords and the sorts of knots that only aethernauts and sailors know to a ring-bolt on the bulkhead. She looked up and hissed at us as we came in, and bared all her needle-teeth.

  ‘Now, now,’ said Jack, ‘that’s no way to show your gratitude. “Thank you, Captain Havock, for saving me from a watery death.” That’s what you should be saying.’

  The Snilth watched him as he spoke. I thought there was something like understanding in those black, black eyes, but I knew there could not be. How could a creature from another star have understood the Queen’s English?

  Then began the greatest test of Rev. Cruet’s Universal Sign Language. We showed our prisoner the pamphlet and untied her hands. Then, while Jack lounged against the cabin door with a pistol trained upon her, Charity and I engaged her in conversation.

  It was heavy going at first. It took at least fifteen minutes for us to explain that we were Art and Charity and Jack (and how her lizardy mouth and hissing voice mangled those names when she spoke them!). It took fifteen more before we learned that she was called Thsssss Sixspike (which Charity said sounded more like a gas-leak than a name, and I agreed). And after that we found ourselves at a bit of a loss. The sign language is very useful for asking someone if they are hungry, or sleepy, or ill, or for discussing the weather, or talking about pieces of furniture. It is not so useful if you wish to say something like, ‘Who exactly is this Mothmaker, what does she want and how do we defeat her?’ We could find no sign for ‘Mothmaker’ at all and had to make do with saying, ‘Who is the Fabricator of Flying Insects?’

  I think that after an hour of fruitless hand-waving even Charity was willing to admit that Rev. Cruet’s brainchild needed a little more work before it could truthfully be called universal. Or, indeed, a language.

  All we really learned was this: that Miss Thsssss hated and despised us, that she revered the Fabricator of Flying Insects and that she expected our kind and the worlds we lived upon would soon be laid waste, flattened or possibly spread with butter (the signs for all three things being the same in Rev. Cruet’s universal language).

  ‘Well, I do not like the sound of that,’ said Mr Munkulus a little later, when the captive was safely tied up again and the crew sat eating gulper steak around the cabin table.

  ‘Me neither,’ agreed Nipper. ‘I do not want to be flattened or laid waste.’

  ‘Even to be buttered would be most disagreeable,’ added Charity, ‘if it were done against one’s will.’

  ‘I don’t believe that blue baggage and her Mothmaker mean to butter us,’ said Mr Grindle. ‘You should have seen the look in her eye when we was tying her. She’ll kill us all if she can. I say the best thing to do with her is—’

  I imagine he was about to suggest that we throw our prisoner into space, since he likes to cultivate a bloodthirsty image and is forever saying things like that. But he trailed off in mid-sentence, for at that moment Ssilissa came out of the wedding chamber to collect her dinner, wh
ich she would take back aft with her and eat beside her alembic. Had she heard what we were talking about? I felt sure of it. There was a wary, suspicious look upon her face and her spines were all a-quiver.

  ‘Then we must make sure Miss Thsssss don’t get the chance to make trouble,’ said Jack, watching Ssil as he spoke. ‘We’ll hand her over to the British authorities as soon as we reach Jovian space.’

  ‘Oh no, Jack!’ cried Ssilissa, almost dropping the covered bowl which she had just picked up. ‘No, please! You know what they will do with her! They’ll quessstion her, torture her perhapsss, and then, if she ssstill lives, they will take her to … ’

  ‘The Institute,’ said Nipper.

  Yarg and Squidley’s twin mops of tentacles crackled with angry pea-green light as they too recalled the time they had spent penned and studied in the halls of the Royal Xenological Institute. No matter how dangerous our Snilthish prisoner seemed, they would not deliver her to that fate!

  ‘Promissse me, Jack,’ said Ssilissa softly. ‘She ssseems unfriendly, I know, but she is the only other creature of my race I have ever ssseen, and I cannot bear to think of her in that place!’

  ‘I reckon you’ll be meeting a lot more like her pretty soon,’ said Grindle darkly.

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Jack. ‘We’ll keep her aboard until we think of what to do with her. But we’ll keep her well guarded. Yarg, Squidley—keep watch on her.’

  When I awoke next morning we had slowed; Alchemical Space no longer soughed and whispered outside the curved wall of my cabin, and when I lifted the tarpaulin curtain aside to look out of the window I saw that the light of the Golden Roads had faded and the Sophronia was coasting in towards Jupiter. The giant world lay ahead, barred with its candy stripes of cloud, looking like some titanic boiled sweet adrift upon the blackness of the aether. Io, the most important of its many moons, was out of sight behind it somewhere, so rather than waste time steering the Sophronia through the gravitational tide-rips and shoals of system-ships which clog the Jovian aether, Jack set us down at the aether docks of Spooli, which is the chief city on the ocean-moon of Ganymede. Harbour officers came aboard at once, very angry at us for appearing so suddenly and unannounced, and for docking at an empty pergola without permission. But Jack greeted them with piratical insolence and said, ‘Better send word to Io. That cloud astern of us may herald the ruination of your empire.’

  ‘Some breed of beastly alien moths,’ agreed Captain Moonfield, standing squarely beside the young pirate. ‘And if we don’t stop them they’ll take these worlds for their own, and then head on to Earth.’

  The harbour officers looked at one another and turned pale. They might have scoffed at such a warning if it had come only from Jack and his crew of ne’er-do-well unearthlies, but Captain Moonfield was so clearly an officer and a gentleman that they could not doubt him for a moment, but hastened off to the aetheric telegraphy office at once.

  Jack set us down at the aether docks of Spooli.

  Within a quarter-hour the whole of Spooli was buzzing with the news, and we quickly found ourselves besieged by sailors and harbour folk of every race and species, demanding to know if it were true that giant moths were coming to attack us. Jack stood at the gangplank and told them all we knew, and it was not long before the Spooliites were arming themselves with whatever they could find and preparing to defend their fair city to the last being.

  One memory comes back to me very clear out of the busy days and nights which followed. It is eventide, a few days after our arrival. All that can be done to prepare the Sophronia for the coming storm has been done, and I am strolling along Spooli’s broad seafront, watching the light of Jupiter fade from the shining levels of the sea. Charity is with me, and Mr Munkulus, and we are all licking water-ices and feeling fairly content, for we know the Sophronia is in fighting trim, and we have been much reassured by the way the Army and Navy have been preparing to defend the Jovian system against the fast-approaching moths.

  Soon after our arrival, Captain Moonfield left us and travelled round to Io, where he conveyed our news to Admiral Chunderknowle, the old officer who commanded the British squadron there. The Jupiter station was regarded among naval gentlemen as rather a dull posting, as there was never any trouble on the moons of Jove. So Admiral Chunderknowle and his staff were quite pleased when they heard Captain Moonfield’s account of the loss of the Actaeon and realised that there was a real enemy in the offing. I think they looked upon the Snilth and their moths as a sort of Christmas present.

  And, of course, he was very careful to let the admiral know that the warning had been brought by Jack Havock and his piratical crew, and to suggest that a certain serum held by the RXI might be a suitable reward.

  There was one piece of information, though, which Captain Moonfield did not share. True to his promise, Jack had kept secret the fact that we had one of those enemies locked up in his ship and that he was still trying, through the medium of sign language, to prise from her any useful intelligence she might have about the mysterious Mothmaker and her schemes. But since Miss Thsssss would tell him precisely nothing, that was perhaps no great loss, and if they had known of her, I do not think it would have altered the actions which the authorities were making. Indeed, I am convinced that they were doing everything which could be done.

  As we stroll along the promenade that evening, we see everywhere the preparations for war. Sand-bagged gun emplacements are being constructed, and soldiers are wheeling quick-firing cannon and phlogiston agitators into position on the rooftops of the taller buildings. Over the sea come sweeping squadron after squadron of warships, while at lower altitudes fly the slow-moving system-ships of Jovian merchants, on whose outer decks we see Ionians and anemones and Nipperish land-crabs and all sorts of Grindle-like goblins from the minor moons, waving ancient muskets and ancestral broadswords. The art of war is long forgotten among Jupiter’s moons, but word of the coming of the moths has roused even those peaceable beings to anger. It is both thrilling and frightening to reflect that it is we who have set all this in motion!

  Admiral Chunderknowle’s flagship, the thousand-gun HMS Unflappable, with Captain Moonfield on board as an advisor, has lately arrived from Io and hangs in the sky offshore like a military moon, casting a deep shadow across the western headland of Spooli Bay. From launching cannon near the docks, pressure-ships take flight, ripping out of the fragrant Ganymedian atmosphere with dull booms and soaring towards Jupiter, where they will plunge into the wind-race to take the news to Thunderhead and ask for his advice and blessing on the coming struggle.

  And yet, despite it all, the busy life of Spooli goes on. Fair Ganymede is a water-world and Spooli is a water-city, where elegant canals curve between the buildings.18 Whole districts of shops and houses lie underwater for the convenience of the amphibious natives. Ever and again, as we cross the spindly bridges which that world’s low gravity allows to be built in the most fantastic and delicate shapes, we look down and see streets beneath us where hundreds of anemone-folk are going about their business: a forest of gently waving tentacles, pulsing with multicoloured light. It is a lovely place, and I vow there and then that I shall return with Mother and Father as soon as this business with the moths has been sorted out and the moons of Jove are all at peace again.19

  And as our portion of Ganymede turns its back on Jupiter for the night, and the twilight deepens, we see people gathering on the promenades to gaze wonderingly at the sky and at that splodge of ugly light which marks the approach of our enemy. And I look up at the British flag which flaps from a flagpole on the promenade, and despite all the ships and troops I have seen I wonder if it will fly there much longer, or if our empire shall soon be swept away and become one with Athens and Rome and the ancient empire of the Martians?

  We walked back towards the Sophronia, through a harbour crowded with soldiers, and part-time soldiers, and plump merchants playing at being soldiers. There was a sense of confidence and almost gaiety in the evening air. �
�We’ll swat a few moths for you!’ shouted cheerful redcoats, puffing out their scarlet chests and squaring their shoulders to impress the onlookers as they marched by.

  A shipload of Threls was disembarking at No. 6 pergola, and among them, proudly bearing their knitted battle-flag, I recognised Sergeant Tartuffe. ‘Sophronias!’ he shouted when he saw us. ‘The news has reached Threl, and we came as fast as we could to add our strength to yours! Our needles are with you!’ And the Threls about him raised their gleaming crochet hooks and knitting needles with a lusty war cry that I’m sure would have made the blood of a giant space moth run cold had there been any present to hear it.20

  But we could not stop to chat to the Threls, for official-looking gentlemen were intent on hurrying them off to some mustering-point on the far side of the harbour, so we contented ourselves with waving and wishing them luck, and went on our way. Cranes offloaded shiny new artillery pieces from military transports, and passenger steamers crammed with ladies and children and their servants took off for Mars or Earth, where they would be safe when battle came. How happy I was that I was not being packed off like a parcel out of harm’s way! I was eager to see those moth-riders taught a lesson after the way they had used us at Georgium Sidus!

  We were close to the Sophronia’s berth when we were startled by a cheerful hail. ‘What ho! Sophronias!’

  We looked round and there, riding on a splendid tricycle-o’-war, sat another old friend from Starcross, Colonel Quivering (Ret’d). I had forgotten that he lived on Ganymede, where the gentle gravity and balmy airs were good for his lumbago. He was resplendent now in his regimental colours, and pedalling at the head of a column made up of elderly gentlemen of various species, some armed with dusty hunting rifles and elephant guns, others with golf clubs or broomsticks with knives lashed to the ends. ‘The Verdant Meadows Retirement Colony Militia is at your service,’ cried Colonel Quivering, standing up on his pedals and saluting smartly while his followers stumbled to a halt behind him. ‘I hear it was you who raised the alarm about these invaders, Art. What is that they’re called? Noths?’