Mothstorm

by Philip Reeve

  ‘She’s gone, anyway,’ said Jack. ‘Lost overboard in the heat of battle and dead for aught we know.’

  ‘Oh, how very convenient,’ sneered Dr Blears.

  Poor Admiral Chunderknowle blinked at us. He was a mild old gent, whose greatest interest was the cultivation of his magnificent side-whiskers,25 and the battle with the Snilth had quite upset him. He did not know what to make of this bitter argument which had broken out upon his star deck.

  ‘Arrest Havock and his cronies!’ demanded Dr Blears, signalling furiously to the file of marines who stood at attention behind the admiral. But since he was only a civilian, and they did not know him from Adam, they stoically ignored him.

  ‘Jack,’ said Myrtle, stepping to his side, ‘a few days since, you asked me to come with you aboard the Sophronia. You phrased it rather rudely and behaved quite churlishly afterwards, but I forgive you. I shall come with you, and if you will entrust the Sophronia’s alembic to my care, I am fairly certain I can take us all to Mercury.’

  ‘Oh, what fiddle-faddle!’ expostulated Dr Blears. ‘Arrest them, or I shall have you all arrested!’

  The marines nervously started towards Jack and the rest of us, but Colonel Quivering stepped into their path. ‘Keep your distance!’ he ordered. ‘These good folk are under the protection of the Verdant Meadows Retirement Colony Militia!’ And all his elderly comrades-in-arms, looking very pleased to be of use at last, stood or sat behind him with their muskets ready, forming a thin red line between the sophronias and those who meant them harm.

  ‘Well,’ said Jack, one hand upon his cutlass hilt, ‘that’s good of you, Myrtle. I ain’t standing about here to be insulted, that’s for sure. So who’s for a pleasure trip to Mercury? Once around the planet and a stop at the old Tin Moon … ’

  I sprang to his side, of course, as did all the other Sophronias. So, too, did Myrtle and Father, and Charity Cruet. Together we turned about and strode across the Unflappable’s decks to the foot of the Sophronia’s gangplank.

  ‘Good luck!’ called Colonel Quivering, still holding the marines at bay.

  ‘Good luck!’ shouted Captain Moonfield, breaking off from a long defence of Jack’s character which he was giving to the admiral.

  Naturally Dr Blears was not going to give us up so easily. He squirmed past the Militia’s guns and hurried after us, demanding querulously, ‘What did Moonfield mean by claiming that you saved him in the trans-Georgian aether? That old tub of yours could not have flown to Georgium Sidus and back in the brief time we have been away!’

  ‘Oh, couldn’t she?’ said Nipper.

  Dr Blears scowled. ‘What did the crab say?’ By that time we had started up the Sophronia’s ramp, and the pull of the Unflappable’s gravity generator was growing weak. Dr Blears clung to the handrails, and moved cautiously, looking a little like a crab himself.26 ‘Look here, Havock, if that unnatural minx Mrs Mumby gave you some of the same potion she used to boost the Actaeon to such speeds, then you shall hand it over! It is a vital weapon that must be used by Britain to defeat these blue devils. If you try to keep it to yourself, I shall have you and your whole ungodly menagerie taken up as traitors and shot!’

  Jack’s crew paused and looked back at him. But it was Father who took the action they were each considering. Father has a very peaceful nature, but that unkind reference to Mother had angered him. He turned to Dr Blears and said sternly, ‘I do believe, sir, that we have all heard quite enough of your opinions!’

  So saying, he grabbed the good doctor by the collar of his shabby frock coat, turned him about and planted a forceful kick in the seat of his trousers. I think he meant to send the fellow hurtling back down the gangplank on to the star deck of the Unflappable, but, as I have said, the pull of the flagship’s gravity was faint, and instead of falling down Dr Blears shot straight up into the aether, flailing his arms and legs and shouting, ‘Help! Murder!’

  There was a great deal of laughter and some happy ‘Huzzahs!’ from Colonel Quivering’s men and also from Mr Bradstreet and other midshipmen assembled on the star deck, and a great many stern rebukes from their officers. I could see Admiral Chunderknowle looking quite outraged that a gentleman should be thus assaulted in his presence. I think he might have ordered his marines to stop us leaving, but Sir Richard Burton stepped forward and said something firm and urgent, and no action was taken against us.

  We piled aboard the Sophronia, where the crew crowded round Father to pat him on the back and tell him, ‘Well done!’ and do comical impressions of Dr Blears’s indignant shrieks.

  ‘So this is your ship, Jack?’ Father said, polishing his spectacles upon an end of his cravat and looking about him in a sort of wonder at the splintered holes in the hull and the scattered and tumbling debris.

  And already Myrtle, showing unusual forward thinking, was at work in the wedding chamber, adding a little of Mother’s recipe to the alembic; already the walls and decks were trembling and the alembic starting up its song. Jack manned the helm. Charity took my father aside and heard from him the sad news about Rev. Cruet’s enslavement to the Mothmaker. And I looked back from a porthole as we soared away into the aether.

  The last I saw of our victorious British fleet was a puntload of able spacemen silhouetted against the face of Jupiter as they tried to catch the drifting Dr Blears with a boathook.

  Chapter Eighteen

  In Which I, Miss Myrtle Evangeline Mumby, Shall Take Up the Reins of This Narrative, Since Art Was Too Affected by the Sad News I Brought from Mothstorm to Observe Anything Which Happened During Our Voyage to Mercury.27

  I know what you are thinking, gentle reader. I know all too well the burning question which has troubled you since the middle of Art’s previous chapter. You are wondering, was it proper for Myrtle to go aboard Jack Havock’s ship again, having parted from him amid such angry and tearful scenes not one week previously?

  You are right to wonder. I wondered that myself as the Sophronia pulled away from Jupiter and the British fleet. And all that I can say in my defence is that there are times, such as, for instance, when one’s solar system is threatened by the moth fleets of a deranged demi-god, and one’s mother has been killed, yet some hope of restoring her still lingers—there are times (strange as it may seem and much as it pains me to write it) when questions of etiquette and decorum may have to be set aside, at least until the greater good has been served.

  So I considered it proper that I should board the Sophronia, and I imagined that I should be so busy using my alchemical talents to carry us to Mercury that I should never have to make conversation with Mr Havock at all. Indeed, the wedding chamber was in a terrible mess, and for the first few hours of the voyage there was so much tidying to do that I barely had time to think of him.

  I scrubbed and polished and went about with a butterfly net, scooping up little drifting clouds of sawdust and oakum and the alchemical powders that had spilled during the battle (which appeared to have been an exceedingly messy one). And I tended to the alembic and found that it ran very happily on Mother’s special mixture (which sat in a nice zinc jar at the front of Ssil’s element rack, with a label saying, To dear Ssilissa, wishing you a happy Christmas and GOD SPEED, with all my love, Emily Mumby). And I thought sadly of how, since that was writ, both Mother and Ssilissa had been lost to us: one snatched away by death, the other simply snatched away.

  And as I sat there in the dark of the wedding chamber, the bulkhead door was quietly opened, and Jack came in.

  ‘It is strange not to have Ssilissa here,’ he said, looking about and not making any remark at all about how much cleaner and tidier the wedding chamber was now that it was in my care.

  ‘I am sorry that she is lost,’ I said, ‘but I trust that I can convey us all to Mercury with almost as much ease.’

  ‘How goes the alchemical wedding?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, swimmingly, thank you,’ I replied. ‘Though Mother’s special mix is rapidly being used up, and we may have to resort t
o ordinary elements to fuel our return from Mercury.’

  ‘Let’s get there first,’ said Jack, ‘and worry later about the return trip.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Very well, then.’

  I waited for him to leave me, but he lingered. It was rather awkward, as you may imagine. How is a maiden to address a young man who has Flung Away her Devoted Affection, and Trampled Upon the Bower of her Girlish Dreams?

  Naturally, I decided to behave politely yet coolly. ‘Tell me, Mr Havock,’ I said sweetly, ‘do you know anything of this Tin Moon for which we are bound? I have heard it mentioned, I believe, but I never paid it much attention until now.’

  Jack looked surprised, as if he had not expected me to be quite so cool or polite. But he mastered himself and said, ‘I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard stories told of it in every port in the system. They say it’s the oldest object in all the worlds of the Sun. Though I suppose Larklight must be older, when you think of it.’

  ‘And is it really made of tin?’

  ‘Oh yes. Bright, shiny tin. A perfect sphere of it, hanging in space above the sun-baked plains of Mercury. There used to be a race that lived on Mercury, tho’ they vanished long before any earthly explorers set foot there and left behind nothing but odd ruins. It’s always been thought the Tin Moon was something of theirs. Many and many an expedition has tried to explore it, but no one has ever been able to get through its tin skin and find out what lies inside. Captain Cook tried blasting it with cannon, Mungo Park set to work on it with black powder charges and a man named Grambley Scraggs tried to hack his way in with a gigantic patent tin-opener. Not one of them so much as made a dent.’

  ‘Then what use can there be in going there?’ I complained. ‘Are we really to travel clear across the Empire simply to sit staring at an impregnable ball of metal?’

  ‘There must be some point,’ said Jack. ‘For your mother told you to go there, and I can’t think she’d say something like that without good reason.’

  I started to weep, which is never a good idea in zero BSG, for the tears, instead of running down, go up or sideways, and hang about one’s head like little glass beads. Some drifted against the alembic and the hot exhaust pipes, where they sizzled and turned into steam. ‘Do you think there is really any hope?’ I whispered. ‘Is Father right, or is he just deluding himself? Do you think it possible that she may yet live?’

  ‘I think where Mrs Mumby is concerned, anything’s possible,’ said Jack. ‘She’s wise and good and beautiful, and she knows a great deal more than she lets on. And you know something else? Her daughter takes after her.’

  ‘Oh Jack,’ I said, both touched and annoyed, and I felt myself blush hotly, which invariably makes my spectacles steam up.

  ‘Oh Myrtle … ’ he said.28

  At that moment the Sophronia suffered some sort of lurch or wobble—one of those minor disturbances which pass almost unnoticed by those of us who sail the aether seas—and I was flung against Jack, who caught me in his manly arms and would not release me. Instead, he removed my steamed-up spectacles and gently kissed me.29 And we stood there together, looking out of the mullioned porthole at the Sophronia’s sparkling wake, shining in the golden light of Sir Isaac Newton’s roads, and I knew that the rift between us had been healed and that we never more must part … 30

  The Real Chapter Eighteen

  Our Voyage to the Tin Moon, as Told by Art Mumby, with None of the Slushy Bits.

  Oh, honestly! Enough is enough, don’t you think? It is all very well to let Myrtle lend a hand in the recounting of our adventures, but who wants to read about her and Jack spooning, when the whole Empire was riven by war and the fate of entire worlds hung in the balance? Nobody, that’s who, so I have resolved to put a stop to her horrid whimsy and tell you what really happened.

  Of course, sailing across those war-torn stretches of the aether was not at all the uneventful pleasure trip that Myrtle has made out. We were all busy repairing the ship and making plans for what to do when we reached Mercury. And Father was telling Charity about her father’s sad condition and assuring her that if we could just find a way to dispose of that nasty Mothmaker, he was certain that rest and loving kindness could restore Rev. Cruet to his former self. Meanwhile, the ship rolled and bobbed and lurched about so violently that Charity turned quite green, and Nipper was actually space-sick. Myrtle does not mention that, you’ll notice! The truth is, she is not nearly so good an alchemist as she likes to pretend, and it was a wonder we did not fall off the Golden Roads entirely, or crash straight through the heart of an asteroid.

  Naturally, when Jack gave the helm to Mr Munkulus and vanished into the stern cabin, we assumed he had gone to tell Myrtle off for the skittish way she had the engines behaving. And when he spent so long in there we imagined he was keeping an eye on her to make sure she did not blow us all up. So it came as something of a shock when they emerged together, hand in hand, looking shy and foolish. Myrtle’s spectacles had steamed up, and there were tears shining like pearls in their hair.

  ‘Father, Art,’ she said, taking Jack’s hand, ‘Jack and I are engaged to be married.’

  I believe she was expecting Father to object on the grounds that they were both far too young and that Jack was a sworn enemy of Britain. But his rough handling of Dr Blears had put him in an even sunnier mood than usual, and he just cried, ‘A capital notion! Jack is just what you need, my girl. If only poor Shipton were here, he could perform the service right away!’

  ‘Oh Heavens!’ exclaimed Myrtle, looking most alarmed, for a wedding in space aboard a speeding aether-ship was not what she had in mind at all. ‘We are prepared to wait, aren’t we, Jack my dearest? I had thought of having the ceremony perhaps three or four years from now, in Port George Cathedral on the Moon. A simple little service, with just a few hundred well-connected guests. I shall need bridesmaids, of course … ’

  Father hugged her and shook Jack’s hand. ‘I shall look forward to the happy day,’ he said. ‘But what a pity it would be if your mother could not be there. So I suggest that before we make any detailed plans, we should concentrate all our efforts upon reaching this Tin Moon and getting inside of it. For whatever it is that Emily thought so important must be inside. It is well known that the Tin Moon’s exterior is barren and featureless: a lifeless metal plain roasted by the merciless heat of the Sun.’

  ‘Not altogether lifeless, Mr M.,’ Grindle put in. ‘It is one of the hunting grounds of the Twooks: the dreaded Sun Dogs, which ate up so many of Captain Cook’s men and many other bold aethernauts since.’

  ‘What do they look like?’ I asked.

  ‘Why, no one knows,’ declared Grindle in a ghoulish tone. ‘For everyone who’s met one has been eaten up by it, and their friends caught only glimpses of the creatures as they scarpered. Some say they have the heads of lions, the bodies of snakes and the tails of shrimps; others, that they’re more like jellyfish. Most likely, they look like nothing we’ve ever seen before.’

  ‘Well, let us hope we never do see them,’ said Myrtle fervently. ‘They sound most unsavoury! Besides, it would not be at all genteel to be eaten up. How would it look in the Obituary column of The Times?’

  ‘We shall be ready for ’em, whatever they look like,’ said Jack, seemingly glad that the talk had veered away from love and marriage and towards a subject which he knew more of, e.g. fearless battles against dreadful foes. ‘Grindle, Munkulus, break out the weapons—pistols and cutlasses for all, and be sure the cutlasses are good and sharp and the pistols primed and loaded.’

  And so Myrtle, with many a fond glance at Jack, went back to her post by the alembic, and the rest of the voyage passed in the business of checking and preparing the Sophronia’s little arsenal of weapons, and sneaking peeks at ourselves in the cabin looking-glass, and being astonished at how splendid we looked, bedecked with swords and shooting instruments. And also, I believe, we ate and slept, and all in all it seemed not so very long before the ship
began to slow, and Myrtle emerged again to announce in tones of unutterable smugness that we were entering the Mercurial aether.

  Indeed, we could have guessed where she had brought us to even without her announcement, for as the golden glow of alchemical particles faded from without the portholes it was replaced by another glow, equally intense and also golden, though of a redder hue; and through the Sophronia’s thick, space-weathered planking we felt a summery warmth come creeping, quite different from the usual chill of space. We had arrived in the gardens of the almighty Sun!

  You would expect them to seethe with life, those regions of the aether where the great Sun rolls. I had imagined they would be like tropic seas, teeming with abundant shoals of many-coloured fish and groves of song flowers. But when Charity, Father and myself scrambled out on to the star deck, our eyes shielded by smoked-glass goggles, we looked about us at a sky almost deserted. Half of Heaven was taken up with the immense furnace of the Sun, a sphere of blazing coals and towering fires so vast that it made Jupiter seem no bigger than a pea. It was a thousand thousand miles away, but still space was filled with the roar and rumble and crackle of its burning. No wonder we saw no fish, no flowers! Few are the forms of life which can bear for long the gaze of that great golden eye!

  ‘Look!’ called Charity. ‘There is Mercury … ’

  And there was Mercury, a dusty, reddish sphere which swings around its brief orbit with the same scorched face turned always to the Sun. Dimly, in the shadow line between the bright and dark sides of the planet, I made out the forms of crumbled towers and the angles of walls half buried in baked sand: the ruins of one of the cities left behind by the great lost race of the Mercurians. And then, beyond the planet’s curve, something caught the light and seemed to flare up, dazzling, like the burnished helm of some knight of olden times. It was the Tin Moon, rising behind the shoulder of its mother-world, and as it rose, so the Sophronia flew towards it, stirring the hot aether with the steady flap of her wings.