Larklight

by Philip Reeve

  ‘Oh, Art!’ my mother cried. ‘Oh, Art!’ She clutched the locket tight, and tears ran from her eyes. It must have been agony for her, to have so much power at her command, yet still be powerless. For what could all the engines and contraptions of Larklight do against one small pistol in that madman’s hand?

  Mother reached up and undid the clasp of the locket chain. She started forward, holding it in her outstretched hand. I felt Dr Ptarmigan quiver with pure pleasure at his victory, and hoped in his excitement he wouldn’t accidentally let his finger tighten on the trigger.

  ‘Don’t give it him, Mother!’ I managed to say. I did not much want to be shot, but I couldn’t bear to think that the whole Solar System might be given into the control of potty Dr Ptarmigan on my account!

  ‘Now don’t be hasty, ma’am,’ Mr Burton cautioned her.

  ‘That’s easy for you to say, sir!’ snapped Father. ‘He’s not your boy!’

  ‘Shoot ’em!’ shouted the Duke of Wellington, losing patience with us all. ‘Shoot the whole d——d lot of ’em!’

  But nobody obeyed him. Mother and I stood between Dr Ptarmigan and the soldiers, and they none of them wanted to shoot a woman or a boy. Mother kept coming slowly forward, and the locket glittered in her hand, and her grey eyes were fixed on Dr Ptarmigan’s face, as if she were trying to hypnotise him. Or (I suddenly realised) as if she were trying to keep him from noticing something that was going on behind him …

  With a wild, piratical cry, Jack Havock came down upon the demented doctor from above. Looking down from the windows of Larklight, he had seen what was happening, and he had found that he hadn’t the heart to leave us to our fate after all. He had come to rescue me! He hadn’t time to make the long, slow climb down that rope ladder, of course, so he had jumped. But above his head to ease his descent flew all the Sophronia’s hoverhogs in a squealing, chuffing cloud. Jack held tight to the ends of their strings like a peddlar with a fine display of fat pink balloons, and let the hogs support him.

  His feet flailed, kicking Ptarmigan’s pistol aside so that when it went off – Bang! – it was pointing up into the sky, and did no harm (tho’ later we found out it had smashed a box-room window on the underside of Larklight). Dr Ptarmigan howled in fury and tried to twist his gun about to point at Jack, but Jack was too fast. He let go of his ropes and dropped to the ground. Ptarmigan tried to aim at him, but the frightened clump of hoverhogs blundered past him, and the ends of the trailing strings lashed at him. He dropped the gun. Before he could snatch it up Jack was on his feet again. His shipmates cheered. A swift uppercut sent Ptarmigan staggering backwards, and as he staggered a huge white shape burst from the drifting smoke …

  I had forgotten Mr Webster until then. I had imagined he was trapped aboard his ship, prostrated by Earth’s gravity. But Mr Webster was made of sterner stuff than that. Even with two and a half BSG bearing down on him he had managed to creep out of Larklight, and he was easily strong enough on Earth to take his revenge upon the villain who had double-crossed him.

  ‘All for my benefit, was it?’ he bellowed, snatching Dr Ptarmigan up in his foreclaws and shaking him. ‘Spiders shall be your slaves too, shall they?’ (He must have heard everything Dr Ptarmigan had told us, you see, and he wasn’t best pleased to find he was just another pawn in the mad doctor’s game.) ‘You just needed us to set your plans in motion, did you?’ he shrieked, throwing poor whimpering Ptarmigan down upon the grass and lifting one great gleaming claw above him like the Sword of Damocles, ready to pin him to the lawn.

  But to everyone’s astonishment, Jack went haring in between the spider’s legs, grabbed Dr Ptarmigan by one foot and dragged him aside before the claw stabbed down. And Grindle and Mr Munkulus and I set up such a hollering and whooping and a waving of cutlasses, and the Tentacle Twins crackled so bright and fierce, that Mr Webster flinched back and missed his chance to impale Jack and Ptarmigan together.

  Jack arrived at my side, panting, still dragging Dr Ptarmigan, who looked as pale as unbaked pastry and as shaky as a syllabub. ‘I had to help him,’ Jack said. ‘He was kind to me when I was little.’

  Mr Webster, meanwhile, had recovered himself. He drew himself up to his full height, towering over us on his long back legs, claws and eye-cluster a-gleam. He signalled towards the western end of the park, where the Crystal Palace automaton had paused in its rampages, and called out to it in a clattery language of his own, doubtless telling it that there were some insolent humans and assorted Xenomorphs here, waiting to be crushed. It responded at once, raising its great wrought-iron legs one by one and stamping towards us, moving with a lurching, wayward, drunken, galloping gait, as if maddened by the prospect of killing us. As the ground began to shake beneath us with the thunder of its approach old Mr Webster turned and surveyed us all, the whooping space pirates, the gunners frantically turning their pieces towards him, my mother and father clinging together in the shadow of Larklight, and said smugly, ‘You have defeated us for the moment, but the First Ones will triumph in the end! Your victory is temporary, and none of you will live to enjoy it!’

  Only we did, of course. For at that instant the drifty veils of smoke above us parted, and down upon Mr Webster came one of the huge iron feet of the Crystal Palace. He looked up as it descended, and saw that great weight dropping towards him, and cried out, ‘Oh, b—’, which I believe would have turned out to be a Very Wicked Word Indeed, had he had time to get the rest of it out.

  There was a great squelch as the foot squashed him flat, and then silence. We all stared at the massive, spidery structure looming over us. It showed no further inclination to move. And as we peered up at it we saw a little compartment beneath its body pop open. A small, ragged, human shape came creeping out and began to descend towards us, climbing clumsily down one of the motionless legs.

  ‘It’s Myrtle!’ I cried.

  ‘Myrtle?’ gasped Jack, who of course had believed her still on Mars until that moment.

  ‘The gent with the curious whiskers brought her here,’ I explained helpfully, but Jack wasn’t listening. He didn’t care how Myrtle came to be there, he was just glad that she was.

  ‘Oh, she will fall and break her neck!’ Father exclaimed.

  ‘Not Myrtle,’ said Jack Havock, grinning at my sister’s pluck. ‘She can cope with more than you know.’

  Nonetheless, Mother touched the key which she still held, and Larklight started moving again, gentle as a summer cloud, until it hung close to the motionless spider palace, and Myrtle was able to reach out and grab a hold of that dangling rope ladder, down which she climbed to meet us.

  ‘That’s the lunatic wench who sat upon Her Majesty!’ thundered the Duke of Wellington, pointing at her with his cane as she drew close to the ground. ‘By G-d, so it was she controlling the palace all along!’

  ‘No, no!’ I cried, certain that there must be another explanation, for I knew Myrtle was not the sort of girl who tramples wantonly on public monuments.

  I think the Duke would have ignored me, but luckily Mr Burton took my side and said, ‘I imagine that the palace was controlled by a smaller version of that monstrous spider we have just seen crushed; a brute no bigger than your hand, bred specially to operate in British Standard Gravity. I would have attempted to reach him myself, but it appears this brave young lady has beaten me to it …’

  And my sister, jumping down on to the turf, said, ‘Oh, dear Mr Burton, I am so happy to find that you have not been trod upon! You are quite right; there was a horrid little spider inside, just like the one which steered the false Sir Waverley. I squashed it with a rolled-up copy of the Times. Then, as I looked down and wondered how I should make my descent, I saw that horrible Mr Webster menacing you all. I do not know how I managed to steer the automaton towards you and crush him; I suppose desperation helped me to focus my mind. I certainly could not do it again. It is a most unsuitable occupation for a young lady …’

  And then she looked past Mr Burton, and was astonished to see
me, and more astonished to see Father, and yet more astonished still to see Mother standing there, and there was a great deal of hugging and hurried explanations, and it felt very strange indeed to think that we had counted her, and she had counted us, among the dead. And meanwhile the story of how she had saved the day was spreading quickly among the people in the park, and the artillerymen were getting up a chorus of ‘For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow’ and shouting ‘Huzzah!’ and hurling their pillbox caps into the air, and at last Myrtle turned her attention from us to Jack Havock, who stood shyly watching our reunions with his crew behind him.

  ‘Oh, Jack!’ she said.

  ‘Oh, Myrtle!’ said Jack.

  And I cannot bring myself to describe what happened next. It is one thing to write of giant spiders and man-eating moths, but there are some sights too stomach-turning for even the bravest British boy to contemplate, and the soppy way Jack and my sister ran to cuddle and to kiss each other is one of ’em.

  Epilogue

  And now my tale is almost done (as proper authors say) and it only remains to tell what happened after.

  Some weeks have passed now since those extraordinary happenings in Hyde Park. The clearing up and rebuilding of London has begun, and many prayers of thanks have been offered up to the kindly Providence which allowed my sister to stop the Crystal Palace before it laid the whole capital in ruins, and which ensured that nobody was seriously injured during the catastrophe. (The Queen and Prince Albert, about whom Myrtle was terribly worried, were found hiding under an upturned rowing boat on a small island in the Serpentine.)

  Larklight has returned to its own lonely orbit, north of the Moon. It did not travel here in an instant, on mystical wings of light, but slowly, hauled along by space tugs which were loaned by the London Corporation by way of a thank you for our help in saving the city. Never again will it speed about the aether with such haste, and such scant regard for the Laws of Physics, for Mother has had Jack’s crew help her break up the strange Shaper machines in the boiler room, and Sir Waverley Rain (who is quite a kindly gentleman when you come to know him) agreed to melt them down for her in the furnaces of one of his factories in the north country.

  Everyone was very sorry to see their secrets consigned to the fire, but Mother would not listen to any arguments. ‘Now that the world knows such power exists,’ she said, ‘we should never be able to rest easy. There would always be somebody trying to seize Larklight and use it for their own selfish ends – spiders or anarchists or agents of the Tsar. So I shall destroy those old machineries for ever, and Larklight will be just a house again.’

  But of course Larklight will never be just a house. It is our home. We have a new gravity generator now, the very latest patent model from the Trevithick company, also a whole staff of Rain & Co.’s finest auto-servants, given us free and gratis by Sir Waverley. And we are having the roofs repaired, and the old carpets taken up, and the rooms redecorated, and all manner of improvements made. For we are quite well-to-do now.

  You will remember how a number of the spiders from Mr Webster’s ship were left behind at Larklight, disabled by our gravity, yet still alive. Well, Father has been chosen by the Royal Xenological Institute to make a study of them, and he is to receive a very handsome grant for doing so. He calls them Tegenaria saturnia, and says that he hopes his studies may one day enable us to make peace with their strange race. But for the moment we shall remain very wary of the First Ones.

  As for Dr Ptarmigan, he has been confined in the Bide-A-Wee Sanatorium for the Criminally Deranged, which stands upon a lonely island in a Scotch loch. There, amid the heather and the porridge, we must sincerely hope that he comes to see the error of his ways.

  Jack and his crew are staying at Larklight for a while, until they finish the repairs to the Sophronia. When it emerged who they were there was a great uproar. Gentlemen stood up in Parliament to demand that they all be arrested for piracy. The Sophronia’s owners insisted that their property be returned. Sir Launcelot Sprigg announced that he would sue for damages, as the hullabaloo that Jack and his friends caused when they fled Russell Square had led to Sir Launcelot being dismissed from his position, and becoming the subject of satirical cartoons and a popular music-hall song.

  But Mr Burton (who is Sir Richard Burton now, on account of all his fine work on Mars) calmed them all down. He pointed out that, contrary to popular belief, Jack and his crew had never harmed anyone. He reminded the shipping company that the Sophronia had been headed for the breaker’s yard when Jack stole her. He told Sir Launcelot not to be such a d——d bad sport. And then he took Jack aside and suggested that he might consider remaining captain of the Sophronia, but working for Sir Richard as an intelligence agent. ‘For mankind is spreading ever outwards, Jack,’ he said, ‘and who knows what threats and perils we may encounter in the wilds of space, which you and your brave crew could help us foil?’

  Jack looked sullen at first. He has a rebellious nature and has always thought himself the enemy of Britain, so it must have come as a surprise to him being asked to serve her. But he understands that it is in no one’s interest to let monsters like the First Ones rove about unchecked, and besides, he wants to keep the Sophronia aetherborne and his crew together, and now that their pirating days are over they need some way to make a living. So he agreed, and shook Sir Richard’s hand, and became Jack Havock of the Secret Service there and then.

  So here I sit at Larklight, with a huge full Moon shining in at the drawing-room windows. Mother and Father are talking quietly together in the corner. They have a great deal to talk about, of course. Poor Father was quite distressed to learn that his dear wife was really a four-and-a-half-billion-year-old being from another star, but he seems to be growing used to the idea, especially since it means that Mother can explain to him all sorts of secrets about the nature of life. Currently he is terribly excited about something he calls ‘Evolution’.

  Meanwhile, Mother’s space flowers sing softly in the conservatory, their curious voices harmonising with ‘Birdsong at Eventide’, which Myrtle is playing on the pianoforte. Myrtle looks very ladylike and demure and almost pretty (tho’ I expect we shall see a different side of her when she finds out I have copied all those passages from her secret diary). Even her piano playing has improved somewhat, no doubt because she is in LOVE. It certainly seems to please Jack, who is leaning on the pianoforte listening to her, and reaching out to turn the pages when she asks. But it does not please Mr Grindle or Mr Munkulus, whom I can see waiting impatiently to get their own hands upon the instrument and treat us to a rousing aether shanty.

  Ssillissa, who has quite recovered, sits toasting muffins and Mars-mallows by the stove, occasionally throwing a crumb to one of our hoverhogs, who have emerged from whatever cranny they hid in while the First Ones were here and resumed the task of keeping Larklight tidy. (They got on swimmingly with the hogs from the Sophronia, and we now have several litters of fat pink piglets too.) Ssil looks quite fetching as blue lizards go, for Mrs Burton took her to a good dressmaker in Knightsbridge and had some clothes made up which better fit her saurian physique. The Tentacle Twins are up on the roof, catching Icthyomorphs for our supper, and my good friend Nipper is dozing beside me on the sopha – indeed, I am using his shell for my writing desk.

  And that is the picture I shall leave you with, of Life at Larklight. No doubt, as Sir Richard says, all kinds of threats and perils lie before us, and who knows what horrors may be winging towards us even now from out the vasty deeps of space? I am sure that I shall pretty soon find other adventures and alarms to tell you of …

  But first I shall have a hot buttered muffin and a nice cup of tea.

  Arthur Mumby

  Larklight

  The author and illustrator record a new species of ogleweed.

  Two Gentlemen of Devonshire

  Mr Philip Reeve was born and raised in the bustling seaside slum of Brighton. Like all residents of that vile town he fled as soon as he was able, and now l
ives in a secluded cottage on Dartmoor, where frequent encounters with gigantic house spiders and fruitless efforts to preserve his tweed and serge against the voracious moth have given Mr Reeve a deep understanding of Art Mumby’s plight. He is the author of the bestselling Mortal Engines quartet.

  Mr David Wyatt was expelled from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood for being ‘a bit weird’, but remains one of the finest illustrators of the present age. He lives and works in an ancient house in a Devonshire graveyard, where he is much troubled by restless spirits who knock upon his door to complain about his late-night lute playing and other Bohemian excesses. He has illustrated books for such authors as Mr Tolkien, Mr Pratchett, Mr Pullman, Mrs Wynne-Jones and many others of the finest pedigree.

  Acknowledgements

  Mr Reeve and Mr Wyatt wish to express their thanks to the Three Graces of Soho Square: Mrs Val Brathwaite, who inspired their joint venture, Miss Elena Fountain, who guided it to fruition, and Miss Helen Szirtes, who spied out all the spelling mistakes.16

  Footnotes

  1 Father says these space fish are not really fish, but rather Aetheric Icthyomorphs. But they do look awfully like fish, except that some of their fins have grown into wings. Father has spent years and years watching them, because he says that only by studying every detail of Creation can we truly begin to appreciate the Infinite Love and Wisdom of God. Father’s name is Edward Mumby, and he is the author of a useful book called Some Undescribed Icthyomorphs of the Trans-Lunar Aether. We have several hundred copies of it stacked up neatly in the guest wing, should you be interested in reading one. Father has even had a fish named after him by one of his colleagues in the Royal Xenological Institute. It is called Icthyomorphus mumbii, and here is Mr Wyatt’s drawing of it.