by Philip Reeve
“You have an airship?”
“Yes. A yacht, in the hangar behind the house. Why?”
“I am not Anna Fang,” said the Stalker thoughtfully. “But I am here to do what she would have wanted. I shall take your ship, and fly to Erdene Tezh. There I shall speak with ODIN.”
“No!” said Popjoy. “No!”
“You have heard of ODIN, I see.”
“My old Guild… But even they… It was impossible, the codes are lost…”
“The codes are found,” the Stalker said. “They were recorded in the Tin Book of Anchorage. I saw them on Cloud 9. I have carried them safe in my head ever since.”
“It’s madness! I mean, ODIN… Don’t you understand the power of it?”
“Of course. It is the power to make the world green again. Where the Storm has failed, ODIN will succeed.”
Popjoy clenched his plump hands into fists, as if he was about to attack her. “But Excellency, what if it goes wrong? We barely understand these Ancient devices. Remember MEDUSA! ODIN would be incomparably more dangerous than MEDUSA…”
The Stalker’s claws slid from her finger-ends. “Your opinion is irrelevant, Doctor. You are no longer needed.”
“But, but you do need me! Your memory problems… With the right trigger, they could flare up again… No!”
The Stalker Fang caught him as he tried to dodge past her to the door. “Thank you for your assistance, Doctor,” she whispered.
Fishcake shut his eyes tight and covered his ears, but he could not quite block out the crunch and spatter of Popjoy’s dying. When he looked again his Stalker was helping herself to things from the shelves; fragments of circuitry, wires and ducts, the brains of lesser Stalkers. The walls of the workshop had been redecorated with eye-catching slashes of red.
“Find food and water for yourself, boy,” she whispered. “I shall need your help when we reach Erdene Tezh.”
22
WREN NATSWORTHY INVESTIGATES
London (!!!)
28th May
I’ve always thought that only smug, self-satisfied people keep diaries, but so much has happened in the past few days that I know I’ll forget half of it if I don’t write it down, so I have cadged this notebook off of Clytie Potts and made a promise to myself to write a journal of my time in London. Maybe if we ever get back to the Hunting Ground I can turn it into a book, like one of Prof Pennyroyal’s. (Only true!)
It seems hard to believe that it is only two days since we arrived in the debris fields. So much has happened, and I have met so many new people, and found out so much, that it feels as if I have been here a year at least.
I’ll try to start at the beginning. After our meeting with the Lord Mayor, Mr Garamond and some of his young warriors took Dad back to where we left the Jenny Haniver and made him move her round into the same secret hangar where the Archaeopteryx is kept. They say she will be safer there, and won’t be seen by the Green Storm spy-birds which cruise over from time to time. But I think it’s also so they can keep an eye on her; they keep saying we’re not prisoners, but they obviously don’t want us sneaking off. They seem terrified that we’ll tell some other city that they’re here, which seems a bit pathetic – I mean, what do they have that another city would want to cross hundreds of miles of Storm Country to eat?
Later, after an evening meal in the communal canteen, we were all three of us brought to this house, which is to be our home while we’re in London. I say house, but it’s really just a sort of hut; a lot of sheets of old metal bolted and welded together at the base of one of the old brake-blocks which supports Crouch End’s roof. There are wire grilles over the window-holes, but I don’t know if they’ve been put there to keep us from escaping or just because there’s no glass in London. Inside there are three rooms, linked by a lot of winding passages, the floors dug down into the ground so that we can stand upright inside. It’s a little damp, but homely enough, and close enough to the edge of Crouch End that the sun shines in for a half-hour or so in the evenings, which is nice. Dad has the biggest room, Wolf is next to him, and I have chosen for myself a little semi-circular chamber at the back; one wall is made from an old tin advertising sign (Stick-Phast Paste – Accept No Imitations), and I have a window that lets in a little sunlight, and the light of the moon some nights.
I thought that Wolf would try to escape or something, but he seems quite content at the moment, very interested in this little world the Londoners have made for themselves. He’s a strange person. It’s hard to tell what he is thinking.
Dad is just glad to be home, of course. I was half hoping he’d find True Love with Clytie Potts, but it turns out she’s married (to an Engineer called Lurpak Flint, who flies her airship for her, so she’s not just Clytie Potts and Cruwys Morchard but Clytie Flint as well – I’ve never known a woman with quite so many names).
29th May
I think I like London. It’s funny, I’ve come so far, and I’ve ended up in a place that’s very like Anchorage-in-Vineland. It’s secret, and hidden, and so small that everyone knows everyone else, which is both good and bad. Sometimes I think I can’t wait to get back on the Bird Roads, but at other times I wish I was a Londoner myself. And it’s beautiful. You wouldn’t think there would beauty in a great smashed-up heap of rubbish, but there is. In all the clefts and stretches of open earth, trees and ferns grow, and in every soil-filled nook among the debris too. Birds sing here; insects buzz about. Angie says that in another month the scrapheaps above Crouch End will be pink with foxgloves.
Angie is my best friend here. (Her name is short for Ford Anglia – her dad, Len Peabody, named all his children after Old-Tech ground-cars.) She’s sensible and funny, which is a good combination, and she reminds me of a badger or a mole or something; small and stocky and slightly furry, always busy with something. She’s been all over the debris fields, because she goes on patrol with Garamond’s militia, keeping an eye out for intruders and the Green Storm. All the young Londoners are always going off on patrol, or hunting, or scouring about for salvage in the farthest corners of the wreck. I suppose the Emergency Committee think it’s a way of using up all that teenage energy. I’d like to go with them, and use up some of mine, but Garamond says I can’t, because he still doesn’t trust me. What a fuss-pot that man is! He says that me and Wolf (Wolf and I?) have to spend our days helping the old folk dig over the vegetable plots, or listening to Dad talk History with Mr Pomeroy.
2nd June
For all their kindness I am starting to feel sure the Londoners are hiding something from us. Wolf has said this from the first, but I thought he was wrong. Now I’m starting to believe him. It’s just little things; like the way people look at us, and the way Dr Childermass kept shushing Len Peabody that first morning – what was she afraid he’d tell us? Sometimes, when Dad and Wolf and I go into the communal canteen in the middle of Crouch End where everybody eats, people who are deep in conversation about something suddenly stop and start talking about the weather instead. And when Dad asked Clytie Potts why she had been collecting Kliest Coils and other bits of Electric Empire technology she went all red and changed the subject.
Last night, I heard voices outside again while I was trying to get to sleep, so I went to my window and pulled the curtain aside (it’s just a bit of old sack really) and what do you think I saw? Engineers! Lavinia Childermass and half a dozen others! They were leaving Crouch End and walking off up a track that leads eastward over a steep ridge of debris. Where were they going? It looked a lot more purposeful than just a moonlit stroll. Do they do this every night? Maybe that’s we why I hardly ever see any of the Engineers around in the daytime – they must be catching up on their sleep!
Well, I always dreamed of being a daring schoolgirl detective, like Milly Crisp in those books I used to read when I was little. So this afternoon I wandered off on my own up that track that I saw the Engineers taking last night. From the top of the ridge you can see it winding on across the debris fields for about ha
lf a mile, towards a really big, wedge-shaped chunk of wreckage that looks as if it must have been a section of London’s Gut.
Nobody about, but something flashed in one of the holes or window-openings in the side of that big old chunk. Then, all of a sudden, I heard footsteps behind me and there was Mr Garamond with a couple of his favourite young warriors, Angie’s brother Saab and a girl called Cat Luperini. “What are you doing here?” he shouted, all purple with rage, nearly as cross and ugly as Mum. I tried to explain that I’d just felt like stretching my legs, but he wouldn’t have any of it. “You’re on the edge of a hot zone!” he shouted, and Cat got hold of me and started steering me back towards Crouch End. Saab leaned over and said, “You mustn’t go wandering off like this, Wren. That’s a dangerous part of the fields. We don’t want you to get crisped by a sprite.”
He was quite kind about it, actually. I like Saab. But if that part of the wreckage is so dangerous, why is there such a well-trodden track leading through the middle of it?
Later, I talked about some of this with Wolf. He doesn’t believe in the sprites at all. When I reminded him about the one that almost fried us on our first day here he just laughed and said it had been “remarkably well-timed”. He thinks the sprites are a sort of trick the Engineers have dreamed up to keep people out of the wreck. He’s got a point, hasn’t he? I mean, if they can make those electric anti-Stalker guns, why not sprites too?
Well, I’m not going to let stupid old Garamond put me off. He leaves a couple of his people on guard outside our hut at night, for fear we’ll try and run off to sell this little static to a predator, but the guards don’t really believe we will, and they usually just chat and then fall asleep. Tonight, as soon as all is quiet, I am going to creep out and see what’s really going on in that big old wedge of rust they have out there.
(If this is the last entry in this journal, you’ll know that Wolf is wrong about the sprites, and I’ve been roasted crispier than Milly Crisp herself…)
Wren put away her pencil, slipped her notebook into the inside pocket of her flying-jacket and lay waiting. She listened to Tom’s soft, steady breathing coming through the gaps in the tin wall from the room next door, and wondered what he was dreaming about. Did he have any suspicions about the Londoners? He had not said anything. He just seemed happy to be home.
In the room to her right she could hear Wolf moving about. Little metal noises; clicks and scrapings. What was he up to? Outside, Mr Garamond’s guards spoke softly to one another.
Wren did not remember going to sleep, but she must have done, because she woke suddenly to find that the luminous hands of her wristwatch stood at half past three.
“Oh Clio!” she groaned, rolling off her bedding and scrambling to her feet.
She went to the door and looked out into the narrow passage. For some reason she felt uneasy. Wolf’s door was half-open, moonlight spilling through. She crept to it, and peered into his tiny room. His bed-roll was empty. Wren ran to the window, and stifled a cry as the steel-mesh shutter came free in her hands. Wolf had unfastened it somehow, and hung it back in position after he climbed out so that the guards would not notice anything wrong.
“Oh, Gods!” Wren whispered, thinking of the Jenny Haniver. She had not forgotten the ruthless streak in Wolf’s nature. What if he were already creeping away through the debris fields to steal the Jenny? How long had he been gone? Was it the sound of his going that had woken her?
She scrambled out under the loosened grille and peeked around the corner of the hut. The guards were sitting on the doorstep, bored and sleepy; one was already snoring, and the other’s head was nodding. Wren tiptoed away, then ran between the silent shacks and huts and out of Crouch End. The ruins of London were a maze of stark moonlight and inky shadows. Eastward, a figure showed for a moment on the spiky skyline.
Wolf! Wren started after him, relieved that at least he was not heading for the Jenny. So what was he doing? Snooping about, she guessed, just as she had been planning to snoop. It annoyed her to think that he had beaten her to it. She had wanted to learn London’s secrets herself, and impress him with her discoveries over breakfast…
She started to go after him, up the track that she had taken earlier. She told herself there was no reason to be afraid; the Londoners were softies, and even if they caught her they would do nothing worse than return her to her prison and screw the window-grilles down tighter. But she could not help feeling tense, and when a shape suddenly stepped out of the shadows beside the path to grab her she cried out loudly and shrilly.
An arm went round her middle, and a strong hand covered her mouth. She twisted her head around and saw Wolf Kobold’s face above her in the moonlight. “Shhhh,” he said softly. His hand left her mouth, but lingered for a moment on her face. “Wren… What are you doing out here?”
“Looking for you, of course,” she said, her voice wobbling slightly. “Where are you going?”
Wolf grinned, and released her. He pointed along the moonlit road to the enormous segment of wreckage which lay ahead. In some of the openings lights were moving about, bobbing like marsh-lanterns.
“Listen!” he said.
Across the wastes of moonlit metal came a low rumbling noise, rising and falling, then cutting out altogether. White light flashed and flickered out of the openings in the hulk.
“Sprite?” asked Wren.
Wolf shook his head. “Machinery of some sort. The same sound I heard two years ago.”
“Engineers come up here at night,” she whispered, hoping to impress him with her discoveries.
Wolf just nodded. “I’ve seen them too. And I’ve seen people bringing crates up here; crates filled with salvage from the debris fields. And Engineers poring over plans. Why? What are they building in there, Wren?”
Wren felt a little annoyed that he had found out more than her. Milly Crisp never had this sort of competition. She tried to look as if his findings came as no surprise to her.
“Let’s find out, shall we?”
Side by side they hurried on, and soon reached the Gut-segment. It really was immense; a sea-cliff pitted with countless caves where ducts and corridors had once linked it to the rest of London. Wolf clambered in through one of them, and reached back to haul Wren up behind him. “It looks like some kind of factory from London’s Deep Gut,” he whispered. “It seems to have survived almost intact…”
They moved deeper. The floors were tilted at a slight angle, making walking tricky. Metallic noises echoed along the drippy corridors. They reached a bolted door, retraced their steps, climbed a flight of sloping, metal stairs. They passed a wall stencilled with the symbol of a red wheel and the words London Guild of Engineers: Experimental Hangar 14. The higher corridors were lit by shafts of stuttering white and orange light that grew brighter as Wren and Wolf crept on into the heart of the building. The steady, reassuring glow of argon-lamps shone through hanging curtains of transparent plastic.
Wren felt more excited than afraid now. She let her hand brush against Wolf’s, and he gripped it and squeezed it reassuringly as he pushed the curtains aside.
Together, hand in hand, they looked down into an immense open space at the centre of the hangar.
“Great Gods!” Wren whispered.
“So that’s it!” said Wolf.
“Put your hands up, Mr Kobold,” said another voice, quite close behind them. “You too, Miss Natsworthy. Both of you, put your hands up and turn around very slowly.”
23
THE CHILDERMASS EXPERIMENT
“Hester?” mumbled Tom, waking slowly. He had been dreaming of the old London Museum again, but this time it had been Hester who was leading him through the dusty galleries. In his dream, he had been happy to see her.
Now someone was crouching beside his bed, shaking him. He remembered that it could not be Hester, and sat up. A lantern dazzled him. He turned his head away, and saw a couple of Garamond’s boys in the doorway. The person who had woken him was Clytie Potts.
“There’s a problem, Tom. It’s Kobold and your daughter. Oh, they’re quite all right, but – I think you’d better come…”
Out across the ruins. Moonlight and scrap-metal. Clytie walked with Tom, the two of them surrounded by silent Londoners, some carrying guns.
“What has Wren been doing?” he asked as they hurried him along.
“Spying,” said Clytie. “She and Kobold were found … where they should not be.”
“Wren’s just a girl!” Tom protested. “She may be inquisitive and foolish, but she’s not a spy! What was she spying on, anyway? What is this place you found her in?”
“Easier to show you than explain,” said Clytie.
Tom pulled his coat more tightly around him. It wasn’t just the cold that made him shiver. He had a feeling that he was close to learning the secret of his city. Had Wren discovered it already for herself? Was that was this was all about? He felt proud of her bravery, but worried, too, in case she was in danger.
In an open doorway at the foot of a wall of wreckage Dr Childermass and five of her fellow Engineers stood waiting; six bald heads like a clutch of eggs. “Mr Natsworthy,” said the Engineer, with a faint, weary smile. “You may as well see the project. No doubt your daughter and her friend will tell you about it anyway. As long as we can dissuade our more excitable colleagues from shooting them, that is.”
Up a stairway, through a plastic curtain, and out on to a narrow metal viewing platform where Garamond and a gaggle of his people stood around Wren and Wolf Kobold. They had both been made to kneel, and their hands were tied. Dr Childermass said, “Oh, don’t be such a twerp, Mr Garamond!”
“They were in a restricted area! Spying!” Garamond complained.
“Only because you let them come here,” retorted the Engineer. “Really, Garamond, your people are appallingly slack. Now let them go.”
