Predator Cities x 4 and The Traction Codex

by Philip Reeve

  At first they thought both airships were gone, but when Theo collided with the Archaeopteryx’s underside tail-fin they realized that only the Jenny Haniver was missing.

  “Who goes there?” shouted a nervous voice.

  “It’s me! Wren!”

  A greyish stain appeared in the fog and condensed into Will Hallsworth and Jake Henson.

  “It is, you know,” said Jake.

  “Pass, friend,” said Will.

  “Where’s my dad?” demanded Wren, who didn’t have time for games of soldiers.

  “He came by early this morning,” said Jake.

  “Very early,” agreed Will. “Said Mr Pomeroy had asked him to take the Jenny on a reconnaissance trip and he’d be back soon. I ’spect he’s circling up there now, delayed by all this fog.”

  “It’s a real London particular!” said Jake.

  “Why didn’t you stop him, you idiots!” screamed Wren.

  “Steady on!”

  “He said it was orders from the committee. We couldn’t argue with that.”

  “Was he armed?” asked Theo.

  Will and Jake looked sheepish. “Not when he got here, no.”

  “But he made us give him one of our lightning guns. He said he might need it if he ran into any of those Stalker-birds up above all this pea-soup.”

  Wren turned to Theo, almost fell against him. She was tired by their journey along the Holloway Road, and she felt that she would never see her father again. She was ready to cry. “He’s gone. He’s gone for ever!”

  Echoey sounds came out of the dank throat of Holloway Road. Footsteps and voices. Someone was approaching, and the sound of their coming was rolling ahead of them down the tunnel. Theo held Wren and tried to comfort her while they all waited for the newcomers to emerge. The hard beams of electric lanterns poked through the fog, lighting up all the little individual water droplets without illuminating anything.

  “Zagwan?” said a tetchy voice, from behind the torch-glow.

  “Me?” asked Theo.

  “Put your hands up! Step away from the airship!”

  “I’m nowhere near it,” protested Theo.

  “No, that’s me,” said Will Hallsworth.

  “Is it?” A shape blurred out of the fog. It was Garamond, holding the revolver he had taken from Wolf

  Kobold. “Where’s Wren?”

  “Here,” said Wren. “What is all this about?”

  “We caught you just in time, I see,” said Garamond.

  “Just in time for what?”

  Other figures were appearing behind Garamond; they surrounded Wren and Theo in the fog like a circle of stones. Wren thought she recognized Ron Hodge and Cat Luperini among them.

  “They were going to steal the Archaeopteryx!” said Garamond, loud and triumphant. “Natsworthy has taken his own airship east, and now he sends his daughter and their Green Storm accomplice to take the Archie. They planned to leave us with no way of escape when the Storm’s Stalkers march in.”

  “What are you talking about, you silly little man?” shouted Wren. “My dad’s gone to try and talk to Naga…”

  “Exactly! To betray us to his Green Storm paymasters; yes; we have read the letter. I thought it was a little too neat, your African friend turning up at the very moment the birds struck! You arranged that attack just so that he could appear to save us, thinking it would make us trust him. Well, Wren Natsworthy, I have news for you; I don’t trust him; I don’t trust you, and I don’t trust your traitor father!”

  Wren’s fist caught him full on the nose. He went backwards into the fog with a muffled squeal (“Ow! By doze! By doze!”). Theo held Wren back as she tried to fling herself upon him, though she couldn’t even see him any more. Sobbing, she screamed at the fog that hid him. “What were you doing, reading my letter? That was private! From my father! I told Angie to show it to Mr Pomeroy, nobody else!”

  “Wren,” said Cat, coming to help Theo restrain her. “Wren, Wren…”

  “It’s Garamond who’s the real traitor! When Mr Pomeroy hears you tried to arrest Theo he’ll—”

  “Wren…”

  “What?”

  Cat hung her head, fog-water dripping from her hair. “Mr Pomeroy is dead.”

  “What?”

  “Angie found him when she took your father’s letter to his hut. All yesterday’s excitement must have been too much for him. He died last night, in his sleep.”

  Garamond lurched out of the fog, one hand clutching his nose, blood dribbling down his chin. “Take theb both!” he ordered nasally. “Tie their hands. Brig theb to Crouch Ed. The Ebergency Cobbittee can decide what to do with theb.”

  41

  BACK IN BATMUNKH GOMPA

  The Jenny Haniver purred eastward through the poisoned sky, towards the wall of mountains which marked the eastern borders of Shan Guo, and the broad pass through them which was barred and guarded by Batmunkh Gompa. As he drew close to the fortress-city Tom opened the general channel on his radio set and sent out again the message he had been repeating ever since he left London, explaining that he came in peace. There was still no reply. He turned the knobs on the front of the set, scrolling up and down the airwaves. Static spat and popped like a fir-cone fire, and some kind of interference shrilled. Faintly, behind the gales of white noise, someone was speaking Shan Guonese, fast and panicky.

  Ten miles more to the mountains. Tom had flown through these skies before, with Hester, flying from Batmunkh Gompa to London in an attempt to stop another Ancient weapon. He tried not to think about how that voyage had ended, but he could not keep the memories from welling up. Doubts started to gnaw at him. He had failed then, and he would fail again. His scheme of pleading with Naga, which had seemed so promising to him last night, began to feel more and more like madness. He should not be here! He should have stayed with Wren…

  He started to put the Jenny about, but as he did so he saw three arrowheads of dark shapes waiting for him in the sky astern. He felt his heart clench like a fist. Memories of yesterday’s attack and the birds on the long stair at Rogues’ Roost wheeled round him. He snatched Jake Henson’s lightning gun from the co-pilot’s seat, trying to ready himself for the attack. The birds would make short work of the Jenny, but at least he would take a few dozen of them with him.

  The birds held their position. He started to realize that they were not attacking, just keeping watch on him. Perhaps they had been there ever since he rose out of the fog-banks over London. It was so hard to see anything in this hazy, tar-brown light…

  And then, at last, the voice he had been waiting for came rustling out of the radio set; a stern voice, speaking in Shan Guonese. He looked eastward, and saw the white envelopes of two Fox Spirits glowing in the gloomy sky. The voice translated its order into Anglish. “Barbarian airship, cut your engines. Prepare to be boarded. We are the Green Storm.”

  Tom had just time to stow the lightning gun in a hiding place high in the envelope before they came aboard. They were as unfriendly as the Green Storm soldiers he remembered from Rogues’ Roost, but they were not arrogant any more; they seemed afraid. “How did you know General Naga is at Batmunkh Gompa?” they demanded angrily, when Tom tried to explain what he was doing here in the air-approaches of their city.

  “I didn’t. Is he? I thought he’d be in Tienjing. That’s your capital, isn’t it? I thought from Batmunkh Gompa you would be able to take me to Tienjing.”

  “Tienjing is gone,” said the leader of the Storm patrol, pacing about nervously on the Jenny’s flight-deck.

  “Gone? What do you mean, gone?”

  The young officer didn’t answer. Then she said, “Anna Fang’s ship was called the Jenny Haniver. I saw a film about her life in basic training.”

  “This is the same ship,” said Tom eagerly. “Anna was a friend of mine. I inherited the Jenny when she was, when she…”

  “Quiet!” screamed the officer in Shan Guonese, wheeling round to quell the outburst of whispering that had broken out
among her men. They seemed to come from half a dozen different countries, and were busy translating Tom’s words for each other. The officer barked more orders, and two of them came forward to hold Tom and manacle his hands. “You will come with us to Batmunkh Gompa,” she said.

  “I just want a chance to talk to General Naga,” said Tom hopefully. “I have something important to tell him.”

  “About the new weapon?”

  “Well, partly, I suppose…”

  More whispering, more orders, none in any language that Tom could understand. Some of the men returned to their own ship and reeled in their spidery boarding-bridge. The officer took control of the Jenny Haniver, and Tom peered over her shoulder as they flew on towards Batmunkh Gompa, remembering how he had first come here with Anna and Hester all those years ago. The Wall was as sheer and black as before, and still armoured with the deckplates of dead cities, vast discs of metal like the shields of ancient warriors. But on the summit, where the oak-leaf banners of the League had blown, long lightning-bolt flags hung limply in the reddish sun, and between them an immense statue of Anna Fang stood pointing westward, summoning the people of the mountains to battle against the Traction Cities. As the Jenny descended past her Tom noticed that she was a lot prettier than the real Anna Fang had been, and that a lot of bird-droppings had drizzled down her face.

  Then they were over the wall, and sinking past the vertical city on its eastern side, the pretty laddered streets and swallow’s-nest houses all just as Tom remembered them, except that extra docking pans had been constructed on the lower levels, and hundreds of concrete barrack blocks now covered the valley floor at the western end of the lake. The Jenny flew over them, making for a cluster of buildings outside the city proper, on a crag which jutted out from the northern wall of the pass. Tom saw an old nunnery perched on the flat summit surrounded by what looked like an encampment of tents. The lightning-bolt flags were everywhere, interspersed with giant-sized portraits of General Naga. On the pan at the crag’s foot where the Jenny set down someone had scrawled big Chinese letters in whitewash, and then underneath, in shaky Anglish ones, SHE IS RISEN!

  “What does that mean?” asked Tom.

  “It means nothing,” snapped his captor. “The lies of Anti-Naga troublemakers.” She was a grim young woman, and not in any mood to chat, but she did at least allow Tom to keep his green heart-pills when her men hustled him across the pan to one of the squat blockhouses behind it, and then into a tiny, limewashed, concrete cell.

  All the time he was being ordered about, or marched around; all the time someone else was in charge of him, Tom had felt quite fearless; what happened next was not up to him, and barely seemed to matter. But as soon as the iron-bound door slammed shut on him and he was left alone his fears came crowding in. What was he doing here? How was Wren coping, back in London? And what had that Green Storm girl meant when she said Tienjing had gone? Had he misheard her? Had she used the wrong word?

  It was very quiet in the cell. Strangely so, for when he was last in Batmunkh Gompa one of the things which had hooked in his memory were the sounds; the puttering motors of the balloon taxis, the cries of street vendors, the music from the open-fronted teahouses and bars. He stood on the bunk in the corner of his cell and looked out of the small, barred window. The city stretched away from him, a scarp of stairs and houses where nothing moved but the flags. No smoke rose from the chimneys; no airships waited in the harbour, only a few scurrying figures could be seen on the steep streets. It was as if the city had been abandoned, and the people who remained had all pitched tents on the crag above. A mystery…

  Footsteps, voices, out in the narrow entryway beyond his door. He jumped down, surprised. He had expected to wait hours or days for the Storm to deal with him. But the door opened, armed guards in white uniforms took up positions on either side of it, training their guns on Tom, and with a clank of armour a tall, yellowish man whom he recognized as General Naga came in, stooping as his exoskeleton carried him through the low doorway. Tom was relieved that his request for an audience had been taken seriously, but astonished by the speed; panicked, too, for he had not quite finished working out what he was going to say to this fierce-looking soldier.

  Naga’s narrow eyes narrowed even more as he looked Tom slowly up and down, taking in his travel-stained clothes and unkempt hair. His armour looked scraped and battered and servomotors inside it whined and crunched unhealthily when he moved. There was a wound on his face, freshly dressed with lint and sticking-plaster.

  “You are the barbarians’ envoy?”

  Tom was taken aback. What was the man talking about?

  “You came in the Wind-Flower’s old ship, and claim to bring word of the weapon. But you look like a sky-tramp. Not even in uniform. Are the Traktionstadts so certain of victory now that they expect me to surrender to a buffoon?”

  “Surrender? But the new weapon…”

  “Yes, yes!” shouted Naga. “The new weapon! You have destroyed Tienjing, you have destroyed Batmunkh Tsaka; you almost destroyed me!”

  Tom felt as if a chart which had been guiding him through treacherous territory had suddenly turned out to be upside-down all along. A bad-dream feeling. If Naga did not control the ODIN weapon, who did? The cities? But those fires in the west last night… Had the Storm not seen those cities burn? Had the news not reached them?

  He closed his eyes and breathed deeply for a moment. This was all beyond him. But he could still do what he had come here for. “I’m nothing to do with the Traktionstadts,” he said. “I come from London.”

  “London?”

  “I came to ask you … to beg you … The survivors there – I know you know of them – they are building something; have been building something for many years… They are making a new city; a city that hovers, and will not harm the earth, and has no wish to eat any static city of yours. I’m here to tell you that they – we – mean you no harm; we have no quarrel with the Storm. If you could call off your birds, and let us go in peace when we leave the debris fields…”

  Naga was frowning. “A hovering city?”

  “It’s called magnetic levitation,” said Tom. “It sort of floats…” He waved his hands about, trying to demonstrate, and then remembered something Lavinia Childermass had said. “It’s not really a city at all, more a very large, low-flying airship… My daughter is there…”

  Naga turned to one of the officers behind him and barked out something in Shan Guonese. Tom didn’t know many of the words, but he recognized the tone. The general was asking, “Is this fellow mad? Why are you wasting my time with him?” A moment later, without another look at Tom, he stalked out of the cell, his guards behind him.

  “Please,” Tom shouted, “your wife will vouch for me! Is she here? Are her companions here?” (It had suddenly occurred to him that if Tienjing had been destroyed, Hester might have been destroyed with it.) He said, “Please, I am a friend of Theo Ngoni and Hester…”

  “My wife?” Naga turned, glaring at him. “She is on her way home. I will certainly tell her all about you when she arrives.” But he made it sound like a threat, not a promise.

  The door slammed shut. Tom was left alone again.

  Outside, Naga stopped for a moment to think. His men clustered together, glancing fearfully towards the misty heights of Batmunkh Gompa. He knew what they feared. It seemed inconceivable that after destroying Tienjing the barbarians had not turned their devil-weapon on the Shield-Wall and opened a path for themselves into the mountain kingdoms. And yet, when the few airships he had managed to salvage from the disaster at Tienjing flew here at dawn they found the place untouched, although the populace and half the garrison had already fled into the hills. What were the townies waiting for? (Naga had already discounted the reports which said that Traction Cities had been destroyed last night, too. They must be mistakes, or lies put out by the enemy to add to the Storm’s confusion.)

  And what did the appearance of this madman Natsworthy mean, aboard the F
lower’s old ship?

  “London,” he muttered. “Poor Dzhu told me something about London.”

  One of his officers, a captain from the Batmunkh Gompa garrison, saluted smartly and said, “There has been increased activity among the squatters there, Excellency. We have been watching them with spybirds.”

  “You have records?”

  “There is a file in the Intelligence office on Thousand Stair Avenue.”

  “Hurry there, and fetch it.”

  The captain saluted and ran off, grey-faced with fear and clearly expecting the fire from the sky to fall on Batmunkh Gompa at any instant. Naga watched him go. He thought wistfully for a moment of Oenone and then crushed the thought and muttered, “London…”

  He remembered the night after the Wind-Flower died; how he had stood on the top of the Shield-Wall while the smoke of the burnt northern air-fleet drifted up from the hangars below him, and faint and far away the lights of London glittered. It seemed to General Naga that all the troubles of the world began with London.

  42

  THE FUNERAL DRUM

  That afternoon, as the fog thinned and dirty sunlight broke over the debris fields, the people of London buried their Lord Mayor. Bareheaded, and with black mourning-bands tied around their sleeves, eight members of the Emergency Committee carried the shrouded body of the old Historian along a winding, little-used path between the rust-hills, while the rest of London followed, and Timex Grout beat out a solemn, steady rhythm on a drum made from an old oil-can. Boom, boom, boom, the echoes rolled away, across the wreckage, out across the plains beyond, up into the mottled sky where a few Stalker-birds still circled, very high, watched all the time by lookouts with charged lightning guns.

  In Putney Vale, a mossy space between the masses of debris, where trees grew thickly and shaded the graves of all the other Londoners who had died since MEDUSA-night, they laid him to rest, and piled the earth over him, and marked the place with a metal marker, carved with the symbol of his Guild, the eye which gazes backwards into time. Lavinia Childermass offered up a prayer to Quirke, asking London’s creator to welcome the old man when his soul reached the Sunless Country. (She did not believe in gods or afterlives, being an Engineer, but she had been Pomeroy’s friend as well as his deputy, and she understood the need for this ritual.) Then Clytie Potts stepped forward and sang in a thin, uncertain voice a paean to the goddess Clio.