by Philip Reeve
Only an owl!
Only an owl…
Shuddering, Pennyroyal took a nip of brandy from his secret hip flask and started hunting along the water’s edge for Tom’s anti-Stalker gun. The boy had said that Hester dropped it here somewhere. Pennyroyal didn’t mean to go any closer to that damned house without it. Ah! There it was. Still humming. Looked undamaged. A dashed odd-looking weapon, but they don’t call me Dead-eye Pennyroyal for nothing! Setting the stock of the strange gun firmly against my shoulder (is that where it’s supposed to go?) I resumed my cat-like progress…
The Stalker Fang was busy with her machinery. From time to time the words and numbers crawling across the goggle screen were replaced with a furry, greyish picture. Tom realized that he was seeing what no human being had seen for millennia; the world from space, viewed through the eye of ODIN. Oddly, it was not very impressive.
Could ODIN really destroy humanity? Surely it would break, or run out of power, or something in that crazy stack of old machinery that the Stalker was using to talk to it would go wrong, and that would be the end of her plans. It made him angry that he and Hester had come so far and sacrificed so much to avert such a tatty effort. At least MEDUSA had looked worth dying for; its entrails had filled a cathedral, and its cobra-hood had towered over London. This new weapon was just space-junk, controlled by a mad old Stalker from a place that looked and smelled like a teenager’s bedroom…
Beside him, Hester gave a little grunt of triumph as the knife severed the rope on her wrists. She stooped to start work on the one which bound her ankles.
The Stalker Fang was talking to ODIN again, tapping at her ivory keys, whispering the codes to herself as she conducted her bargain-basement apocalypse. Sometimes she whispered something to Tom and Hester, too: “Just think, my dears; all that pretty lava…” Anna Fang had liked having someone to talk to, and the Stalker she had become had inherited the taste. When Hester whispered, “Now!” and Tom rolled off the bed and stood up she said, “Where are you going?”
“Come on!” hissed Hester, her arm around him, supporting him, dragging him towards the nearest window. She hadn’t Tom’s education, and she hadn’t really followed the Stalker’s rambling talk. All she cared about was saving Tom. She refused to believe that there was no hope at all.
But Tom knew there was little point in trying to outrun the Stalker Fang, who turned and came towards them as they neared the window. He twisted round to face her. Hester was still trying to drag him to the window, but Tom shook free of her. He had come to Shan Guo to talk, not to fight; if Naga wouldn’t listen to him, perhaps this Stalker might. I am not Anna, she had said, just a bundle of Anna’s memories… But what was anyone but a bundle of memories?
Tom reached out to her. “We can’t stay,” he said. “We have a daughter. She’ll need us.”
The Stalker’s eyes flickered. “A daughter…”
“Her name’s Wren.”
“A daughter…” She clapped her hands together with a clang. “Tom, Hester… How wonderful! When I, when Anna first saw you together she, I knew you were meant for each other! And now you have a baby girl…”
“She’s not a baby girl any more,” said Hester. “She’s a great big stroppy young woman.”
“We brought her up,” said Tom, “we kept her safe; we taught her things; she learned to fly the Jenny Haniver… And now you want to kill her along with everybody else.”
The Stalker shrugged – an odd movement for a Stalker; it made her armour grate. “You can’t break eggs without making an omelette, Tom. Or is it the other way around? Where is she, this daughter of yours?”
“In London,” said Tom. “In the wreck of London. The people there are building a new city, a floating city…” He wished now that he had paid more attention to Dr Childermass’s technical explanations. “It doesn’t claw up the ground, it doesn’t eat other cities, it doesn’t even use up much fuel. Why can’t it have a place in your green world? Why can’t Wren?”
The Stalker hissed and turned away, going back to her machines.
Tom stumbled after her, and Hester, who had resigned herself to listening to the two of them chat, came with him.
The Stalker’s fingers were rattling at her keyboards again. The grey image on the central screen changed, from a view of Zhan Shan’s blazing wound to a more distant panorama of the clouded limb of the earth. Then it began to close in again, the machinery behind the screen wheezing and clicking, the images flicking past like shuffled cards. A charcoal-grey patch expanded to become the wreck of London, then filled the screen. Tom recognized Putney Vale and the Womb as ODIN’s gaze slid eastward, then north.
“Nothing moving…” whispered the Stalker.
“What are those bright patches?” asked Tom.
“Those are burning airships.”
“What?” Tom stared as more specks of white fire slid past; then, just off the northern edge of the wreck, a burning sprawl like a hole torn in the screen. What had happened in the debris fields since he’d been gone? What had happened to Wren? His heart clenched into a fist and began to batter at his ribs.
“Ah!” hissed the Stalker. “That must be your floating city…”
She was quicker at reading the grainy pictures than Tom. It took him a moment to understand that he was looking down at New London. It was well outside the debris fields, moving north. And still the machinery whirred and nattered and the image on the screen kept flicking, changing, pulling closer and closer to the new city until he could make out people milling about on its stern. Dozens of people, lining the handrails, staring back towards the debris fields as New London bore them safe away. And he could make out faces now; the faces of his friends; Clytie and her husband, Mr Garamond laughing for once, looking happy – And there was Wren; dishevelled, smeared with what looked like soot, but Wren for sure; he cried out as her face slipped across the screen, and the Stalker swung ODIN’s gaze to focus on her, still zooming in and in.
“It’s Wren! She’s all right!”
Tom felt Hester’s hands tighten on his arm as she watched their daughter’s face swim up towards them out of the grey fuzz of the picture. “Wren,” she said. Her voice sounded shaky. “What’s she done to her hair? It’s all lopsided… And there, behind her, look! It’s Theo!”
ODIN zoomed again and there was nothing on the screen except their daughter’s face. Tom went closer, pushing past the Stalker Fang, reaching out to touch the glass. At such close range the image started to grow vague; Wren’s face broke down into lines and specks and flares of light; this smudge of shadow an eye, that white smear her nose. He traced with his hands the curve of her cheek, wishing he could push through the screen somehow and touch her, speak to her. Surely she must be able to feel him watching her? But she only smiled and turned her head to say something to the boy behind her. Tom felt as if he were already a ghost.
The Stalker hissed like a kettle coming slowly to the boil.
“Please don’t hurt her,” said Tom.
“She will die,” the Stalker whispered. “They will all die. For the good of the earth. Your child will have a few years more, if she is lucky…”
“And what use will a few more years be if she’s starving and scared, watching the sky fill with ash?” asked Tom. He took another step towards the Stalker, excited by a sense that he was getting through to her, or to some weird, mechanized remnant of Anna Fang that nested within her. “Wren deserves to live a long time, in peace, and have children of her own, and see their children…”
“Sentimentality!” the Stalker sneered. “The life of a single child means nothing, compared with the future of all life.”
“But she is the future!” Tom cried. “Look at her! At her and Theo –”
“It is for the good of the earth,” the Stalker repeated coldly. “They will all die.”
“You don’t believe that,” Tom insisted. “The Anna bit of you doesn’t. Anna cared about people. You cared about me and Hester enough to rescue us. A
nna, don’t use the machine. Switch it off. Break it. Smash ODIN.”
He crumpled at the knees and would have fallen if Hester had not supported him. The Stalker was hissing angrily. Hester, thinking that she was about to attack, pulled Tom backwards and turned so that her own body was between them. But the creature had swung away, flailing with one hand at its own skull. “Where is Popjoy?”
“Dead,” said Hester grimly. “You killed him. It’s the talk of Batmunkh Gompa.”
“Sathya, I…” the Stalker said. “They must be exterminated. It is for the good of… Tom, Tom, Hester…”
That bony sound again; steel fingers on ivory keys. Green letters flicking up. “What is she doing?” asked Hester, afraid that the maddened Stalker was telling ODIN to drop fire on New London. Tom shook his head, as lost as her. The Stalker paused, studied a ribbon of green light that scrolled down another of her screens, typed again, hit a final key and turned to them. She was trembling; a quick, mechanical vibration, like an engine pod on full power. Her marsh-gas eyes flared and flickered. She reached out to her guests with her long, shining hands.
“What have you done?” asked Tom.
“I have… She has… We have…”
From the far side of the room, through another doorway, they heard a crunch and slither of feet on broken tiles. The Stalker spun to face the noises, her finger-glaives sliding out, and Pennyroyal shouted out in terror as he stepped into the chamber and her green eyes lit up his face. He was holding the lightning gun in front of him, and as the Stalker tensed to spring at him he squeezed the trigger. A vein of fire opened in the air, juddering between the gun’s blunt muzzle and the Stalker’s chest. The Stalker hissed and bared her claws and Pennyroyal backed away from her wailing, “Argh! Poskitt! Please! Spare me! Help! Stay away!” and never taking his fingers off the triggers. The Stalker’s robes began to burn. Lightning was crawling across her calm bronze face, St Elmo’s fire pouring from her finger-glaives. She fell heavily against the ODIN machinery and the lightning wrapped that too. Stalker-brains and goggle screens exploded, broken keyboards sent anagrams of ivory keys rattling across the floor like punched-out teeth, flames ran up the cables and set fire to the ceiling, and still Pennyroyal kept firing, and shouting, and firing, until the gun faltered and failed.
After a while, when they had started to grow used to the silence, he said, “I did it! I killed it! Me! You wouldn’t have a camera about you, I suppose?”
The Stalker Fang lay on her pyre of machinery. Tom waved away the smoke and went closer, watching her cautiously. Things were on fire inside her; he could smell the gamey stench, and see the firelight flicker beneath her armour. Her bronze mask had come off, baring the grey face beneath, shrivelled and grinning. Tom tried not to feel disgusted as he looked at it; after all, he would soon be taking the same journey himself.
The dead mouth moved. “Tom,” sighed the Stalker. “Tom.” Nothing more. The green glow in those headlamp eyes died to a pinprick, and went out.
Pennyroyal was staring at the spent gun in his hands, as if wondering how it came to be there. He dropped it, and said, “There’s an air-yacht moored down below. The keys are round that thing’s neck.”
It never occurred to Tom to ask him how he knew. He reached out and took the keys. They came away easily, for the cord they were threaded on had almost burned through.
“She is dead this time, isn’t she?” asked Pennyroyal nervously.
Tom nodded. “She’s been dead a long time. Poor Anna.” And then the pain came in his chest again and he couldn’t speak; he doubled over, groaning, while Hester clung to him and tried to soothe him.
“I say!” said Pennyroyal. “Is he all right?”
“His heart…” Hester’s voice was tiny; trembly; she’d not felt as helpless or as scared as this since she was a little girl watching her mother die. “Don’t die, Tom.” She grovelled on the floor with him, holding him as tight as she could. “Don’t leave me, I don’t want to lose you again…” She looked up through her tears at Pennyroyal. “What shall we do?”
Pennyroyal looked as scared as her. Then he said, “Doctor. We’ve got to get him to a doctor.”
“No use,” said Tom weakly. The worst of the pain had passed, leaving him white and frightened, shining with sweat in the light of the rising flames. He shook his head and said, “I saw a doctor in Peripatetiapolis and he said it was hopeless…”
“Oh, oh…” wept Hester.
“Great Poskitt!” cried Pennyroyal. “If this doctor of yours had been any good he’d hardly have been working in a little place like Peripatetiapolis, would he? Come on, we’ll find you the best medicos money and fame can buy. I’m not having you die on me, Tom; you and Hester are the only witnesses I have to the fact that I’ve just killed the Stalker Fang! Wait until the world hears about this! I’ll be back at the top of the best-seller lists in a flash!” He held out his hand. “Give me the key. He’ll never make it across the causeway. I’ll bring the sky-yacht down in the garden.”
Hester glowered at him.
“Well, all right,” said Pennyroyal, “you go and fetch the yacht, and I’ll stay here with Tom.”
“Please stay, Het,” Tom said weakly.
Hester passed the key to Pennyroyal, who said, “Hold on, Tom. Back in a jiffy. You might want to wait outside,” he added, as he hurried away. “This building’s on fire.”
Carefully, Hester began to drag Tom after him, along the villa’s mouldering halls and out into the cold of the garden. They heard Pennyroyal’s footsteps crunching off along the causeway, then silence, broken only by the rush of the flames inside the house. Firelight lapped across the gardens, gleaming on frosted grass and the ice-hung branches of bare trees. Beside a frozen fountain Hester laid Tom down, pulling off her coat to make a pillow for him. “We’re going to get you to Batmunkh Gompa,” she promised. “Oenone will sort you out. She’s a brilliant surgeon; saved Theo’s life; mine too, probably. She’ll make you well again.” She held his face between her hands. “You’re not to die,” she said. “I don’t ever want to be parted from you again: I couldn’t bear it. You’re going to be well. We’ll take the Bird Roads again…”
“Look!” said Tom.
Above the mountains, a new star had appeared. It was very bright, and it seemed to be growing larger. Tom managed to stand, walking a few paces away from the fountain for a better view.
“Tom, be careful… What is it?”
He looked back at her, his eyes shining. “It’s ODIN! It must have … blown up! That’s what she was doing, before Pennyroyal appeared. She ordered it to destroy itself…”
The new star twinkled like a Quirkemas decoration, and then began to fade. At the same instant the roof of the house collapsed with a roar and a rush of sparks, and a spear of pain went through Tom’s side, so much worse than before that even as he fell he knew this was the end of him.
Hester ran to him, her arms around him; he heard her screaming at the top of her lungs, “Pennyroyal! Pennyroyal!”
Pennyroyal reached the docking pan, and saw the boy creep out of the pines to meet him. Even here the ground was lit by the glow of the fire on the island; the sky-yacht’s silvery envelope shone cheerfully with orange reflections. Pennyroyal waved the key as he hurried towards it. “Nothing to fear now, young Fishpaste! I sorted your Stalker out. All it took was a bit of good, old-fashioned pluck.”
He unlocked the gondola and climbed inside, the boy following. The yacht was a Serapis Sunbeam, rather like the one Pennyroyal had owned in Brighton. He squeezed into the pilot’s seat and quickly found the key-slot under the main control-wheel. Lights began coming on. The fuel and gas gauges all showed half full, and the engines worked after a couple of attempts. “First I must collect my young friends,” Pennyroyal said. After what they had just endured together he felt Tom and Hester really were his friends; his comrades. He was determined that he would save young Tom.
“No,” said Fishcake coldly, from just behind him.
>
“Eh? But it’s all right, child; there’s no danger now…”
“Go now,” said Fishcake, and he reached around from behind the pilot’s seat and pressed one of the blades of Pennyroyal’s own pocket-knife against his throat.
“They left me behind,” he said.
In the garden Hester heard the engines rumble and rise, and said, “He’s coming, Tom, the airship’s coming!”
Tom wasn’t listening. All he heard was the word “airship”, and as all pain and feeling began to leave him he saw again the bright ships lifting from Salthook on the afternoon that London ate it, long ago.
The sky-yacht rose and hung above the garden. The downdraft from its engine pods whipped Hester’s hair about and made the burning house behind her roar like a furnace. She looked up. Fishcake was staring down at her through one of the gondola windows. She recognized the look on his face, solemn and triumphant all at once, and she felt sorry for him, for all the things he must have seen and been through, and all the long miles he had had to come for his revenge. Then he turned from the window and shouted something at Pennyroyal and the yacht rose, curving away towards the mountains, the drone of its engines whispering into silence.
There’s no way out this time, Hester thought. And then she thought, There is always a way out. She pulled Fishcake’s long, thin-bladed knife out of her belt again and laid it down in the shadows beside her, where it gleamed with reflections from the fire; a narrow doorway leading out of the world.
