Our Lady of the Streets

by Tom Pollock

  ‘The whole country?’ Pen pressed. ‘Would it spread over the ocean floor? Could it cover the whole world?’

  It sounded ridiculous: The World. Like a supervillain’s boast from a Saturday morning cartoon. But Gutterglass couldn’t contradict it, and anyway, Beth knew it wasn’t the world that Pen was really worried about.

  It could be halfway to Birmingham by now. She could see in Pen’s brown eyes that she was picturing her parents tucked up in her Aunt Soraya’s house, with thousand-degree Fever Streets heading their way.

  ‘What can we do?’ Pen demanded again.

  Her cuticles were bleeding now where she’d worried away at them, and Beth couldn’t help noticing that the barbs on the wire were drawing tighter into her, the more agitated her voice became. ‘We have to do something. What can we do?’

  Beth was about to admit she didn’t know when she sensed an idea at the back of her head – an idea so strange, so unlikely, that she wasn’t sure it had really come from her at all. She recoiled from it, appalled that she’d even thought it, but then she looked back at Pen, hesitated and went to speak.

  Don’t say it, Beth. Fil’s voice sounded in her mind. Once you’ve said it, you can’t take it back. You’ll get her hopes up and you don’t know it’s even possible.

  It could be though, couldn’t it? she countered silently. You thought of the cranes at the same time I did. It was you who put that idea in my head. She looked at her street-scored hands. If Mater Viae did it, maybe I could do it too.

  She’s healthy. You’re sick.

  I know.

  Beth, you’re dying.

  There’s enough left in me for this. She said it to herself with more confidence than she felt.

  Have you totally lost it? Fil’s voice demanded. Have you forgotten what it cost us to put him down the first time?

  Beth pictured a railing-spear, its point scratching a bloody star in Fil’s chest as her hand trembled. I haven’t forgotten. I won’t ever forget.

  Beth, please. When he’s done with a place, there’s no life, no energy – he’ll leave nothing to sustain you. You know that. If you do this, if he gives you what you want, you’ll die.

  Like you said, Fil, I’m dying anyway.

  ‘Beth?’ Beth met Pen’s eyes; she saw the anxiety there, the need and the desperate hope that, somehow, Beth could help her. ‘You … you looked like you were going to say something?’

  Beth, please, Fil started, but the churn of gears and turbines and the growl of cars from Beth’s body drowned him out as she started to speak. ‘There’s one thing we could try,’ she said. ‘It’s risky, but we don’t have an army and we don’t have much time, so I guess this is the only idea on the table.’

  ‘What is it?’ Pen asked.

  ‘London’s sick,’ Beth said. ‘The city is killing its inhabitants, infecting everything it touches – and it’s growing, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘The only way to stop it growing is to kill it. So we kill it. We need someone who can do that, who can demolish an entire city. Tell me,’ she said, ‘does that sound like anyone we know?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Pen led the way through the labyrinth. Of all of them, she knew the way the best. Beth followed close behind her, looking over her shoulder, her eyes washing the narrow passages through the collapsed masonry in traffic-light green.

  It was three hours since they’d stood on the radio mast. Pen had gaped at Beth as she’d explained what passed for her plan, and her jaw had virtually unhinged itself when Beth had insisted they execute it that very day.

  ‘Why?’ she’d said. ‘Why are we rushing into it? Can’t we at least take a day to think of something’ – she’d groped – ‘a little less batshit?’

  Beth had shaken her head.

  ‘Why not?’

  Beth had held up her arm so Pen could see the rough streaks of newly clotted Tideway where her veins had once been. ‘Because tomorrow I might not be well enough any more.’

  So now here she was, crawling behind Pen, elbow over elbow through the wreckage around St Paul’s, with Gutterglass behind her, and Petris laboriously bringing up the rear. Beth had tried to order the granite monk to stay behind, but he’d replied with a curt, ‘Fuck off, My Lady,’ and that had been that. None of the others had been allowed to come, though, not Ixia nor Astral nor the rest of the stoneskins. If she failed, Beth wanted them to have a chance to run.

  Run where? Fil’s voice asked bitterly. You’re about to give their home to His cranes.

  Beth took another step. She relaxed the muscles in her feet, but nothing came through. This was a Demolition Field, the city’s scar tissue. There were no symptoms here, and no life either.

  No life, Fil picked up the thought, no energy to feed off. No Urbosynthesis, not ever. If you get what you want – make all of London like this – you’ll starve. He was silent for a moment in her head, and then, in a tone of realisation said, You’re giving up.

  Beth felt a shiver run down her spine. She gave a tight shake of her head. I’m not, she thought back. Inside her hood, Oscar curled into her neck crooning unhappily, but Beth told herself it was just the confined space that frightened him.

  You are. Fil’s voice was shocked. Glas might still come through with a treatment, but you don’t care. You’re giving up.

  Beth’s lip curled into a sour half-smile. I’m saving the world.

  London is the world, Fil snapped.

  For us, Beth thought, her gaze flashing off the steel that bound Pen. Not for her.

  The tunnel widened and natural light seeped through cracks in the ceiling, making tiny waterfalls of dust glow. They emerged into a pyramid-shaped chamber. Beth felt a thrill of recognition and tightened her grip on her spear. Ahead of her, Pen didn’t so much as break step, but Beth thought she saw the barbs on the coils that wrapped the back of her neck prick up as though they sensed something.

  When they finally emerged, coughing and blinking, back into the daylight, Beth was jarred by the silence. In her memory, this place was full of glare and clamour: sunlight springing sharp from newly built skyscrapers, the shriek of machine gears and the footsteps of steel giants.

  Now though, the clouds stifled the sun and the cranes that loomed over the building site were motionless. Two half-built towers reared up, one to the north and one to the east. The scaffolding that sheathed them was piebald with rust.

  Pen hugged herself against the cold as Beth stomped forward. From where she stood, the undulations of the rubble-strewn ground looked random, but she remembered hanging over it from the yard-arm of a crane. She knew that, from above, these crags and hillocks would become the eyes and chin and cheeks of the Demolition God, hewn from London’s bedrock. The dust covered Him like a funeral shroud.

  So, Fil, she thought, how do I do this?

  What, you want me to help now? the voice in her head grumbled. Piss off.

  She should, she reflected, probably have expected that. She closed her eyes. Now her mind was a city made of shadows, and she filled it with the dark, malevolent shapes of cranes; she imagined them as the fingers of a vast entity, hewn into the bedrock of the city. She took in a deep breath, leaned heavily on her spear and tried to pour the idea into the dead earth under her.

  Stop! Even in her head, Fil sounded incredulous. What in the name of my Mother’s tiled left tit are you doing?

  Beth’s concentration dissolved. Her eyes flickered open. What does it look like I’m doing? I’m raising Reach.

  Well, for Thames’ sake, don’t do it that way! You couldn’t even turn out a couple of Pavement Priests a couple of days ago – if you try and recreate the Crane King from scratch out of your own bleedin’ head you’ll die of exhaustion before you’ve got one flywheel turning.

  If you’ve got any advice, I’m all ears, Beth shot back. Well, actually, I’m all roads and houses and satellite dishes, but you know what I mean.

  Fil called her a name so vile that Beth was genuine
ly impressed. He went on swearing for a good half-minute before saying, All right, kneel down.

  Beth obeyed, her knees knocking up little scuffs of concrete dust where they hit the floor. She could feel the others’ anxiety as they watched her.

  Plant both hands palms flat to the floor. Spread your fingers. The Crane King already exists, Beth; River knows we don’t need a second one. He’s here somewhere, in this machinery, this concrete and clay. We just need to wake Him up.

  Even with her palms pressed firmly against the ground, Beth still had a fleeting impression of a grey-skinned hand gently taking hers.

  Ready? Fil’s voice asked her. Go.

  She closed her eyes and her mind sank into the city beneath her. For a second she was swimming below the surface, baffled by the darkness, her fevered mind too slow to let go of the senses that had brought her this far. Gradually though, her awareness uncurled in the lightless, airless subcutaneous city, and she began to sense its structure: pipes, cables, layers of sediment, electric fields, all interwoven like muscle fibres, with wires like nerve-endings. She brushed them gently with her mind, but felt nothing from them. They were dead.

  Fil led her deeper; she could feel him tugging further down, into the bedrock beneath the clay. Beth felt an ache and at first couldn’t work out where; at last she realised it was in her skull. She was concentrating so hard it was hurting. Her attention almost snapped back to her body on the surface, but she wrestled it under control.

  She sensed something – a whisper of motion from a cracked pipe or a hissing of sparks from a mains cable behind her. Her mind flitted back to it, but in the instant it had taken her to find and focus on it, it had fallen silent.

  Further down, Fil urged, and further out. Try to sense the whole site at once.

  Beth tried, but it was like trying to wrap her arms around a cathedral. She stretched and strained. The pain in her head flared, but she was only vaguely aware of it. Gradually, like rainwater, her consciousness soaked further and further into the porous rock.

  With a rill of horror she realised she was filtering through corpses: Masonry Men and Women in the Walls: civilians, not soldiers in any war. The splinters of a shattered Sodiumite needled her and she almost fled back to the site above.

  Steady, Fil whispered. They’re already dead. You can’t hurt them. They can’t hurt you. It’s okay, Beth, take your time. Try to get a sense of the place as a whole.

  Other motions reached her, other scraps of almost-sound: a sigh of concrete expanding with the heat, a drip of groundwater. She strained her mind further and became aware that, on the surface, she’d gritted her church-spire teeth. She felt the whole site poised above her. She was spread so thin she was afraid she would break up. She was trembling. She was too tired, too sick. She couldn’t hold it …

  … I will …

  Beth froze. It was the barest of vibrations, hardly even a sound at all. It began with some sand shifting in the wake of a worm on the east side and finished with a spark discharging on the west. You had to be spread the whole way under the site to make sense of it.

  Her mind screaming with the effort, Beth waited.

  I will …

  There it came again: a whisper dying before it was even spoken, like a breath exhaled in sleep. Ten more seconds, and it came again: I will …

  Wait for it to come round again, Beth. You know what to do.

  She did, instinctively, she knew. The part of her that had once been a Goddess remembered this. She began to scavenge from all the little forces acting in her city-body, from the turbines in the power stations in her stomach and the foundations straining under the buildings in her knees, from the lights in her eyes and the cranes in her fingers, she sucked up what little energy she could spare and held it thrumming in the core of her body far above.

  … I will …

  Beth sprang.

  She let her power discharge down through her palms and in the vaults of her mind she heard Fil’s voice join with hers as she yelled, ‘BE!’

  The site shuddered and Beth’s grip slipped. Her mind flew back into her body and she knelt on the rubble shivering and coughing and hacking.

  And then, past the sound of her own wheezing, she heard gears start to whine.

  Petrol engines coughed into life. Vast drills lowered themselves to the ground and their steel teeth shrieked into the concrete.

  Beth’s gasps were drowned out by the thunderous noise. The earth shook under the diggers. Crane-mounted hooks slammed into wreckage. Concrete dust billowed like stormclouds. The ground lurched and shifted, shale subsided and a crater opened up under her head. She stared down into it. Recessed into the vast socket was a rough orb – a stone eyeball. The hollow pupil that had been gouged from it was fathomless.

  I AM REACH, the machines sang together. I AM REACH.

  Inside her mind, Beth felt Fil shrink from that voice. A shadow passed over her and she looked up. A crane-arm reared in skeletal silhouette. Its cable whirred as it wound back its hook and Beth could do nothing but watch.

  I WILL BE.

  Pen screamed.

  Beth’s heart lurched in her chest.

  It was a shriek of agony, so loud it carried clear over the frantic song of Reach’s engines. Beth tried to push herself up, but her muscles were exhausted and she fell painfully back onto her face.

  Pen screamed again and again, over and over. Beth felt like her heart was cracking under the sound of it. As the dust cleared, Beth saw her: arched backwards, impossibly balanced on tiptoes with her arms thrown back above her head. It was the wire – the wire held her, bound tourniquet-tight around her abdomen, her chest, her legs. Beth could see Pen’s clothes darkening as blood soaked them; droplets spilled onto the ground from the curve of her spine.

  An umbilical of steel strained into the air from Pen’s stomach, twisting and snapping, reaching for the tip of the nearest crane. Her toes skidded sharply through the dust as it dragged her forwards a foot.

  Beth stared helplessly, remembering.

  Reach has a priestess too. The Wire Mistress, we call her, the Demolition clergy.

  They’d brought the cursed thing home.

  ‘Miss Khan!’ Petris roared in his gravel voice. He surged towards her in a blur of granite. The wire lashed almost contemptuously and the Pavement Priest crashed heavily to the floor. His stone monk’s form flickered and shuddered amidst the rubble, but he failed to rise.

  Again Beth tried to push herself up; again she slipped back. Acid filled her mouth. She’d poured everything she had into Reach; she had nothing left.

  Pen screamed on. Gutterglass ran towards her. Beth could see the fear in his eggshell eyes. He dissolved into a chaotic tangle of scrap metal and pigeon wings and plastic and then suddenly he was a tiger, baring rusty-nail fangs and crouching to spring. Pen’s scream changed; it took on a shape, resolving in the air until it was a single word:

  ‘Wait!’

  Pen’s eyes were wide in her head, her neck corded, but her voice had authority. ‘Wait!’ she cried again.

  Gutterglass growled but didn’t move, except for swishing his hosepipe tail.

  With sudden violence, Pen swung her hand around and seized the wire that stretched from her abdomen. The metal hissed angrily.

  Pen’s lips were moving, and Beth could just make out the words amidst Reach’s clamour: ‘We will understand one another, you and I.’

  Blood ran between her fingers where she gripped the wire, but she wasn’t screaming any more. ‘Put. Me. Down.’

  Slowly, Pen’s heels descended towards the ground. The Mistress coiled and lashed almost piteously, but it couldn’t move even an inch closer to the crane it so longed for. Beth watched, awestruck, as Pen held it for five more seconds, and then, very softly said, ‘Go.’

  She cracked the wire in her hand like it was a whip, and the steel tendril shot out and lashed around the steel struts at the top of the crane.

  I WILL BE, Reach shrieked.

  ‘Only if yo
u listen,’ Pen said clearly. Her eyes were closed now. ‘If you don’t, you will never wake again.’

  The wire stretched between her fist and the crane shivered like a steel guitar string, modulating its frequency as she spoke.

  Beth gaped, but in her head it was Fil who spoke. She’s speaking to him through the Mistress. His voice mirrored her astonishment. Steel speaking to steel.

  ‘We woke you,’ Pen continued. ‘We have a common enemy. You have to listen to us.’

  I WILL BE!

  Reach is a child, Beth thought; he’s a baby – how can he possibly understand her?

  His mind is a child’s mind. Fil sounded awestruck. But she’s not talking to his mind. She’s talking to the system of him, the cranes, the scaffolding, the Scaffwolves, the dirt, the whole fucking mechanism of him: it understands what will keep him alive. That must be how the Mistress always talked to him – not to what he thinks, but what he is. It’s a metal language. It’s like she’s talking to his DNA.

  I WILL BE!

  The cranes and diggers shook in their rage, and the ground shook with them. Pen stumbled, and for a second she looked uncertain. ‘Please,’ she gasped, but she didn’t seem to know what else to say.

  Beth, Fil’s voice whispered, suddenly full of urgency, go to her.

  Using her spear as a lever, Beth managed to get to her feet. She swayed over to Pen’s side. Now, Fil muttered to her, say what I say, and tell Pen to repeat it.

  Fil, I—

  Just trust me.

  ‘Pen,’ Beth swallowed hard, ‘repeat after me.’

  And the message was relayed from Fil’s voice to Beth to Pen and finally up the Mistress’ taut-drawn wire, and of all of those voices, only Pen’s rose clearly above the clamour.

  ‘The Lady of the Streets silenced you, and She will do it again if you don’t help us. She doesn’t need you any more. The city She’s wrought will grow by itself. It has no use for a Construction God.’

  I WILL BE!

  ‘Only if you help – only if you stop the sickened city in its tracks. Only if you do what we tell you. We will help you. We will protect you from Her.’