by Philip Webb
There’s a screech from Wilbur. He’s just got two arms levered over the minute hand with his legs scrabbling against the glass. This is it. There ain’t no more chances. No more thinking things through. I pay out the harness – maybe six yards of slack. It’s got to be right, but there ain’t no time for measuring. It’s a guess and that’s that.
I swivel to face the end of the hour hand. Away from Wilbur.
Deep breath.
One more for luck.
And I go.
My head ain’t really coming with me on this one, cos with all that slack in the harness, the drop has become pretty bloody real, all three hundred and something feet of it. Two, three, four strides out onto the hour hand, speeding up as I go, out toward the grubby gold of the rim. All the sky of London surrounds me. A swirl of pigeon wings disturbed from the eaves of the tower. And a fearsome pug-nosed dragon with bat wings leering down at me, its stone eyes bulging. I plant one boot down hard on the fat arrow point of the hour hand. And I feel it give as I leap out.
Then I’m twisting in the air, with the numbers and glass panes rushing past me.
Thwack!
The harness snaps taut and stamps out my screams.
And as I open my eyes again, I’m swinging up toward Wilbur.
He’s seen me now, and I don’t reckon I ever seen anyone look that scared. Cos he knows what’s gonna happen next.
I’m sailing so fast I’m gonna knock him off no matter what. So I either catch him or I drop him. Simple as.
I reach out.
And I’m that close to him I can see two yellow lines of snot.
He lets go.
And when I clutch hold, I can feel him gasp and go limp, like I’ve squeezed all the life out of his bag-of-bones body. But I’ve got him. And I ain’t never letting go.
We swing gently to a stop. And I can’t speak for a bit. Cos I’m just hanging from the clock face of Big Ben with my dopey brother in my arms, facing out east where the smog’s lifting a bit now and the sun’s getting up and there’s the maze of slag pits and sludge where South London used to be before it got scavved out. And there’s the Thames looping round toward Blackfriars, and way in the distance I can just make out the smoke trails of the power stations where the Great Barrier holds back the sea.
A loop of rope drops on my head. I slip it round us both and under my arms, and give it a tug. Then, inch by inch, Pajama Boy hoists us up. I can see his shadow behind the glass right about six o’clock, using the spindle above to take the strain. And he sure don’t look like much, but he knows ropes as good as any scav. Or he’s a quick learner.
When we get back through the hole, Wilbur goes, “It wasn’t there, Cass.”
Then he bursts into tears.
And I don’t know whether to shake him to death or hug him.
THE LUBBER
Actually, I don’t do neither of these things. Cos he’s got to be kidding, right?
I just gawp at him and go, “Oh, nice one, Cass – thanks for bailing me out. Sorry for just swanning off mid-shift on a whim. Without telling a soul. Then winding up on the outside of Big Ben with no backup and no ropes. I mean, what was you gonna do if it was the blasted artifact, eh? You’d’ve been a hero for what, five minutes tops, before plunging down to the pavement with a loony smile on your face?”
“I slipped! I never meant to go right out. I just wanted to touch the clock hands, see if I was warm.”
“What?”
“You’re supposed to know if you touch it. You feel the artifact. That’s how you know.”
“What kind of cobblers is that?” I huff at him, trying not to lose it completely.
“It’s hidden, but if you hold it, you’ll know.” His voice runs out of steam and he gazes at his boots dangling off the spindle. “That’s what I heard.”
“Who from? The king of the fairies?”
“It’s not like other things, not ordinary!” he pipes up. “It’s got to be different.”
“Well, thanks for pointing that out, Wilbur. I’ll be sure to make a note of that killer fact. And what are you supposed to feel exactly? You know, when you grab hold of this not-so-ordinary bit of poke?”
He don’t answer.
I pluck out one of the comics that he’s stuffed in his coat pocket and make a show of flicking through it. “It’s all written in here, is it?”
“Hey, give that back!”
I boff him round the head with it and toss it over my shoulder.
“It’s not like that,” he mumbles.
“So what is it like?” I go, and my voice winds up softer now. Cos I can see how upset he is.
“There’s clues in them. It doesn’t say exactly. You have to figure it out.”
“Except you didn’t figure it out, did you?”
He shakes his head and sniffs.
“Oh, Wilbur! You’ve got to see how crazy this is! You’re trying to tell me that whoever dreamed up the adventures of Captain Jackson and his time-traveling galleon knew where the artifact was and left riddles for us to follow?”
“It’s not a galleon, it’s a brigantine. And it’s Captain Jameson.”
“Johnson, Josephine, Jamboree. That ain’t the point! The point is you going out on a bonkers hunch and nearly ending up dead!”
“You’re not telling Dad, are you?”
I lift his face to mine. “You ain’t listening to me, Wilbur. I need to know you ain’t going on any more solo goose chases.”
“It’s not a hunch – the clues are in the Captain Jameson adventures,” he insists.
“How do you know?”
“When I’m reading them, I can feel when a clue is right. It’s like an itch inside my head, like the artifact telling me I’m getting warmer. Like it’s mine.”
That stumps me, and cos I don’t answer, his face brightens up. And that’s the spooky thing about Wilbur. Cos he’s a kid that does stupid kid things, but the claptrap he comes out with … Well, it’s clever claptrap. You have to give him that. But he ain’t putting my mind at ease, is he?
“I’ve found a load of clues now. Not just about where the artifact is but what it’s like. Look, these are my reminders – things that help me think about it.” He pulls out all these bits and bobs from his pockets and shows them to me one by one with a look of total wonder in his eyes.
A pack of plasters. “This tells me it’s for helping people, protecting them. Or maybe it can heal you.”
A floppy spring. “And it can change shape – but it can go back to the way it was, too.”
A whole bunch of old tickets and scraps of paper. “Lottery tickets, scratch cards. I found this one today at the bottom of the stairs – sudoku.”
“Soo-doke who?”
“Like a crossword but with numbers. Numbers are important, Cass – I know they are. I just don’t know how yet …”
A glass bauble, like from a chandelier. He holds it up to his eye. “And it can change what you see.”
A conker. I’ve had enough of this, so I finish it for him. “Don’t tell me – it grows on a tree? Or how about it’s brown and shiny like a sheep turd?”
He looks hurt. “No, it’s alive.”
“Riddles, Wilbur. You’re seeing what you want to see …”
I take a deep breath cos I’ve got to give him a rollicking now. Except my heart ain’t in it no more.
But then a voice pipes up from below. A voice I’ve clean forgotten about. “Why does it mean so much to you?”
Pajama Boy’s standing half in shadow, holding the comic I just lobbed over my shoulder. With his sticking-up hair, he looks like he’s waiting for the maid to bring him his breakfast. And it ain’t that he’s been hiding exactly, but it bugs me that he listened to all that without making a peep.
Wilbur gawps at the stranger so hard I reckon his eyes are gonna start swiveling in their sockets any second now.
Pajama Boy riffles through the comic like maybe the answer’s gonna fall out. Like a free gift. The silence is so deep it’s embar
rassing.
“I mean, you risked your life just then. Why do you want to find it so much?” he asks again.
“Don’t you?” goes Wilbur. “Doesn’t everybody?”
“So it’s precious, then – this thing?”
Wilbur whispers, “It’s more precious than anything …”
Pajama Boy shuffles closer, and I can see the pages of the comic trembling in his hand.
And that sums up the weirdness, right there. Yeah, precious about sums it up, when you got close to ten thousand scavs and an invading army looking for it. But how come he don’t know this stuff?
“The Vlads came back to London looking for it after the Quark Wars,” blurts Wilbur.
“Why here?”
“Because London was one of the last cities still standing – most places were turned into dust by Quark bombs. The Vlads already knew it was here somewhere. That’s why they only sent bioweapons to kill people and leave buildings standing. They didn’t want to destroy it.”
“But how did they know it was here?” Pajama Boy’s got this scared look on his face now, like he don’t want to believe any of it’s true.
“The artifact is special,” whispers Wilbur, like there might be Vlads listening. “Before the Quark Wars began, Vlad hunters came to look for it cos they found clues about how it was hidden in a London building. But they couldn’t find it in time before the first bio-attacks.”
Pajama Boy kneels down to face Wilbur. “And why is it … special?”
“Cos it’s got powers more than all the Quark bombs in the world put together. And secrets—”
“There ain’t no time for a history lesson,” I go. Best to nip these things in the bud before Wilbur goes off on one. “Anyway, no one knows what it is or what it can do, so it’s all hearsay, just a bunch of olden-time stories.”
“But if the Vlads are here looking for it,” pipes up Pajama Boy, “they must know something about it. I mean, they must be sure it exists, that it’s buried in this city somewhere.”
“Except they ain’t found it in a hundred years of trying, so maybe it’s all just cobblers.”
“It’s not, Cass!” cries Wilbur, getting all fired up.
“Yeah, well, like I say, we’d love to gasbag on, but you know what, the old man’s gonna go ape if we don’t get back pronto. They’re bound to have patched up the crusher by now, and if we ain’t feeding London into it nineteen to the dozen any time soon, then we don’t get paid.”
I start fetching up the ropes and hustling Wilbur off the spindle.
“Who is he, Cass?” goes Wilbur. Like Pajama Boy’s deaf.
Down on the deck, I stuff all the ropes back into my pack and slip the comic out of Pajama Boy’s hand. It feels rushed and wrong, but what can I do? I ain’t got the time to get into someone else’s problems. I’m already hard-pressed to think up watertight excuses for how come we’ve been gone so long as it is.
Pajama Boy looks gutted.
I hold out my hand, like that’s gonna make things better. “Hey, thanks, you know, for pitching in,” I mumble.
He don’t take the hand, so I pat him on the shoulder as I go past.
Wilbur hangs back. “Cass!”
I chivy him toward the stairs. “Not a word, you hear? I ain’t even decided if I’m gonna spill the beans on you yet.”
“Where are you going now? Wilbur’s only just got here,” goes Pajama Boy. Like we’re leaving his birthday party early. “Wilbur, you were sure the artifact was here, weren’t you? Maybe it still is. We haven’t looked properly …” There’s strain in his voice now, like he’s somehow tied to the place, like he’s scared of being alone here.
I stop by the bell, but I don’t have the heart to look at him. Cos it’s wrong. I know it is. But I can’t pick up no stray. There ain’t nowhere for him to go. Nothing I can do.
“Take me with you,” he goes.
“Look, I ain’t got the foggiest where you racked up from. But that’s the problem, see? Where I’m going to, there ain’t no time for answering questions and holding your hand on things you don’t know nothing about.”
“He helped us,” goes Wilbur.
“I kind of know that!” I snap. “But what’s he doing here, eh? All on his jack.” I face Pajama Boy. “You ain’t gonna tell us in a hurry, are you? Cos if you’re on this side of the Thames creeping about like a ghost, then you’re bound to be in seven different kinds of trouble. And you probably don’t even know that if the Vlads catch you on this side of the river after the shifts are done, they’ll shoot you.”
He dumps all the color from his face at that, but still his voice is firm. “I just need to get back across the river. There’s someone waiting for me there.”
I look at him, trying to weigh it up. I shake my head.
“How’d you get here in the first place?” I try.
His lips clam up. Which ain’t that much of a surprise.
I give him a shrug. “There ain’t no way back across the river ‘less you’re a scav that’s come over here on a shift in the first place. Gangmasters clock you in and clock you out again. If they don’t know who you are, you’ll have to explain yourself to the Vlads. That’ll be one conversation that’s over in a flash.”
He frowns then. “These Vlads – what do they know that makes them so sure the artifact’s here?”
“Gramps says it’s got to be something to do with the old computer machines,” goes Wilbur. “They’ve been broken or switched off for a whole century. Only Vlads can see what’s inside them with their scanners …”
“Who’s Gramps?”
“Enough yacking, all right?” I give Wilbur daggers. Cos this stranger could be a spy for all we know – plonked here in his jim-jam outfit to wheedle stuff out of gullible scavs like my brother. Except he don’t seem tough enough for a spy …
“There’s got to be a way to help him,” Wilbur whispers.
Then I think about what would’ve happened if this boy hadn’t showed up. Even if I’d figured out on my own how to snatch Wilbur off the clock face, we’d just be dangling there with no one to haul us to safety. Waiting. Till maybe the Vlads used us for target practice. But then I think about what he’s even doing here – maybe he trailed Wilbur to Big Ben in the first place. His words rattle around in my mind. Wilbur’s only just got here, like he’s been waiting for him to show up … Which is suspect. So maybe it’s best to keep this stranger close, find out what he’s up to. But what am I thinking of? Helping him is too risky.
I gaze at him then and he’s just so out there – like he’s just stepped out of one of them pictures of olden-time London, all dandied up and innocent-looking. Clueless about the disaster that’s just about to wipe him out. Cos he don’t seem to cotton on that he ain’t gonna last much more than a week around here, with the Parliament crews closing in.
“Thing is, look at you,” I go. “You’re a lubber. You ain’t got a clue. We’d be rumbled at the first hurdle. If you was a scav, then it’d be a start.”
“So make me into a scav.”
WINGING IT
I must be mad.
But there ain’t no time to fart about. If I’m gonna let him tag along, it has to be right now. Cos the longer I leave it, the harder it’s gonna be. He pitched in for us, so I’m returning the favor, though God knows it’ll be the undoing of me. I know it. I ain’t even got the shadow of a plan, but you’ve got to start somewhere. And that’d be with the pigging pajamas.
He holds out his hand this time, all hopeful and grateful and eager beaver. But there ain’t no time for meet-and-greet right now. I plonk my helmet and coat on his arm like it’s a rack.
“Stick these on. You won’t last five minutes in the scav zone, looking like the prince of ponce.”
Then I’m racing down the stairs, dispensing advice over my shoulder, trying to think of the next thing, the next thing …
“You stick on my shoulder. You don’t gawp about like a tourist – all this is same old same old to you, righ
t? And you don’t open your cake-hole for nothing. These are the rules, OK?”
“What?”
“Flippin’ Nora. Do like I do and keep your gob zipped. Comprehend-day?”
Wilbur goes, “Copy us and don’t say anything.”
At the bottom of the stairs, I inspect him. And it ain’t filling me with hope and sunshine.
“His shoes,” goes Wilbur. And he’s right. Moccasin affairs with no tread to speak of. They’re a proper giveaway.
I peel off a clod of mud from my boots and smear the silky shine off his slippers.
“First chance you get, go knee-deep in crud.”
I plant the rest on his chops. He grins at me and rubs it in his hair, up his nostrils.
“There you go. You’ll pass muster.”
So it’s out onto the scaffold and the port-a-loo roof and into the streets. We skirt round Big Ben and head toward the roar of the crushers. And would you credit it? The smog’s really lifting on account the wind’s picked up, and it ain’t so simple to blend in now cos it’s masks off. So folks are starting to cast odd looks our way. Like we don’t belong. And down the end of Bridge Street, coming toward us, is a Vlad guard patrol – five soldiers with black armor and headsets and machine guns. This ain’t no stroll in the park neither. They’re in formation, checking down alleyways. Stop ‘n’ search.
My apprentice scav stops dead in his tracks.
“Ain’t no time for the jitters!” I hiss at him. “Stay cool.”
“We have to hide,” he mutters, all the while darting his head about like a spooked squirrel.
“What’s your name?” I go.
“What?”
“Your name, bonehead. They give those out where you come from?”
“Peyto.”
“Well, listen up, Peyto. If you head for the hills now, they’re gonna clock you bang to rights. You run, you’ve got something to hide. Which is why we’re gonna stay put, see?”
“But –”
“But nothing. Wilbur, get on the deck and look injured.”
Wilbur lies down and starts groaning, a bit too loudly.
I give him a kick. “Hey, tone it down! This ain’t the village show. Just play dead.”
