by Philip Webb
“I’ve synched yours up to show the same thing as mine and Peyto’s.”
I slip the cuff over my hand and it comes to life – coils of ink on the underside of my wrist, itching a bit near the veins.
“A countdown to what?” I go.
“A countdown to … well, until it’s too late.”
The coils straighten into six bands, each one made up of dots no bigger than freckles. The top band is slightly shorter than the others. As I gaze at it, one of the freckles vanishes. I feel it prick me slightly. And then I get it – each freckle is an hour and I’ve just lost one. Twenty-four hours in each band. Six bands for six days …
There ain’t much to say about the journey back. We’re all wrecked, ’specially Peyto, who did his first-ever scav shift on top of everything else. We stash the suits back in the hollow, strap into the shuttle, and silently launch off from the Aeolus. A few minutes later, Erin tells us to brace ourselves for “reentry,” which is thunderous, like we’re being shook to pieces. But then the roar drops away, and the screens show us skimming into the Thames upriver toward the Jubilee tunnel.
My weight comes back, and it’s good to feel my bones settling into place, to be solid again. I take a deep breath of chilly London air as the shuttle roof parts for us – just the smallest of openings.
“Won’t the Vlads spot us?” I go.
“Get up there,” answers Erin. “Tell me what you can see.”
Peyto helps me stand on one of the chairs so I’m practically level with the river surface, just peeking over a furrow of water so smooth that it’s like a fold of black velvet. No bubbles, no foam. The junk of the river, plastic bags and old buoys, bobs past my face, but the wake of the shuttle is so slight, it might as well be a knife drawing through the currents.
Some way ahead, I spot the wide stone arches of London Bridge, but they’re dark, no signs of movement. Behind me, though, the crumbled stumps of Tower Bridge are clustered with searchlights trained on the water.
I duck down. “It’s clear ahead. But there’s a load of action on the last bridge.”
“They must have seen us come down into the river,” mutters Erin. “No way round that.”
I take up my lookout position again, but the way ahead is quiet, past the broken humps of Southwark, the twisted wreckage of the Millennium Bridge. Even the two standing bridges, Blackfriars and Waterloo, are empty, so I start to breathe easier. Maybe the Vlads are all so caught up with where we came down that they left these bridges unmanned. And it’s a shock to be so glued to a proper place again, to hear the lap of water, to see the city. Now as I look at the night sky, I know it’s the same, but somehow the endless darkness of space ain’t such a threat from down here.
Erin goes, “I’ve got control to steer now that it’s not an emergency. Which bank? North or south?”
“Best to land the same side as the dinghy,” I go. “Then we can take it back to where Wilbur is …”
Peyto just nods. His tears are over, but he looks proper haunted – all the stuffing battered out of him, like going to the ship has brung it all home to roost just how bad things are.
Erin glances at me, then she strokes the right-hand wall of the shuttle, and we veer toward the north bank. We all clamber out into the shallows, near the ruins of Westminster Bridge, then the shuttle closes up and disappears into the river. All’s quiet as we scramble up the bank, then down to the tunnel floor, where the water’s still low and the dinghy’s still tied up, thank God. I try not to get too chewed up about Wilbur. It’s only been a few hours, but what with everything that’s happened, it feels like a week. The ship don’t seem real just then. It’s like the stuff of fireside stories.
We paddle like ten men back toward the south bank, which is proper hard work cos we’re going against the flow now. The moonlit hole at the far end of the tunnel gets bigger, but there ain’t no sign of Wilbur.
“Where is he?” goes Erin. “Surely he’d be able to see the flashlight.”
“Well, I did tell him to stick with Sheba on pain of death …” But the truth is, I’m getting nervy, too.
“I see him!” cries Peyto.
And there he is, leaping up and down like a jackrabbit.
When we reach the far end, I slosh through the shallows and give him a mighty hug. “How’s Sheba?”
“Dozing off. I didn’t think you were ever coming back! I just came down for a last look and I saw the light!”
“Well, you did well holding the fort. We got what we came for, so let’s get back now before Dad gets wind, eh?”
Wilbur gives us all a hard stare then. “You’ve got to let me in on it,” he goes.
“Hey, ease up, will you?” I glance at the others. “There ain’t nothing to be let in on, you buffoon –”
“I saw it, Cass. I saw it and I heard it. A rocket shooting out of the river. It lit up the sky all white.”
“Ah …”
“I want to know, Cass. I can help. You know I can.”
I’m too plain knackered to lie.
“We must tell him,” goes Peyto.
“Yes, Cass,” urges Erin. “Wilbur could know something important.”
I think about where I’ve been, how it’d almost be cruel not to let him in on it now. And I’ve got to admit there’d be some kind of relief off-loading what’s just happened, though God knows I’ve tried to keep him in the dark this far.
So after we haul the dinghy back up into its hiding place, we tell him. Everything. Well, nearly everything. Or anyhow, Peyto does. And it’s like telling the story chivies him out of his worries, bucks him up. I just chip in at the end, making sure to cut out the bit about the whole world going to rack and ruin. Things is desperate enough without scaring Wilbur to death on that score. One sharp look at Peyto and Erin and they get my drift. Wilbur listens goggle-eyed without saying a word for the whole journey back to Elephant and Castle. Peyto and Erin show him their flinders and he gazes at them, but his face is hard to read. He don’t even reach out to touch them, which is the first thing I expected him to do. He just leans closer to their halos of light, staring at all the tiny patterns blooming on the surfaces, gobsmacked but shy. And then he gives this little shiver, and his eyelids flicker, like someone’s just walked over his grave.
“How come they’re different?” he goes.
He’s right, but it’s hardly the most staggering thing about the flinders. And yet, it is the kind of thing Wilbur would spot about them.
“Well, I don’t know,” says Erin at last, as if she’s only just realized it herself. “Each one is a special match for a person. And because each person is different, I suppose each flinder is different. It’s said that you don’t choose a flinder, it chooses you.”
He just nods at that, like it makes perfect sense.
“Wish I’d been there, on the ship” is all he says.
“It said you’d be there, at the tower, at Big Ben,” goes Erin. “How did you get the idea to go there in the first place?”
“I thought the artifact was there, that’s all.” From the inside of his coat he brings out a roll of Captain Jameson comics. “I pick up clues about where to try looking from these.”
“And Halina, are you sure you haven’t heard of her?” asks Peyto. “I know I asked you before but …”
Wilbur shakes his head and Peyto looks crestfallen. “I suppose the ship could be wrong – about Wilbur knowing something.”
“Maybe I just don’t know yet.” Vintage Wilbur – spooky eight-year-old pronouncement number thirty-one.
“Hang on, you said you found something else at Big Ben,” I try. “The so-cod-poo or something.”
“Sudoku – it’s a number puzzle. Gramps reckons numbers are important, too.”
“You been talking to Gramps? You never said.”
Wilbur looks guilty. “Sometimes. I go Sundays.” Dad gives him the day off on Sundays, cos scavving the whole time’s a real grind for kids.
“You’re meant to be sticking
in the village!” I go.
Peyto rests his hand gently on my shoulder. “What else does Gramps say?”
“Just bits and pieces. He mumbles a lot. Forgets I’m there, I think.” He looks up at us more brightly. “But he collects clues, too. On the other side of the river.” He points at the dinghy we’ve just put back in its hiding place. “That’s his boat.”
“Wilbur! Why didn’t you tell us that before?”
He picks at his mittens. “I thought you’d get mad at me.”
“Gramps is a looter?”
“Then maybe he’s close to tracking it down?” goes Erin.
They all look at me as I think it through. “He’s a crazy old duffer sometimes … But still, there ain’t no point in us just signing up for another scav shift. So maybe he’s right, that scavving ain’t the way. It’s too slow …” I rub at the countdown cuff Erin gave me, thinking of the time draining away like grains in an egg timer. “I reckon it’s worth paying Gramps a visit tomorrow.”
Back at Elephant and Castle, we head for the stables. I get Peyto and Erin sorted with some old blankets and set them up a bed on the hay. It ain’t exactly the Ritz, but with all the animals in there, it’s pretty cozy.
“You’ll come and find us tomorrow?” goes Erin. She sounds all bent out of shape again, now we’re back on Earth.
“Yeah, course. I’ve got to get out of scavving …” I think about Dad struggling alone on the shift with his gammy leg. “But I’ll figure out something.”
I watch them bed down, fumbling with their blankets, and suddenly I don’t want to leave them either.
“Toodlepip, then,” I go.
Peyto looks at me blank.
“Good night,” I try, and the words sound all proper – not like me at all.
He grins back. “Toodlepip.” Like the worst Cockney accent ever.
I let Wilbur unhitch Sheba while I head back to our hut. I’m trying to dream up an excuse for why we’ve been gone so long, but my head’s fried. And worst luck, Dad’s waiting up, staring at the remains of the fire, his face stewing in fury.
“I’ve been worrying myself to death,” he says through gritted teeth.
Then Wilbur comes in and, before I can open my mouth, he goes, “It’s my fault. I took an apple to Sheba, but when I was feeding her, I got all dizzy. Reckon I had one of my spells …”
I look over at Wilbur then and I’m gobsmacked to see he’s got this whopping black eye and a cut across his forehead.
Dad hobbles over and leads him toward the fire. I hope he’s flustered enough not to notice the damage is a bit too fresh to have happened much more than two minutes ago.
Hating myself, I pick up the lie and run with it. “After the meeting, I went off to look for him. I thought I’d find him easy, but I searched all over.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me your brother was missing?”
I stare at the floor.
“I never figured on you being so stupid, Cass. He could’ve been anywhere!”
“Sorry …”
He turns to Wilbur. “You black out, son?”
“Yeah, dunno how long. Had all this froth on my face like that time in the summer.”
He’s all wobbly and pale, and that ain’t acting, so I figure he must’ve cracked himself pretty hard back at Sheba’s stable. There’s a couple of vicious splinters poking out his bonce.
“I don’t feel that good,” goes Wilbur, looking all set to pass out on us.
“Lay down here. Cass, fetch some water!”
We bathe his head, yank out the splinters, and make up a poultice. Ten minutes later he’s out for the count. I’m in shock – I can’t believe he’d go that far to cover up for us.
Dad can’t even look at me when he speaks at last. “I want you to stay back tomorrow, keep an eye on him. No point in him tagging along for a shift, not in that state.”
“All right. Look, I’m sorry, Dad.”
“So you said.”
I want to ask him about the rest of the meeting, about Gramps, but there ain’t no point, cos I can tell he’s closed me off now.
For a while as I lie down, my head’s just spinning, whirring away, thinking about flying ships, and being weightless, and the curve of the Earth with its trapped skies stretching away from me …
It feels like I’ve been out for five minutes when Wilbur shakes me awake. Sunlight is peeking through cracks in the roof.
“Cass, we’ve got to go!”
Peyto and Erin are hovering warily by the entrance.
“Where’s Dad?”
“He went ages ago. There was soldiers up at the muster point, checking all scavs reporting for work. Old Fred says they’ve gone to Lambeth village, looking for anyone that’s not a proper scav, anyone that’s a stranger. They must’ve seen the shuttle coming back.”
THE FIRST SCAV
I scramble out of bed, and bung some stuff into my pack – water bottles, extra rope, biscuits.
“It ain’t gonna be long before them soldiers make their way here. We’ve got to make tracks, find Gramps.”
“He doesn’t live around here?” goes Peyto.
“Nah, he’s got a shack up on the edge of Battersea Woods.”
“What are we going to tell him?” asks Erin. “About us, I mean.”
“Little as possible, I reckon. Let me do the talking, cos I know how he ticks. He can get pretty worked up about finding the artifact. But there ain’t no sense in mixing in things about ships and sleepers and what-have-you.”
I stop for a moment and stare at Wilbur. His eye’s gone all purple and yellow, closed in like a fat mussel. I realize I can’t leave him here, with soldiers coming.
“You good to go?”
He nods too much, the way kids do.
“If Dad could see you now, hopping about fresh as a daisy, he’d be mad. Some casualty you turned out to be.”
He gives me one of his cheesy grins.
“Don’t pull any more stunts like that, Wilbur. I mean it. Things is dangerous enough as it is, without you bashing your own head in.”
“It’s a beaut, though, eh, Cass?”
“Yeah, real prizefighter.”
But I don’t want to chew him out too much – it ain’t often you get spared a scav shift.
Outside, there’s a few old dears about but nobody looking our way. The last thing I need is someone clocking us when we leave.
We slip out the settlement and head southwest toward Battersea. It’s a clear morning, still and bright, touched with a fur of frost. We scout farther south than the crow flies to give Lambeth a wide berth, but we don’t see no soldiers. I want to steer clear of the main tracks, and that means trudging over the slurry ground between settlements. It’s proper hard work, cos when the rain first hits it, slag dust goes into this claggy mess that glues to your boots. The only thing that grows on it is brambles, which makes plowing through it ten times harder. It’s two hours before we start bending up north again toward the river.
On the way, Peyto goes to Wilbur, “So how did anyone know to ever start looking for the artifact? Back at Big Ben, you said Vlads were searching in London even before the germ attacks. How did they know to come looking here?”
Wilbur skips along to keep up, all perky that Peyto’s taking an interest in what he knows. “Gramps told me it was a man called Morgan Bartlett – the very first scav – who started the search, before the Quark Wars.”
This is a new one on me. “How can Gramps know who the first scav was?” I scoff.
Wilbur sticks his chin out. “Not a scav like us, I suppose. Scav’s just short for scavenger.”
“All right,” chips in Erin. “But what made him look in the first place?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Morgan Bartlett found a … disturbance. That’s what Gramps says.” Wilbur takes a deep breath, and the way he speaks then, it’s like he’s reciting it word for word, from memory. “Before the war, there were computers and memory boxes everywhere,
and they were connected up with each other. London was like a great sea of light and words and sound. And people relied on their computers for everything, but not a single one of these machines was what you’d call clever or alive, not in the same way as a human being. Then one man, this Morgan Bartlett, came across signs of something living and hiding in the connections between computers – something with a voice and a mind of its own, like a ghost running loose in the electricity.”
I exchange glances with Peyto and Erin, and I think about them echoes I felt inside the flinders, like voices. It’s like a kid’s story, the way he tells it. Something Gramps spouted off to shut Wilbur up during one of his Sunday visits. But still, maybe there’s something in it. We’re all waiting for more, but Wilbur clams up.
“So then what happened?” urges Peyto.
“Gramps never said. He had a coughing fit.”
“Bleeding Nora, Wilbur – how come you kept all this quiet? Gramps’s dinghy, your Sunday visits, this Morgan flippin’ Bartlett!”
“You never wanted to listen before,” he complains.
“Well, we’re all ears now,” I go, rolling my eyes at Peyto. “Any more secrets you want to lay on us, just go right ahead.”
Battersea Woods is all raised up on a wide mound. Like all the old parks, it stands out higher than the waste ground, like an island with its proper trees – oaks and sycamore and hawthorn, winter bare now. No one’s really sure how come the Vlads never sent scavs into the parks. I mean, you’d think the artifact could be buried there just as much as anywhere else, but the rumor is they’ve narrowed it down to a man-made place, a proper London building. But how they know that is anyone’s guess.
Scav settlers tend to steer clear of the old parks. They’re untamed, abandoned to the undergrowth, homes to foxes and wild dogs and birds. And the truth is, I’ve never liked it here, even though I’ve been to see Gramps plenty of times as a kid. I don’t like the branches clawing at my face or the dead leaf smell or the startled birds or the fungus. I don’t like the shapes of the trees or their roots – naked and old and peeling. And I know Wilbur feels the same way. But our space-traveling pioneers are wide-eyed at it all. I watch them stare at the treetops and run their hands over the bracken stumps, the rotting wood of fallen trunks. But maybe if I’d been cooped up in a box for a billion years, I’d be spellbound by this manky old wood, too.
