by Philip Webb
At last my elbow nudges against something solid. And as I turn, I see Wilbur’s face – peaceful and waxy white – buried deep inside Halina’s old pod.
THE LAST SLEEPER
A shiver runs through me. I steel myself. There’s still two spare suits – I stashed them in the slots when I was last here with Wilbur. That means I can get to the bridge. I picture the Aeolus inside Maleeva’s body, resetting the shuttle, climbing through the hatch, hightailing it to Earth … But maybe there’s still time. Maybe I can reach the bridge first …
I thrust against the wall, and its surface feels hot … A stink of cooked flesh hangs in the air. We must be close to burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere. I push toward the airlock and seal myself into one of the suits. I’m about to hinge down the helmet, when there’s a sharp noise overhead. Something has docked sleeper-side. Then a hole punches through the dock wall, and three figures appear.
First Erin, then Peyto, and, lastly, Maleeva’s hijacked body.
I know it ain’t Maleeva, cos it still has them two horns stuck to her head, curling round and round, like they’re sniffing the air for something. The sharp joints of the frame poke the suit into odd bulges at the knees and elbows, like swellings.
Erin and Peyto stare at me silently. They seem horribly shaken by something.
“Do what it says,” urges Peyto. “Please, Cass. There’s no time. The ship will burn up any minute now!”
I think of all the Vlad troops pouring across the field toward the stones of Arbor Low, surrounding Erin and Peyto.
“How come you got away from the Vlads?” I whisper.
“Serov was there,” breathes Erin. She glances at the Aeolus, at the body it’s stolen.
“I threatened to end Maleeva’s life,” says the Aeolus. “Serov had no choice.”
I feel the bite in them words. It’s testing me, sowing doubt. And it knows now what I’m relying on, the secret I’ve figured out, it has to.
Smoke rises out the ridges in the ship’s walls.
“Don’t fight it anymore,” pleads Peyto. “You can’t win.”
The Aeolus speaks again. “Erin, take your place as a sleeper.”
“Erin,” I whisper. “Don’t do it – you don’t have to. Listen, it can’t force you.”
She looks at me and shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Cass. I must. It’s the only way.”
She kicks toward the last two empty pods. And I ain’t got the heart to try and stop her. Cos right now, for her, even if she’s too late to save her family, sleep is the bliss of not even knowing. Sleep is a desperate hope. She’ll either go to ash without feeling it, or she’ll wake up in some future heaven on Earth with her family beside her. I stare at the grid of sleeper pods and wonder then, for the first time, which of them hold her loved ones. She looks at me just once before climbing inside her pod. She’s utterly wrecked – covered in mud, and trembling. But she fixes me with a curious stare, all her anger and fear gone.
“Good-bye, Cass,” she says simply.
I nod at her. And when her pod is sealed shut, I feel my body sag like the fight’s gone out of it. Cos there’s only one pod left. And that means it’s either me or Peyto.
Just right then, there’s a massive shudder in the walls. It ripples down one whole side of the ship, and a column of fire bursts into the chamber. The Aeolus pulls Maleeva’s helmet down over her head, and Peyto charges clear of the docking hatch toward where the last suit is stashed …
The hole seems tiny at first. But then anything not tied down funnels toward it in a great rush. And a thin scream of air cuts through the chamber. I slam my helmet shut and snatch out for a handhold, cos I can feel my legs being dragged back toward the hole. But I’m floating free and there ain’t nothing nearby to cling to. Only as I start to slide back do I think of the cable gun on the suit’s forearm. No aim. I just fire, and jerk to a stop with the storm all around me.
Just beyond my flailing legs, I see Peyto struggling his way into a suit, but then I lose sight of him. The last puff of air squeals out the hole, and everything drops slack. In an instant the chamber is silent, apart from my heaving breaths. I unclip the cable and throw myself into a spin to see if I can spot Peyto. The hole in the ship wall yawns huge and white-hot. The edges buckle apart without a murmur. Arcs of light break past me, eating up the inside surface now – cracks tearing through the hull. As I stare at the hole, trying to take in the fact that there ain’t no air left, something nudges against me. And Peyto is there, safely inside his suit, just a faceplate away. Thank God …
He takes me by the shoulders.
His voice crackles through the helmet speakers. “Cass! Can you hear me? You can still save the ship!”
“What?” I look at him in a daze.
And then I cotton on to what he’s saying. The cold truth sinks in, and the dread of it makes me lose all hope. Peyto couldn’t be the last sleeper now even if he wanted to be. Cos the final flinder is with me, inside my suit, and there ain’t no air left. Either I go into the last pod alone. Or I stay here with him till the ship catches fire.
“Cass, you know there’s no other way. You have to be a sleeper. If you climb into that pod, you can repair the ship. You can save yourself, you can save Wilbur. There’s still time!”
“What, go to sleep forever and leave you behind? I can’t. No way.”
Then the ship speaks in its stolen voice – the voice of Maleeva. And, even now, with human lips and human breath, there ain’t a speck of emotion in its words.
“Cass Westerby, this is your final chance. Take your place as the last sleeper.”
I gaze at Peyto and I start to cry. I can’t help it, though it makes me mad, and I can’t even wipe away the tears as they sprinkle free. It’s too much, to leave him, after everything I’ve been through.
But then it’s like the tatters of my plan come together. Cos there ain’t no forest of tentacles springing out to drag me into that last pod, is there? The Aeolus was only telling half the truth when it said a sleeper can’t be forced. The whole truth is that it can’t do the forcing. Even when it took Wilbur from me, it didn’t harm him, it didn’t make him become a sleeper. It couldn’t. And it’s desperate to complete the forty-nine now. But it can’t without me …
“You will not let every soul on this vessel perish,” goes the Aeolus. “You will not.”
And that’s when I know for certain what’s going to happen. I’ve wondered over and over, when push comes to shove, if I’ll have the guts to do it. To let myself die, and Peyto, and the forty-eight people who now sleep on this ship. My own brother. Erin and her family. Maleeva, too – though God only knows whether she can see or hear any of this now. I’ve always figured the ship would back down rather than lose its precious flinders. And now I’m sure. Cos it’s got no choice.
For a moment I waver. What if all the sleepers together can hold back wars on Earth? I’ve always figured that was a lie to keep them up here with their flinders. But what if I’m wrong? Maybe the Earth will end unless forty-nine sleepers are allowed to sleep and sleep. Except I can’t possibly know, can I …?
Never trust it.
The truth is, I just want my brother back.
And the only way I’ll ever get him back is to risk it all.
So I do.
“No,” I whisper. “I ain’t giving in. Let the sleepers go. You have to, or they’ll die.”
“They must not wake. Without them watching over the Earth, wars will rage.”
“They’ll have to find a different way, a new way to protect the world. I know you can let them go. If you can snatch Maleeva’s body from her, if you can sprout tentacles whenever you want, then you can set them people free. Do it.”
The ship’s walls blur and shudder.
At first Peyto just gapes at me, not believing what I’ve said. But then he reaches out and holds me, squeezing me tight. Cos he knows I ain’t gonna budge, not now. And the fire’s gonna take us any moment.
The Aeolus d
on’t say a word. But then, just when I figure it’s too late, as soft as dandelion heads lifting into the breeze, the first pods lift away from the walls.
A FIGHTING HEART
Hundreds of barbed tails spring out from the walls. They glow and smoke, but still they move as one, like grass stems bowing in the wind. And they lift the pods one by one toward the shuttle hatch.
“Come on!” yells Peyto.
He snatches my hand and leaps toward the procession of pods. We latch on to the back of one and scramble through the gap into the shuttle. Already there’s hardly any space left – it’s rammed with body-shaped cocoons like tightly wrapped corpses. The last body to enter is Maleeva’s. Deep down, behind the helmet visor and the struts of her head frame, her dead eyes stare back at me.
The ship is a furnace now. Sheets of white fire rip out into space, as bright as lightning. And beyond them I can’t see nothing but stars. Then the hatch seals shut and the pods snap together around us, as the shuttle blasts away from the ship.
Then gravity kicks in. I clutch hold of Peyto. “We’re gonna burn.”
My voice ain’t no louder than a croak. I just ain’t got the strength to be scared no more.
“No, the shuttle’s much tougher than the ship, remember?” He pushes away from me and tries to force his way past the sleeper pods. “But right now, there’s nothing steering it!”
“What?”
“The ship’s breaking up! The bridge has gone – there’s no way to reset the shuttle! If we don’t do something, we’re going to crash! Help me!”
I try to reach out to the pods, but it’s no use – they’re locked around us and by now we’re falling so hard I’m pinned flat. I can’t even move my arms …
But then Maleeva’s body stirs next to me. It jerks into life and heaves the pods to one side. Then it grabs me by the helmet and drags me toward the edge of the shuttle.
“Peyto, help!”
Them mighty machine arms hurl me down, then one fist reaches back, punches right through the shuttle wall, and comes up with a handful of torn cables that spark and jitter about.
Maleeva’s limp face thrusts toward mine, and the girl’s voice hisses out, “You have a fighting heart, Cass. Prove it again now.”
“What?”
I stare back at this jumble of creature and machine, and I ain’t got a clue what it can truly be now – a ship’s mind inside a girl inside a frame. Layers of metal and skin, and at the heart of it a ghost, spun together by people over a billion years ago … It stuffs the frayed cables into my arms. They leap and wrestle like a net of live eels. And I can feel the surge of the shuttle engines. They thrum against my chest and beat into my ribs. And then the flinder round my neck starts to burn.
“I am just human flesh and blood now,” goes the ship. “I cannot command the shuttle. Only the power of your flinder can save us. Take control.”
I feel helpless. “How?”
“Steer it, Cass!” yells Peyto. “You’re the only one who can do it! Use your flinder.”
And my mind flips. It feels like when I rammed my hands into the innards of the ship and set the shuttle on its way. Like when I called up Halina’s shuttle from the ground at Arbor Low. It’s the same. I shut my eyes and just let go. I picture the Wash, and the racing tide, and the sunken buildings of Lincoln, and the Lodestar bobbing at anchor. And I picture Dad.
We’re hurtling through the wind, scudding over waves, slamming through spray, skimming from crest to crest like a flat stone.
The flinder closes tighter round my neck and it scalds into my skin, but I don’t let up. I just hug them leaping cables and fly.
The sea roars around us.
Then a hole opens up above me and a gale of air blasts in from outside. The cables in my arms go dead. The roof of the shuttle peels right back and the seawater floods in.
“Peyto!”
He’s out of reach, trapped by the sleeper pods, and as the weight of water collapses in he gets sucked farther back. I dunk my helmet into the bubbles, and it goes dark as we plummet farther down. Great clouds of silver air mushroom past me as I dive deeper.
There in the green gloom, I see a hand and I snatch at it. Then something yanks me from behind and I tear up through the currents and out into the dazzling bright air. Peyto bursts out next to me.
It takes me a few breathless moments to figure out what’s happened. It’s Maleeva’s frame that’s saved us from dropping to the seafloor. The Aeolus. It holds us both, one in each fist. We dangle there by the suit collars, water coursing down our helmets. It dumps us like landed fish onto some kind of raft. It ain’t that stable – I can feel myself pitching about on the logs, ready any second to topple back into the drink.
It’s only then that I twig that these ain’t logs. The raft I’m lying on is made of forty-eight floating sleeper pods – seven by seven with a gap in the middle – held together with knotted tentacles that slither over each other like bronzed serpents.
I rip back the seals, toss away the helmet, and drink real air down into my lungs.
Next to me, Peyto’s done the same. We look at each other for a moment, scarcely believing we can still be alive.
The ship don’t say a word. It rips great fistfuls of Maleeva’s suit away and launches her helmet into the sea. Then it just stands there astride the pod-raft with outstretched arms. And strip by strip, the suit flies away from the frame into the wind. Maleeva’s beautiful face sits on top of the tower of scaffold that holds her together, like a hovering angel. And I wonder where her soul has gone, if she’ll ever come back.
I watch Peyto then as he struggles out of his suit, but I’m too plain knackered to even move. He heaves the suit over the side and it drops away into the deep. When he stands up, he shields his eyes to the sun and starts laughing.
“What’s so funny?”
“Good navigating, Cass!”
I look over to where he’s pointing. And there, in the distance, is a church spire rising from the water. The sunken town we passed in the Lodestar.
The tide sweeps us along then, tipping us into furrows of current, closer and closer to the islands that dot the coast. I figure we’re rudderless, the way we spin and lurch, but then the tentacles at the edge of the raft start to work together, dipping and pushing, so that at last our course steadies.
Peyto helps me out of my suit, and I stand up with him to balance on the creaking pods. I gaze at all their faces – the sleepers that have found their home at last. Near the front of the raft is Wilbur, and next to him, Erin – both of them still locked in their dreams. Suddenly it hits me proper that scavving is over. It has to be now that the artifact – Halina’s flinder – ain’t buried in London anymore. For all the Vlads know, it’s lost in space now, out of their reach. And that means the scavs are free. The crushers of London won’t ever be heard again.
Soon there’s islands all around us, and, at last, nestling in the lee of the tide, I spot the Lodestar. I can see Dad scrambling to the edge of the deck and he’s hooting at the top of his lungs. Peyto grabs hold of me and lifts me off my feet.
“You did it!” he whispers to me.
“We all did it,” I go.
“No, Cass. You were ready to risk everything. I’d never have had the guts. That was the maddest, bravest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do.”
“Brave? I just had to stick to my guns. You don’t get it, do you? I knew it would back down. It had to.”
“What?”
“I figured it out, Peyto. The ship’s secret.”
I glance at the Aeolus, but it ain’t even looking at us no more, like it’s zoned out, staring at a world it’s only seen through people’s dreams.
“It can’t harm people. Remember what you and Erin told me? It’s alive but it ain’t a creature. Humans can kill. I can and you can. But it can’t. Its only reason for being alive is to create life, to nurture it. So it couldn’t stand by and watch all the sleepers die. It had to set them free.”
H
e draws away from me and looks at the sleepers that make up our raft.
“But you were ready to let us all die.”
“I had to be. The Aeolus wouldn’t have backed down otherwise.”
He turns back to me and grins. “I don’t care what you say, Cass Westerby. Mad, brave, headstrong …”
I grin back. “Headstrong’s about right. Worked, though, huh?”
Then I start proper belly laughing.
“What?”
“I don’t know – you wait a billion years for something to happen and then it all kicks off, eh?”
And I feel strong being on that raft as it bobs ever closer to the Lodestar. I reach up to my throat, and there’s a searing mark where the flinder burned me – my flinder now. But I don’t care no more. Cos I feel something then – something beautiful about all the flinders being together, like the way this raft of pods is knitted together. The flinders as one, the Aeolus said.
Peyto hops about on the front edge of the raft, yelling and whooping with Dad, as we bump into the prow of the Lodestar.
Then he turns to me with a smile and goes, “Now what?”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Cass’s voice is a mix of many sources but the main ones are three generations of women in my family: Elsie Quinn, my nan; Terry Webb, my mum; and Sophie Malcolm, my sister. Thanks for helping my writing come to life!
I want to thank my wife, Rebecca, for her support, patience, and priceless sanity-checking of early drafts.
Many thanks also to Veronique Baxter, who first rescued my manuscript from the slush pile and encouraged me to make it better!
Everyone from Chicken House has been a delight to work with and learn from, in particular Barry Cunningham and Imogen Cooper, who saw the potential in my complex tale and gave me enormous support to complete it.
There are lots of people without whom my efforts would have been so much scrap paper. So: Tony Webb, Chris Quinn, Clare Telford, John McCrone, Lorna Harty, Davey Fraser, Mark Proctor, Graham and Caroline Parker, Anthony Fennel, Mark Lee, Katherine Pascoe, Natalie Davies, Alex Potterill, Suzanne Beishon, Olivia Boertje, Mario Constantinou, Claire Barber, Heather Swann, Kate Turnough, Corey China, Joe Ungemah, Kerry Hedley, Tracey Sinclair, Kara May and everyone on the Goldsmiths writing course, Laura Windley, Frankie Pagnacco (for the race), Jane Butterworth, and Mave and Al Bilham-Boult – thank you all for your advice, encouragement, and feedback.
