Mortal Engines me-1

by Phillip Reeve

  “Little twerps!” snorted Peavey. “I wasn’t sniffling over them. It’s my lovely suburb! Look at it! Damn Mossies…”

  Just then, from somewhere to the south, they heard the faint clatter of gunfire.

  Peavey’s face brightened. He turned to the others. “Hear that! Some of the lads must have got ashore! They’ll be more’n a match for them Mossies! We’ll link up with ’em! We’ll capture Airhaven yet, keep a few of its people alive to repair it, kill the rest and fly back to the mainland rich. Drop out of the sky on a few fat towns before word gets round that Airhaven’s gone pirate! Catch ourselves a city, maybe!”

  He set off again, hauling himself up from boulder to boulder with the monkey riding on his hunched shoulders. The others followed behind. Maggs and Mungo seemed dazed by the loss of Tunbridge Wheels and not convinced by Peavey’s latest plan. They kept exchanging glances and muttering together when their mayor was out of earshot—but they were in strange country, and Tom didn’t think they had the nerve to move against Peavey, not yet. As for Mr Ames, he had never set foot on the bare earth before. “It’s horrible!” he grumbled. “So difficult to walk on… All this grass! There may be wild animals, or snakes… I can quite see why our ancestors decided to stop living on the ground!”

  Tom knew exactly how he felt. To north and south of them the steep side of the Black Island stretched away, and above them the slope climbed almost vertically to dark crags which moaned with ghostly voices as the wind blew around them. Some of the higher pinnacles of rock had been sculpted into such wild shapes that from the beach they had looked like fortresses, and Peavey had led his party on a long detour to avoid them before he realized they were only stones.

  “It’s lovely,” sighed Hester, limping along at Tom’s side. She was smiling to herself, which he had never seen her do, and whistling a little tune through her teeth.

  “What are you so happy about?” he asked.

  “We’re going to Airhaven, aren’t we?” she replied in a whisper. “It’s laired up ahead somewhere, and Peavey’s little gang will never take it, not with Mossies and the Airhaven people ranged against them. They’ll be killed, and we’ll find a ship to take us north to London. Anna Fang’s there, remember. She might help us again.”

  “Oh, her!” said Tom angrily. “Didn’t you hear what Peavey said? She’s a League spy.”

  “I thought so,” admitted Hester. “I mean, all those questions she kept asking us about London, and Valentine.”

  “You should have told me!” he protested. “I might have revealed an important secret!”

  “Why would I care?” asked Hester. “And since when have Apprentice Historians known any important secrets? Anyway, I thought you realized she was a spy.”

  “She didn’t look like one.”

  “Well, spies don’t, generally. You can’t expect them to wear a big sandwich board with ‘SPY’ on it, or a special spying hat.” She was in a strange, jokey mood, and Tom wondered if it was because these dismal steeps reminded her of her girlhood on that other island. Suddenly she touched his arm and said, “Poor Tom. You’re learning what Valentine taught me all those years ago; you can’t trust anybody.”

  “Huh,” said Tom.

  “Oh, I don’t mean you,” she added hurriedly. “I think I trust you, almost. And what you did for me back in Tunbridge Wheels—making Peavey let me out of the lock-ups like that… A lot of people wouldn’t have bothered. Not for somebody like me.”

  Tom looked round at her, and saw more clearly than ever before the kind, shy Hester peeping from behind the grim mask. He smiled at her with such warmth that she blushed (at least, her strange face turned red in patches and her scar went purple) and Peavey looked back at them and hollered, “Come on, you two lovebirds! Stop whispering sweet nothings and march!”

  * * *

  Afternoon, the cloud clearing eastwards and sunlight dazzling down through the wave-tops, flickering on the upperworks of Tunbridge Wheels. Shrike moves through the suburb’s streets with his head swinging slowly from side to side. Bodies drift in the flooded rooms like cold teabags left too long in the pot. Small fish dart in and out of a pirate’s mouth. A girl’s hair coils on the current. Dark keels of salvage boats move overhead. He waits hidden in the shadows while three naked boys come diving down, flying past him with urgent motions of their arms and legs and leaving trails of silver bubbles. They kick back to the surface carrying guns, bottles, a leather belt.

  Hester is not here. Shrike turns away from the sunken suburb, following the shadows of drifting oil-slicks over the silt. Wreckage is strewn along the sea floor, and floating bodies beckon him towards the roots of the Black Island.

  It is evening by the time he walks out of the surf, trailing flags of seaweed, water draining from inside his battered armour. He shakes his head to clear his vision and stares about him at a beach of black sand beneath dark cliffs. It takes him most of another hour to find the life-raft, hidden in a tumble of house-sized boulders. He unsheathes his metal claws and tears the bottom out of it, cutting off her escape. Hester is his again now. When she is dead he will carry her gently through the drowned sunlight and the forests of kelp, back through the marshes and the long leagues of the Hunting Ground to Crome. He will take her into London in his arms like a father carrying his sleeping child.

  He drops on all fours in the sand and starts sniffing for her scent.

  * * *

  Towards sundown, they finally reached the top of the slope, and found themselves looking down into the centre of the Black Island.

  Tom hadn’t realized until now that it was an extinct volcano, but from here it was obvious; the steep, black crags ringed an almost circular bowl of land, green, and patched with fields. Almost directly below the place where the pirates crouched, a small static settlement stood beside a blue lake. There were airship hangars and mooring masts beside the stone buildings, and on the flat ground behind them, dwarfing the whole place, Airhaven perched on a hundred skinny landing legs, looking as helpless as a grounded bird.

  “The air-caravanserai!” chuckled Peavey. He pulled out his telescope and put it to his eye. “Look at ’em work! They’re pumping their gasbags back up, desperate to get back into the sky…” He swung the glass quickly across the surrounding hillsides. “No sign of any of our boys. Oh, if only we had a cannon left! But we’ll manage, eh lads? A bunch of airy-fairies is no match for us! Come on, let’s get closer…”

  There was a strange edge to the mayor’s voice. He’s frightened, Tom realized. But he can’t admit it, in case Mungo and Maggs and Ames lose faith in him. He had never thought he would feel sorry for the pirate mayor, but he did. Peavey had been kind to him, in his way, and it hurt to see him reduced to this, scrambling across the wet ground with his people muttering and cursing him behind his back.

  They still followed him though, down between the screes into the crater of the old fire-mountain. Once they saw riders silhouetted on a distant crag; a patrol of islanders hunting for survivors from the sunken pirate town. Once an airship flew low overhead, and Peavey hissed at everybody to lie flat and stay still, wrapping his monkey under his robes to muffle its shrill complaints.

  The airship circled, but by that time the sun had gone down, and the pilot did not see the figures who cowered in the twilight below him like mice hiding from an owl. He flew back down to land at the caravanserai as a fat moon heaved itself over the eastern crags.

  Tom gave a sharp sob of relief and scrambled up. Around him the others were also starting to move, grunting, dislodging small stones which went clattering away down the hillside. He could see people hurrying about with lanterns and torches in the streets of the air-caravanserai, and lamp-lit windows that made him think how wonderful it would be to be warm and safe indoors. Airhaven was bright with electric lights, and the wind brought the distant sounds of shouted orders, music, cheering.

  “For Pete’s sake!” hissed Mungo. “We’re too late! It’s leaving!”

  “Never,”
scoffed Peavey.

  But they could all see that Airhaven’s gasbags were almost full. A few minutes later the growl of its engines came rumbling up the slope, rising and falling as the wind gusted. The flying town was straining upwards, its crab-like legs folding back into place underneath it. “No!” shouted Peavey.

  Then he was running downhill, scrambling and tumbling down clattering spills of scree towards the flat, boggy land in the crater floor, and as he ran they heard him screaming “Come back! You’re my catch! I sank my town for you!”

  Mungo and Maggs and Ames set off after him, with Hester and Tom behind. At the foot of the slope the ground grew soft and squashy underfoot and pools of water reflected the moon and the lights of the rising town.

  “Come back!” they could hear Peavey shouting, somewhere ahead of them. “Come back!” and then, “Ah! Oh! Help!”

  They hurried towards the sound of his voice and the harsh screams of the monkey, and all came to a halt together at the edge of a deep patch of bog. Peavey was already up to his waist in it. The monkey perched on top of his head like a sailor on a foundering ship, grinning with fear. “Give me a hand, boys!” the mayor pleaded. “Help me! We can still get it! It’s only testing its liftin’ engines! It’ll come down again!”

  The pirates watched him silently. They knew they had no chance of taking the flying town, and that his shouts had probably warned the islanders of their presence.

  “We’ve got to help him!” whispered Tom, starting forward, but Hester held him back.

  “Too late,” she said.

  Peavey was sinking deeper, the weight of his chain of office pulling him down. He spluttered as the black mud swilled into his mouth. “Come on, lads! Maggs? Mungo? I’m your mayor! I done all this for you!” He searched for Tom with wild, terrified eyes. “Tell ’em, Tommy boy!” he whimpered. “Tell ’em I wanted to make Tunbridge Wheels great! I wanted to be respectable! Tell ’em—”

  Mungo’s first shot blew the monkey off the top of Peavey’s head in a cloud of singed fur. The second and third went through his chest. He bowed his head, and the mud gulped him down with soft farting noises.

  The pirates turned to look at Tom.

  “We prob’ly wouldn’t be ’ere if it weren’t for you,” muttered Mungo.

  “If you hadn’t of gone filling the Chiefs head up with all them ideas about manners and cities and stuff,” agreed Maggs.

  “Different forks for every course, and no talking with your mouth full!” sneered Ames.

  Tom started to back away. To his surprise, Hester stepped quickly between him and the pirates. “It’s not Tom’s fault! “she said.

  “An” you’re no use to us, neither,” Mungo growled. “Neither of you is. We’re pirates. We don’t need no lessons in etiquette an’ we don’t need no lame scarface girl to hold us up.” He raised his gun, and Maggs followed suit. Even Mr Ames pulled out a little revolver.

  And a voice out of the darkess said, “they’re mine.”

  21. IN THE ENGINEERIUM

  London was climbing towards a high plateau where the town-torn earth was dusted with thin layers of snow. A hundred miles behind it rolled Panzerstadt-Bayreuth, not just a threatening blur on the horizon any more but a huge dark mass of tracks and tiers, the gold filigree-work of its ornate top deck clearly visible above the smoke of factories and engines. Londoners crowded on to the aft observation platforms and watched in silence as the gap between the two cities slowly narrowed. That afternoon the Lord Mayor announced that there was no need for panic and that the Guild of Engineers would bring the city safely through this crisis—but there had already been riots and looting on the lower tiers, and squads of Beefeaters had been sent down to keep order in the Gut.

  “Old Crome doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” muttered one of the men on duty at the Quirke Circus Elevator Station that evening. “I never thought I’d hear myself say it, but he’s a fool. Bringing poor old London way out east like this, day after day of travelling, week after week, just to get scoffed by some big old conurbation. I wish Valentine was here. He’d know what to do…”

  “Quiet, Bert,” hissed his companion, “here comes some more of ’em.”

  Both men bowed politely as two Engineers strode up to the turnstiles, a young man and a girl, dressed identically in green glastic goggles and white rubber hoods and coats. The girl flashed a gold pass. When she and her companion had gone up into the waiting elevator Bert turned to his friend and whispered, “It must be important, this do at the Engineerium. They’ve been swarming up out of their nests in the Deep Gut like a load of old white maggots. Imagine having a Guild meeting at a time like this!”

  * * *

  Inside the elevator Katherine sat down next to Bevis Pod, already feeling hot and self-conscious inside the coat that he had lent her. She glanced at him, and then checked her reflection in the window, making sure that the red wheels they had drawn so carefully on each other’s foreheads had not got smudged. She thought they both looked ridiculous in these hoods and goggles, but Bevis had assured her that a lot of Engineers wore them these days, and the other occupant of the elevator, a fat Navigator, didn’t so much as look at them while the car lurched towards Top Tier.

  Katherine had spent the whole day restlessly waiting for Bevis to arrive with her disguise. To while away the time she had looked up the name HESTER SHAW in the indices of all her father’s books, but couldn’t find it. A Complete Catalogue of the London Museum contained one brief reference to a Pandora Shaw, but it just said she was an Out-Country scavenger who had supplied a few minor fossils and pieces of Old-Tech to the Historian’s Guild, and gave the date of her death, seven years ago. After that she tried looking up MEDUSA, only to learn that it was some sort of monster in an old story. She didn’t think Magnus Crome and his Engineers believed in monsters.

  Nobody gave a second glance as she and Bevis strode across Top Tier towards the main entrance of the Engineerium. Scores of Engineers were already hurrying up the steps. Katherine joined them, clutching her gold pass and keeping close to the apprentice, terrified that she might lose him in this crowd of identical white coats. This will never work! she kept thinking, but the Guildsman on duty at the door wasn’t bothering to look at passes. She took a last look at the fading sunset behind the dome of St Paul’s, then stepped inside.

  It was bigger than she expected, and brighter, lit by hundreds of argon globes that hung in the great open shaft at the centre of the building like planets hanging in space. She looked around for the staircase, but Bevis tugged at her arm and said, “We go up by monorail. Look…”

  The Engineers were clambering into little monorail cars. Katherine and Bevis joined the queue, listening to their muttered conversations and the squeaky rustle of their coats rubbing together. Bevis’s eyes were wide and frightened behind his goggles. Katherine had hoped that they would be able to get a monorail car to themselves so that they could talk, but more Engineers were arriving all the time and she ended up sitting on the far side of a packed car from him, wedged tightly in with a group from the Mag-Lev Research Division.

  “Where are you from, Guildsperson?” asked the man sitting beside her.

  “Um…” Katherine looked frantically at Bevis, but he was too far away to whisper an answer. She blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “K Division.”

  “Old Twixie, eh?” said the man. “I hear she’s having amazing results with her new models!”

  “Oh, yes, very,” she replied. Then the car moved off with a lurch and her neighbour turned to the window, fascinated by the passing view.

  Katherine had expected the monorail to feel like an elevator, but the speed and the spiralling movement made it quite different and for a moment she had to concentrate hard on not being sick. The other Engineers seemed not to notice. “What do you think the Lord Mayor’s speech will be about?” one of them asked.

  “It must be MEDUSA,” said another. “I heard they are preparing for a test.”


  “Let’s hope it works,” said a woman sitting just in front of Katherine. “It was Valentine who found the machine, after all, and he’s only a Historian, you know. You can’t trust them.”

  “Oh, Valentine is the Lord Mayor’s man,” said another. “Don’t let that Historian’s guild-mark fool you. He’s as loyal as a dog, so long as we give him plenty of money and he gets to pretend that foreign daughter of his is a High London lady.”

  Round and round they went, and up past offices and workshops full of busy Engineers, like an enormous hive of insects. The car stopped on level five and Katherine climbed out, still flushed with anger at what the others had said. She linked up with Bevis again and they all trotted together along chilly, white corridors and through hanging curtains of transparent plastic. She could hear the babble of voices ahead, and after a few twists and turns they emerged into an immense auditorium. Bevis led the way to a seat near one of the exits. She looked about her to see if she could spot Supervisor Nimmo, but it was impossible to make him out. The auditorium was a sea of white coats and bald or hooded heads, and more were pouring through the entrances all the time.

  “Look!” hissed Bevis, nudging her. “That’s Dr Twix, the one I told you about!” He pointed to a squat little barrel-shaped woman who was taking a seat in the front row, chattering animatedly with her neighbours. “All the top Guildspersons are here! Twix, Chubb, Garstang … and there’s Dr Vambrace, the head of security!”

  Katherine began to feel frightened. If she had been unmasked at the door she might have been able to pass it off as a silly prank, but now she was deep in the Engineers’ inner sanctum, and she could tell that something important was about to happen. She reminded herself that even if they discovered her, the Engineers would never dare harm Thaddeus Valentine’s daughter. She tried not to think about what they might do to Bevis.