Predator's Gold

by Philip Reeve

  “Mr Scabious!” he said aloud. Scabious had never wholly believed in Professor Pennyroyal. Scabious would listen. He turned and ran as fast as he could back to the stairway. As he passed the Wheelhouse Pennyroyal leaned over a balcony to watch, shouting after him, “‘A Startling Talent!’ – The Wheel-Tapper’s Weekly!”

  Down in the hot dark of the engine district everything thrummed and thundered with the beat of the engines as they drove the city on towards disaster. Tom stopped the first men he saw and asked where he could find Scabious. They nodded towards the stern, fingering their amulets. “Gone to look for his son, like every night.”

  Tom ran on, into quiet, rusty streets where nothing moved. Or almost nothing. As he passed beneath one of the dangling argon-lamps a faint movement in the mouth of a ventilation-shaft flicked a sliver of reflected light into the corner of his eye. He stopped, breathing hard, his heart thumping, hairs prickling on his wrists and the back of his neck. In his panic over Pennyroyal he had all but forgotten the intruders. Now all his half-formed theories about them flooded his mind again. The ventilator looked empty and innocent enough now, but he was sure there had been something there, something that had darted guiltily back into the shadows just as his eye caught it. And he was sure that it was still in there, watching him.

  “Oh, Hester,” he whispered, suddenly very frightened, wishing she were here to help. Hester would have been able to cope with this, but he wasn’t at all sure he could, not alone. Trying to imagine what she would do, he forced himself to walk on, one step after another, not looking towards the ventilator until he was sure he was out of sight of whatever hid there.

  “I think he saw us,” said Caul.

  “Never!” sneered Skewer.

  Caul shrugged unhappily. They had been tracking Tom with their cameras all evening, waiting for him to reach a place that was quiet enough and close enough to the Screw Worm for them to carry out Uncle’s mysterious command. They’d never watched a Dry this closely for this long, and something in Tom’s face as he glanced towards the camera made Caul uneasy. “Come on, Skew,” he said. “It must all build up after a while, mustn’t it? The noises, and the feeling you’re being watched. And he was suspicious even before…”

  “They never see!” said Skewer firmly. The strange message from Uncle had made him nervous, and faced with the task of tracking Tom he’d been forced to admit that Gargle was the best cam-operator aboard and hand over the controls to him. He clung to the idea of his superiority over the Drys as if it was the last certain thing in the world. “They might look, but they never see. They’re not as observant as us. There, what did I tell you? He’s walked past. Stupid Dry.”

  It wasn’t a rat. All the rats of Anchorage were dead, and anyway, this thing looked mechanical. As he crept back through shadows towards the ventilator Tom could see the light jinking on segmented metal. A bulbous, fist-sized body, supported on too many legs. A single camera-lens eye.

  He thought of the mysterious boy who had come for him on the night Hester left, and how he seemed to know everything that went on at the air-harbour and the Winter Palace. How many of these things were there, scuttling and spying in the city’s ducts? And why was this one watching him?

  “Where is he, Gargle? Find him…”

  “I think he’s gone,” said Gargle, panning to and fro.

  “Careful!” warned Caul, resting his hand on the younger boy’s shoulder. “Tom’s still round there somewhere, I’m sure of it.”

  “What, psychic as well now, are you?” asked Skewer.

  Tom took three deep breaths, then flung himself at the ventilator. The metal thing scrabbled, trying to retreat into the dark shaft. Glad that he was still wearing his heavy outdoor mittens, Tom grabbed its thrashing legs and pulled.

  “He’s got us!”

  “Reel in! Reel in!”

  Eight steel legs. Magnets for feet. An armoured body warted with rivets. That cyclops-lens whirring as it struggled to focus on him. It was so like a gigantic spider that Tom dropped it, and flinched away as it lay there on its back on the deck, writhing its legs helplessly. Then the thin cable that trailed from its rear end went suddenly taut, dragging it backwards against the ventilator with a clang. Tom lunged after it, but he was too slow. The crab-thing was tugged quickly into the shaft and vanished, leaving him listening to the fading clatter as it was hauled away into the city’s depths.

  Tom scrambled up, his heart beating quickly. Who would own such a thing? Who would want to spy on the people of Anchorage? He thought of Pennyroyal’s tale of the vampire towns, and suddenly it did not seem quite so unlikely after all. He leaned against the wall to catch his breath and then started to run again. “Mr Scabious!” he shouted, the echoes rolling ahead of him down the tubular streets or vanishing upward into great, dark, dripping, haunted vaults. “Mr Scabious!”

  “Lost him again! No, there – camera twelve…” Gargle flipped wildly from camera to camera. Tinnily, through the cabin speakers, Tom’s voice was shouting, “Mr Scabious! He’s not a ghost! I know where he comes from!”

  “I think he’s heading for the stern gallery.”

  “Gotta get him quick!” wailed Skewer, rummaging through lockers for a gun, a net. “He’ll blow our cover! Uncle’ll kill us! I mean really, really kill us! Gods, I hate this! We’re burglars, not kidnappers! What’s Uncle thinking? We’ve never been asked to kidnap Drys before; not full-grown ones…”

  “Uncle Knows Best,” Gargle reminded him.

  “Oh, shut up!”

  “I’ll go,” said Caul. The emergency had made him calm; he knew what had to be done, and he knew how he would do it.

  “Not without me,” Skewer shouted. “I don’t trust you up there alone, Dry-lover!”

  “All right.” Caul was already halfway to the hatch. “But let me handle him. He knows me, remember?”

  “Mr Scabious?”

  Tom burst out on to the stern gallery. The moon was up, hanging low in the sky behind the city, and the drive-wheel flung its reflection across the deckplates. The boy stood waiting there in the flash and flicker like a grey ghost.

  “How are you doing, Tom?” he asked. He looked nervous and a little shy, but friendly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for them to meet like this.

  Tom swallowed his yelp of surprise. “Who are you?” he said, backing away. “Those crab-things – you must have loads of them, creeping all over the city, watching everything. Why? Who are you?”

  The boy held out his hand, a pleading gesture, begging Tom to stay. “My name’s Caul.”

  Tom’s mouth felt dry. Bits of Pennyroyal’s stupid story clanged inside his head like an alarm bell; they murder the menfolk, the city is left just an empty shell, a husk, everyone dead…

  “Don’t worry,” said Caul, grinning suddenly, as if he understood. “We’re only burglars, and now we’re going home. But you have to come with us. Uncle says.”

  Several things happened all at once. Tom turned to run and a net of thin metal mesh, flung from some gantry overhead, dropped over him and brought him crashing down. At the same instant as he heard Caul shout, “Skew! No!” another voice yelled, “Axel?” and he looked up to see Scabious standing at the far end of the gallery, transfixed by the sight of the frail-looking fair-haired boy whom he took to be his son’s ghost. Then, in the shadows overhead, a gun went off with a cough and a sudden stab of blue flame, some kind of gas-pistol, ricochet yowling like a hurt dog. Scabious cursed and flung himself sideways into cover as a second boy leapt down on to the stern-gallery, bigger than Caul and with long dark hair whipping about his face. Together, he and Caul lifted Tom, who was still struggling to free himself from the net. They began to run, jostling their captive into the mouth of an underlit access alley.

  It was very dark, and the floors throbbed and jarred with a steady rhythm. Thick ducts sprouted from the deckplates and rose into the shadows overhead like trees in a metal forest. Somewhere behind there was a dim glow of moonlight a
nd the angry, hurt voice of Mr Scabious shouting, “You young –! Come back here! Stop!”

  “Mr Scabious!” Tom shouted, pushing his face into the cold cross-hatch of the net. “They’re parasites! Thieves! They’re—”

  His captors dropped him unceremoniously on the deck. He rolled over and saw them crouching in a gap between two ducts. Caul’s long hands had gripped a section of the deckplate and he was lifting it; opening it; a camouflaged manhole.

  “Stop!” shouted Scabious, close now, shadow flashing between the ducts astern. Caul’s friend swung his gas-pistol up and squeezed off another round, holing a duct which began to gush a great white geyser of steam.

  “Tom!” yelled Scabious. “I’ll fetch help!”

  “Mr Scabious!” Tom cried, but Scabious was gone; Tom could hear his voice shouting for aid in some neighbouring tubeway. The lid of the manhole was open, blue light shafting up through steam. Caul and the other stranger picked him up and swung him towards it. He had a glimpse of a short companionway leading down into a dim, blue-lit chamber, and then he was falling, like a sack of coal dropped into a cellar, landing hard on a hard floor. His captors came clattering down the ladder, and the hatch above him slammed shut.

  22

  THE SCREW WORM

  Around-roofed hold, stuffed with plunder like a well-filled belly. Blue bulbs in wire cages. A smell of damp and mildew and unwashed boys.

  Tom struggled to sit up. In the fall down the companionway one of his hands had come free of the net, but just as he realized this, and before he could free himself entirely, Caul grabbed his arms from behind and Caul’s friend, the boy called Skewer, squatted in front of him. Skewer had holstered his gas-pistol, but there was a knife in his hand; a short blade of pale metal with a serrated edge. It flashed blue in the blue light as he pressed it against Tom’s throat.

  “No, please!” squeaked Tom. He didn’t really think the strangers had gone to all the trouble of kidnapping him just to murder him, but the blade was cold, and the look in Skewer’s pewter-coloured eyes was wild.

  “Don’t, Skewer,” said Caul.

  “Just so he knows,” Skewer explained, drawing the knife away slowly. “Just so he’s clear what’ll happen if he tries anything fancy.”

  “He’s right, Tom,” said Caul, helping Tom to stand. “You can’t escape, so you’d better not try. You won’t be very comfy if we have to lock you in a cargo container…” He pulled a cord from his pockets and bound Tom’s wrists together. “This is just till we’re away from Anchorage. We’ll untie you after, if you behave.”

  “Away from Anchorage?” asked Tom, watching Caul’s fingers tie the complex knots. “Where are you going?”

  “Home,” said Caul. “Uncle wants to see you.”

  “Whose uncle?”

  A circular door in the bulkhead behind Caul whirled open suddenly, like the iris of a camera. There were banks of dodgy-looking equipment cluttering the room beyond, and a third boy, startlingly young, who shouted, “Skewer, we’ve got to GO!”

  Caul grinned quickly at Tom, said, “Welcome aboard the Screw Worm!” and ran through into the new room. Tom followed, shunted forward by Skewer’s firm hand. This strange, blue-lit kennel was not some undercroft of Anchorage as he’d thought at first, but it clearly wasn’t one of Professor Pennyroyal’s parasite towns either. It was a vehicle, and this was its control-room; a crescent-shaped cabin with banks of dials and levers all around and bulbous windows looking out into a rushing darkness. On six oval screens above the controls grainy blue views of Anchorage flickered: the Scabious Spheres, the stern-gallery, Rasmussen Prospekt, a corridor in the Winter Palace. On the fifth screen Freya Rasmussen was sleeping peacefully. On the sixth, Scabious led a gang of engine-workers towards the secret manhole.

  “They’re on to us!” said the youngest of the burglars, sounding very scared.

  “All right, Gargle. Time to go.” Caul reached for a bank of levers. They had a home-made look, like everything else aboard this craft, and they grated and creaked as he pulled them, but they seemed to work. One by one the pictures on the screen folded up and dwindled to white dots. The cabin filled with a metallic hiss as the camera-cables which had infested Anchorage’s air-ducts and plumbing like the tendrils of an invasive weed were reeled quickly in. Tom imagined people all over the city looking up in surprise at the sudden rush and rattle in their heating-ducts. In the cabin, the noise of the reels rose to a deafening shriek and then ended in a series of dull clangs as the crabs were jerked home into ports on the hull above his head and armoured lids closed over them. As the echoes of the last one faded he heard another, fainter clanging; Scabious and his engine district workers hacking at the camouflaged hatch with picks and hammers.

  Caul and Skewer stood side by side at the controls, their hands moving quickly and confidently over the crowded panels. Tom, who had always taken great care of the Jenny Haniver’s instruments, was shocked by the state of these: rusty, scuffed and dirty, levers grating in their slots, dials cracked, sparks flashing blue each time a switch was tripped. But the cabin began to shake and hum and the needles in the crazed gauges flickered and Tom saw that this stuff worked. This machine, whatever it was, might be about to snatch him away from Anchorage before Scabious and the others could do anything to save him.

  “Going down!” whooped Skewer.

  There was a new sound, not unlike the one made by the Jenny Haniver’s mooring clamps when they disengaged from a docking pan. Then an awful sensation of falling, as the Screw Worm dropped free from its hiding place on Anchorage’s underbelly. Tom’s stomach turned over. He grabbed a handle on the bulkhead behind him for support. Was this an airship? But it was not flying, just falling, and now came a great juddering shock as it landed on the ice beneath the city. The huge shapes of gantries and skid-supports rushed past beyond the windows, half hidden by a spray of greyish slush, and then suddenly the city was gone and he was looking out across open, moonlit snowfields.

  Gargle checked his instruments. “Thin ice bearing east-by-north-east-a-half-east, about six miles,” he squeaked.

  Tom still had little idea of the size or shape of the Screw Worm, but watchers on the upper tier saw it clear in the moonlight now as it shot out from beneath the city, narrowly avoiding the drive-wheel. It was a house-high metal spider, its fat hull supported by eight hydraulic legs, each ending in a broad, clawed disc of a foot. Black smoke spurted from exhaust-ports on its flanks as it ran eastward, back along the track made by Anchorage’s runners.

  “A parasite!” growled Scabious, dashing out on to a maintenance platform above the drive-wheel to watch it go. Anger bubbled up inside him, forcing apart the locks and bolts with which he had fastened down his feelings since his son died. Some filthy parasite clinging to his city like a tick! Some thieving parasite-boy tricking him into believing that his Axel had returned!

  “We’ll stop them!” he shouted to his people. “We’ll teach them to steal from Anchorage! Tell the Wheelhouse ready about! Umiak, Kinvig, Kneaves, with me!”

  Anchorage dug in its starboard ice-rudders and came about. For a while nobody aboard could see anything for the glittering curtains of snow the runners had flung into the air. Then the parasite appeared again, a mile ahead, veering north-east. The city put on speed to give chase, while Scabious’s people heaved the jaws open and gnashed them to clear the ice that had formed on the banks of steel teeth. Searchlights fumbled across the snow, stretching the parasite’s crooked running shadow ahead of it. Closer, closer, until the jaws were snapping so near to the thing’s stern that a puff of smoke from its exhausts was trapped inside. “Once more!” bellowed Scabious, standing on the floor of his city’s small gut. “This time he’s ours!”

  But Windolene Pye peered at her charts and saw that the city was speeding towards a place the survey teams had marked with red crosses: a place where open water had skimmed over with ice that would not bear a city’s weight. She swung the engine district telegraph to ALL STOP and Anchorag
e backed its engines, dug in all its anchors and came shivering to a halt with a shock that scattered black flocks of tiles from the rooftops and brought down an empty terrace of rust-sick buildings on the upper tier.

  The parasite machine ran on, stilting its way out on to the treacherous ice. Scabious stared out through the open jaws and watched it slow and halt there. “Ha! We’ve driven him on to the thin stuff! He’ll dare go no further! He’s ours now!” He ran through the gut to the garage where the survey-teams kept their sleds, snatching a wolf-rifle from one of his men as he went. Someone dragged a sled out for him and fired the engines up, and he leapt aboard it and went rushing down the exit chute, a steel door sliding open ahead of him. Out on the ice he swung around the city’s jaws and sped towards the cornered spider-thing, a dozen of his men on other sleds whooping and shouting behind him.

  Tom squinted through the limpet’s windows, trying to shield his eyes against the glare of Anchorage’s searchlights. He could already hear the faint shouts of his rescuers, the crack of wolf-rifles fired into the air, the throaty stutter of sled engines hammering towards him across the ice.

  “If you just let me go, I’ll put in a good word for you,” he promised his captors. “Scabious isn’t a bad sort. He’ll treat you well if you just hand back the things you’ve stolen from his engine district. And I know Freya won’t want you punished.”