Fever Crumb

by Philip Reeve

  Inside the place was more like a cave than a shop. Stacked with old car parts and barrels of machine scraps, Ancient technology heaped up against the walls and dangling from the rafters. The owner popped out of a secret lair among the clutter and blinked at them. "Bagman ...

  Charley knew the man, of course. Knew him by sight, at least, for Thaniel Worm timber was one of Ted Swiney's cronies, and could be found most evenings propping up the Mott and Hoople's bar. He was small and walnut brown and dirty and he had large, watchful, yellow eyes.

  "Charley," the Skinner said, "this here is Master Wormtimber. He's the New Council's Master of Devices, but I believe he won't be above lending us a helping hand."

  "Always happy to help the Skinners' Guilds, Master Creech," replied Wormtimber, rubbing his little mittened hands over and over each other, like a cat washing its paws. His head twitched forward and those weaselish eyes looked hungrily at Charley. "Oh, always happy, Master Creech. Ted Swiney at the Mott and Hoople told me you were hunting again, but I didn't dare imagine that I might be of any use."

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  "You keep an eye on the digs around town, I believe? You keep the Council abreast of who's digging where and what they're finding?"

  "Oh, yes, indeed, Master Creech, that is one of my duties."

  "What do you know about an archaeologist called Solent?"

  Wormtimber blinked cautiously. "Kit Solent? He's nothing much. He married old Chigley Unthank's daughter. The daughter's dead, too, now, I believe. Solent's never found anything of much note. What makes him Skinner's business, Master Creech?"

  Creech said nothing for a moment. Charley sensed that the old man was uneasy about sharing what he'd found with the Master of Devices. But he coughed, and then said, "Solent's hired a new Engineer. A girl."

  Wormtimber nodded. "Crumb's foundling. I've heard of her."

  "What do you mean, foundling?"

  "Why, I mean what I say, Master Creech; that she was found. In a basket, on the Brick Marsh somewhere. Fever Crumb ... He stopped, and his eyes seemed to light with a pale fire. "I say, Master Creech -- you don't suspect she's one of them? "

  "It ain't proven neither way," said Creech. "I've had a look at her, but I can't be certain. I need to get in and check her over without actually getting in and checking her over, if you take my meaning. I heard you're the man to come to for the old machines."

  "Oh, yes, Master Creech, sir," said Wormtimber, nodding, rubbing his hands, smiling so much that his eyes folded themselves

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  away into deep creases. "I do have some most interesting devices at my disposal. Say what you will about the Patchskins, they left behind some lovely toys. Old-tech weapons, sir, and spyware. As Master of Devices it's my task to maintain such things for the New Council, but between ourselves, the post pays poorly, and so to make ends meet I do sometimes rent out or even sell the more useful pieces. Though, of course, I'd not dream to expect a rental fee from you, Master Creech. I'm always pleased to help the Skinners. So this girl, you say, this girl who may be, or may not be...? We need a close look at her, do we? A sneaky peek, while she's asleep?" He gave a little slithery giggle. "Oh, yes, I think that can be done. Come back tonight, when it grows dark, and we shall see what we shall see...."

  ***

  Some miles outside the inhabited city, where the sparse brown grasses blew on hummocks of brick and tarmac that had once been streets, the Orbital Moatway marked the borders of Greater London. An Ancient feature, built up and fortified in Scriven times, it curved through the heaths and fields like a thick green snake, a deep dike and an embankment topped with a wall of salvage stone and a timber palisade. A stone guard tower stood sentry every mile, looking south toward the Channel Ports, east to the Minarchies of Upnor and Doggerland on the salt plains where the North Sea used to roll, west to the marches of Redding, and north toward -- well, nothing much. North of the Moatway there were only more hummocks, more dun grass,

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  the huts and fields of an occasional small settlement and sometimes, in clear weather, on the edge of sight, the blunt dirty snouts of far-off glaciers squatting in the haze that hung forever above the ice sheet.

  Until that evening. That evening there was something new. In the afternoon some of the Moatway lookouts had noticed that a part of the northern sky was striped with dozens of gray lines, which rose straight up and spread into a stain, like the bruise of smoke that might hang above a dense concentration of chimneys. As the sun went down and the shadows deepened, they began to see lights beneath the smoke; dozens of lights, yellow and white like distant, lighted windows, flickering red like far-off furnaces. It was as if a mirage of the city were forming itself out there, a mirror-London conjured from the tawny heaths and cold melt-water lakes.

  The watchmen, whose job it was to guard the Moatway against foreigners, gathered on the palisades. They stood in worried clumps on the battlements of the mile castles, fingering the hafts of their pikes, the stocks of their clumsy muskets. Officers trained telescopes on the distant smoke. "Things are moving...Throwing up a lot of dust, but...Big things...Land barges...There's a whole city on the move out there!"

  A moving city. That's how things were up in the wild and fridgy marches of the north. Up there, the tribes who had been set wandering by the plagues and firestorms of the Downsizing had never settled down again, the way sensible people had in

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  warmer climates. They'd just kept going, century after century, millennium after millennium. They'd started out on foot, tramping after their herds. Then they had built wagons, and the wagons had become motorized, and the motors had grown more powerful, and the wagons had grown larger, turning into barges, land hoys, and traction castles. And still they kept moving, too in love with their wandering lives to ever settle now. And now, for the first time since the Scriven came, some of them had moved within sight of the borders of London.

  The men on the Moatway could only look and wonder, taking turns with the most powerful telescopes. Meanwhile, out of the scrublands and the scattered northern digger villages, the first gray-brown bundled processions of refugees were streaming, battering at the Moatway's gates to be let through. Women carrying children, children carrying babies. An old man wearing a cheap chest of drawers on his back like a rucksack. "Let us in!" Their thin, chilly voices scratched at the air like the voices of sheep. "Let us through! They are coming! The Movement is coming!"

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  ***

  12 T he F oldable A ssassin

  Darkness settled over Ludgate Hill. The children went to bed, tired and contented. Ruan made a space on his bedside table for the toy land barge that his father had bought him at the fair, and fell asleep gazing at it. Fern snuggled against Noodle Poodle's blue fur and dreamed small, happy dreams. Upstairs, Fever recited logarithms to herself until she had cleared her head of all the dizzy memories of Summertown before she went to bed. After a little while longer Kit Solent turned in, too. The house lay quiet for a long time. A clock ticked in the hallway, and another in the drawing room. A brown beetle hurried across the living room floor. Wands of moonlight reached slowly through the silent rooms.

  Just before midnight, with a papery rasp, something was pushed through the letter flap of the street door and fell with a soft thump on the mat. It lay there for a silent while among the

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  children's kicked-off shoes, a dim block of white in the gloom of the hall, like a tightly folded newspaper.

  Then, if you had been watching, you might have seen a shy, sly movement. A corner curled. It settled again, cautious, as if waiting to make sure no one had noticed. Then, very swiftly, with quick crinkling, crisping noises that were almost too faint to hear, the paper boy unfolded itself and stood upright, balancing on the edges of its flat, white feet. Its blank face swung to and fro, scanning the emptiness of the hall.

  ***

  Outside, Charley Shallow hurried away from the house, afraid that some passerby would have spotted him c
ramming the folded paper through Solent's door. But no one challenged him. He ran across the empty street, ducked into an alleyway, and pounded on the door of a big sedan chair that waited there, its four bearers dozing between the shafts. After a moment the door opened and he was pulled inside.

  One of the chair's seats was taken up by a strange machine, all copper wire and twisty brass tubes and complicated little lead boxes, with a tiny screen glowing in the middle of it all. Thaniel Wormtimber had clipped a magnifying lens in front of the screen, and he sat on the opposite seat, his feet working the pedals that powered the contraption, his hands gripping a set of brass levers, his eyes peering fiercely at the flickering picture. Beside him, statue still, sat Bagman Creech.

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  "We're in," said Wormtimber, in an excited sort of whisper that kept threatening to turn into a giggle. "That's Solent's hallway."

  "It's hard to see much," said Bagman, unimpressed. "All blurs and splodges. Can't you make it clearer?"

  "Make it clearer?" snapped Wormtimber. "This is old, old technology, from the Black Centuries, Master Creech. We're lucky it works at all. if anyone knew how to improve it, they'd have done so. Paper boys' eyes sense heat, not light. Those dark gray bits are cold, the light gray are warmer. Warmest of all will be living things, like this girl of yours. Let's see if we can find her...." He pedaled a little harder, and the tiny picture flickered brighter, like a gray moth trapped behind the magnifying lens.

  ***

  The paper boy went rustling across the hall and started upstairs. It walked jerkily, leaning forward like a man walking into a gale. As it passed the landing windows, moonlight shone through it. if you'd been watching you might have seen the wafer mechanisms pressed between its paper layers; the wires of its bones, thin as horse hairs; the shadows of its electric eyes in the blank page of its face. It moved along the landing to a bedroom, hesitated a moment, then folded itself to the floor and posted itself under the door like a note.

  ***

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  In the chair outside, Bagman Creech leaned closer to the tiny screen, and made out the fuzzy white shapes of the Solent children sleeping in their beds.

  "That's not her. Move on."

  ***

  The paper boy went crisping and crinkling on its way. It climbed more stairs, and crept toward the door at the end of the landing. It spilled through the crack beneath it like a paper flood.

  Fever was sleeping on her back, as always, her hands by her sides. The paper boy circled the bed like her own bleached shadow, sprung to life. It studied the neat piles of her clothes, and the picture she had taken down, propped up carefully against the wall. It came close to the bed and leaned over her, its flat, dead face above her sleeping one. It raised one hand and flexed it, with a sound like someone smoothing out a screwn-up banknote. It stretched its forefinger and, with a ripping sound no louder than Fever's breathing, a curved needle tore out through the paper. It was a sharp little hypodermic claw, and it glinted in the moonlight spilling round the edges of the curtain.

  ***

  Out in the sedan chair Wormtimber moistened his lips with the tip of his pink tongue and wiped the palms of his hands against his robes. He was giggling softly, and when he giggled he actually said " Tee hee hee ...A little needle, Bagman. That's how the Patchskins used paper boys to kill off their enemies and rivals.

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  Foldaway assassins. A fingertip-needle connected to a sac of venom...Now, just a jab in her pretty neck...Just a little prick... Tee hee hee!"

  "You'll respect that girl, Wormtimber. For all we know she's as human as you or I. I ain't ever killed a human being yet and I don't mean to start now."

  "I know, Master Creech, I know. You don't want her dead; you just want proof.... "

  ***

  Fever frowned and stirred as the needle pierced her skin. After a moment the paper boy stepped back. There was a bead of blood on Fever's neck. She turned on her side, murmuring something. She opened her eyes, and half lifted her head from the pillow, but the paper boy turned sideways on to her, and stood motionless, almost invisible.

  When she had settled, it went back across the room and slid itself out under the door again. It walked back down the stairs. It stopped on the front doormat, and started to crumple. It screwed itself up small and bundled itself out through the letter flap. Outside, it went bounding and tumbling away along the street, and if you'd been watching then you might have thought it just a bit of windblown litter, except that there was no wind, and it moved too purposefully, rounding the corner and rustling into an alley, where it fetched up against the door of Wormtimber's sedan chair.

  Charley scrambled out, picked up the bundle of dirty paper,

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  and passed it inside. Then he set about waking the drowsing bearers.

  Inside the chair, Wormtimber uncrumpled the paper boy. He found its hand and lifted it into the light of the now blank screen. There was a tiny, rust-brown smudge on the forefinger. Beneath the paper a small sac bulged, filled with the blood of Fever Crumb.

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  ***

  13 M orning after the N ight before

  In her dreams that night Fever returned to Nonesuch House. Not by the tunnel this time, but across Godshawk's old causeway and up a graveled path to where the fine, unruined house stood waiting for her. There were lights in the windows, music and perfume on the evening air, and the lamps of London twinkling across the marshes in the twilight. She walked on the lawns, watching servants light big paper float lanterns and set them free to rise into the sky, their glow reflecting in the ponds. The sedan chairs of the party guests stood on the drive like wardrobes lined up at an outdoor furniture sale. Dr. Crumb was there, and Fever felt proud that she would be able to show him her house, and her vault beneath it, filled with wonders....

  She woke with a gasp, her mouth still full of the taste of the wine that she had been drinking in her dream. The scent of some pricey, bespoke perfume hung in her memory like fog. Her neck hurt, and when she touched the place she felt a tender, raised

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  lump. Cimex lectularius, she thought. It was hardly surprising that an irrational old house like Kit Solent's should be infested by the common bedbug.

  She threw off the covers and went down to the bathroom to dash water at her face. It was light outside. She looked in the mirror and felt slightly disappointed to see her own bald, big-eyed self staring out at her, as if she had been expecting someone better. A peach-fuzz of sandy down furred her scalp. She reached for her razor, then changed her mind. Why should she not have hair? She was not in Godshawk's Head anymore.

  Downstairs, to the clatter and chatter of the conservatory. The smells of coffee, fresh-baked bread, fried bacon, fishy dishes Fever didn't know the names of. The children falling quiet as she walked in, still shy of her, although she did her best to smile encouragingly at them. Kit Solent was reading the London Alarmist, holding it up in front of him with one hand while he buttered toast with the other.

  "Sleep well, Miss Crumb?" he asked.

  "Yes," said Fever, and then, seeing no cause to lie, "No. I had irrational dreams. About Nonesuch House."

  "You didn't happen to dream the code to get us through that door, I suppose?" He waved the newspaper at her as he put it down. "We must find our way into Godshawk's treasure chest soon, I think. It looks as if London may have visitors before long."

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  "You mean the Movement?" asked Fever, taking her place at the table.

  "Are the nomads coming here?" asked Fern, looking half excited and half scared. "Is there going to be fighting?"

  "No, no, no, nothing like that," Kit Solent said hurriedly. "The Movement's hoys and wagons have been sighted north of the Moatway, that's all. Even Gilpin Wheen has finally admitted that it's time to do something. The Trained Bands are mustering."

  "The Movement have a traction castle," announced Ruan. "They have armies of Stalkers, too. They're hairy savages, and they think only of fi
ghting and conquering!"

  "That's not really true, Ru," his father said patiently. "Northerners aren't so bad. In many ways they're more civilized than a lot of people in London. But if they do plan to capture the city, I'd like to have the contents of Godshawk's vault in my possession by the time they arrive. They'd pay me well for it."

  "How do you know?" asked Fever.

  "Why do you think they're coming here? They've never shown any interest in this place before."

  "You think they've learned of the vault somehow? But you said no one knew of it...."

  "I said no other human being knew of it," Kit corrected her. "There were always stories that a few Scriven had escaped and sought refuge with the nomads in the north. And what if one of

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  them knew something about Godshawk and his secrets? if you feel up to it, I'd like to take you back through the tunnel."

  "But I can't open the door, Master Solent!" Fever couldn't understand why he had such faith in her. "I can't just pull the right combination of numbers out of thin air...."

  Kit reached out and touched her, gripping her shoulder with a firm, fatherly hand. "Not out of thin air, Fever. Out of that remarkable brain of yours. You can do it. I'm sure you can."

  ***

  For the second morning running, Charley Shallow came awake to the noise of Bagman Creech's helpless, chesty coughing. He lay for a moment wondering where he was, letting the memories of the day before assemble themselves around him in the dark.

  He was lying in the spare room of Creech's lodgings on Ketch Causeway, on a bed he had made for himself out of old sacks and his bundled-up coat. Brown paper was pasted on the windows to keep the room shady, but that wasn't for Charley's benefit; it was to protect all the books. The books rose all around him, crammed onto shelves that covered every wall. Not just books, but rolled-up documents and sheaves of yellowed paper done up with hairy string. All of them were about the Scriven. Creech called them his archive.