Infernal Devices

by Philip Reeve

  "I can hear engines," said Theo as they made their way through the trees onto the landing apron in front of the boathouse. "Someone's opened the doors...."

  "Great Poskitt Almighty!" shouted Pennyroyal.

  The Peewit sat poised in the open doorway, her engines purring as they warmed up for takeoff. The lights were on in her gondola, and Wren could see Nabisco Shkin at the controls. He must have given up waiting for her to bring him the Tin Book and decided to cut his losses and save his own skin. She hung back, scared of him, but Pennyroyal put on a last

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  spurt of speed, charging toward the yacht. "Shkin! It's me! Your old friend Pennyroyal!"

  Shkin swung himself out through the hatch in the side of the Peewit's sleek gondola and shot Pennyroyal twice with a pistol he pulled from inside his robes. Wren saw an exclamation mark of blood fly upward into the glare of the yacht's lights. Pennyroyal did an ungainly somersault and crashed against a heap of hawsers and was still.

  "Oh, gods," whispered Wren. Pennyroyal was so much a part of her life from all the stories she had heard in Anchorage that she had imagined he was indestructible.

  Shkin stepped down from the gondola and strode toward them with his gun held ready. "Do you have my book?" he asked.

  "No," said Theo before Wren could answer. "The Storm took it."

  "Then what's in the suitcase?" asked Shkin, and Theo opened it so that he could see. The slaver smiled his cold gray smile. "Well, that's something, isn't it?" he said. "Close the case and hand it to me."

  Theo did as he was told. Shkin's chilly eyes slid toward Wren again.

  "Now what?" she asked. "You'll shoot us, I suppose?"

  "Good gods, no!" Shkin looked genuinely shocked. "I am not a murderer, child. I am a businessman. What profit would I make by killing you? It's true you managed to annoy me, but it sounds as if our friends from the Green Storm will soon be arriving to teach you some manners."

  Wren listened, and heard harsh foreign voices drifting across the garden. Lights were moving among the trees

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  behind the boathouse. She wanted to ask Shkin about her father, but he had already heaved Pennyroyal's case aboard the Peewit and was climbing in after it. The engines roared.

  "No!" screamed Wren. She couldn't believe that the gods were really going to let that villain Shkin fly away unscathed. But the Peewit's docking clamps released, and she rose from the boathouse floor, engine pods swinging neatly into takeoff position. "It's not fair!" howled Wren, and then, "The book! We've got the book! Theo lied! Take us with you and I'll give you the book!"

  Shkin heard her voice, but not her words. He glanced down at her and smiled his faint smile, then turned his attention to the controls again. The yacht sped across its landing apron, passed between two clumps of trees that bowed aside to let it through, and rose gracefully into the sky.

  "It's not fair!" Wren said again. She was sick of Shkin, and sick of being afraid. She understood why Mum and Dad had never wanted to talk about the adventures they had had. If she survived, she would never even want to think about this awful night.

  "Why did you lie about the book?" she asked Theo. "He might have taken us with him if we'd given him the book."

  "He wouldn't," said Theo. "Anyway, if everybody wants it so badly, it must be something dangerous. We can't let a man like Shkin get his hands on it."

  Wren sniffed. "Nobody should have it," she said. She walked to where Pennyroyal lay and gingerly fetched the Tin Book out from inside the mayor's torn robes. One of Shkin's bullets had made a deep dent in the cover, but it looked

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  3O1

  otherwise unharmed. The touch of it disgusted her. All the trouble it had caused! All the deaths! "I'm going to throw it into the sea' she said, and ran with it across the smoldering, cratered airstrip toward the edge of the gardens.

  But it was not the sea that she saw when she looked down over the handrail. Cloud 9 had drifted farther and faster than she had thought. The white wriggle of surf that marked the coast lay several miles away toward the north, with the lights and fires of the other cities strung out along it like pearls on a necklace. Below her, the hills of Africa lay stark beneath the moon.

  And as she stood there staring at them, clutching the Tin Book in both hands, she heard running feet behind her, and turned to meet the torches and the upraised guns of a squad of soldiers. There were Stalkers too, one of whom seized hold of Theo, and a man who seemed almost a Stalker himself, a hawk-faced man in mechanized armor with a sword in his iron hand, who stepped in front of the others and said, "Don't move! You are prisoners of the Green Storm!"

  As the Peewit slid out through Cloud 9's rigging into open sky, Nabisco Shkin permitted himself a thin smile of satisfaction. Most of the Green Storm's ships were miles away, still engaged above Benghazi and Kom Ombo, and the troops they had landed in Pennyroyal's garden had better things to worry about than the odd absconding slave trader.

  He settled into the yacht's comfortable seats and patted the case that lay on the deck beside him. Far ahead, the lights of the smaller cities twinkled in the desert night. He would

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  set down on one of those until he was sure the Storm had finished with Brighton; then he would go and see what damage had been done to his business there. The Pepperpot would have been battered, no doubt. Servants and merchandise killed, probably. No matter--they were all insured. He hoped the boy Fishcake was still alive. But even without him, it should be possible to find Anchorage-in-Vineland and fill the holds of a slave ship or two....

  He was still dreaming of Vineland when the raptors found him. They were part of a patrol flock set to guard the skies around Cloud 9. Shkin thought they were just a cloud as they came sweeping down on him, dimming the moonlight. Then he saw the flap and flutter of their wings, and an instant later the birds started slamming into the Peewit's glastic windows, tearing at her pod cowlings, slashing her delicate envelope with talons and beaks. Torn-off steering vanes whirled away on the wind. The propellers sliced dozens of birds to scrap, but dozens more kept taking their places until the Peewit's engines choked on feathers and slime. Shkin reached for the radio set, opening all channels and shouting, "Call off your attack! I am a legitimate businessman! I am strictly neutral!" But the Green Storm warships that picked up his signal did not know where it was coming from, and the birds themselves did not understand. They tore and rent and clutched and worried, stripping the envelope fabric from its metal skeleton until Nabisco Shkin, looking up through the bare ribs, saw nothing but a kaleidoscope-churning of bird shapes circling black and splay-winged against the sacred moon. And as the wreck began to fall, they ripped the

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  roof off the gondola and got inside with him.

  Nabisco Shkin was not usually a man who let his emotions show, but there were a great many birds, and it seemed a terribly long way to the ground. He screamed all the way down.

  30 Captives of the Storm

  ***

  THE MAN IN THE mechanical armor was called Naga. Wren heard his men call him that as they took the Tin Book from her and started marching her back toward the Pavilion. It was a scary sort of name, and he looked pretty scary too, stomping along inside that hissing, grating exoskeleton, but he seemed civilized enough, and told his men off when they prodded Wren with their guns to make her walk faster. She was surprised, and relieved; she'd heard stories about the Storm shooting prisoners on sight. She thought about asking Naga what he meant to do with her, but she wasn't quite brave enough. She glanced at Theo, hoping he'd explain what the Green Storm soldiers were saying to each other in their strange language, but Theo was walking with his head down and would not look at her.

  They climbed one of the Pavilion's outside stairways, past

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  a walled garden where a crowd of captured slaves and party guests had been penned by a company of Stalkers. Boo-Boo Pennyroyal was there, trying to keep everybody's spirits up with a rousin
g song, but it didn't look to Wren as though it was working.

  She assumed at first that she and Theo were being taken to join those other captives, but the soldiers kept them moving, past Pennyroyal's swimming pool, which had emptied itself across the tilting deck in a broad wet stain. Outside the ballroom windows stood a Stalker far more frightening than the mindless, faceless brutes Wren had seen so far. He was big and gleaming, and his armored skull piece did not extend down to hide his face the way those of the others did, but left it partly bare; a dead white face, with a long gash of a mouth that twitched slightly as his green eyes lighted on Wren. She looked away quickly, horrified at catching the thing's attention. Was he going to speak to her? Attack her? But he just returned Naga's salute and stepped aside, letting the Stalkers and their captives past him into the ballroom.

  Someone had got the lights working again. Medical orderlies were taking Cynthia out on a stretcher. Wren heard her groan as they carried her past and felt glad that her friend was still alive, then remembered that she had only been a fake friend, and wasn't sure if she should be glad or not.

  Up on the podium where the musicians should have been playing, a group of officers had gathered. Naga marched over to them and saluted smartly, making his report. The tallest of them turned to stare at the captives. Her face was a bronze death mask pierced by two glowing emerald eyes.

  "Oh!" cried Theo.

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  Wren knew at once that this was the Stalker Fang. Who else could it be? She seemed to exude power; it crackled in the air about her like static electricity, making the small hairs on the back of Wren's neck stand up on end. At her side she could feel Theo shaking as if he were in the presence of a goddess.

  Naga said something else, and the Stalker stepped gracefully down from the podium, her eyes glowing more brightly as he drew the Tin Book from a hatch in his armor. Snatching it, she studied the symbols scratched into its cover and gave a long, shivery sigh of satisfaction. Naga pointed at Wren and Theo and asked something, but the Stalker waved his question away. Settling herself cross-legged in the rubble, she opened the Tin Book and began to read.

  "What now?" muttered Theo. "I thought she'd want to question us...."

  "I think Naga thought so too," said Wren. But it seemed they had been forgotten by the Stalker Fang. The Green Storm troops were watching her as if waiting for more orders, but she was engrossed in the Tin Book. Naga muttered something to one of his companions. Then a woman--young and pretty, in a black version of the white uniforms the others wore--spoke to him, bowed, and jumped down from the podium, making her way to where the two prisoners waited. "You will please come with me," she said in Anglish.

  Wren felt relieved. This person looked less stern than the rest of the Green Storm landing party. DR. ZERO said the printed name tag on her uniform, under a pair of squiggly characters that Wren guessed would say the same in Shan

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  Guonese. She looked far too young to be a doctor. Her tilted eyes and broad cheekbones reminded Wren of Inuit friends at home in Anchorage, and that cropped green hair suited her elfin face surprisingly. But there was no kindness in her voice. She took a gun from one of the troopers and leveled it at the two captives. "Outside, please. Now!"

  They did as she said. As she herded them out onto the sundeck, Wren glanced up and saw the big Stalker watching her again. What had she done to interest him so? She looked away quickly, but she could still feel that green gaze following her.

  Dr. Zero motioned with her gun for the prisoners to cross the sundeck and go down the stairs, as if she were taking them to join the others in the walled garden. But at the stairs' foot, on a half-moon-shaped terrace out of sight and earshot of the ballroom, she suddenly stopped them and said in her soft, accented Anglish, "What is that thing the Stalker took from you?"

  Wren said, "The Tin Book. The Tin Book of Anchorage ..."

  Dr. Zero frowned, as if the name were one she had not heard before.

  "Isn't it what you came here for?" asked Theo.

  "Apparently. Who knows?" Dr. Zero shrugged and glanced back in the direction of the ballroom, lowering her voice as if she feared that her mistress might overhear her. "Her Excellency did not see fit to share with anyone her reasons for attacking your city. What is this Tin Book? What makes it so important that she had to come here with warships to get it?"

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  "Cynthia said that whoever had the Tin Book could win the war," said Wren.

  She was trying to be helpful, but Dr. Zero just stared at her. Was it only the moonlight that drained her face of color? Her eyes were wide, looking through Wren toward some terrible vision of things to come. "Ai!" she breathed. "Of course. Of course] The book must be a clue to some kind of Old Tech weapon. Maybe something like MEDUSA, powerful enough to destroy whole cities. And you have given it to the Stalker Fang! You fools!"

  "That's not fair!" protested Wren. "It wasn't our fault...."

  Dr. Zero let out a little laugh, but there was no trace of humor in it, only fear. "It's up to me now, isn't it?" she asked. "It's up to me to stop her!"

  She turned and started to run back up the stairs toward the ballroom, flinging her gun aside as she went.

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  31 The Moment of the Rose

  ***

  GENERAL NAGA, STILL ANGRY at being denied a chance to tackle Benghazi and the rest of the cluster, had led his shock troops off to scour the lower levels of the Pavilion, hoping to find some lurking nest of townie warriors who might put up a decent fight. In the ballroom, a few battle-Stalkers stood guard while the Stalker Fang sat reading. The metal pages of the book glowed softly green in the light from her eyes; her steel fingertips, tracing the ancient scratch marks, made faint clicking sounds.

  Grike waited at the window, watching his mistress but not really seeing her. He focused instead on the face in his mind: the face of the young girl prisoner whom Oenone Zero had just led away. He was sure, or almost sure, that he had seen that face before--those sea-gray eyes, that long jaw, that coppery hair, had all sent sparks of recognition darting

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  through his mind. And yet, when he tried to match the girl's features to the other faces in his memory, he found none that fitted.

  Running feet on the sundeck. Grike turned, and sensed behind him in the ballroom the other Stalkers all reacting too, baring their claws in readiness. But it was only Dr. Zero.

  "Mr. Grike!"

  She picked her way toward him between the bodies on the sundeck. She was trying to smile, but the smile had gone wrong somehow and turned into a kind of grimace. Grike sensed her ragged breathing, the quick drumbeat of her heart, the sharp, warning odor of her sweat, and knew that something was about to happen. For whatever reason, Oenone Zero had decided that this was the moment to unleash her mysterious weapon against the Stalker Fang.

  But where was it? Her hands were empty; her trim black uniform left nowhere to hide anything powerful enough to harm a Stalker. He switched his eyes quickly up and down the spectrum, searching in vain for a concealed gun or the chemical tang of explosives.

  "Mr. Grike," said Dr. Zero, stopping at his side and looking up into his face. "There is something important that I must tell you." Beads of perspiration were pushing their way out through the pores of her face. Grike turned his head and scanned the ballroom, wondering if she had brought something with her from the Requiem Vortex when they had first landed. He checked the sundeck too, looking for hidden devices behind the statues on the balustrades. Nothing. Nothing.

  A touch on his hand. He looked down. Dr. Zero's fingers

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  were resting lightly on his armored fist. She was smiling properly now. Behind the thick lenses of her spectacles, her eyes were filling with tears.

  She said, "The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew tree are of equal duration."

  And Grike understood.

  He turned and walked quickly away from her into the ballroom. He didn't mean to go; he had not t
old his legs to move, but they moved anyway. He was Dr. Zero's weapon; that was all he had been all along.

  "stop me !" he managed to shout as he neared the Stalker Fang. Two of the battle-Stalkers leaped forward to bar his path, and with two blows he disabled them both, knocking their heads off and leaving their blind, stupid bodies to stumble about, jetting sparks and fluids. But at least he had warned Fang of what was happening. She turned, and rose to meet him. The Tin Book shimmered in her long hands.

  "What are you doing, Mr. Grike?"

  Grike could not explain. He was a prisoner in his own body, with no power to control its sudden, deliberate movements. His arms raised themselves, his hands flexed. Out from his finger ends sprang shining blades, longer and heavier than his old claws. Like a passenger in a runaway tank, he watched himself charge at the other Stalker.

  The Stalker Fang unsheathed her own claws and swung to meet him. They crashed together, armor grating, sparks flashing. From behind the Stalker Fang's bronze death mask came a furious hiss. The Tin Book fell, snapping its rusty bindings, metal pages bounding across the floor. This is why I couldn't see the danger, thought Grike, remembering Oenone

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  Zero's clever fingers busy in his brain through all those lonely night shifts in the Stalker Works. Why had he never guessed what she was doing to him? He had looked everywhere for the assassination weapon, but he had never suspected himself. And all this time the urge to kill his new mistress had been embedded in his mind, waiting for Oenone Zero to speak the words that would awaken it....