by Tim Standish
‘Which that ship shouldn’t have anyway,’ said Church, standing up now in his own pair of the mechanical legs. I saw that Mac was also fitting a pair as was the wiry Curtis. Baker carried on unpacking rocket tubes similar to the one that he had given me. Reminded by a growing warmth under my feet, I took a few steps across the grass to look from the top of the slope across the countryside that fell away below us. Off to my left a single narrow lane wandered out from the village and disappeared between a dark patchwork of fields studded intermittently by the shapes of farm buildings. At the very edge of the horizon I could just make out the slim shape of the airship, starkly silhouetted in the moonlight. Somewhere in the village behind me I heard a dog bark for a few seconds then fall silent.
I hoisted the rocket over my shoulder by the carrying strap. It was bearably uncomfortable in the way that I had learnt to associate with any item of equipment designed by the British Army for one man to carry. ‘Something that small will be using hydrogen.’
‘That’s right,’ said Church, walking in short, bouncing steps to come and stand next to me. He looked at me. ‘It’s your directive, Sterling. What do you want to do?’
I looked at Church for a moment, as we were joined by first Curtis and then Garner, each moving easily on their own springheels. Each of them had a rocket slung across his back.
‘Let’s bring it down,’ I said, feeling for the top of my shoulder holster and making sure it was fastened securely.
And we set off.
I went over the graveyard’s small wall with as much thought as I would normally give to stepping off a curb, the bouncing action in the springheels’ pistons making it effortless. Church and the two Jays followed, all of us picking up speed as we went down the hill, each loping stride accompanied by a sharp pneumatic hiss. It felt less like running and more like flying. The combination of pell-mell speed and slow bounds made effortless by the machinery of the springheels was glorious and after only a few moments of this I found myself grinning like a delighted child.
We flashed past a sparse line of bare-branched trees that marked the boundary of the slope, variously leaping round or through their whipping branches and across the fields that lay on the other side. The ground there was softer, slowing us down enough that we spotted the canal before we dashed headlong into it. It looked too wide to jump even wearing the springheels and I was glad that Mac led us to the corner of the field and onto a lane running towards a small bridge.
We clattered noisily over it and found ourselves on the other side following the road past the yard of a small farmhouse, where a startled farmer stared at us, white faced, eyes wide in terror as we flew past, legs hissing and coats flapping behind us. Next to him a black collie crouched in confusion, crawling behind its master’s legs where they were rooted to the spot. Beneath and around us the land flashed past as we sped along. We kept our course as straight as the land would permit us, while avoiding the marshier looking areas that increased in number the closer we got to the coast. Mac led the way, ranging ahead of the rest of us at times to scout out the land.
A few minutes later, Mac raised his right arm above his head and slowed his pace, turning his last few steps into a deft half-pirouette as he halted and waited for the rest of us to catch up.
‘Village ahead,’ said Mac as we reached him. ‘Looks soft going either side so it’s probably best to go straight, then use the road for a while before we head for the coast again.’
‘Any sign of life?’ asked Church.
‘Everyone looks tucked up inside to me,’ replied Mac.
‘Fine. Let’s cut through,’ I said. ‘As quick as we can.’
Mac took the lead again as we moved onto the road and followed it towards the crossroads where the village started. Moving quickly on the hard surface we picked up speed so that by the time we reached the first houses we were travelling down the main street faster, I’d wager, than anyone had ever done before. The village was too small for gas lamps and what little light there was came from the shuttered windows of houses and, as we came to the centre of the village, the cheery glow warmth of the pub. Mac was just past it and I was following on, the other two behind me, when the door suddenly flew open as I drew level, disgorging a handful of farm labourers, lost in cheerfully loud conversation and oblivious to their surroundings.
Moving too quickly to change direction, I simply leapt up and over them, landing my next step onto the roof of the pub’s porch and then the roof of the pub itself, the springheels easily carrying me over and directly to the ground on the far side. I landed on both legs with a heavy thump that forced the pistons almost totally back into the frames of the legs and almost, but not quite, had me over. I recovered, though, and set off again, accelerating to catch up with the others and leaving the sounds of disbelief and astonishment in our wake.
We regrouped, a few hundred yards past the village, at another crossroads.
‘Didn’t take you for a hurdler,’ said Church as I arrived.
‘Nice one, boss,’ said Curtis, smiling, ‘Those yokels will still be scratching their heads at that a week from now.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Okay, Mac, which way now?’
‘We can’t keep heading straight across country,’ said Mac. ‘It’s getting marshier so we’ll have to work our way back and forth a bit.’
‘Maybe not,’ I said.
‘Why not?’ asked Church.
By way of an answer I pointed down one arm of the crossroads, which was signposted towards Rye. Just along the road a red triangle was mounted on a post, and under it, a silhouette of a train with the letters LCDR.
‘Because I think instead we might avail ourselves of the goodwill of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway,’ I said, and set off down the road at a gentle, long-limbed trot. After a few hundred yards we came to a gated crossing point. I stepped over the gate and looked over in each direction but there was no sight or sound of a train along the tracks. Church stepped over and stood next to me. ‘Branch line,’ he said. ‘Probably doesn’t run at the weekend and in any case, we’ll just have to keep an ear out, right Mac?’
‘Right you are Mr Church. Curtis you get up front. I’ll take the rear.’ So saying, he bounded down the track for about 100 yards, then did the same sort of neat, balletic turn that he had when we stopped earlier and raised his hands, signalling us to set off.
There was enough room either side of the tracks for us to avoid the tricky surface of the sleepers as long as we kept in single file, spaced over a few hundred yards and each of us keeping an ear open for the sound of steam or whistle. We heard neither as we sped along, so Church’s guess must have been right, and we saw little sign of life along the railway line as it took us deeper though brackish marshland. It briefly passed through the edge of another village as we got nearer the coast and then we were firmly into a barren coastline of coarse sand, dotted with short clumps of dune grass and shingle.
The only building I could see was the lighthouse, towards which the railway line seemed to be gently curving and to the right of which the airship was clearly aiming as it serenely carried Fuller and his treachery on towards the Channel. At its base I could clearly see the windows on the small cabin which looked less cramped than I might have imagined and, just faintly, I could hear the thrumming of its engines. We had made good ground on them and I was trying to estimate how much closer we would have to get in to be within range when, a few hundred or so yards ahead of me and Church, Curtis must have decided he was close enough. I slowed to a walk and watched him as I saw him go through the same quick motions that Baker had showed me back in the graveyard and bring the rocket up to his shoulder.
A second or so later there was a bang and a steady rush of noise as the rocket raced up towards the airship. Curtis must have been using the wire-guidance mechanism because I could see him making slight adjustments and the missile shifting as it flew so that, a second or so later, it had curved a parabola towards the cabin and was about to strike when su
ddenly an arc of explosions rang out directly in the rocket’s path, detonating it some twenty or thirty yards short.
‘Counter-rocket munitions,’ I heard myself say, remembering my brother describing the German airship in Montreal airport. Hard on the heels of the explosion a stream of tracer fire hammered out from the back of the airship at the ground by the base of the rockets’ launch. Moments later came the rattling sound of the machine-gun as it reached out across the sky and I saw Curtis go down next to the railway line and lie still.
I could hear the sound of Mac’s springheels as he charged up the path behind us and it struck me that the three of us were clumping nicely for whoever was on the other side of the trigger up there when suddenly the tracer fire erupted again, only this time it was carving a path down the railway towards us.
‘Scatter!’ shouted Mac behind me but I was already moving, heading diagonally away from the track across the dunes, legs pumping as I forced every last ounce of power out of the springheels, Tracer bullets screamed through the air behind me, splintering railway sleepers, but I didn’t look back, just kept running wide and trying to see what the airship was doing, whether he would keep heading straight or turn and try to finish us off. He turned and the night echoed with the sound of machine-gun fire for a few more seconds, the white streaks of tracer rounds eagerly reaching for targets. Then silence.
‘Reloading!’ I heard Church shout off to my right and seconds later saw another rocket whoosh up towards the airship as he or Mac tried their luck. They must have decided against staying in one place to guide it, just fired and run; it was close but still narrowly missed the rear of the airship and whistled off across the water. I kept moving, picking up speed as I left the dunes, and found myself running across a flat, open expanse of scrubland, as inviting a background for a machine-gunner as I could have found. He was still taking things personally, though, up there at the back of the airship and the next stream of tracer flashed down to the site of the second rocket launch before being walked back and forth in a pattern of short bursts.
I kept running forwards, trying to get closer to the airship while at the same time staying out of its gunner’s eyeline. The lighthouse was in front of me and, as I ran, I saw another, similar shape in the darkness, though shorter, wider and unevenly edged. As I drew closer and my eyes grew used to it, I saw the geometric conundrum for what it was; a second, partially completed lighthouse surrounded by scaffolding. An idea forming in my mind, I ran harder.
A few hundred yards further on from the second launch, a third rocket streaked up towards the airship. This one was on target but, as with the first, a ripple of small explosions caught it before it reached the cabin. Once again a staccato burst of tracer fire probed the launch site.
Even as I got closer to the lighthouses, the airship was moving slowly away along the coastline, seemingly in no hurry to make a dash for the continent. They knew they were safe from attack, I guessed, but either wanted to make sure of it, or, if Fuller had told them who we were, were taking the opportunity to remove some opposition. Someone was still moving over there, either Mac or Church keen on keeping their attention away from me. Another burst of fire rattled out in response. I reached the scaffolding and kept moving, the springheels taking me quickly up the ramp that led up around the scaffolding of the new lighthouse until I reached the wooden platform at the top. From there I could see the top of the existing lighthouse, no more than twenty yards or so away and a few yards higher from where I stood.
I walked back to the far end of the wooden platform and sprinted along it, waiting till the last minute before I jumped, feeling as though I hung in the air for a brief moment of heart-stopping terror before slamming against the outside of the old lighthouse and sprawling on the metal walkway surrounding the light chamber at the top, the rocket in its case thumping painfully into the back of my head. I tried to get to my feet and realised that, choosing exactly this moment to run out of their energy, the springheels had become cumbersome weights again. I reached down and found the clips where Baker had fixed them, managing to unclip them both and extricate myself from the machinery. I stood up and unslung the rocket. I unclipped the rocket cover and hefted its weight on my shoulder.
About six or seven hundred yards away, and not much higher than I was now at the top of the lighthouse, the airship had slowed to a crawl and, confident in its superiority, was firing in short, controlled bursts into the darkness. I hoped that Mac and Church were still, somehow, alive down there.
I flicked up the trigger cover and looked through the sights at the airship, then lifted the rocket up to point at the blank sky above it and pressed the button. The rocket roared out of the cylinder and raced away up into the night sky. Lifting my eye away from the sights I held the trigger down and watched the rocket climb then, as the bell trilled to tell me that the wire was almost used up, I jerked the cylinder back down to point at the airship. In response the rocket dived straight down, exploding through the roof of the airship to set off an enormous explosion that ripped the airship apart and, for the briefest of moments, lit the beach up like day.
It took me a while to force an entry into the old lighthouse and make my way back down but when I reached the beach the flames were still burning.
21. Mapmaker
The tick of the clock on the mantelpiece had the tone that all clocks have in rooms where someone will be required to wait; a persistent, nagging reminder not just of time passed but of time lost. Aside from the clock’s tick, the occasional scratch of the secretary’s pen and the faint, almost inaudible murmur of city bustle from outside the window, the room was silent.
I had been listening to the clock for twenty-seven minutes.
The low, wooden table next to me was a rich, brown in colour. Its surface was inlaid with either 208 or 214 small wooden diamonds, depending on how one counted the half diamonds around the sides of the pattern. There was a bronze bust on a plinth by the door to the managing director’s office, but from where I was sitting it was almost impossible to make out the features in any detail.
Apart from myself and the principal secretary, the only other person in the room was a serious-faced young woman whose name and role I could only guess at. She was in the same position that she had been when I arrived; head bowed, eyes intently scanning a thick sheaf of papers in front of her. Occasionally, with no pattern of regularity that I could discern, she would turn a page over onto the other side, place it upon a different pile and make a mark of some kind in a large binder next to her.
The secretary had received four telephone calls in the time that I had been sitting waiting. In each case his responses had been too brief and hushed to deduce the nature of the calls.
An electronic bell trilled briefly on the secretary’s desk, to which he responded by lifting a handset and speaking into it in a low voice. Replacing the handset, he pushed back his chair and, gesturing to the door behind him, said, ‘Viscount Millbrook will see you now, Mr Sterling.’
I stood, hoping that cramp hadn’t set in and, as guided by the secretary and walking behind him, passed through into the office beyond the door.
‘My Lord, this is Mr Sterling from the Royal Office of Topography & Survey.’
‘How do you do Mr Sterling?’ The man behind the desk was slim, a few years older than me. His grey hair was cut severely short, his clothing plain but impeccably tailored. The wide expanse of mahogany desk in front of him was as neatly ordered as he was. He came round the desk to greet me as he spoke, extended his hand.
‘Lord Millbrook,’ I said, exchanging a firm shake.
‘Would you care for some refreshment?’ he asked me, indicating one of the chairs on my side of the desk.
‘A coffee would be lovely, thank you,’ I replied.
‘See to it, please, would you, Mr Longley?’ Lord Millbrook walked back to his chair and sat down.
‘Of course, my lord,’ the secretary replied, giving a slight bow and exiting the room with quiet and practised
ease.
I looked at Julius with grudging admiration as the secretary left. The last time that he had seen me was eight years ago, when I had been sitting in a stale and crumpled dinner suit, wearing handcuffs, and listening in shock as he explained why ten years’ exile was the best offer I could expect. And yet, except for the briefest flash of recognition, he was exuding the calm and polite demeanour of a powerful and busy man facing an almost certainly unimportant visitor. There was a moment of silence before he spoke.
‘When you weren’t at the funeral, I rather assumed that common sense had prevailed and that you had given up on Augustus’s ridiculous scheme. I see now, however, that I was being hopelessly optimistic.’ He sighed briefly, a rare mannerism of his that was broadly equivalent to a shouted stream of curse-laden invective in most ordinary people.
‘I suppose I should be glad to see you alive, Ti.’ A name from our early childhood, before I had decided I preferred the less-mocked Charles to the cumbersome Tiberius.
I was silent.
‘I went to Father and told him about your and Gus’s inept scheme to bring you home, you know.’
‘And he wouldn’t hear of it, I expect,’ I replied. ‘I learnt well enough in Canada what he thought.’