Mothstorm

by Philip Reeve

  Charity Cruet’s bubble, in contrast, was somewhat dark, lit only by a few luminous starfish which were stuck to the walls and by the twilight of the Georgian sky which filtered down through the thick mesh of roots and sprouts above us.

  ‘I’m sorry it’s so jolly dingy,’ said Charity. ‘I can’t light so much as a candle, you see, for fear that I’d use up all the air. Would you like some seaweed juice?’

  I did not think I would, but Mother and Father brought me up to be polite, and so I accepted the small shell of greenish fluid which Charity handed me and took a sip. And, do you know, it was not half bad? I drank the rest quickly and felt much better for it.

  ‘Seaweed is what we chiefly live on down here,’ said Charity. ‘I shall ask Mr Zennor to bring us some for our supper.’

  ‘How do you communicate with him?’ I asked. ‘Have you learned to speak that clickety, clackety language of his?’

  ‘Oh no,’ she replied. ‘It is far too complicated. But I have taught Mr Zennor and some of his friends the rudiments of Universal Sign Language. It is an invention of Daddy’s. Here, I have a pamphlet about it.’

  She thrust into my hands a thin soft-bound volume which seemed to consist entirely of drawings of people waving their arms about – touching their noses, pointing to their ears, tapping their elbows and performing other strange contortions. Beside each was another smaller picture, usually showing an object, such as a plate of food, a book, a house or a coin. I gathered that this was a sort of picture dictionary and that if one were to learn it by heart, one would be able to hold simple conversations merely by flapping one’s hands about like the people in the drawings.

  ‘Daddy says that it is a great shame that the races of the worlds are divided by our lack of a common language,’ explained Charity. ‘Several gentlemen have tried to invent one, but theirs were spoken languages, and who wants to give up their own mother tongue in favour of a made-up one? So Daddy decided to devise a sign language. It is not supposed to take the place of speaking, but if everyone were to be taught it, we could all communicate one with another. It would lead to much greater understanding between the nations, and no one should ever have to trouble learning a foreign language.’

  I thought this a ripping idea, for, as I’ve said, Mother had been trying to teach me a little French and Latin, and I had found those verbs and prefixes jolly hard going. (Not only that, but she had suggested that it might be a nice idea to take up Classical Martian next year!) I leafed through Reverend Cruet’s pamphlet with growing hope, wondering if I might persuade her to let me learn this Universal Sign Language instead.

  ‘And how many people have learned the signs so far?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, only me, I’m afraid,’ said Charity. ‘And Mr Zennor, of course. It never really caught on. We have ever so many of these pamphlets aboard our ship. Daddy had twenty thousand printed, anticipating great interest from the school boards and learned institutions. But he only sold four.’

  I nodded sympathetically. ‘My father published a book called Some Undescribed Icthyomorphs of the Trans-Lunar Aether once, and we have whole attics at Larklight simply filled with unsold copies.’

  I leafed a little further through the pamphlet but without really seeing it, for suddenly I had been reminded of my own father, and my own family, and dear old Larklight, which I might never see again. I was glad of Charity Cruet’s company and the shelter of her curious home, and dashed grateful to the kindly Providence which had brought us together in that lonely place, but I did not think that I could be content to live there for very long, eating seaweed and with none but mermen for company.

  ‘Look here, Charity,’ I said. ‘What do you think has become of our parents, and my sister, and my other companions?’

  ‘I do not know,’ she replied sadly. ‘But I cannot imagine we shall see them again in this life.’

  ‘Yet the moth-people took them alive. They must be holding them as prisoners, otherwise they would not have troubled to shoot them with those sleep-inducing darts.’9

  ‘But holding them where?’ asked Charity. She took the pamphlet from me and returned it to her bookshelf. ‘The moth-people are not from this world, so they must be from another. From Hades or some still lonelier sphere far out in the darkness at the system’s edge, perhaps. And if they have taken our loved ones thither –’

  ‘Then we must go thither too and save them!’ I cried manfully. ‘Remember, Charity, we are British, and there is nothing that good old British Pluck cannot accomplish!’

  Charity looked somewhat doubtful about this. ‘Well, for a start,’ she said, ‘I do not see how it can lift us off this planet. The poor old New Jerusalem is a wreck, and even if she were aether-worthy I do not believe that we could fly her. Father was the only alchemist aboard. And even if we did get her up into space, she would be brought down again at once by those moths.’

  Annoyingly, she was quite right. I found a last square of chocolate in a corner of my pocket and shared it between us, nibbling my half as slowly as I could, for I feared it might be the last that I should ever taste. ‘If only we could send a distress signal,’ I mused.

  ‘There are some alchemical distress flares left aboard the New Jerusalem,’ said Charity. ‘At least, there are if the moth-people haven’t stolen them. But what good would it do to let one off? There is no one to see it.’

  ‘Indeed, you are mistaken!’ I cried, and suddenly I was so excited that I had to leap to my feet and pace about the bubble. ‘Someone will see it! I bet the Actaeon got off a distress message of her own before the moth-men wrecked her. More ships will be on their way – a whole squadron, probably. And they’ll be ready for trouble this time. We must make sure that they know we’re down here! Charity, we simply must return to your father’s ship and fire off another of those flares!’

  I always find that it bucks me up no end to have something to do at times like that. I was all for setting off right away to find the New Jerusalem and fetch the flares, but Charity said, ‘Oh, no; Mr Zennor will be here shortly with fresh seaweed for our supper, and it is time for my concert.’

  I must have looked surprised at that, for she explained at once. ‘You don’t think I am content to accept these kind mer-people’s hospitality and do nothing in return, I hope? I can’t join them on their wild hunts across the floor of the gas-sea or nurse their children, or anything like that. So I play music to them on Daddy’s old portable harmonium. They are very musical and most appreciative. Just watch the way that they gather outside the bubble when I start.’

  And so saying, she sat herself down at the harmonium, pumped the foot-pedal furiously for a moment or two and then began to play. And sure enough, the merfolk busy in the other bubbles all looked up, and their glowing lures shone pink with pleasure, and it was not long before they were all slithering out of their bubble-homes and coming to cluster outside the walls of ours, gazing with rapt attention at the girl who sat there playing old English hymns.

  And I gazed too, in purest wonder. I’ve often had cause to speak of my sister’s piano playing in these yarns of mine and to say how utterly beastly it was, so you may have taken the impression that I am not much of a music-lover. But Charity Cruet’s playing, there in that bubble ’neath the Georgian waves, struck me with the force of a revelation. You may find it hard to believe, but I promise you, dear reader, this is the Gospel Truth:

  She was even worse than Myrtle!

  I smiled as best as I could, and nodded encouragingly when she glanced at me over her shoulder, and tried not to wince each time she hit a wrong note. But I decided one thing there and then: come what may, I simply had to escape Georgium Sidus!

  When the recital was over, and the mer-people had pantomimed their thanks and swum away, I ventured to suggest again that we should start for the New Jerusalem. I was quite desperate to know whether there might still be a flare left aboard the Cruets’ ship, or whether the damp or the moth-people had ruined them all. But Charity cautioned against it.
<
br />   ‘Those moth-men will still be sneaking about,’ she reasoned. ‘And it will be night soon, which is when all sorts of disagreeable Georgian wildlife chooses to emerge. It would be better to wait until morning.’ So we dined on the raw fish and seaweed which Mr Zennor brought us, and settled down to sleep.

  And while we are slumbering, you would doubtless like to hear what had befallen Mother and Father after our lifeboats tumbled from the Actaeon. A few of you may even be wondering in a half-hearted way about Myrtle.

  How fortunate, then, that Myrtle has written her own account of the Actaeon’s defeat and the events which followed, which she has called A Young Lady’s Adventures in Unknown Space – not the catchiest title, I think you’ll agree. But here is a sample of it, so that you may find out how she fared—A.M.

  Chapter Eight

  In Which I Present an Interesting Portion of My Sister’s Diary.10

  A Young Lady’s Adventures in Unknown Space by Myrtle Evangeline Mumby (Miss).

  1

  How am I to express in mere words the terrible series of events which it has been my misfortune to endure? How strange it is to think that back among the orbits of civilised worlds it is the festive season. According to Crevice’s Almanac, it is already Christmas Day in England. Families there are walking to church thro’ the snow or coming home to tables heaped high with good food. Innocent children are exclaiming with delight over presents from their kindly relations11 and the gifts which St Nicholas has left in their stockings,12 and good Christian men and women everywhere are remembering the birth of a baby in that stable in Bethlehem one thousand eight hundred and fifty-one years ago and giving thanks to Almighty GOD for the great goodness of His world …

  And I am stranded here in the void between the stars, imprisoned, with the dreadful knowledge that that world may be doomed and that those men, women and children may not survive to see another Christmas …

  Nothing has gone right since the HMS Actaeon sailed into the Georgian aether! First there were those awful moths and their dreadful mahouts or riders, and the loss of poor, dear Captain Moonfield. And then, among all the alarums and confusion, Art foolishly got into quite the wrong lifeboat, and went off without us. There was nothing to be done but to cram ourselves into another boat and cast ourselves upon the bosom of the aether – and I must say, a thoroughly wayward, unreliable bosom it has turned out to be!

  As we plunged away from the Actaeon, I realised for the first time the true size and number of those hateful moths. The whole of space seemed filled with their silvery wings, and along their backs their armoured handlers scurried, hurling more of those fiendish explosive devices at the poor Actaeon, which had by then become the merest bonfire! Away on what Jack Havock would call our port or larboard quarter, I saw one of the lifeboats slam into a moth and tear straight through it like a shell from a howitzer, rending it into pieces and scattering its riders into the void. And although it may be un-Christian of me, I was glad to see them thus brought low, for was it not what they deserved for launching such a treacherous and barbaric attack upon the agents of civilisation?

  Yet that was but a single incident in the battle, and wherever else I looked I saw the moths triumphant and their riders casting out great silvery nets which caught the Actaeon’s lifeboats and ensnared them, like poor flies in the webs of spiders.

  I had barely seen what was happening before there came a cry of alarm from Father, and our own progress was arrested, hurling us about the cramped and gravityless cabin. Our lifeboat hung motionless in space, trapped in one of those nets and at the mercy of an inhuman foe!

  It was all so reminiscent of our adventures with the white spiders that I almost fainted. Indeed, I am quite sure I should have done so had not Mother slapped me about the face and said firmly, ‘No swooning, Myrtle dear. We shall need all our wits about us if we are to get out of this, and get out of it we must if we are to rescue Art!’

  I declare she cares far more for Art than ever she has for me!

  Just then there came a deafening thunderclap, a tremendous green flash and a most disagreeable smell. The door of our lifeboat was torn off and there stood one of the brigands who had assaulted us, with several of his accomplices behind him. All wore those same spiny metal spacesuits, somewhat in the Gothick taste. Had their suits been empty and stood in a shop window, I should have asked Mother to buy a few, for they would look highly Romantic standing on the landings of Larklight. But here among the rings of Georgium Sidus they seemed utterly terrible.

  The brigand chief stepped into our lifeboat. I shrieked, and Father naturally offered to fight, but the thug knocked him aside with scant regard for sportsmanship, using a kind of armoured club on the end of his tail. (I had not realised until then that our assailants had tails. I had thought those long extensions at their rear ends to be mere whimsy on the part of their tailor, or their blacksmith, or whoever it was who ran up those quaint tin suits for them.) Poor Father was flung back into his seat and lay there groaning, while Mother and I confronted his attacker.

  ‘Sssurrender!’ the brute hissed, dark eyes glinting at us through the eye-slit of his helmet. ‘We are the Sssnilth!’

  Muffled though it was, his voice sounded strangely familiar, and also strangely feminine. He was not a he at all, I realised, but yet another of those shameless Amazons with whom fate is always throwing me together. And I thought how deeply wrong it was that a female of any species should so forget herself as to go rampaging about in armour and tossing bombs around.

  And then, reaching up, the creature pulled off her helmet and shook her head and ran a hand through the long blue spines which served her for hair, and all other thoughts quite vanished from my head – for she was none other than Ssilissa!

  2

  Once more my good breeding almost overcame me, and if there had been any gravity aboard the lifeboat, I am certain I should have dropped insensible to the deck. As it was, however, I was afraid that my skirts might ride up and expose my petticoats, so I mastered myself and exclaimed angrily, ‘Oh Ssilissa, you false blue lizard!’

  ‘Sssilence!’ she retorted, her black tongue flickering like a snake’s. ‘Which of you is the Shaper?’

  I began to understand then that she was not Ssilissa, but only another member of Ssilissa’s race. Her face was broader, her expression fiercer, her head-spines longer and striped with indigo, like serpents. A perfect Medusa she looked, and I stood as if turned to stone while her black-in-black eyes looked me up and down.

  ‘I believe I am the one you are looking for,’ said Mother quietly.

  The blue creature looked at her. ‘You? You are the Shaper?’ She laughed in the same hissing manner as Ssilissa. ‘We were told you were harmlessss, but I had not guessed just how harmlessss. You will come with ussss or we shall kill your companionsss.’

  ‘Oh, that would never do!’ said Mother. ‘Certainly I shall come with you. But might we close the door? I don’t know about you, but I find the aether rather thin out here.’

  She was quite right; the aether here was not just thin, but chilly too. I was shivering despite my fur-lined cape, and all three of us were having difficulty breathing. But our cruel captor gave another sibilant laugh. ‘We are the Sssnilth. We can breathe thinner stuff than this. We are ssuperior to your creations, little Shaper. You will come with usss.’

  So saying, she hissed an instruction to her companions, who ran out on to the silver mesh of the net which held us and signalled upwards. At once the great moth from which the net hung began to fly towards the rings of Georgium Sidus, apparently following a great crowd of its kind, many of whom carried the lifeboats of our shipmates in similar nets.

  ‘They were clearly expecting us,’ said Mother thoughtfully. ‘I wonder how they knew that we were coming?’ Then she brightened and said, ‘At least all the lifeboats are being taken towards the same place. No doubt when we reach it we shall be reunited with Art.’

  Ahead of us, ghostly behind the rings of Georgium Sidus,
a strange shape hung amid a swarm of the giant moths. I could not make it out at first, veiled as it was by those fluttering, shimmering wings. Then, as we drew closer and the moths thinned, I saw it plain. It was a huge, dark hulk of space-battered metal, shaped in the semblance of some great and evil fish, with bulging window-eyes and iron rudders for fins. Its pugnacious jaws were open wide and the moths were flying into the darkness between them.

  ‘Remarkable!’ exclaimed Father. ‘Is that thing their home?’

  ‘I think it is a means of transport for them,’ said Mother, watching just as intently. ‘Impressive though these moths are, I should not think they can travel at alchemical speeds. The ship is what brought them here.’

  ‘Brought them from where, Mother dear?’ I asked. ‘For they are Ssilissa’s people, aren’t they? And I am sure I have heard you say that you had never seen anything quite like Ssilissa on any world of the Sun.’

  ‘That is true,’ said Mother. ‘Poor Ssilissa. She will be very pleased when she hears we have found her people, but I fear she will be in for a disappointment if they all turn out to be such rascals.’ She tapped our captor politely on her armoured shoulder and said, ‘Excuse me, but where do you come from?’

  The blue virago glowered at her. ‘We are the Sssnilth,’ she said. ‘We come from there!’

  We were passing through the rings now, a mist of ice particles and aether dust. Ahead of us the Snilth ship blotted out half the sky, but beyond it we could see the star-speckled blackness of deep space, and it was to that that our captor had pointed.