Mothstorm

by Philip Reeve

  ‘A good thing it did,’ said Mr Munkulus. ‘Or we should not have known where to start looking.’

  ‘And then those other flares went off in all this fog and showed us where to finish looking,’ added Mr Grindle. ‘And we homed in upon ’em and found that great insect flapping about, so we ran out the guns and fired off a broadside.’

  I shook my head, puzzled by it all. ‘There were legions of those moths in orbit yesterday,’ I said. ‘Where have they all gone?’

  ‘Back to their own mothy world, I suppose,’ said Nipper. ‘And taken their prisoners with them!’ I said. ‘None of the other lifeboats made it to the surface. The moth-men threw nets and snared them all. And then they took Sir Richard and Ulla and Mr Bradstreet, who were aboard my boat, just like they took poor Charity’s papa … Oh Jack, we must find out where they have gone, and follow them there, and fetch our people out!’

  ‘Jack!’ said Ssilissa suddenly, from the hatchway. ‘Listen!’

  We all listened, and from outside we heard a faint, hissing cry. At once we crowded to the hatch, Jack and Grindle reaching for their pistols. Ssilissa stared a moment into the fog, then pointed. A little way off an armoured figure clung to a shard of moth wing. Its helmet was off and, as we saw it, it raised its blue head again and let out that cry.

  ‘She is alive!’ said Ssil.

  ‘How do you know it is a she?’ asked Nipper.

  ‘I don’t know, Nip; I can feel it sssomehow. Oh, she needs help!’

  ‘Well, she ain’t getting none, the treacherous lepidopterist!’ growled Mr Grindle.

  ‘Now, now, Grindle,’ chided Munkulus. ‘That there is a shipwrecked mariner and deserving of our help, no matter what or who she is. That is one of the rules of the aether.’

  The shipwrecked moth-rider hissed again. Ssil turned to Jack. Her face had turned palest lilac and her dark eyes brimmed with tears of pity. ‘Jack, please help her!’

  Jack looked grim. ‘We don’t know these creatures, nor what they may be capable of. What do you say, Miss Cruet?’

  Charity looked nervously at the shape in the fog, and for a moment I thought she would tell Jack to fly away and leave the moth-rider to her fate. But then she said, ‘Of course we must save her. It would be most un-Christian to let her drown.’

  ‘Then jump to it,’ said Jack, and the Tentacle Twins fetched a lifebelt on a long rope, which they hurled towards the moth-rider on her flotsam raft. Three times they threw it out, and three times it fell short and had to be dragged back and thrown again. But on the fourth attempt it dropped upon the piece of wing, and the moth-rider looked warily at it, as if she suspected it was some strange weapon and we were trying to hasten her end.

  ‘Clap on, dearie!’ shouted the Sophronias. ‘Grab a hold!’ They illustrated their words with gestures which were nothing like as precise as those in Reverend Cruet’s pamphlet, but which seemed to make their message clear all the same. The moth-rider seized hold of the lifebelt, Yarg and Squidley hauled hard upon the line and a minute later we were all leaning out of the hatch to help her aboard. And I must say I was pleased to see her safe, despite the fact that she and her friends had been shooting their darts at us a quarter-hour before.

  But Jack knew better than to let his heart rule his head, or to expect gratitude from that rescued foe. ‘Bind her good and tight, Mr Grindle,’ he said. ‘If she is anything like our Ssil, she will be nimble and clever and devilish strong.’

  The creature on the floor looked up fearfully at us and gave a sort of snarl as Grindle looped a rope about her wrists and tied it in a series of firm knots. Then she saw Ssilissa and her expression changed; she flushed purple, her spines bristled upright on her bony blue head and she began to hiss words that none of us could understand.

  ‘What is she saying?’ I asked Ssil.

  ‘How would I know, Art? It is in no language I have ever heard. And yet I can feel her dimly in my mind … Her race… my race … we are called the Snelth … no, the Snilth. She thinks I am a traitor; she wonders what I am doing here with you. She thinks I have betrayed the Mothmaker … ’

  ‘Who?’ asked Jack. ‘Who’s the Mothmaker?’

  Ssilissa shook her head, looking confused and distracted. ‘I do not know … Oh Jack, someone … something … wonderful and terrible … and She is coming …! The Snilth who came to this world were just an advance guard. Many more are coming, and the Mothmaker comes with them!’

  Everyone stared at Ssil and looked from her to her armoured twin and wondered what it could all mean, until Jack said, ‘Enough of this. Fire up the alembic, Ssil. We’re bound for high orbit.’

  ‘What about our prisoner here?’ asked Mr Munkulus.

  ‘Why, shut her in a spare cabin and see if you make any sense of her hissing and spitting. I want to know who these blue devils are, and what they want, and where they are holding Myrtle and Mr and Mrs Mumby. And then perhaps we shall go after them and teach them what happens to creatures who make prisoners of our friends.’

  ‘Aye aye, Jack,’ the Sophronias mumbled, hurrying to their stations while Yarg and Squidley heaved the hatch to, blotting out that foggy Georgian morning. But Ssilissa still lingered, staring after our prisoner as Mr Munkulus and Nipper pushed her firmly towards the spare cabin.

  Jack looked worriedly at Ssil. He never normally had to ask her twice to do a thing; usually she was a step ahead of him, ready to obey his orders before even he knew what they would be. But she seemed quite distracted now, and washes of colour chased across her strange blue face, turning it lilac, mauve and many other similar shades which only the French have bothered to think up names for.

  ‘The engines, Ssil,’ said Jack.

  ‘Of course – I mean, aye aye, Jack … ’

  But Jack and I stood watching her as she hurried aft into the wedding chamber.

  I believe we were both wondering the same thing. If it came to a fight with the moth-riders, would Ssilissa side with us or with them?

  While Jack took the wheel and guided the ship spaceward through the soggy clouds, Nipper took charge of Charity and me. Hot chocolate, warmed on the galley stove, was poured into mugs and handed to us with instructions to ‘drink up quick, afore we lose gravity’. For despite Jack’s radical notions he is a great traditionalist and still hasn’t fitted a gravity generator aboard that old ship of his.

  I took Nip’s advice and gulped my cocoa quick, but Charity, less used to space travel than I, sipped hers gently and still had half a mugful when we broke from the planet’s gravity. It went wobbling out of her mug like a glistening chocolate balloon. I swam after it, hoping to trap it in my own mug and show her what an old hand I am at aether-faring, but before I could reach it Jack came drifting by, his telescope in his hand and a look of worried perplexity upon his face.

  ‘Art,’ he said, ‘come and give me your opinion upon this.’

  ‘Upon what?’ I said.

  ‘There is a sort of cloud or stain upon the aether. It was hidden from us by the planet’s face when we arrived, but now there is no missing it … ’

  ‘Oh, that,’ I said, taking the telescope and boosting myself to the nearest porthole. What with all the excitement of moths and mermen which Georgium Sidus had offered us, I had quite forgot the mystery cloud, but now I recalled it. ‘That is what brought us out here in the first place. It is an anomalous spatial phenomenon.’ But just when I was thinking myself very clever for trotting out all those long words, I peeked out through that porthole, and almost squeaked with fright.

  That cloud, which had been a merest smudge on Dr Blears’s photographs, looked vast and threatening from here, blotting out the stars and dwarfing Georgium Sidus’s tiny moons, which showed black against its glittering, shimmering pallor. I wondered why I had not noticed it when I first entered Georgian space. Had the Actaeon, too, been on the wrong side of the planet? Or had it grown immeasurably during the time that I had been upon Georgium Sidus?

  ‘Reckon that has something to do with our mo
thy chums?’ asked Jack.

  I nodded. ‘Do you think that is where we will find Mother and Father and Myrtle?’ I asked. ‘Do you think that is where we must go?’

  Jack shrugged (it is horribly difficult to shrug convincingly in zero BSG, but Jack is an old hand at such manoeuvres). ‘Don’t see much point in going to meet it,’ he said. ‘For from what I see, that thing is coming to us, and coming at a fair old speed too.’

  ‘Oh Rowlocks and Ratlines!’ exclaimed Mr Grindle from somewhere below us. I thought at first that it was the horrid prospect of that vast approaching cloud which had driven him to use such colourful language, but when I looked I saw that he did not even have his telescope out. He had been into the galley to begin preparing our dinner, and now he had emerged again, still in his grease-stained cook’s apron, and was doing what appeared to be a savage war dance on the planking just outside the door.

  Jack shut up his telescope and jumped down. ‘What is it, Grindle?’ he asked.

  Grindle made a few last savage stamps, squashing flat what appeared to be some raisins. He swiped another from mid-air and said, ‘’Tis those pesky Pudding Worms again, Jack! The cake Mrs Mumby gave us must have been infested with them while it was still at Larklight! The little beggars have scoffed all that was in the galley too!’

  Jack uttered an oath which would have made Myrtle faint away had she been there to hear. Indeed, I almost fainted myself. Where did he learn such words, I wondered?

  ‘So we have no provisions left?’ asked Mr Munkulus, drifting by with a worried expression.

  ‘Not unless you fancy pudding-beetle for breakfast, dinner and tea,’ retorted Grindle. ‘There’s a few boxes of ship’s biscuits left, but all else is quite ruined. I hadn’t planned a long voyage, see – thought we’d be tied up snug at Larklight for a week or two, with never a need for salt beef or salmagundi.’

  Jack shook his head. ‘This ain’t so good. There’s unknown dangers coming, and whether we stand and face ’em or run before ’em, we shall need a good full larder.’

  ‘Oh, sir!’ cried Charity Cruet, putting up her hand. ‘If you please, sir! We could catch some fish. There are shoals of great, vast icthyomorphs cruising all about this planet and its moons. My father called them Georgian gulpers, and declared they were the fattest space fish that he ever did see. Might we not lay in a few of them?’

  Jack looked thoughtful for a moment, but I could see that my friend’s quick thinking pleased him. ‘Very well, miss,’ he said. ‘You and Art can go aloft with line and tackle, while the rest of you make the ship ready to fight or flee before that cloud arrives.’

  And so it was that, by the light of that immense, ominous, approaching cloud, Charity Cruet and I went space-fishing.

  Chapter Eleven

  In Which, with Our Pocket Handkerchiefs at the Ready, We Return to Myrtle’s Account and Learn of a Tragic Event Within the Storm of Moths.

  A Young Lady’s Adventures in Unknown Space (Continued).

  6

  It never ceases to astonish me that our English fashions in interior design have yet to be adopted by the residents of other spheres. You would think that a Martian, having once seen one of our lovely homes with all its carpets, wallpapers and panelling, would begin to feel dissatisfied and even peeved with his own miserable dwelling place, which is made like a wasp’s nest out of paper and spittle. You might imagine that the people of Io, having once been exposed to our superior architecture, would knock down their warrens of blue mud and start putting up some nice townhouses in their place. But no; Martians and Ionians alike cling to their old ways, and we have hard work ahead of us if ever we are to persuade them to change.

  Which is why it seemed very wonderful to me when the Snilth forced me after my parents through the door of that strange moth-built house in the heart of the maelstrom of moths and I found it to be decorated as prettily as any villa one could hope to find in Hampstead or Kensington. It is true that at first glance it seemed no more than a nasty, dusty den of moth wings and moth bones, bound together with strands of their silvery thread. But as the door swung shut behind us I realised that my eyes had been playing tricks on me, and that I actually stood in a very pleasant hall, with a great sweep of banistered stairs rising to a landing high above, and long windows through whose lattices of stained glass the silver light of the pocket-sun outside slanted sweetly. The mounted hunting trophies on the wall above the hallstand were the heads of creatures I had never seen or heard of before, but is that not often the case in houses on other worlds? And I was almost certain that one of the paintings on the stairway was the work of Sir Edwin Landseer …

  ‘Be careful, my dears,’ said Mother softly. ‘All here is not as it appears.’

  Father did not seem to hear her. He was looking about him with an expression of great admiration. ‘My word!’ he cried. ‘What a superb display! I have never seen such an extensive collection of aetheric icthyomorphs, all quite unknown to science! No doubt they were collected in the void between the stars … ’

  I began to fear that the strain of our capture had disordered his intellects, and I looked questioningly at Mother, for the only specimen I could see was a stuffed pike in a case above the fireplace. But Mother said, ‘Edward, I believe the owner of this house is working on your mind to make you see what she wishes you to.’

  ‘But how can you know that our host is a lady?’ wondered Father.

  ‘Because only a Shaper could have contrived all this,’ said Mother, ‘and all Shapers are female.’

  ‘Bravo, my dear!’ called a voice from above us – a pleasant, educated, English voice; the last thing I had expected to hear in that far-flung quarter of space. We looked up, and there on the elegant staircase stood a gentleman in grubby tweeds, scuffed leather gaiters and a clerical collar. ‘Your guess is quite correct!’

  ‘Shipton!’ cried Father delightedly.

  ‘Eddie!’ replied the other, with a look of great affection, and came hurrying down to meet Father at the foot of the stairs, where they shook hands in a most hearty manner.

  ‘My dears,’ said Father happily, ‘this is Shipton Cruet!’ And, turning back, he asked his friend, ‘Shipton, my dear fellow, how came you here?’

  ‘The Snilth brought me,’ replied that Reverend gentlemen, in a way that made it sound as though he felt most grateful to the Snilth for having done so. ‘They picked me up on Georgium Sidus. Did you stop there on your way out, I wonder? It is a horrid planet – interesting flora and fauna, of course, but damp and dull and drear. I only went there because I thought I had heard the voice of God calling me to go and preach to the Georgians. Can you imagine anything more absurd? Of course, the Snilth were soon able to set me right; it was not God’s voice I’d heard, but Hers.’

  ‘Whose?’ asked Father.

  ‘Her. The Shaper who created and still rules this wonderful little universe of lepidopterae. She began to send out Her thoughts as She drew near our solar system, hoping that there might be one or two who would sense them and come to meet Her. But it seems I was the only one who did. At least, the only one who had access to an aether-ship. I was walking on the clifftop near St Porrock’s one evening when I heard it clear as a bell: “Come to Georgium Sidus, Shipton; come and serve me!” Naturally, I thought it was the Lord speaking; my mind was terribly limited in those days, hedged about by primitive superstitions. She’s explained it all to me. She’s made me understand that there is no God; all our earthly legends of gods and angels are simply reflections of the Truth. It is the Shapers who guide and govern life all over the Universe.’

  ‘I don’t know about “govern”,’ said Mother, frowning slightly. ‘I would not even go so far as “guide”. We merely do our little best to set things moving.’

  But the Reverend Cruet did not appear to be listening. ‘In return,’ he said, ‘I have taught Her English – alas, I could not persuade Her to learn my Universal Sign Language – and told Her a little of the history and customs of our empire. She
was most attentive. Most attentive. She really is a rather wonderful person, you know … ’

  ‘But tell me, Shipton,’ Father said, ‘what of little Charity? Is she here with you?’

  ‘Eh?’ said his friend, looking puzzled. ‘Who?’

  ‘Charity, old chap. Your daughter. Pretty little girl, about so high. Blue eyes. Pigtails.’

  Shipton Cruet shook his head. ‘No. No, I’m sorry, Eddie, I have no idea who you mean. But to return to the Mothmaker –’

  ‘Who is this Mothmaker?’ asked Father.

  ‘I am the Mothmaker!’ called another voice. It had a clear, bell-like, musical tone, not at all like the reptilian hissing of the Snilth. I sensed a movement on the landing at the head of that elegant staircase and looked up.

  What did I see? Even now I am not sure. At first I thought some vast and odious shape was stirring there, a slithering darkness pricked by many eyes. But before I could cry out or faint away, or do any of the other things that well-brought-up young ladies are supposed to when confronted by a monster, my vision cleared, and I saw that a tall and graceful lady was walking down the stairs towards us. Her hands were outstretched in greeting, and the vast skirts of her gorgeous dress, which were made of some fine, dark fabric patterned with golden eyes like the tail of a peacock, whispered down the stair carpet. Her face was pale, ageless and beautiful, and her eyes were as dark and wise as Mother’s. She might almost have been Mother’s sister.

  ‘Welcome to Mothstorm, my dears,’ she said warmly. ‘I am so pleased that you could come to meet me!’

  7

  She smiled so kindly at us all as she reached the stairs’ foot that it would have been easy to forget that we were not guests but captives, who had not come to her strange house willingly but had been dragged there in a prison-ship by her friends the Snilth.