Larklight

by Philip Reeve

  ‘What are you saying?’ asked Jack. ‘You mean you told Sir Isaac how to make the chemical wedding?’

  ‘It’s such a simple thing,’ she said. ‘I thought it would amuse him. He was very keen on Alchemy, you know, and I thought he would be pleased to see some genuine transformations going on in his smelly old oven, so I suggested certain elements he might try combining. I was quite surprised at what it all led to: aether-ships, and the expansion of your empire into space. I confess, I was a little embarrassed. I retired to the Lantern of Creation’s Dawn and lived quietly for a while, growing my flowers and making a few improvements to the old place. But I could not resist popping back to Earth now and then; I have grown so very fond of it. And on one of my visits I met dear Edward Mumby. Such a gentle man. He made me realise that I could not truly hope to understand your species until I had been in love, and had children …’

  ‘So are Art and Myrtle human?’ asked Nipper, eyeing me curiously. ‘Or are they Shapers like you?’

  ‘Human, quite human,’ said Mother. ‘To all intents and purposes I am human now too. I turned my back entirely on my old existence. I shut down my vessel’s mighty gravitational engines, all except for a few tiny parts of them, which provide what gravity we need to keep our feet upon the floors. The rest I immobilised and locked, and hid the key in a trinket which I gave to my first-born child. You see, I was aware that a few First Ones might still exist among the nooks and crannies of the system, and I knew that it would spell disaster if ever they were able to control the Lantern of Creation’s Dawn – Larklight, as I had come to call it.

  ‘Little did I know how advanced their plans were! When the Aeneas expedition vanished I suspected the worst, and set off for England to warn the Government. Alas, the spiders seized the ship I was travelling on. They devoured my poor fellow passengers, and hid me away in their webs so that I could not interfere with the great plot they were weaving with that renegade Dr Ptarmigan.’

  ‘But without this key they can’t do any harm?’ asked Jack. ‘Without the key they may do a great deal of harm,’ my mother cautioned him. ‘They will not be able to use Larklight’s power, but in their attempts to turn the gravitational engines on without the key they could trigger an explosion that would have all manner of calamitous effects. And who knows what other plans they have laid to divert and dismay the British Empire while they struggle to set Larklight working?’

  ‘What must we do?’ asked Ssil.

  ‘My dear, if you could use that clever brain of yours to steer us quickly to Larklight,’ said Mother, ‘I shall be eternally grateful. Larklight is where we must begin. Then we shall endeavour to find out the rest of their plans, and frustrate them. And we shall find dear Myrtle too,’ she promised, turning to smile at me.

  But I was not sure that I wanted her smiles any more. It is strange. You would think that I should have been beside myself with joy at being reunited with my dear mama. Yet all I felt towards her was anger. I was angry that she had left us, and let us grow up without her. I was angry at her for being all those billions of years old and not really human; not really my mother at all. I don’t wish to sound like some fellow in a gloomy play, but I felt as if my life up until then had all been lies.

  And as if she sensed my doubts, Mother came and put an arm around me while the rest of the crew began getting Sophronia under way. ‘I am sorry I lied to you, my dear,’ she said gently. ‘Please believe me when I say that of all the things I have seen and done and been, there was not one that gave me so much happiness as my life with you. Shapers appreciate beauty and order, but we do not feel. I had to become a living being before I could begin to do that, and I don’t think I truly understood what it meant until I knew you and Myrtle …’

  Well, I am sure can imagine the rest; I won’t go on. I don’t know about you, gentle reader, but when I am reading a book and people start to blub and talk about love and such I generally think it is time to skip a few pages to the next exciting storm or gory battle. So I shall save you the trouble by skipping there myself. But I should say that I felt quite at ease with Mother again by the time Sophronia sailed into the trans-lunar aether. I think the rest of the crew did too, for she was a model passenger, quite unlike Myrtle. She helped us tidy up and heave all those nasty old dead spiders overboard, and never once complained of anything. And when she tucked me up in my hammock and sat and sang to me at night, I sensed my shipmates gathering close outside the cabin door to listen to her pretty voice. Poor orphan monsters, I expect they wished they could have found their own mothers among the First Ones’ webs, don’t you?

  Ssillissa steered us swift and true across the leagues of space, and we slowed into the trans-lunar aether on the morning of the 1st of May, 1851. At first I thought Ssil must have brought us to the wrong quarter of the sky. I barely recognised the white ball of cotton wool which hung in space ahead of us. The spiders had shrouded Larklight in webs so thick that barely a rooftop or a chimney stack was to be seen, although after I had stared at it a while I spotted a familiar weathervane poking out of that cat’s cradle of silk.

  ‘It looks just like a gigantic chrysalis!’ Mother said when she saw it.

  ‘But what manner of trouble is going to hatch from it?’ asked Grindle.

  Jack began calling out his orders, and the rest of us jumped to obey him, even Mother; for although she might be very clever at shaping new worlds out of the raw matter of creation she could tell that Jack was the master when it came to battles, boardings and assaults from space. Grappling hooks and sidearms were readied, the cannons doubleshotted, and the Tentacle Twins warbled a cheerful space shanty as they briskly sharpened cutlasses and boarding axes on a grindstone. I stood watch on the star deck while Mr Munkulus donned his armour and stuffed four cutlasses through his belt. I could see Larklight looming larger and larger as Ssilissa brought us up upon it from below. Away to my left the huge crescent of the Moon half-filled the sky, and I stared at the lonely mountains there and shuddered as I recalled my meeting with the Potter Moth.

  A flash of light blazed in the corner of my eye, but when I turned it had already faded. I wondered if I should cry out to the others, but I did not want to raise the alarm until I was sure, so I used Mr Munkulus’s spyglass to scan that region of the aether. I saw a dense shoal of red whizzers swooping and turning in perfect unison, their scales flashing with moonshine. Had they been the source of the light I’d seen? But no; for as I watched they scattered, and through them came rushing a huge, dark, thorny shape which I knew all too well. It was the spine-ship of the First Ones! That flash I’d seen had been the light of its engines as it swung towards us!

  ‘Ship ahoy!’ I shouted, not certain of the correct aethernautical term. ‘Help! Help!’ I added, as I scrambled to climb back inside, but I feared I was too late. Already big, prickly balls from the spine-ship’s guns were whooshing past me, drawing faint, pale trails across the aether. As I dropped back into the main cabin I felt the Sophronia lurch and shudder as the broadside slammed into her stern, filling the air with smoke and sparks and cartwheeling splinters and the shrieks and shouts of my shipmates …

  Chapter Nineteen

  Another Excerpt from My Sister’s Diary, Containing a True Account of Her Part in the Recent Unpleasantness at Hyde Park.

  May 1st

  What an extraordinary day! I shall write down quickly all that happened, in case I do not live to speak of it. Oh, how my hand does shake! Outside the windows of the building in which I am sheltering I can hear the crash and clatter of collapsing masonry, and the afternoon sky grows dark with smoke …

  How different it all looked this morning! As we slowed over the polar regions and began our descent we saw that the skies above the British Isles were quite clear, (apart from a pother of factory smoke above the mill towns of the north country and the potteries). The rising Sun shone brightly down on our dear green homeland, set in its silver sea, and I doubt that there was any heart aboard the Indefatigable left unstirred as w
e approached the cloud of aether-ships which clustered about the orbital terminus of Mr Brunel’s great space elevator.

  There we left the ship, Mr and Mrs Burton and myself. Captain Moonfield suggested that we take a party of his space marines with us, and I wished we had, for they looked very splendid in their red coats and white cross belts. But Mr Burton explained that speed was of the essence, and that we should reach London more quickly if we went alone.

  There was some delay at the elevator station, but when Mr Burton waved his repeating-pistol in the air and announced that the safety of Queen and Empire depended on our reaching London forthwith we were soon permitted to descend, and emerged after a half-hour or so in early morning sunlight at the elevator’s base, which is built at a squalid spot called Shoeburyness, near the mouth of the river Thames. There, Mr Burton at once commandeered a swift-moving steam packet, which carried us upriver in great style, past little villages and docks and warehouses and through the clusters of shipping in the Pool of London. I looked with delight upon the sights: the Tower, and St Paul’s Cathedral, and the new Houses of Parliament, still wrapped up in scaffolding.

  I wonder how many of those great edifices will still be standing by this evening?

  Once we left the water our progress grew slower, for crowds of people were making their way to Hyde Park, intent on seeing the opening ceremony of the Great Exhibition. It was late morning before we reached the park, and saw the roofs of the magnificent Crystal Palace rising above the trees ahead.

  I shall try to forget what happened later, and record my first impressions of that wondrous building. It is – or rather it was – like nothing so much as an almighty greenhouse. Indeed the original design was done by a Mr Paxton, gardener to the Duke of Devonshire, and famed formerly for designing the great hothouse at Chatsworth, where that gentleman’s collection of extraterrestial flora is housed. The palace is so large that whole groves of elm trees are enclosed within it, and the gleam of sunlight on its many windows so bright that on a clear day it may be seen from the Moon!

  But although we could admire the wonders of Mr Paxton’s design, as we disembarked from our carriage among the throngs outside, our hearts were filled with gloomy forebodings, for we all knew that the actual building of the place had been carried out by Sir Waverley’s company, using prefabricated sections shipped from his works on Mars. Did some infernal machine lurk hidden in one of the iron cross-trees which held up that enormous arched roof? And if so, how might we contrive to find it?

  Mr Burton had already sent several warnings by telegraph, advising that the opening ceremony be delayed and the palace and its surrounds cleared. However, his messages had either gone astray, or been dismissed as the ravings of a crank or madman. As we hastened through the turnstiles we heard fanfares sounding, and when we had recovered from our awe and surprise at the great hall of sunlight in which we found ourselves we saw, upon a podium in the heart of that great space, the Queen, her children, and Prince Albert, surrounded by as great a gathering of Bishops, Generals, Lords and Members of Parliament as I imagine I shall ever see!

  ‘Stand aside, in the name of Her Majesty’s Secret Service!’ cried Mr B., and made a path for us through the throng.

  People turned to stare at us, looking askance at Ulla’s rusty elfin face and borrowed trousers; looking at me too, I fear, for to my shame I still wore my old brown dress, and although the Indefatigable’s laundry had done their best with it, it was sadly stained and faded by all that it had been through!

  We hurried past displays which seemed to come from every world of the Sun and every nation on the Earth, as if Science, Art and Labour had all poured out their horns of plenty in that mansion of glass. Somehow we managed to draw close to the podium, where a clerical gentleman in a white surplice with big, puffed sleeves was intoning a long and somewhat dreary-sounding sermon.

  ‘Please! Clear this place!’ shouted Mr Burton, and Ulla cried, ‘There may be an infernal machine close by. We expect an explosion at any moment!’

  Some of the ladies and gentlemen about us reacted in horror, and a sort of eddy swept through the crowd as they began shoving their way towards the doors. But the Royal Family did not appear to have heard. I stared at the Queen. She was much smaller than I had imagined her, and although she wore a splendid gown of pink silk with sprays of lace at the sleeves and bosom, and a broad blue sash, and a tiara, she was not beautiful in her own face or person. Indeed, she seemed rather plump, with a beaky nose and slightly bulging eyes, and the look upon her face was one of mild boredom rather than the noble and gracious expression which one expects of one’s monarch.

  A horrid thought came to me then. What if the white spiders had exchanged Sir Waverley Rain for an automaton simply so that he might affect a still more dastardly exchange? I clutched at Ulla’s sleeve and whispered, ‘Mrs Burton! That is not the Queen!’

  ‘Now, steady on,’ I heard Ulla warn me, but my mind was made up; I was perfectly convinced that my dreadful surmise was correct. As fabricator of the Crystal Palace, Sir Waverley had doubtless been invited to visit Her Majesty at Balmoral, her new estate in Scotland. In that remote spot he must have overpowered her and set up this replica in her place! For how better to smuggle an infernal device into the heart of our island home than to conceal it in the person of our own beloved monarch? No doubt in an instant more, when the clerical gentleman had concluded his address, this facsimile queen would turn upon her family and the assembled Members of Parliament and rend them limb from limb with an arsenal of concealed weapons!

  Horror overcame my natural meekness and good breeding, and I pushed my way past several gentlemen who stood between me and the podium and ran quickly up the steps. I believe I shrieked, ‘She is not the Queen!’ or something similar, and I heard a great rush of astonished voices echo all about me as I lunged at the demure shape in front of me and threw her to the floor. ‘You’ll see!’ I cried, tugging off her tiara and pulling at her glossy hair. ‘Her head opens! There will be one of them inside!’

  Except, of course, that her head did not open. She was not an automaton at all, merely a small, startled woman, staring up at me, while all around me men shouted and women screamed, and Prince Albert drew his ornamental sword and brandished it at me, demanding to know the meaning of this outrage.

  I believe it was the most embarrassing moment of my entire life. I am quite confident that, even if I live to be one hundred, I shall never be quite so humiliated again.

  Of course, it is hardly likely that I shall live to be one hundred. Indeed, I am unlikely to see tomorrow morning. For as I sat there on top of our dear queen, wondering how I might begin to apologise, a terrible rending noise came from the massive iron frame of the palace, and the white spiders’ master plan became all too horridly apparent.

  It was not the Queen who was an automaton, nor Prince Albert, nor the Duke of Wellington, nor any other person present. The infernal machine which the spiders had inveigled into our midst was the Crystal Palace itself!

  A thousand windows shattered and crashed down as the iron frame stirred. It is only due to the great goodness of God that nobody was impaled upon the brilliant daggers which rained down all around. Of course, panic was spreading fast, and most of the onlookers had already turned tail and were fleeing out into the park. One by one, the iron pillars which supported the palace began to uproot themselves, to fold and turn and twist about. The entire palace was changing itself, transforming itself from a giant greenhouse into the semblance of a colossal metal spider! Trailing torn flags and the rags of calico sunblinds it crouched above us, blocking out the Sun, and still, with clashes and crashes, the metal girders kept folding and combining, strengthening its monstrous limbs and forming a spiky, armoured body between them.

  The infernal machine which the spiders had inveigled into our midst was the Crystal Palace itself!

  Mr Burton discharged his pistol, but it had no effect, other than to wing one of the sparrowhawks which the Duke of Wellington h
ad introduced into the palace to keep down the pigeons. ‘Bullets just bounce off it!’ I heard him cry, and at once he and Ulla began herding the Royal Family and the startled ladies and gentlemen of the court towards a stand of trees which had been safe inside the palace until a few moments ago.

  For the great iron spider was moving, creeping forwards slowly, as if testing its own strength. One forefoot crushed the boiler house which had stood behind the palace, and a flare of white steam gushed up into the sunlight. Sobbing with fright, I hurried through the swooping shadows as the huge feet stepped over us. I found myself running for a moment beside the Queen, and managed to say, ‘Ma’am, I am most dreadfully sorry,’ but at that moment a clawed foot tore apart a display of steam engines and other devices which had stood in the Hall of Moving Machinery, and I doubt she heard me above all the racket.

  We were almost among the trees when, with a deafening ‘WOOF!’, they burst into flame. The Indefatigable, swooping down from orbit, had trained her phlogiston agitators on the iron spider, and one had missed and almost roasted us. The others played across the spider’s armoured body, causing it to glow red hot, but before any real damage could be done it reached up with one limb and swiped the Indefatigable’s wings and engines off. The poor ship veered away. I heard someone say that her crew had managed to bring her down in the Thames.