by Ian Beck
‘You will regret that,’ said the Fantom calmly.
‘It was inauthentic,’ said Catchpole. ‘It didn’t belong in here at all.’
‘I will cut you and then take out your heart while you are still alive.’
Catchpole swung the rifle across to point at the Fantom.
‘You won’t risk a shot – surely not with the lovely Eve so close to me.’ The Fantom pulled her closer still.
‘Go, Caleb, and go now,’ said Bible J.
Caleb took his father’s hand and pulled him towards the narrow staircase to begin their descent. Lucius called out, ‘All my fault, all my fault, the ghost in the machine.’
The cabin door stood open on the hovering airship. Inspector Prinsep stood in the doorway. ‘This way, sir,’ he said.
Buckland crawled his way across the roof, whimpering and holding his damaged hand in pain, and Inspector Prinsep managed to pull him into the cabin.
Buckland, out of breath, called back to the Fantom, ‘Come with us now, and bring your Eve with you. This thing holds four very comfortably.’
Caleb took a last look back at Eve. She was outlined in a sudden green burst of light from an exploding firework. Her bright eyes were fixed on Bible J. Eve is his girl, Caleb thought. I must let him save her. He gave a little wave at Eve as if he were leaving her standing at a bus stop, not teetering on the edge of life itself, six hundred feet in the air.
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Chapter 57
Bible J kept his pistol trained on the Fantom. It glinted in the reflected light of the continuing fireworks.
He took a step forward and the Fantom took one step closer to the edge, pulling Eve with him one step closer to the abyss.
The Fantom gestured out across the city rooftops. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘look at the marvels of Pastworld.’
The gun trembled in Bible J’s hand. The Fantom hummed a tune to himself, under his breath.
‘Have you ever jumped from this high, ever fallen free?’
‘No,’ Bible J said through clenched teeth. He was furious, powerless, armed but with no chance of taking a clear shot.
‘I have many times. Why just the other day I jumped from this building. You should try it. It’s quite a feeling.’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Put it this way. It’s either jump now or stay and be swooped up by my ragged men. Come on now, lad,’ he said. ‘Join us.’
There were repeated shots from the stairwell.
‘Here come my reinforcements,’ the Fantom said grinning.
‘All of your ragged men were slaughtered tonight,’ Catchpole called out, ‘every last one of them. Lestrade’s work.’
For a split second the Fantom hesitated in his reaction. He looked down at the city far below them, and tightened his grip on Eve.
A brighter white light flared up for an instant, and there was a roar from all the Gawkers milling about below.
Buckland called out from the airship, ‘That was a warning signal. There will be a siren or two and then the building will be blown. Come inside, Adam, and bring Eve with you.’
The Fantom moved to step up into the gondola of the airship, but at that moment Bible J jumped forward and held on to him with one hand as tightly as he could, bunching the windblown flapping cape around the Fantom’s waist.
‘Let her go,’ Bible J screamed. ‘I love her.’
The Fantom turned, one arm still firmly wrapped around Eve. He raised his free arm. An ivory-handled razor flicked open and the blade caught the light. The razor flew downwards towards Eve’s exposed throat just as Bible J thrust his own head in the way.
‘Adam,’ Buckland shouted from the airship. ‘Now. Quickly.’
Bible J fell down on to the roof. He slipped forward, blood pumping from his neck. The Fantom raised both his arms. He still held the razor. It was high in the air, and it dripped an arc of blood. Eve stared up at the Fantom as if she were magnetically attached to him. She was aware Bible J had fallen injured, possibly dead, beside her. It was then that something was released in Eve, and the spell was broken. She screamed fiercely in the Fantom’s face. She resisted him. She broke free and crouched down next to Bible J, cradling his bloodied head. With the sudden chance of a clear shot at the Fantom, Catchpole fired his rifle several times.
Inspector Prinsep threw a stun grenade from the airship. A muffled explosion shocked the air around them. Catchpole was knocked off his feet. The crowd below roared.
The Fantom, with almost calm deliberation, just stepped off the edge of the building out into the open air. He made no attempt to climb into the open door of the airship gondola, which in any case had been pushed clear of the building by the shock wave from the grenade.
He went into free fall.
Buckland screamed out something which was lost to the wind as his creation fell. The swirling air rushed past the Fantom, and his black cloak billowed out behind him. The Fantom pulled at something, a little hooked handle on a lanyard across his chest. He was jerked upright as his bright scarlet parachute rippled and blossomed above him in the surrounding grey air. He slowed in midair. He became, for a moment, a puppet dangling on a string. He drifted towards the crowds and the cobbles with a strange slowness, floating towards the Gawkers and the wet roadway below. Inspector Lestrade watched the red blossom as it fell and signalled to his army of cadets to move in.
Amid the noise of the cheering crowd came the rattle of cab wheels, and a black closed cab driven by the last of the ragged men swept through the crush. The harsh scrape and rattle of iron rims rang unnoticed against the cobbled road. The warning siren sounded again. From somewhere close, echoing from the high hard walls, came the sound of police whistles. Then another siren sounded, and was answered by another. The Fantom ran forward across the wet cobbles, a ragged sleeve reached down from the closed hansom cab and pulled him up, and then the cab careened off down an incline and away from the crowd and into the fog with a great panel of scarlet fabric trapped and flapping behind it.
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Chapter 58
Eve picked herself up and stood tall. She breathed in deeply and opened her eyes. Buckland’s little airship had moved off now and was hovering away from the building. Her mate, her would-be killer, her Adam, had gone too, vanished in an instant in his black cape somewhere over the edge. Her love, her Bible J, lay at her feet in a spreading pool of blood. The other man was getting up.
‘We can’t stay here,’ he said. ‘I am here to help you. We must get down to safety.’
Eve crouched down next to Bible J. She kissed his forehead. It was warm. She felt his pulse. There was a faint fluttering movement.
‘Save yourself, Sergeant,’ she said. ‘I will save Bible J.’
‘The building will be blown at any moment,’ said Catchpole.
Another siren sounded.
‘There’s the warning,’ he said.
Eve put her arms under Bible J’s warm back. She picked him straight up from the roof in her delicate black velvet arms as if he weighed no more than a feather. She walked forward to the very edge of the building. The big Buckland Corp. passenger airship still hovered, some yards from the tower. The anchor wire was stretched tight. It swayed in the wind but no more and no worse than the high rope she was used to.
‘Where are you going?’ Catchpole called out.
‘Wait and I will come back for you.’
She looked across at the airship, at the word Buckland written along the side. She held her Bible J between her arms. He was her life, her balance. She stepped out over the abyss towards the wire and put one foot forward.
Her feet were firm on the swaying anchor wire. Some of the crowd gathered below could see what was happening, and they called out. She did not falter. She walked forward as if she were carrying poor Bible J along a wide road, just as Jago had taught her. She moved fast, but time seemed to slow down for her. All of her movements were careful and deliberate, but to anyone looking on she resembled a black streak, a blur of speed.
>
The cadet piloting the airship opened the door of the passenger gondola in disbelief at what he was seeing. Eve laid Bible J out on a sofa in the gondola. She went back across the wire in a blur of speed for Sgt Catchpole. He protested and made to run for the staircase but then the final siren blew. She held her arms out to him. There was no time to argue. He allowed himself to fall back into her arms. She stepped out on to the wire with a six-foot-tall police sergeant balanced across her arms and carried him too across the chasm.
The cadet cast off and the airship moved back and away just as the first explosions split the night and Tower 42 shuddered on its foundations. The crowd cheered.
The building slowly toppled and sank to the ground in a great cloud of dust and shattered debris. Caleb watched it all from the safety of the street. The collapsing building reminded him of the way poor Jack had fallen when the knife had entered his heart.
When the dust had settled and the crowds had dwindled his father managed to hail a hansom cab. They set off for Fournier Street. Caleb watched and thought about Eve as the horse’s grey hooves flew over the wet cobbles.
‘I must just tell you one thing, Caleb. You are not as them. You are my natural son, the son of your dear mother. They are, well, they are genetically linked to you, and no more. Their DNA was based on ours – but modified of course.’
‘Later, Dad, not now. Just tell me one thing. Did you tell me to run when you were down on the ground that night?’
‘Of course I did, Caleb. I wanted you to save yourself. Any father would.’
Caleb closed his eyes and rested his head for a moment on the seat of the cab in relief. They ordered the cab to stop near the great church. Before it had even come to a complete stop, Caleb threw the door open and jumped down. He skidded across the damp cobbles and slid to a stop, gesturing back for his father to follow and for the cab to wait. Then he ran across Fournier Street. With his father behind him, he opened the door of Number 31 with the key.
Mr Leighton stood in the dark hallway bristling with guns. He had a rifle raised ready on his shoulder.
‘Oh, it’s you, Caleb,’ he said, lowering his rifle. ‘Thank God, I thought that the Fantom had finally come for me.’
‘I doubt that will happen now,’ said Caleb. ‘This is my father. We found him.’
‘Both of you together.’ He smiled. ‘Now I can claim my enormous reward from a grateful Corporation.’
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Epilogue
FROM EVE’S JOURNAL
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The leaves are full and green. It is summer again and I am writing this under one of my favourite trees. It has a soft moss waistcoat creeping up from the roots. There are more flowers now, white with a yellow centre, all scattered among the grass, the soft grass which tickles my bare feet when the breeze stirs it. Jago says it will be a long hot summer for me. Brother Caleb came out to see me a few days ago. Jago brought him. And here I am writing once more in that very book he so kindly kept for me.
A red admiral butterfly has just landed on my hand and I have waited, paused in my writing. I let it just sit and dry its wings. I have plenty of time now. No one has seen the Fantom, my mad, sad brother, Adam, since his jump. He has disappeared, the cadets tried to follow his cab but effectively he has vanished. That doesn’t mean he has gone away for ever but I feel safe here. I think that I could resist him now. Knowing exactly who I am has helped me to understand everything. Mr Brown told me that my memory was cleared and locked by Jack after the fire. He told me that my speed and abilities had surely been put there by Jack to protect me. He says that when time appeared to slow down for me it was just that I was going so fast. In a way I am lucky. I am, I suppose, the first of a new step in evolution. I have been engineered, assisted. I try not to overuse my skills and I am certainly lying low here in the forest far away from everyone and everything. Caleb says that Mr Buckland has been charged under the Misuse of Genetic Science Act and that Lucius Brown will give evidence at the trial about the nature of the Prometheus project. Inspector Lestrade has been retired and Sgt Catchpole has been promoted into his position at Old Scotland Yard.
Sgt, sorry, Chief Inspector Catchpole, will write an official account to set things straight. I will be living quietly among the beautiful trees here in the forest for a long while yet, well at least until the baby is born. What kind of a child will he or she be, I wonder. What new gifts will they bring?
I want to find the perfect name for this blessing, our child, this new and doubly welcome entry into Jago’s broad family. I have two favourites if it is either a boy or a girl, and so can’t decide. I will have to let my darling choose, my dear funny Bible J, who lies comfortably resting and restored in the hammock above me, his dear face patterned and shaded by dappled leaf shadow. He will have the last word on that matter.
M
Excerpt taken from the Little Planet Guide to Pastworld.TM London
M
All in all, Pastworld London lives up to all the stereotypical images that the traveller may have of that very old and literary place. A city of twisted streets and quaint old buildings. A city of mystery, a city of shadow and fog. A city like no other.
Perhaps it will first work its recreated magic on you when you turn a corner into a side road near the murky river and see the cranes and wharves, and hear Big Ben strike the hour over the bustle of river traffic. Perhaps it will come over you the moment you step aboard a horse-drawn hansom cab and feel the floor dip as your weight springs the supports. Perhaps it will happen when you slam shut the heavy door of a railway carriage and catch the intoxicating smell of the steam smuts and the hot oiled metal of the engine. Or might it be the moment when a respectable-looking gentleman in an opera cloak tips the brim of his evening hat to you as you pass him, his face shadowed under a gaslight, and a shiver of apprehension goes through you, and your senses quicken to the thrill of possible adventure . . .
M
© Little Planet Guide. All rights reserved.
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Acknowledgements
I should like to thank my agent, Hilary Delamere, for believing in, and encouraging me to write, this story. Valerie Brathwaite and Sarah Odedina of Bloomsbury Children’s Books listened to my original idea with enthusiasm, and then waited for the book to be finished with an equal, and almost monumental, patience. I should also like to thank various friends and family who listened to my ideas or read and commented on the various drafts of this book, including David Fickling, Juliet Trewellard and Lily Beck.
No book is ever the work of the author alone and I must especially thank my marvellous editor, Margaret Miller of Bloomsbury USA, who suggested so many ways to shape and improve my muddled drafts and ideas, and for whom no praise is high enough, and also Isabel Ford who fine-tuned the result with such care and attention to detail.
Pastworld is a work of fiction, although I have borrowed, for the purposes of the story, my good friend Rodney Archer’s house and secretly lent it to the roguish Mr William Leighton. Any errors of fact and geography among the murky underground railway lines and the ruined platforms are the fault of the Buckland Corporation and any complaints should be addressed to them.
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Ian Beck
2009
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Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin, New York and Sydney
First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
36 Soho Square, London, W1D 3QY
Text copyright © Ian Beck 2009
The moral right of the author has been asserted
This electronic edition published in August 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4088 1191 7
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title page
Dedication
Epigraph
Contents
Classified ad
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50