Predator Cities x 4 and The Traction Codex

by Philip Reeve

  “What a dump!” complained one of Widgery Blinkoe’s wives, peering out through the gondola windows.

  “You told us reporting that old airship would bring us luck and money,” agreed another. “You said we’d be sunning ourselves on a raft resort, not trailing out here off the edge of the world.”

  “You promised new dresses, and slaves!”

  “Silence, wives!” shouted Blinkoe, trying to concentrate on his steering-levers while ground-crew guided him into the hangar with coloured flags. “Show some respect! This is a Green Storm base! It is an honour to be asked here: a sign that they value my services!” But in truth he was as dismayed as them at being summoned to Rogues’ Roost. After he radioed his sighting of the Jenny Haniver to the Storm’s base in the Tannhäusers he’d expected a thank you and perhaps a nice payment. He had certainly not expected to be jumped by a flight of Fox Spirits as soon as he left Airhaven and dragged all the way out here.

  “Well, really!” grumbled his wives, nudging each other.

  “It’s a pity the Green Storm don’t respect him as much as he respects them!”

  “Value his services, indeed!”

  “Think of the business we’re losing, trailing out here!”

  “My mother warned me not to marry him.”

  “So did mine!”

  “Mine, too!”

  “He knows this is a fool’s errand! See how worried he looks!”

  Mr Blinkoe was still looking worried as he stepped out of the Temporary Blip in the chaotic, echoey hangar, but his expression changed to an indulgent smile when a pretty subaltern came hurrying up to salute him. Widgery Blinkoe had a weakness for pretty young women, which was how he had ended up marrying five of them, and although those five had all turned out to be rather shrill and headstrong and tended to gang up on him, he could not help toying with the thought of asking the subaltern to become number six.

  “Mr Blinkoe?” she asked. “Welcome to the Facility.”

  “I thought it was called Rogues’ Roost, my dear?”

  “The commander prefers us to call it the Facility.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m here to take you to her.”

  “Her, eh? I hadn’t realized there were so many ladies in your organization.”

  The girl’s smile vanished. “The Green Storm believes that both men and women must play their part in the coming war to defeat the Tractionist barbarians, and make the Earth green again.”

  “Oh, of course, of course,” said Mr Blinkoe quickly. “I couldn’t agree more…” He didn’t like that sort of talk: war was so terribly bad for business. But the past few years had been bad for the Anti-Traction League: London had rolled almost to the gates of Batmunkh Gompa, and its agents had burned the Northern Air Fleet. That had meant that there were no spare ships to come to the aid of the Spitzbergen Static when Arkangel attacked it last winter, and so the last great Anti-Tractionist city of the north had been swallowed into the predator’s gut. It was only natural that some of the League’s younger officers had grown impatient with the dithering of the High Council, and itchy for revenge. Hopefully it would all come to nothing.

  Trailing after the subaltern, he tried to judge the strength of this little base. There were a couple of well-armed Fox Spirits standing ready on docking pans, and a lot of soldiers in white uniforms and bronze crab-shell helmets, all wearing armbands with the lightning-flash symbol of the Green Storm. Heavy security, he thought, his gaze slipping quickly over their steam-powered machine guns. But why? What was going on out here at the back-end of nowhere that warranted all this? A line of troops tramped past, carrying big metal cases stencilled Fragile and Top Secret, tightly locked. A little bald-headed man wearing a transparent plastic coat over his uniform was fussing at the soldiers. “Do go carefully now! Don’t jostle! Those are sensitive instruments!” Sensing Blinkoe’s gaze, he glanced towards him. There was a small tattoo between his eyebrows, in the shape of a red wheel.

  “What exactly is it you’re doing here?” Blinkoe asked his escort, following her out of the hangar and along damp tunnels and stairways, climbing up and up through the heart of the rock.

  “It’s secret,” she said.

  “But surely you can tell me?”

  The subaltern shook her head. She was a rude, officious, military sort of girl, Blinkoe decided; not sixth-Mrs-Blinkoe-material at all. He turned his attention to the posters tacked to the passage walls. They showed League airships raining down rockets on mobile towns, beneath angry slogans that exhorted the reader to DESTROY ALL CITIES. Between the posters were stencilled signs pointing the way to cell-blocks, barracks, various gun-platforms, and to a laboratory. That seemed strange, too. The Anti-Traction League had always been sniffy about science; they thought any technology more complicated than an airship or a rocket projector was barbaric, and best ignored. Clearly the Green Storm had different ideas.

  Mr Blinkoe began to feel a little afraid.

  The commander’s office was in one of the old buildings on the summit of the island. It had once been Red Loki’s private quarters, and the walls had been decorated with saucy murals which the commander had primly whitewashed over. The whitewash was thin, though, and here and there faint, painted faces were beginning to show through, like the ghosts of dead pirates looking on in disapproval at the Roost’s new tenants. In the far wall, a big circular window looked out at nothing much.

  “You’re Blinkoe? Welcome to the Facility.”

  The commander was very young. Mr Blinkoe had hoped she’d be pretty, but she turned out to be a stern-looking little minx, all cropped black hair and a hard, peat-coloured face. “You are the agent who sighted the Jenny Haniver at Airhaven?” she asked. Her hands kept clenching and flexing, like fidgety brown spiders. And the way she stared at him with those great dark eyes! Blinkoe wondered if she was slightly mad.

  “Yes, Your Honour,” he said nervously.

  “And you’re sure it was her? There is no mistake? This is not some story you cooked up to defraud the Green Storm of money?”

  “No, no!” said Blinkoe hastily. “Gods, no; it was the Wind Flower’s ship, as clear as day!”

  The commander turned away from him and walked to the window, peering out through the salt-frosted glass at the swiftly darkening sky. After a moment she said, “A wing of Fox Spirits was scrambled from one of our secret bases to intercept the Jenny. None of them returned.”

  Widgery Blinkoe was uncertain what to say. “Oh dear,” he ventured.

  She turned towards him again, but he couldn’t see her expression, standing as she was against that luminous window. “The two barbarian infiltrators who stole the Jenny Haniver from Batmunkh Gompa may have looked like Out-Country urchins, but they were really highly trained agents in the pay of London. No doubt they used their infernal cunning to outwit and destroy our ships, then fled north into the Ice Wastes.”

  “It’s, um, perfectly possible, Commander,” agreed Widgery Blinkoe, thinking how unlikely it sounded.

  She came close to him, a short, slight girl, her eyes burning into his. “We have many Fox Spirits. The Green Storm grows stronger every day. A great many League commanders are on our side, and are prepared to send soldiers and ships to strengthen our bases. What we lack is an intelligence network. That is why we need you, Blinkoe. I want you to find me the Jenny Haniver, and the barbarians who fly her.”

  “That’s, um, well, that might, yes,” said Blinkoe.

  “You will be paid well for your services.”

  “How well? I don’t want to seem mercenary, but I do have five wives to support…”

  “Ten thousand when you deliver the ship here.”

  “Ten thou –!”

  “The Green Storm rewards its servants well,” the commander assured him. “But we punish those who betray us, too. If you breathe a word of this, or of what you have seen at the Facility, to anyone, we will find you, and kill you. Quite painfully. Do you understand?”

  “Eep!” squeak
ed Blinkoe, turning his hat around and around in his hands. “Um, may I ask why? I mean, why this ship is so important? I thought she might have sentimental value, as a sort of symbol for the League, but she hardly seems worth—”

  “She is worth what I am offering you.” The commander smiled for the first time; a thin, cold, pained little smile, like someone thanking a distant relative for attending a funeral. “The Jenny Haniver and the barbarians who stole her could be vital to our work here,” she said. “That is all you need to know. Find her and bring her to me, Mr Blinkoe.”

  10

  THE WUNDERKAMMER

  All Anchorage’s doctors were dead. The best nurse who could be found for Professor Pennyroyal was Windolene Pye of the Steering Committee, who had once done a first-aid course. Sitting by his bed in a luxurious guest room high in the Winter Palace, she held his wrist between her thin fingers, checking his pulse against her pocket watch.

  “I believe he has simply fainted,” she announced. “Perhaps it was exhaustion, or delayed shock after his terrible adventures, poor gentleman.”

  “How come we haven’t keeled over then?” Hester wanted to know. “We went through terrible adventures too, and you don’t see us swooning all over the place like maiden aunts.”

  Miss Pye, who was a maiden aunt herself, gave Hester a hard stare. “I think you should leave the professor in peace. He requires silence and round-the-clock care. Shoo, now, all of you…”

  Hester, Tom and Smew retreated into the corridor, and Windolene Pye closed the door firmly behind them. Tom said, “I expect he was just overcome. He spent years trying to get somebody to fund a second expedition to America, and to find out so suddenly that the margravine’s taking her whole city there…”

  Hester laughed. “It’s impossible! She’s mad!”

  “Miss Shaw!” gasped Smew. “How can you say such things? The margravine is our ruler, and the Ice Gods’ representative on earth. It was her ancestor, Dolly Rasmussen, who led the survivors of the first Anchorage out of America to safety. It’s only natural that it should fall to a Rasmussen to lead us home again.”

  “I don’t know why you’re defending her,” Hester grumbled. “She treats you like something she found clinging to the sole of her shoe. And I hope you know you aren’t fooling anybody with all these costume changes. We can tell there’s only one of you.”

  “I am not trying to fool anybody,” Smew replied, with immense dignity. “The margravine must be attended by certain servants and officials: chauffeurs, chefs, chamberlains, footmen, et cetera. Unfortunately, they are all dead. So I have had to step into the breach. I do my bit to keep the old traditions going.”

  “And what were you before? A chauffeur or a chamberlain?”

  “I was the margravine’s dwarf.”

  “What did she need a dwarf for?”

  “The margravine’s household has always had a dwarf. To amuse the margravine.”

  “How?”

  Smew shrugged. “By being short, I suppose.”

  “Is that amusing?”

  “It’s tradition, Miss Shaw. We have been glad of our traditions in Anchorage, since the plague came. Here are your rooms.”

  He flung open the doors of two rooms a little further along the corridor from Pennyroyal’s. Each had long windows, a big bed, fat heating ducts. Each was about the size of the Jenny Haniver’s entire gondola.

  “They look lovely,” said Tom gratefully. “But we just need the one.”

  “Out of the question,” said Smew, bustling into the first room to adjust the controls on the ducts. “It would be unheard of for unmarried young persons of the opposite gender to share a room in the Winter Palace. All manner of canoodling might occur. Quite out of the question.” A rattling inside one of the ducts distracted him for an instant, then he turned to Hester and Tom with a sly wink. “However, there’s a connecting door between these rooms, and if someone wished to slip through, why, nobody would ever know…”

  But somebody knew almost everything that happened in Anchorage. Peering at their screens in the blue dark, the watchers saw a grainy, fish-eye view of Tom and Hester following the dwarf into the second room.

  “She’s so ugly!”

  “She doesn’t look too happy.”

  “Who would, with a face like that?”

  “No, it’s not that. She’s jealous. Didn’t you see the way Freya looked at her boyfriend?”

  “I’m bored with this lot. Let’s hop.”

  The picture changed, jumping to other views: the Aakiuqs in their living room, Scabious in his lonely house, the steady, patient work of the engine district and the agricultural quarter…

  “Shouldn’t we send word to the Aakiuqs?” asked Tom, as Smew made his adjustments to the ducts in the second room and prepared to leave. “They might be expecting us back.”

  “It’s already been done, sir,” said Smew. “You are guests of the House of Rasmussen now.”

  “Mr Scabious won’t be too happy about that,” said Hester. “He didn’t seem to like us one bit.”

  “Mr Scabious is a pessimistic man,” said Smew. “It is not his fault. He is a widower, and his only son Axel died in the plague. He has not borne the loss well. But he has no power to stop the margravine offering you her hospitality. You are both very welcome here in the Winter Palace. Just ring for a servant – oh, all right, me – if you need anything. Dinner will be at seven, but if you would please come down a little earlier, the margravine wishes to show you her Wunderkammer.”

  Her what? thought Hester, but she was sick of looking stupid and ignorant in front of Tom, so she kept quiet. When Smew had gone they opened the connecting door and sat on Tom’s bed, bouncing up and down to test the springs.

  “America!” said Tom. “Just think of it! She’s very brave, this Freya Rasmussen. Hardly any cities venture west of Greenland, and none have ever tried to reach the Dead Continent.”

  “No, because it’s dead,” said Hester sourly. “I don’t think I’d risk a whole city on one of Pennyroyal’s books.”

  “Professor Pennyroyal knows what he’s talking about,” said Tom loyally. “Anyway, he’s not the only one to report green places in America.”

  “All those old airman’s legends, you mean?”

  “Well, yes. And Snøri Ulvaeusson’s map.”

  “The one you told me about? The one that conveniently vanished before anybody could check it out?”

  “Are you saying the professor’s lying?” asked Tom.

  Hester shook her head. She wasn’t sure what she was saying; only that she found it hard to accept Pennyroyal’s tale of virgin forests and noble savages. But who was she to doubt him? Pennyroyal was a famous explorer who’d written books, and Hester had never even read a book. Tom and Freya believed in him, and they knew much more about these things than her. It was just that she couldn’t equate the timid little man who had quivered and whined each time a rocket came near the Jenny Haniver with the brave explorer who fought off bears and befriended savage Americans.

  “I’ll go and see Aakiuq tomorrow,” she said. “See if he can speed up work on the Jenny.”

  Tom nodded, but he wouldn’t look at her. “I like it here,” he said. “This city, I mean. It’s sad, but it’s lovely. It reminds me of the nicer bits of London. And it doesn’t go about eating other towns, like London did.”

  Hester imagined a gap opening between the two of them, like a crack in ice, very thin at the moment, but likely to widen. She said, “It’s just another Traction City, Tom. Traders or Predators, they’re all the same. Very nice up top, but down below it’ll be slaves and dirt and suffering and corruption. The sooner we leave, the better for both of us.”

  Smew returned for them at six, and led them down by long, spiralling staircases to a receiving room where Freya Rasmussen was waiting.

  The margravine seemed to have made an attempt to do something interesting with her hair, but given up halfway through. She blinked at her guests through her overgrown fring
e and said, “I’m afraid Professor Pennyroyal is still indisposed, but I’m sure he’ll be all right. The Gods of the Ice would hardly have sent him here if they were just going to let him die, would they? It wouldn’t be fair. But you’ll be interested in my Wunderkammer, Tom, a London Historian like you.”

  “All right, what’s a Wunderkammer?” asked Hester, tired of being ignored by this spoilt teenager.

  “It’s my private museum,” said Freya. “My Cabinet of Wonders.” She sneezed, and waited a moment for a handmaiden to come and wipe her nose, then remembered they were all dead and wiped it on her cuff. “I love history, Tom. All those old things people dig up. Just ordinary things that were once used by ordinary people, but made special by time.” Tom nodded eagerly, and she laughed, sensing that she’d met a kindred spirit. “When I was little, I didn’t want to be margravine at all. I wanted to be a historian like you and Professor Pennyroyal. So I started my own museum. Come and see.”

  Smew led the way, and the margravine kept up her flow of bright chatter as they passed through more corridors, across a vast ballroom where chandeliers lay mothballed under dust-sheets, out into a glass-walled cloister. Lights shone in the dark outside, illuminating whirling snow, an iced-up fountain. Hester stuck her hands into her pockets and made them into fists, stalking along behind Tom. So she’s not just pretty, she thought, she’s read all the same books as he has, and she knows all about history, and she still expects the gods to play fair. She’s like Tom’s mirror image. How am I supposed to compete with that?

  The journey ended in a circular lobby, at a door guarded by two Stalkers. As he recognized their angular shapes Tom flinched backwards and almost cried out in terror, for one of those ancient, armoured fighting machines had once chased him and Hester halfway across the Hunting Ground. Then Smew lit an argon globe and he saw that these Stalkers were only relics; rusted metal exoskeletons hacked out of the ice and stood here at the entrance to Freya Rasmussen’s Wunderkammer by way of decoration. He glanced at Hester to see if she shared his fear, but she was looking away, and before he could attract her attention Smew had unlocked the door and the margravine was leading them all through it into her museum.