Predator Cities x 4 and The Traction Codex

by Philip Reeve

  She could hear a childish, whingeing note creeping into her voice, and knew that she wasn’t coming across as brave and grown-up and adventurous, which was how she wanted Gargle to see her. It suddenly occurred to her that she was nothing to him; nothing but a way to get hold of the Tin Book.

  “That’s it,” said Gargle to himself. He threw Wren’s bag back at her, then handed the Tin Book to Fishcake, who stuffed it into a leather satchel which hung at his side.

  “I’m coming with you,” Wren reminded Gargle. “I am coming with you, aren’t I?”

  Gargle moved closer to her. There was a mocking tone in his voice when he spoke. “Thing is, Wren, I’ve been having a think about that, and we haven’t got the space, after all.”

  Wren blinked quickly, trying to stop the tears from coming. Flinging her bag down on the shingle, she shouted, “You promised you’d take me with you!” She could see Remora watching her, whispering something to little Fishcake which made him smirk, too. How stupid they must think her!

  “I want to see things!” she shouted. “I want to do things! I don’t want to stay here and marry Nate Sastrugi and be a schoolteacher and get old and die!”

  Gargle seemed to be angered by all the noise she was making. “Wren,” he hissed, and instantly, like a furious echo, another voice out of the darkness shouted, “Wren!”

  “Mum!” gasped Wren.

  “Damn!” muttered Remora.

  Gargle didn’t say anything at all, just dragged the gaspistol from his belt and fired towards the beach. In the blue flash of the gun Wren saw her mother striding across the shingle, barely flinching as the shot whipped past her. She held her own gun out stiffly in front of her. Whack, it went, whack, whack, whack; dull, flat sounds like books being snapped shut. The first bullet rebounded from the Autolycus with a clang; the next two hissed away over the lake; the fourth hit Gargle between the eyes. Something thick and wet spattered Wren’s face and clothes.

  “Gargle!” shrieked Fishcake.

  Gargle went down on his knees, then flopped forward with his bottom in the air and his face in the chuckling waves.

  Fishcake scrambled through the shallows towards him, getting in Remora’s way as she pulled out her own gun. “Fishcake, get aboard!” she screamed. “Get back to Grimsby!” Hester put two bullets through her, kicking her backwards and down into the lake.

  “Gargle!” Fishcake was wailing.

  Hester was reloading her gun, empty shells jinking on the shingle around her feet. She shouted, “Wren, come here!” Shaking with fright, Wren stumbled gladly towards her, but suddenly Fishcake’s arm was round her waist, tugging her back. The snout of Gargle’s pistol ground against her chin.

  “Drop the gun!” Fishcake shouted, “Or I’ll, I’ll kill her, I’ll kill her!”

  “Mummy!” squeaked Wren. She couldn’t breathe properly. She knew suddenly that she had had all the adventures she would ever want. She longed to be safe at home. “Mummy! Help!”

  Hester edged forward. Her gun was raised, but she dared not pull the trigger, they all knew that; there was too much danger of hitting Wren.

  “Let her go!” she ordered.

  “What, so you can shoot me?” sobbed Fishcake. Twisting Wren about so that her body was always between him and her mother, he started to drag her with him up the boarding ramp. His gun was still pressed under her chin, pushing her head up. She could feel him shaking, and although she could easily have overpowered him she dared not try, in case the gun went off. He pulled her through the hatch into the limpet, and slammed his elbow against the button that raised the ramp. A ricochet howled off across the lake as Hester shot at the hydraulics and missed. “Mummy!” shouted Wren again, and had a brief glimpse of her mother shouting something back as the hatch closed. Then Fishcake shoved her through a doorway into the complicated electrical clutter of the control cabin. She felt the limpet shiver as he began working the controls with one hand, the other still pointing the gun at her head. “Please,” she said. The cabin lurched. Wren saw lights on the hillside behind the beach. “Help!” she shouted. Waves were slapping at the cabin windows, and she glimpsed the moon for a moment, shivery and unreal through the rising water. Then it was gone, and the note of the engines changed, and she thought, We’ve submerged, I’ll never get home now! and her stomach turned over and she fainted.

  Hester ran down the beach, firing her gun at the limpet until its black hull was lost in a boiling of white water. Then there was nothing to do but shout Wren’s name over and over, hoarse, useless, her lonely voice the only sound remaining as the lap and wash of the Autolycus’s wake faded into silence.

  No; not quite silence. Slowly Hester became aware of other sounds: dogs barking, shouts. Lanterns and torches bobbed on the hillside. Mr Smew came charging through the gorse, waving an antique wolf-rifle twice as tall as him and shouting, “Where are they, the subaquatic fiends? Let me at them!”

  More people followed him. Hester went to meet them, shrugging aside the hands that reached for her, the questions.

  “Are you all right, Mrs Natsworthy?”

  “We heard shooting!”

  “Was it the Lost Boys?”

  The bodies in the shallows stirred gently as the waves broke round them, dragging long smears of red away into the lake. Caul knelt beside one of them and said in a soft, puzzled voice, “Gargle.” The air stank of gun-smoke and exhaust fumes.

  Tom ran up, looking stupidly about and seeing only his daughter’s going-away bag lying forlorn upon the shingle. “Where’s Wren?” he asked. “Hester, what happened?”

  Hester turned away and would not answer. It was Freya Rasmussen, in the end, who came to him and took his hands in hers and said, “Oh, Tom, they’ve gone, and I think Wren is with them; I think they’ve taken Wren.”

  8

  KIDNAPPED

  “Daddy, Mummy’s face is all funny.”

  “I know.”

  “But why is it all funny?”

  “Because a bad man cut her when she was just a little girl.”

  “Did it hurt?”

  “I think so. I think it hurt a lot, and for a long time. But it’s all right now.”

  “Will the bad man come back?”

  “No, Wren, he’s dead. He’s been dead a long time. There are no bad men at Anchorage-in-Vineland. That’s why we live here. We’re safe here; nobody knows about us, and nobody will try to hurt us, and no hungry cities will come to gobble us up. It’s just us, quite safe; Mummy, and Daddy, and Wren.”

  The voices of her childhood whispered in Wren’s memory as she slowly returned to her senses. She was lying on the floor of a tiny cabin which held a metal washbasin and a metal toilet. The toilet smelled of chemicals. A dim blue bulb glowed in a cage on the roof. The walls vibrated slightly. She could hear the threshing, churning sound of the Autolycus’s motors, and another sound, a creaking and whispering, which she guessed was water pressing against the hull.

  Well, bad men have come to Anchorage-in-Vineland now, she thought, and they’ve escaped with what they wanted, and I’ve helped them. Only question left is, what are they going to do with me?

  Dad had been taken by the Lost Boys once, yet he’d survived all right, and returned to Anchorage to marry Mum. So that must mean that there was hope for Wren, mustn’t it? But thinking of Dad made her think of Mum, and that made her remember what Mum had done, and the memory filled her with a sick horror. Inside her head, like an echo that would not fade, she could hear the crack and spatter of the bullet hitting Gargle.

  She was not sure how long she lay there, shivering, whimpering, too shocked and miserable to move. At last the hard floor grew so uncomfortable that she forced herself to stand up. Get a grip, Wren, she told herself crossly.

  The stuff on her clothes had dried brown and crusty, like spilled goulash. She ran some water into the metal handbasin and tried to sponge it off, then washed her face and hair as well as she could.

  After a long time a key grated in the lock and
the door opened. Fishcake came and looked in at her. The gun was still in his hand. His face looked hard and white in the blue light, as if he’d been carved out of ivory.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Shut up,” said Fishcake. His voice sounded hard, too. “I ought to kill you.”

  “Me?” Wren wriggled, trying to burrow into the deck. “But I haven’t done anything! I got you the Tin Book like Gargle asked…”

  “And your witch of a mother killed him!” Fishcake shouted. The gun in his hand wobbled as big sobs shook his body. Wren wondered if he was going to shoot her, but he didn’t. She felt scared of him and angry at him and somehow responsible for him, all at the same time.

  “I’m very sorry,” she said. “About Remora, too.”

  Fishcake sniffed loudly. “’Mora was Gargle’s girl,” he said. “Everybody says he’s in love with her. He was never really going to take you with him. I heard him and ’Mor talking about you, saying how stupid you were…” He started to cry again. “What are the Lost Boys going to do without Gargle?” he asked. “It’s all right for him; him and ’Mora are down in the Sunless Country together. What about the rest of us? What about me?”

  He looked at Wren again. In this underworld light his eyes looked black; two holes opening on to empty space. “I ought to kill you, just so your Mum would know how it feels to have someone you love took away. But that would make me as bad as her, wouldn’t it?”

  He stepped back, the door slammed shut, and the key grated in the lock.

  “I’m going after her,” said Tom.

  Everyone politely ignored him. They thought that going after Wren would be impossible, but they were all too kind to say so. They thought that the shock of what had happened was making him talk wildly. And he had been shocked; quite numb with it when they first told him she was gone. He had run up and down the beach shouting her name at the waves as if the Lost Boys who had taken her might hear him and relent, until his heart had twisted and kicked so painfully inside him that he thought he was going to die right there and then upon the shingle, without ever seeing Wren again.

  But he hadn’t died. Kind hands had led him to a boat, and rowed him back to Anchorage, where now he sat with Hester and Freya and a dozen other Vinelanders in one of the smaller rooms of the Winter Palace.

  “It’s my fault, you see,” he explained. “She was asking about the Lost Boys only this morning. I should have guessed something was going on.”

  “No fault of yours, Tom,” said Smew, glaring at Hester, who sat silent and scowling beside her husband. “If certain people hadn’t gone racing off ahead of the rest of us and started shooting…”

  Several other Vinelanders muttered in agreement. They had always respected Hester, for saving them from the Huntsmen of Arkangel, but they had never liked her. They all remembered the way she had killed Piotr Masgard; killed him when there had been no more need for killing, and hacked and hacked at his body long after he was dead. Small wonder that the gods would send bad luck to a woman who could do such things. It was just a shame they’d waited sixteen years to send it, and that it had fallen on her nice husband and her lovely daughter too.

  Hester knew what they were thinking. “I was only defending myself,” she said. “I was defending all of us. I promised Freya once I’d look after this dump and guard it from harm, and that’s what I was doing. You want somebody to blame, blame him.”

  She pointed at Caul, who sat awkwardly in a far corner. But nobody seemed to think badly of what Caul had done. His former friends had come asking for his help, and he had refused. You couldn’t expect him to betray them. They were his people.

  “What were the Lost Boys here for anyway?” asked Mr Aaqiuk.

  “Lost Girls, too,” said Smew, still glowering at Hester. “One of those kids she shot was just a girl.”

  “But what brought them back to Anchorage, after all these years?”

  Everyone turned to look at Caul. He shrugged. “Don’t know. Didn’t ask. Thought the less I knew, the better.”

  “Oh, gods and goddesses!” said Freya suddenly, and went running from the room. When she returned, she was carrying the empty casket that had once held the Tin Book of Anchorage. “Wren came asking about it,” she said. “This was what the Lost Boys came here for.”

  “Why?” asked Tom. “It’s not worth anything, is it?”

  Freya shrugged. “I didn’t think so. But here it is, gone. They must have asked Wren to get it for them and…”

  “The stupid little—” Hester started to say.

  “Be quiet, Het,” snapped Tom. He was thinking of Wren as a child, and of how, when she was frightened by thunder or a bad dream, he would hold her tight till she was calm again. He could not bear the thought of her trapped aboard that limpet, alone and afraid, with nobody to make it better. “I’m going after her,” he said again.

  “Then I’m coming too,” Hester agreed, taking his hand. They had been parted once before, when Hester was a prisoner at Rogues’ Roost, and they had vowed then that they would never be apart again. She said, “We’ll go together.”

  “But how?” asked Freya.

  “I’ll help.”

  Caul had risen to his feet. He circled the room with his back to the wall, lamplight gleaming in his eyes. “It’s my fault,” he said. “I thought maybe if I didn’t help them they’d leave us alone. I didn’t think they’d turn to Wren. I’d forgotten how clever Gargle can… could be.” He put a hand to his throat, to the shiny red scars that the ropes had left where Uncle tried to hang him. He said, “I remember Wren being born. I played with her when she was little. I’ll help. The Screw Worm’ll take you all the way to Grimsby if needs be.”

  “That old limpet of yours?” Hester sounded angry, as if she thought Caul was mocking them.

  “I thought the Screw Worm broke down years ago,” said Tom. “That summer that you and Mr Scabious dug out the harbour-mouth…”

  “I’ve repaired her,” said Caul. “What do you think I’ve been doing with my time, down in the district? Picking fluff out of my belly-button? I’ve been repairing the Worm. All right, repairing the Worm and picking fluff out of my belly button. She’s not perfect, but she’s seaworthy. No fuel, of course…”

  “I reckon there might be a drop left in the old air-harbour tanks,” said Mr Aakiuq. “And we can recharge her accumulators from the hydro-plant.”

  “Then she could be ready in a few days,” Caul said. “Maybe a week.”

  “Wren will be miles away by then!” Hester said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Tom firmly. Usually it was Hester who was the firm one, and Tom who did as she said, but he was utterly certain about this. He had to get Wren back. If Wren were lost, what would be the point of going on living? He took Hester’s hand, sure that she felt the same. “We’ll find her,” he promised. “We’ve faced worse things than Lost Boys in our time. Even if we have to go all the way to Grimsby, we’ll find her.”

  9

  THE MESSAGE

  The Autolycus made its way south and east along the winding river-systems of the Dead Continent. Fishcake knew his way back to the sea, for he had helped Gargle map these channels on the journey from Grimsby. It was simple enough to retrace the route which had brought the Autolycus through the Dead Hills to Vineland, except that all the way Fishcake kept thinking, The last time we passed through this lake Gargle was here, or, Last time we crossed this sand-bar ’Mor made that joke…

  He had to do something. But what could he do? He had loved Gar, and he loved Gar still, but Gar was gone, and crying would not bring him back. What could he do? He had to do something…

  Always before there had been someone to tell him what to do. He had never acted on his own, or made his own plans, except for that one, panic-driven moment back in Vineland when he grabbed that gun and pointed it at Wren to stop Wren’s mum from shooting him, and even that had not worked out as he meant it to, for he had ended up with Wren as a captive, and he didn’t k
now what he should do with her either.

  On the third night after the fight at Vineland he cut the limpet’s engines and climbed out on to the roof. The dead hills of America rose stark against the shining sky. Certain that Lady Death and all the gods of war and vengeance watched over this land, Fishcake raised his voice so that they would all hear him. “I’ll revenge you, Gargle! I’ll revenge you, ’Mora! I’ll find Hester Natsworthy again one day, and when I do, I promise you I’ll kill her.”

  Next day the limpet reached the coast, crept across a stretch of dismal saltings and slid gratefully into the grey sea. Safe in the deeps, Fishcake set a course for home, then went aft to see his prisoner. Wren was curled up on the floor of the toilet. Staring at her fragile, sleeping face Fishcake wished he had not had to capture her, for she was pretty, and none of this had been her fault. But it was too late now to let her go.

  He prodded her with his foot. “We’re at sea now,” he told her as she woke. “You don’t have to stay in there any more. There’s fifty fathoms of cold water above us, so don’t even think about trying to escape.”

  “At sea?” Wren knew that the open sea was a long way from Anchorage-in-Vineland. She bit her lip to stop herself from crying.

  “I’m going to take you to Grimsby,” said Fishcake. “Uncle or one of the older boys will know what to do with you. You can clean yourself up if you want. You can take some of Remora’s old clothes from her locker.”

  “Thank you,” whispered Wren.

  “I’m not doing it for your sake,” Fishcake said sharply, to show her he wasn’t soft. “It’s the stink, see? I can’t be breathing your reek all the way to Grimsby.”

  Wren went aft. For four days she had seen nothing but the inside of the toilet cubicle, and after that even the narrow passageways of the Autolycus seemed roomy. Remora’s locker was decorated with pictures snipped out of stolen magazines; hairstyles and clothes. There were photographs of Remora and Gargle laughing, their arms around each other. There was a bag of make-up, and a teddy bear, and a book on interpreting your dreams. Wren took some clothes and changed, then went and stared at her reflection in the mirror above the sink, which wasn’t really a mirror but just a sheet of polished metal bolted to the wall. Already she looked older and thinner, swamped by Remora’s shapeless dark clothes. Wren the Lost Girl. When she had stuffed her own filthy clothes into one of the bags the limpet crews used for loot and tied it shut, there was nothing of Vineland left about her but her boots.