Predator Cities x 4 and The Traction Codex

by Philip Reeve

  “But why me?” she asked. “You must know all sorts of people better at breaking into safes than me…”

  “You should have more faith in yourself,” said Shkin. “You are an accomplished burglar, from what I’ve heard. Besides, if you are caught, the crime cannot be connected to me; you were the one who brought the Tin Book here; Pennyroyal will believe that you were simply trying to retrieve it for yourself.”

  Wren picked up the paper. The darkness was growing deeper as her fellow slaves moved between the trees snuffing out the lanterns, but the white square seemed to shine in her hand with a light of its own.

  “All right,” she said, her voice shrunk down to a whisper. Then, as she put down the tray, “What is it? I ought to know. What is this Tin Book, and why does everybody want it?”

  “Not your business,” said Shkin, looking past her towards the horizon. “I can make a profit from it. What more reason do I need? Now go; you have work to do.”

  Wren went, running away between the trees as the sacred moon peeked over the horizon. For a few seconds perfect silence settled over Brighton, for according to the old tradition, wishes made at moonrise on this sacred night were often granted by the Moon Goddess. Pennyroyal’s guests were far too sophisticated to believe such fairy tales, of course, but they bowed their heads regardless, some with shrugs and smiles to show that they were just being ironic, but moved in spite of themselves, remembering the magical MoonFests of their childhood. They wished for love and happiness and yet more wealth, while down in the city Brighton’s artists wished for fame and her actors for long runs in successful plays, and on the under-decks their slaves and indentured labourers wished for their freedom. And then the silence was ended by a single firework, then another, then a great broadside of rockets and bangers and a clamouring of gongs and bells and kitchen pans loud enough that the Goddess herself might hear it as she strolled among her porcelain gardens.

  Even if the Green Storm fleet had not already picked up the signal of Brighton’s wireless beacon they would have been able to home in on the fireworks leaping into the sky above the raft-resort. Feathering their steering vanes the warships swung towards their target, spreading out across the sky, while their crews prepared rocket projectors and machine cannon, Tumbler-bombs and flocks of raptors, and their fighter escorts went prowling ahead.

  In the belly of the Requiem Vortex Shrike checked on Oenone Zero and found her in her cabin, trying on a steel helmet which made her look even younger and less soldierly than before. Her cowardice perplexed him. He had been sure that she would try and attack the Stalker Fang before the fleet reached its target. Had she given up her plan? Perhaps; he had searched her cabin several times, and found no sign of any weapon.

  Sirens were hooting. The ship’s companionways and passages were full of frightened once-born and impassive battle-Stalkers hurrying to their posts. Shrike made his way to the forward gondola and found his mistress there, ignoring the crew, staring out instead at the enormous moon.

  “WHY ARE WE HERE?” Shrike asked.

  The Stalker Fang’s bronze death-mask turned to stare at him. She had still told no one the reason for this expedition, and Shrike suspected that if any of the once-born, even Naga, had asked her so bluntly, she would have torn their throat out with her claws for their impertinence. But she only stared at Shrike, and then whispered, “Tell me, Mr Shrike, do you ever remember your former life? Your life as a once-born?”

  “I DO NOT EVEN REMEMBER MY LIFE AS A STALKER,” said Shrike. (Although a memory flared up as he spoke; a young girl with a bloody face lying on a heap of bladder-wrack and old cork fishing floats. He squashed it quickly, like a man stamping on a flame.) “I REMEMBER NOTHING BEFORE DR ZERO AWAKENED ME ON THE BLACK ISLAND.”

  Fang turned away, looking out through the glass again, but he could see the reflection of her face, the odd, marsh-gas flaring of her green eyes. “I remembered something once,” she said. “Or I almost did. There was a young man I encountered at Rogues’ Roost. Tom. When I saw him, I felt that I knew him. He was very handsome. Very kind. Anna Fang must have been fond of him. I am not Anna Fang, but when I looked at him I sensed … oh, all sorts of intriguing feelings.”

  “WE ARE THE DEAD,” said Shrike, who was starting to grow uncomfortable. “WE DO NOT FEEL. WE DO NOT REMEMBER. WE WERE BUILT TO KILL. WHAT USE ARE MEMORIES?”

  “Who knows what the first of our kind were built for, back in the Black Centuries?” asked the other Stalker. “My memories are what have brought us here, Mr Shrike. I made enquiries about this Tom. I wished to learn more about him, and perhaps to recapture those strange sensations. I found out that he and his companions had a connection with an ice city called Anchorage, so I sent to the great library of Tienjing for books on Anchorage. They had only one; Wormwold’s Historia Anchoragia. It told me nothing about Tom, but it was there that I first learned of the Tin Book, and guessed what it contains.

  “WHAT IS THE TIN BOOK?” asked Shrike.

  “The Tin Book?” The Stalker looked playfully at him, her head on one side, a finger to her lips. “The Tin Book is what we are here for, Mr Shrike.”

  Hester, too, had been waiting for the moon. Perched on a seat on the lower-tier promenade, she had whiled away the time by glancing through her copy of Predator’s Gold, and what she had found there cheered her. It seemed to her that Pennyroyal had buried the truth beneath so many lies that nobody would ever be able to unearth it.

  At moonrise, as the rowdy crowds flooded out of Brighton’s underdecks to watch the fireworks, she shoved her way past them, pushing against the tide into a district of dank slave-barracks and tenements called Mole’s Combe. By the time she reached the foot of Shkin’s tower the streets around her were deserted except for the seagulls which, startled from their roosts by the racket on the promenades, soared like white phantoms beneath the web of peeling girders overhead.

  She had studied the Pepperpot earlier, and decided on a way in. Round on the sternward side, surrounded by bins and fat, snaky ducts, was a small back door, made of rusty metal and studded with rivets like the hatch of a submarine. Above the door a spiffy brass security camera kept watch on visitors, but there were no other defences; the Pepperpot had been designed to keep people in, not out.

  Hester approached cautiously, keeping to the shadows. Her heart beat fast. She imagined the blood rushing through her veins and arteries, filling her with her father’s cold strength. She felt that both Wren and Tom were very close, and that soon they would all be together again, and happy. Smiling to herself behind her veil, she pulled the Schadenfreude out from inside her coat and waited until the next fusillade of fireworks, then shot the camera off its mountings.

  She had just time to stuff the gun away before the door opened and a man came out and stood with his hands on his hips, peering up indignantly at the smouldering wreckage of the camera.

  “Happy MoonFest!” called Hester.

  The man turned. He looked surprised to see the veiled woman walking towards him, and even more surprised when she shoved her knife between his ribs. He died very quickly and she heaved his body into the shadows behind the bins and went through the door, closing it softly behind her. She found herself in a corridor. Light and voices came from a small guard-room. She peeked in. There were three more men inside. One was stabbing irritably at the buttons beneath a circular screen which fizzed with static; the others were slumped bored and uncomfortable on office chairs, drinks in their hands, wishing they could be with their wives and their children at the celebrations.

  Hester shot the one at the screen first, and killed the others as they sprang up, groping for their guns. She stood quiet for a time in the shadows, waiting for someone to come. No one did. There were so many rockets and maroons being let off in the streets outside the Pepperpot tonight that a few extra bangs made no difference. She reloaded the Schadenfreude, noticing with pride that her hands hardly shook at all.

  The Shkin Corporation was well organized, and she wa
s glad of it. A framed plan on the guard-room wall showed her the layout of the place. She took a moment to memorize it, then, silent and sure of herself, she moved towards the slave-pens. Two men stood watch outside a pair of heavy double doors. One lunged at Hester with some sort of electric cattle-prod thing, but she sidestepped and stuck her knife in his back, then cut the throat of the other as he reached for the alarm bell. There was a ring of keys on the second one’s belt, and it did not take her long to find the one she needed.

  The slave pens were filled with soft breathing and the faint stirrings of caged things. As she grew used to the dark she started to make out the cages ranged around the walls, and the faces staring out at her through the bars.

  “Tom?” she called.

  All around her people were shifting and whispering. Some of the prisoners in the cages closest to the door could see the dead guards sprawled outside, and were reporting it to their neighbours.

  “Who are you?” called a voice from one of the cages.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Name’s Krill.”

  “A Lost Boy?” Hester walked towards the voice. Soon she was close enough to see his eyes shining in the thin spill of light from the door she’d opened. He was watching the keys she held, like a hungry dog watching a forkful of food. She jangled the keys softly, by way of encouragement, as she asked, “Is Wren here? Wren Natsworthy?”

  “That Dry girl who was on the Autolycus?” asked Krill. “Who’s asking?”

  “The lady with the keys,” said Hester.

  She saw Krill’s fair head bob in the darkness, nodding. “She was in a cage near me for a while, but they took her away.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t know. Fishcake went too, soon after.” (He paused to spit, as if he wanted to clean Fishcake’s name out of his mouth. There were murmurs of anger and disgust from the other cages. Fishcake wasn’t popular.) “Shkin’s men told us he turned nark; betrayed Grimsby. Walks about in a uniform now like he’s playing at soldiers. What happened to the girl, I don’t know. Sold, I expect.”

  “What about her father, Tom? He was taken today.”

  “Never heard of him. There’s no Drys in here, lady. Just Lost Boys.”

  “Could he be in the holding cells on the middle tier?”

  “Could be.” Krill shifted thoughtfully. Around him, in the other pens, all the other captives were shifting, too, listening, wary as animals. The ones who were close enough to see Hester never took their eyes off the keys. “There’ll be more guards up there, though. You’ll need something to distract them.”

  “Did you have anything particular in mind?” asked Hester. Krill grinned, and behind her veil Hester grinned too, because this was exactly what she had planned. She dropped the keys into Krill’s cage. “Play nicely,” she said. As she ran towards the stairs she could hear him scrabbling through the bunch of keys, trying each one in the lock on the door of his pen, and the voices of the Lost Boys like rising surf, urging him on.

  27

  THE UNSAFE SAFE

  Mayor Pennyroyal had had the Pavilion ballroom specially redecorated for the Festival. The front wall had been replaced with a long row of French windows which opened on to the sun-deck outside and let in the light of the sacred moon. Around the dance-floor swags and cascades of silvery fabric hung from every pillar and cornice, reflecting the Milky Way of tiny bulbs which swirled across the ink-blue ceiling. Spotlights illuminated a podium where a small orchestra played. The walls were covered with priceless works of art; antique masterpieces by Strange and Nias hanging next to the latest snot-paintings by Hoover Daley, master of the Expressionist Sneeze.

  In a hive of hexagonal chambers opening off behind the main room were all manner of amusing diversions for the guests. In one was a replica of a “bouncy castle”, a strange, inflatable fortification which Pennyroyal claimed had been a key feature of Ancient warfare, but which could also be used as a trampoline. In another, a projector rattled, showing copies of copies of some of the fragments of film which had survived from before the Sixty Minute War. Armoured knights rode through a burning wood, their shadows stretching up the smoke; flying machines lifted into a tropical dawn; a little tramp walked down a dusty road; groundcars chased each other like tiny cities; a man dangled from a broken clock high above some enormous static settlement, and in soft, beautiful close-ups rose the dreaming faces of the screen goddesses.

  Wren, running in from the garden on her mission for Shkin, barely noticed any of it. But as she darted past the film-room towards the spiral staircase which would take her up to Pennyroyal’s office, she almost collided with Theo, who was coming in the other direction, clutching his ostrich-feather fan. He wore baggy silver trousers and a pair of silver angel’s wings.

  “Hello,” said Wren. “What’s the wing thing about?”

  Theo shrugged, and his wings flapped. “All the boys are dressed like this. Boo-Boo’s idea. Horrible, isn’t it?”

  “Vile,” agreed Wren, though secretly she thought he looked rather fetching.

  “Look,” he said, “this idea that Boo-Boo’s got about us—”

  “It’s all right,” said Wren. “I don’t fancy you either.”

  “Good.”

  “Good.” She was glad he was there, though, and she didn’t want to part from him. She thought how much easier it would be to burgle Pennyroyal’s safe if she had an accomplice. Especially an accomplice like Theo, who had been in battles and was probably ten times braver than herself.

  “Look,” she said, “I’ve got to do something…”

  “Another escape attempt?”

  “No. I’ve got to take something from Pennyroyal’s safe.”

  “What? After what happened to that antique-dealer?” Theo stared at her, waiting for her to admit that it was all a joke. When she didn’t he said, “It’s that book thing, isn’t it? That metal book?”

  “The Tin Book of Anchorage,” Wren said. “Shkin sent Plovery for it, and now Plovery’s dead he’s sending me.”

  “Why?” asked Theo. “What’s so important about it?”

  Wren shrugged. “All I know is everybody seems to want it… I think it might be something to do with submarines, but…” She paused uneasily. Maybe she shouldn’t be telling Theo this. He was Green Storm, after all, or had been once. But she was glad she had. She touched his arm. “He’s got my dad at the Pepperpot, and if I don’t do what he asks he… I don’t know what he’ll do. Will you help me?”

  She did know, of course; she just didn’t want to say it. She felt glad that she had Theo to confide in.

  “Your dad?’ he asked. “I didn’t know Lost Girls had fathers…”

  “I’m not really a Lost Girl,” said Wren. “Just mislaid. I told Pennyroyal I came from Grimsby because… Oh, Theo, it’s too complicated to explain. I just have to save Dad!”

  She could tell that he understood. He looked scared and serious. “But if the safe’s booby-trapped…” he said.

  “That’s why I want you to keep a lookout. Please, Theo. I don’t want to go in there alone.”

  “I’m supposed to be on duty in the ballroom. Boo-Boo’s orders.”

  “Boo-Boo’s having a wonderful time. She won’t notice if we sneak off for five minutes.”

  Theo thought about it, then nodded. “All right. All right.”

  Gripping his fan like a battleaxe, he followed Wren up some stairs and through a door at the top into an antique-lined corridor. The noise of the party faded as the door swung softly shut behind them, then dipped again as the corridor turned sharply to the left. Creeping past the door to the control-room stairs they heard the faint voices of the crewmen chatting at their stations down below, but there were no other sounds. Everyone else was busy in the ballroom or the kitchens, and this part of the Pavilion was deserted.

  They reached the end of the corridor and stopped, staring at Pennyroyal’s office door.

  “What if he changed the combination of his safe after last
night?” whispered Theo. “What if he’s changed the locks on the door?”

  Wren hadn’t thought of that. She prayed that Pennyroyal hadn’t either. Her groping fingers quickly found the spare key, still hidden in the vase. At first it didn’t seem to fit the lock, but that was only because her hands were trembling so badly. After a few moments of swearing and fumbling the lock snicked and she turned the handle and pushed open the door.

  The office looked peaceful and safe. The Walmart Strange drawing was back in its place on the wall. Wren went to it and took it carefully off its hook, laying it down on the desk. Theo followed her into the office and quietly closed the door, then almost knocked a statue off its pedestal with his fan.

  “Couldn’t you have left that stupid thing outside?” she hissed.

  “What, where someone might see it lying about?”

  Wren turned to the safe. “Ready?” she asked.

  Theo didn’t look ready. “You think there’s a booby trap inside the safe?” he said.

  Wren shook her head. “The safe was open last night, remember, and I didn’t see anything booby-trappish in there.” All the same, she made sure that she was standing well to one side as she reached for the dial. “Mr Plovery opened the safe and got the book out. That’s when something got him. Now hush.” She frowned, remembering the combination. 2209957…

  As the dial clicked and the tumblers inside the lock chunked and grated, Theo turned slowly around, looking for hidden dangers. There was nowhere much in this small room that a trap could be concealed. The objects on the desk looked innocent enough – a blotter, a few pens, a photograph of Boo-Boo in a heavy black frame. There was a teak filing cabinet against the far wall, a picture hanging above it, and above that just a lot of architectural curlicues and the high, shadowy dome of the ceiling and…

  Was it just his eyes playing tricks, or was something moving up there?

  “Wren –” he said.

  Wren had the safe door open. She reached in and drew out a battered black case. “Got it.”