Predator Cities x 4 and The Traction Codex

by Philip Reeve

  Whoever she is, the Stalker seems happy to be home. “Ah,” she sighs, passing through a reception room where the ceiling has collapsed and bird droppings lie thick on a fine tiled floor. “Oh!” she says, crossing the atrium and peering into a long chamber whose shattered windows stare out across the mere to the white heights of the Erdene Shan. “She had such parties here! Such happy times…”

  The wind hoots through holes in the walls. Beyond the party-room lies a bedroom, a canopied bed sinking like a torpedoed ship into a sea of its own mouldering covers. At the far side of the bedroom is another locked door. And beyond the door…

  The room exhales stale air when she unlocks it. Fishcake, creeping in behind her, guesses that this part of the house has been sealed. It smells a bit like Grimsby. The walls and floor are covered in metal, with rubber mats to walk on. Cobwebs and plastic swathe a curious mountain of machinery; wires and tubes, screens and boxes, valves and dials and coloured flexes, keyboards torn from typewriting machines.

  “Engineers were not the only ones who knew how to build things, back in the good old days,” the Stalker whispers. “Anna was clever with machines, just like you, Fishcake. She even built her own airship out of odds and ends. She was attempting to make a long-range radio transmitter here. It never worked very well, and others since have had much more success. But it’s a start. With what we brought from Popjoy’s workshop, and the radio set from his yacht, I am certain we can boost the signal.”

  “Who are you signalling to?” asks Fishcake.

  The Stalker lets out her hissy laugh. She takes him by the arm and drags him into the ruined bedroom, points through a hole in the roof, straight up, at the deep blue in the top of the sky.

  “Up there. That’s where the receiver is. We are going to send a message into heaven.”

  PART THREE

  32

  LONDON JOURNAL

  19th June

  Seventeen days have passed since Wolf Kobold ran away. Everybody seems to be forgetting him. Even me, most of the time. Even Angie, now her headache has faded and the lump is going down. Most people think that there’s no way Wolf could cross all those miles of Green Storm territory and get back to Harrowbarrow again. Even if he could, he would never be able to bring Harrowbarrow back east to eat New London, at least, not unless war breaks out again. But work on New London is going ahead even faster, just in case.

  When I first found out what they are building I thought they were all a bit mad, to be honest. But when you see how hard everyone works here, and how much they all believe in this crazy new city the Engineers have dreamed up, you realize what it must have been like in Anchorage when Freya Rasmussen decided to take it across the ice to America. That was a mad idea too, and I’m sure there were a lot of people who thought it would never work – my mum was so sure of it that she betrayed the whole place to Arkangel when she couldn’t persuade Dad to leave. But she was wrong, because it did work, didn’t it? And I don’t want to be like Mum so I’ve decided to believe that New London is going to work too.

  Anyway, Dad’s been very keen to do his bit. At first he seemed intent on trying to help the Engineers, but the Childermass machines are so different from any technology he’s seen before that I think he just got in the way. So he started helping the men lug bits of salvage up to the hangar, but I had a quiet word with Dr Childermass and explained about his heart trouble, and she had a q. word with Chudleigh Pomeroy, who took Dad aside and said what New London really needs is a Museum, so that even if it roams to the far side of the world the people who live aboard it will never forget the old London, and what became of it. “And since none of us have the time, Tom,” he said, “perhaps you wouldn’t mind putting together a collection?” So Dad has been appointed Head Historian and spends his days scouring the rust-heaps for artefacts that will say something to future generations about his London – everything from old drain-covers and tier-support ties to a little statue of the goddess Clio from somebody’s household shrine.

  Meanwhile, I’ve been out patrolling with the other young Londoners. Mr Garamond was v. opposed to it at first, but Mr Pomeroy told him not to be such a b——y fool, and Angie and her friends are all very friendly, and most impressed when I told them I’d been in an actual battle and seen Stalkers and Tumblers and stuff. (I didn’t tell them how completely terrified I was, as it might be bad for morale.) Anyway, I’ve been right across the main debris field several times. It’s very spooky, esp. at night, but Angie and Cat and the rest are good company, and I’ve been given a crossbow to use if we’re attacked – I’m not sure I could actually shoot anyone, but it makes me feel a bit braver.

  What I’d really like is one of the lightning guns the Engineers built to deal with Stalkers, but there aren’t very many of those, and only Mr G’s most trusted fighters get to use them; Saab and Cat and people. The Green Storm’s Stalker-birds have been getting very nosy these past few weeks, and the danger bell at Crouch End is forever ringing, telling everyone to get under cover because some flea-bitten old dead buzzard is circling overhead, having a good look at us. Mostly we’ve just taken to ignoring them, but when one gets too close to the Womb the boys on duty in the crow’s nests there shoot it down with their lightning guns; there are half a dozen hanging outside Crouch End now, all singed and charcoal-y.

  There is one other way of getting rid of them; it’s much more dangerous, and Angie and her friends treat it as a sort of sport. Last week, when we were out patrolling, a Stalker-bird came flying over us. We’re supposed to hide when that happens, but Angie said, “Let’s have a spot of Mollyhawking!” and jumped right out into the open, so I followed her. We went along one of the paths that winds between the wreckage heaps, and the bird came after us. I was worried it was going to attack, but Angie said they never do; they’re just spies, and she meant to serve it right for snooping.

  We went on, walking quite fast, and soon I began to realize that we were heading towards the middle of the debris field, the bit they call Electric Lane. Till then I’d tended to agree with Wolf about the sprites – that they were just a fairy tale. But up there in the middle of London, where everything looks kind of scorched and melted, I suddenly wasn’t so sure. I asked Angie if it was safe, and she said “safe-ish”, which wasn’t very reassuring, but I didn’t want her to think I was a coward, so I kept going.

  After a bit we came over a rise and there in front of us was a sort of valley stretching right across the middle of the debris field. It looked quite peaceful, with ponds and trees on its floor, but the wreckage on either side was all charred and twisty-looking. Angie says that it’s the place where the core of MEDUSA fell, having melted its way right down through the seven tiers of London, and that’s why MEDUSA’s residue is strongest there. I don’t know if it’s true. Anyway, I only got a quick glimpse before Angie shoved me into a hollow of the wreckage all overhung with ivy. “Hide!” she said. The stupid old Stalker-bird didn’t see us, and went soaring out over the valley. It hadn’t gone fifty feet before a great snaggly fork of electricity came crackling out of the wreckage and roasted it; there was nothing left but a puff of smoke and some singed feathers that blew away on the wind!

  I got a bit shuddery afterwards, thinking what would have happened to the Jenny if we’d flown into Electric Lane that first day.

  PS Saab Peabody asked me out. I said I’d have to think about it and he said he supposed I had a boyfriend on the Bird Roads somewhere and I said I supposed I did. Silly, or what?

  And now, because it’s late, and tomorrow is a big day – the first test of the new city – I am going to go to bed.

  33

  THE TEST

  The morning of the test dawned dull and cloudy, threatening rain. The wind came from the west in indignant squalls, scattering a confetti-storm of petals from the blossom-trees that had taken root among the debris of London.

  Not wanting to impose himself on Wren, who was going up to the Womb with her new friends, Tom made the trek from Crouch E
nd alone. He scanned the mounds of wreckage beside the track as he walked, for he had fallen into a habit of looking everywhere for fragments which might fit into the New London museum, and give the children who would one day be born upon the new city some notion of what Old London had been like. When you knew where to look, the rusting ruin-heaps were full of relics; street signs and door-handles, hinges and tea-urns. He spotted a pewter spoon with the crest of the Historians’ Guild on its handle, and slipped it into his pocket. He had eaten with spoons like that every day of his childhood; it was like a shard of memory made solid, and he liked to think of those future Londoners looking at it and imagining his life.

  Of course, they would never know the details; how he’d felt and what his dreams had been; his adventures on the Bird Roads, in the Ice Wastes and America. You couldn’t expect a pewter spoon to convey that sort of detail.

  Lately, watching Wren writing in her journal of an evening, Tom had wondered if he shouldn’t try and write down some of the things that had happened to him, before it was too late. But he was no Thaddeus Valentine. He wasn’t even a Nimrod Pennyroyal. Writing did not come easily to him. Anyway, it would have meant writing about Hester, and he didn’t think he could do that. He’d not even spoken his wife’s name since he came to London. If his new friends ever wondered who Wren’s mother was, they kept it to themselves; perhaps they assumed that she was dead, and that Tom would find it painful to speak of her – which was not so far from the truth. How could he write about Hester for future generations when he did not understand himself why she had done the things she had, or what had made him love her?

  Drawing close to the Womb, he caught up with a crowd of his fellow Londoners, all heading in the same direction. Clytie Potts was among them, and she greeted him warmly, glad of his company; her husband was aboard New London with the Engineers. “Dr Childermass is afraid her magnetic levitation system might work too well,” she explained. “She wants an aviator on hand to steer New London down again if it goes too high.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s a joke, Tom.”

  “Oh…” Tom laughed with her, although he didn’t find it funny. “I’m sorry. So much has changed since we were young… So many new inventions… I don’t really know what New London is capable of.” He thought of the Mag-Lev prototypes that Dr Childermass had shown him; platforms the size of dinner tables which manoeuvred around the Womb as if by magic, hanging several feet above the ground. If the new city survived, the Engineers were planning to apply the same technology to actual tables next; floating chairs and beds as well, and hovering Mag-Lev toys, which they would trade as curios to other small cities. Tom had even heard talk of Mag-Lev vehicles, which made him feel oddly sad, because if they worked they would surely bring an end to the age of airships, and his dear old Jenny Haniver would be obsolete.

  The thought made his heart ache – or maybe that was the result of the climb from Crouch End. He swallowed one of his green pills, and went with Clytie through the entrance to the Womb.

  Inside the shadowy hangar New London waited, squatting heavily on its oily stanchions and looking less likely to take to the air than any object Tom had ever seen. Small figures were running about on its hull, gesticulating at each other. The Engineers seemed to be having trouble with one of their magnetic repellors. Tom scanned the crowd of onlookers for Wren and saw her standing near the front with Angie and Saab and a few other young people whose names he could never remember. He felt proud of her, and glad that she was settling in here, and making friends. Seeing her from a distance, he was reminded of Katherine Valentine; she had something of Katherine’s grace and liveliness; the same quick, dazzling smile. It had never struck him before, but then he had not given much thought to Katherine before he returned to London. Now that he had noticed it, the strange likeness was inescapable.

  Wren seemed to sense him staring at her; she turned and saw him, standing on tiptoe to wave at him over the sea of heads. Tom waved back, and hoped it was not bad luck to compare her to poor, ill-fated Katherine.

  A handbell started to ring. “This is it,” said Clytie. Engineers bustled through the crowd, warning people to stay back near the hangar walls. Everyone fell quiet, looking up expectantly. In the silence they heard Dr Childermass, who was aboard the new city, call out, “Ready everybody? Now!”

  There was a humming sound that rose quickly until it was too high to hear. Nothing else happened. One of the stanchions near the new city’s stern gave a long groan, as if it shared everyone’s disappointment. Then the other stanchions began to creak and squeak as well, and Tom realized that it was because they were relaxing; New London, whose dead-weight they had supported all these years, was no longer pressing down on them. Scraps of rust came whispering down like November leaves. A forgotten paintbrush fell from a gantry and clattered on the Womb floor. The magnetic repellors swivelled slightly as Engineers in the city’s control-rooms realigned them, but they still looked like big, misty mirrors; no crackling lightning; no mystical glow, just a faint flicker in the air around them, like a heat-haze.

  Slowly, slowly, like some ungainly insect taking flight, New London rose from its scrap-metal cradle and turned a little, first to one side, then the other. It edged forward, and again Tom sensed that faint hum. “It works!” people started to whisper, glancing at each other’s faces, making sure that they were not imagining this.

  This was how it must have felt when the first airship flew, thought Tom, or when the divine Quirke first switched on London’s land-engines. Lavinia Childermass’s machines were going to change the world in ways he could not imagine. Perhaps by the time Wren’s grandchildren were born all cities would hover. Perhaps there would be no need for cities at all…

  There was a sharp crack. Smoke squirted from some of the vents in New London’s keel. The heat-haze ripple around the repellors vanished and the hovering city dropped gracelessly back on to its stanchions with a bellow of straining metal. The spectators groaned in disappointment, pressing themselves against the walls of the Womb as the stanchions swayed and workers ran forward to steady them.

  “It don’t work!” complained a woman standing close to Tom.

  “It’s a dud!” said another.

  Lavinia Childermass appeared among the unfinished buildings at the edge of New London’s upper hull. The Womb’s acoustics and her own nervousness made her speech almost impossible to hear, but as Tom pushed his way to the exit he caught a few fragments of what she was saying: “A small problem with the Kliest Coils – mustn’t give up – much work still to do – fine tuning – adjustments – wait a few more weeks…”

  But do we have a few more weeks? Tom wondered. For as he stepped outside he heard the drone of Green Storm airships heading west, and another sound, which he thought at first was thunder, and then realized was the rumble of immense guns, somewhere beyond the western horizon.

  34

  DISPLACED PERSONS

  “I see you’re feeling better.”

  “This is better?”

  “Well, conscious. That’s an improvement.”

  Hester rubbed her eye and tried to bring the ceiling into focus. She felt as thin as water; as if her whole body was just a damp stain drying slowly on this hard, horsehair bed. A ghost leaned over her and solidified into someone she ought to know. She began to remember Airhaven; the girl she’d sprung from Varley’s freighter; Lady Naga. She remembered the blow on her head, the fight on Strut 13.

  “You’ve been very ill.” Oenone talked like a doctor, and had changed her sackcloth dress for some kind of white military tunic, but she still looked like a schoolboy. Hester stared at her taped-together spectacles and crooked teeth. “You’ll be all right now; the wound is healing well.”

  Hester remembered airships; the Shadow Aspect and then that big Green Storm job. Taking off into thunder. People yelling at each other; her yelling; Shrike holding her. Shrike must be disappointed that she’d survived. She raised her head from the pillow to look f
or him, but he was not there. She was alone with Oenone in a square, ivory-coloured room. Metal shutters had been folded open to let afternoon light in through a big window. On a chair in the corner her clothes were piled up, neatly folded, her pack and boots beside them on the floor. A couple of her larger guns were propped against the wall, solid and somehow reassuring in this unfamiliar space.

  “What is this place?”

  “We’re at Forward Command,” Oenone said. “It’s an old Traction City which the Storm took years ago.”

  “Not in Shan Guo, then?”

  “Not yet. The Fury was badly damaged when we left the line. The cities broke through faster than anyone expected, and their flying machines were everywhere. We limped this far, and we’ve been stuck here ever since. General Xao is here, too. She’s trying to organize a second line of defence, and she’s promised to send us on our way as soon as the Fury can be repaired. But at the moment her mechanics are too busy keeping fighting ships airworthy to work on the Fury. There’s heavy fighting going on north and south of here. This place is just an island in an ocean of hungry cities…”

  Hester half listened, trying to order her vague memories of her illness and the journey east. She knew now how Theo had felt after she rescued him from Cutler’s Gulp. She wished she’d shown him more sympathy.

  “What about the others?” she said.

  “Mr Shrike is here, quite undamaged. He sat with you all the time you were ill, but today General Xao has persuaded him to go out to the front-line trenches to help build the defences. Manchester and a dozen other cities are closing in on us from the west, so she needs all the help she can get. I’ve sent word to him that you were stirring; he’s bound to be here soon. He’ll be delighted that you’ve pulled through.”

  “I doubt it,” said Hester. “What about Theo?”