A Web of Air

by Philip Reeve

  7

  THE MYSTERIES OF FLIGHT

  hat night in her dreams, Fever flew. The shock of it half woke her and she rolled over in her hammock, blaming the rich Maydan food. She almost never dreamed; she did not approve of dreaming. But then sleep took her again and she was back in the sky.

  She was not flying in a balloon, like the clumsy thing that had lifted her clear from Godshawk’s Head the day it burned. She flew like a bird; like an angel; arms stretched wide, fingers spread like flight-feathers, soaring around the castles and cliffs of cloud that formed the base of a colossal thunderhead. Below her the sea burned with sunlight, gold and blue. She was so high that she could clearly see the blue arc of the horizon, and she thought to herself, There, that proves that the Earth is a sphere, that will show those superstitious people who claim it’s flat. But somehow she could not hold on to the thought; it was swept away from her by the wild, singing joy of flight as the wind tore past her and lifted her spiralling up and up and up again.

  She woke with a jolt and lay there tingling, feeling the vivid sensations of the dream slowly fade. A rim of grey light showed around the porthole shutter, but it was not yet day. When she took out the wax earplugs which she wore at night she could hear Max Froy snoring in the neighbouring cabin and beyond that nothing; only the silence of the theatre and the silence of the other barges around it and around them the wider silence of the sleeping city.

  Quiet as a ghost she swung down out of the hammock, pulled off her nightshirt and washed quickly in cold water from the pail she kept in the corner of the cabin. Then she dressed and put the model glider into a canvas shoulder bag and went with it out of her cabin and out of the barge into the clear, cool, empty morning.

  The sky above Mayda was blue by then, but it would be some time yet before the sun rose high enough to peek above the crater rim. Sunk in lilac shadows and utterly still, the city looked like a picture painted by someone who was good at buildings but didn’t do people. Not even the gulls, not even the angels were awake yet.

  She walked between the barges down to the harbourside with only the sounds of her footsteps for company. Dew had formed on the yards and rigging of the ships moored there. A thin cat appeared and ran soundlessly ahead of her as she went on along the quays, stepping over mooring cables and coils of tarred rope, writhing her way past old iron bollards and rusty winches.

  She found herself at the foot of the Southern Stair and started up it. The climb was long and steep and the city was waking by the time she came to the street called Casas Elevado. It curved around the southern side of the crater several hundred feet above the harbour. On its right-hand side there was just a metal handrail and a dizzy view of the rooftops and chimneys of the houses below, from which smoke and smells of fresh-baked bread were beginning to rise. On the left, long stripes of garden stretched almost vertically up the crater wall. Up the length of each garden ran two pairs of metal rails, a house at the top of one, a blank-walled counterweight at the foot of the other. One of the counterweights had just started to move, rumbling slowly up the cliff while its house descended.

  Fever watched for a few seconds until she understood how they worked. Beneath their broad verandas, where an ordinary house might have a cellar, the funiculars had water tanks. When the occupants wished to descend, the tank was filled with water pumped from reservoirs up among the crags. Then the funicular’s own weight would pull it down the rails, dragging its counterweight up past it until the two had swapped places. When the house needed to go back up it emptied its tanks while the tanks of the counterweight were filled, and the process was repeated. Some of the counterweights were little more than boxes on wheels, but most had been decorated to match their houses, and some were houses in their own right.

  Fever was not sure how she was going to find the Thursday house, and there was nobody in that empty, early-morning street whom she could ask. But it turned out that she did not need to, for halfway along the street she passed a high wall, and then an ornate arched gateway, its portico carved with scenes of ships and dolphins and the word Thursday in curly lettering.

  Fever pushed hopefully at the heavy gate, but it was locked. She put her face against the rusty railings and looked through into the garden. A turreted counterweight, like an ornate tomb, rested against its buffers in a grove of tall, dark trees. Following the rails up through the ragged foliage, Fever saw the house itself, a spiky, pointy-roofed construction, perched at the top of its tracks.

  “Go away!” croaked a harsh voice from somewhere above her.

  She stepped back from the gate and looked up. An angel was perched on the top of the gateway. It flapped its wings and opened its beak to display a pointy grey tongue. “Go away! No visitors.”

  “I just want to talk to Senhor Thursday,” said Fever.

  The angel put its too-big head on one side and studied her. Then, with a rattle of wings, it was gone. She looked through the gate again and saw it glide away between the trees and go soaring up the sunlit garden to vanish among the ramshackle spires of the house. It was the first angel she had met that had not asked her for snacks, and she wondered for a moment if it could be Arlo Thursday’s gatekeeper, carrying a description of her to its master. But that was fanciful; the angels surely hadn’t enough intelligence to be employed as servants.

  She was just turning away when a noise from the garden made her stop and look back. The counterweight was shifting. Creaks and clanks came from beneath it, then soft tearing sounds as it broke free of the weeds which had grown thickly around its wheels and chassis. Cables glinted and twanged taut between each pair of rails as the counterweight started to climb and the house started to descend. A wide, low house with broad verandas, dusty windows, that complicated roof of spires and turrets, all built from wood gone grey with age and weather.

  It reached the bottom, clunking heavily into its resting place against the bottom set of buffers. For a moment there was silence. Then another sharp, mechanical noise and the gate swung squeakily open. Wary, Fever stepped through into the garden. The gate swung shut behind her, and she heard bolts grating as they slid back into their holes, shutting her in. She tried to ignore her feelings of unease and concentrate instead on how that had been done. Not with water-power, surely. There was old-tech at work here, and she looked at the waiting house with fresh respect.

  No one came out to greet her. The door stayed shut, and no face showed behind the dusty windows. Feeling nervous, yet telling herself not to be so irrational, Fever went along the mossy path between the trees and stepped on to the veranda that ran all round the house. It did not rock or give beneath her weight, as she had half expected. It felt as firm as any ordinary house. Beneath the veranda she could hear water gurgling and slopping into a drain as the ballast which had carried it down the cliffside emptied away.

  She knocked at the big front door. No one answered. Yet Fever had the feeling that she was being watched, and not just by the angels which perched on the roof.

  “Senhor Thursday?” she called.

  The wind stirred the trees. Angel claws scritch-scratched across the shingles.

  Fever was starting to grow impatient. Why would Arlo Thursday have brought his house down to street level and let her into his garden if he did not mean to talk with her? She walked round the house, following the sagging veranda. Across every window, pale, sun-faded blinds were drawn. At the back the veranda was broader and covered by a wooden canopy, in the shade of which a white-painted wicker table and two matching chairs had been set out. From the canopy hung baskets of dry earth and dead flowers, and between them, twirling in the faint breeze, winged white shapes.

  Fever reached up and touched one, stilling it. The size of a small gull, it had been made with great care from paper and thin ribs of balsa wood. Its wings were bat-like and there were four in all, two large ones mounted one above the other, two small ones front and rear. Between them, lying flat, a child’s doll had been mounted, its crude wooden hands outstretched as
if to grip tiny control levers.

  Something hard and cold jabbed against the flesh beneath Fever’s right ear. She heard the creak and clack of a pistol being cocked, and a voice that said, “Turn around.”

  She turned, not even breathing, just stretching her hands out slowly on either side of her to show that she was not armed. The pistol’s muzzle wavered an inch from her face. A large-bore pistol, long in the barrel, with an old-fashioned wheel-lock mechanism in which a slow-match was clamped. The match dribbled a thin braid of blue smoke into the air. If the pistol’s owner chose to pull the firing lever the lit end of the match would be pressed into the tray of gunpowder in front of it, sparking an explosion which would drive a slug of lead through Fever’s face.

  The closeness of the gun reminded her queasily of the time in London when the Skinner had cornered her and Kit Solent had been forced to shoot him. It was difficult for her to look away from the weapon. But she controlled herself, and looked, and saw her captor.

  He was a young man, barefoot, and dressed shabbily in clothes which had once been white. His face was mostly hidden by his hair, which was dark, tousled and much too long. Fever could just see one greenish eye.

  “Who are you?” they both said at the same instant.

  “I’ve got the gun,” said the stranger, after a second more. “That means you have to go first.”

  “I’m Fever Crumb,” said Fever.

  “And who has sent you here, Fever Crumb? Was it Flynn? Or the Oktopous Cartel? Or those clowns from the Quadrado Del Mar?”

  Fever, not knowing what any of those names meant and wanting only for the pistol to be pointed somewhere else, said, “I came here yesterday on a land-barge. Persimmon’s Ambulatory Lyceum. I am looking for Arlo Thursday.”

  “Well that’s a new twist! A theatre?”

  The green eye watched her unblinkingly for a long moment. Then the stranger lowered his pistol and took a step backwards, shoving his hair away from his face with his free hand. His face was pleasant, and made more pleasant to Fever’s eyes by the freckles that were scattered over it. Dark against his sallow skin, they reminded her powerfully of the markings of her mother’s people; for a shivery instant she thought that he too was Scriven.

  “You’ve found me,” he said. “I’m Thursday.”

  He was younger than Fever had expected. Twenty? Twenty-two? No older. He tilted his head quickly on one side and studied Fever. (It was a movement she would have called bird-like if that had not suggested fragility and hollow bones and a lightness not in keeping with his height and his broad shoulders.) “You don’t look like an actress,” he said.

  “I operate the lights and stage effects,” said Fever.

  Arlo Thursday smiled. “It’s a long time since I saw a play. Perhaps you have brought me a free ticket? Is that why you climbed all the way up here, Fever Crumb?”

  Fever sensed sarcasm in the question, but she wasn’t good at sarcasm and had no idea how she should respond. “I am not here on theatre business,” she said. She opened her bag and pulled out the glider she had found on the cliff. “I’ve brought this back.”

  Arlo Thursday’s eyes went down to the model, then back up to Fever’s face. There were shadows and questions in them, and something that looked a little like fear. He didn’t sound at all sarcastic when he said, “How did you come by that?”

  “On the cliff path, the night before last,” said Fever patiently. She knew it must have been Thursday himself who sent the model glider to her. She assumed that this was some sort of test. “It flew past me. Landed in the bushes.”

  Arlo Thursday watched her. There was something odd and secretive about him; his quick movements and the way he hid behind his hair. Suddenly he snatched the model from her and set it down on the table. “This was an early version. It does not fly well.”

  “Well enough,” said Fever. “It made me want to find out more.”

  “Ah,” said Arlo Thursday, and looked up for a moment at the other miniature gliders swaying on their strings. He put down the gun, then reached up and unhooked the largest of the models, a boxy thing with four wings. “Weasel!” he called. His voice echoed against the cliffs, and before the echo faded there was a fluttering of wings and an angel landed on the veranda, tilting its head, its blue eye glinting greedily. “Snacksies?” it croaked.

  Arlo Thursday did not answer, unless that odd little quirk of his head was an answer. He was moving some part of the model which he held in his hands, winding and winding a carved shape like a double-ended spoon which was set in the centre of it. After a few seconds he walked to the edge of the veranda, held the machine above his head and threw it as far and as hard as he could.

  “No!” gasped Fever, afraid that the beautiful thing would be snatched by the rising wind and dashed to pieces against the rocks of the garden. But instead of falling the model rushed busily upwards, its paper wings dazzling white in the sunlight, the spoon-thing chirring as it whirled. A paddle-wheel; a propeller… When it was almost out of sight, way up in the sky above the crater, it lost momentum and began to spiral downwind, but the angel called Weasel kicked into the sky with one big beat of his scruffy wings, soared easily after it and snatched it in his beak. Another wingbeat carried him back to the veranda, where Arlo took the model from him and laid it down carefully on the table. Arlo sat down on one of the wicker chairs, or rather he perched on it, pulling his knees up to his chin and wrapping his bare toes around the edge of the seat.

  “It’s just a model. But if it were built full size, with an engine – a lightweight engine – then a person could ride on it. He could fly.”

  He looked at her, daring her to disagree. She said, “Dr Collihole thought that it was impossible. He’s an Engineer I know, in London. He says that if we are ever to fly then we must concentrate on making balloons. I went up in the balloon he built.”

  “Gas or hot air?” asked Arlo, as if balloons were commonplace things.

  “Hot air. There was a brazier on board.”

  “How far did you fly?”

  Fever wasn’t sure. She had been terrified and exhausted and she had slept through most of that historic flight. “It must have travelled twenty miles.”

  Arlo Thursday bobbed his head like a pigeon. “Balloons are no use. Clumsy. Easy to get up, but hard to steer, and impossible to bring down where you want them. They make you a slave to the wind. Heavier-than-air is the answer. Aëroplanes, like the Ancients used.”

  Fever nodded eagerly to show that she too knew something about the Ancients. “Dr Collihole studied one. Well, the remains of one. It wasn’t much more than a stain in the earth, but you could see how big it had been, and the shape, like a giant bird. But he could never understand how they got the wings to flap.”

  “They don’t need to.” Arlo Thursday peeked at her through his overgrown hair. She had the feeling that he didn’t really want to talk to her but couldn’t stop himself. He said, “When I was a boy I used to watch the angels and long to fly like they did. Look at them…” He pointed out into the sky where dozens of the grubby creatures wheeled, keeping watch for dropped snacks in the streets below. “They hardly move their wings at all. You saw Weasel just now. He flapped once to lift himself, again to change direction, but most of it was just gliding. That’s the way I made my first models. The angels were happy enough to let me draw and measure them. They aren’t quite as bird-brained as most people think. I learned everything from them.”

  Fever picked up the model aircraft. She turned it in her hands, running her fingers over the leading edges of the wings, feeling the roundness there, the way they tapered. There was something about that shape that must help the machine rise, and keep it in the air.

  “What about the engine? Could you make one light enough for the machine to carry?”

  Arlo Thursday shrugged. “I know nothing about engines. I’m Maydan; we don’t have them here, except for a couple of weeks each year when you travelling folk bring your barges over. But I had a frien
d in Thelona, a man called Edgar Saraband; he wrote to me about flying machines. I made some models for him; some designs. He was clever with engines. He thought he could build one small enough to fly with…”

  “Did he succeed?”

  “Yes. From what I’ve heard, his machine flew. But then…”

  He paused. Fever waited for more, but no more came. She dimly remembered that name, Saraband. Remembered AP flapping his newspaper at her somewhere in the rust-country, sometime early in the summer, saying, “Here, Fever; this will interest you; ’tis most scientific…” There had been a story about a rich Thelonan who had built a “flying machine”, only it had not so much flown as fallen. She’d paid no attention at the time. Newspapers were full of stories like that.

  “Are you planning to make a full-scale machine?” she asked.

  Thursday’s face changed. It was as if blinds had been lowered behind his eyes. “No,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Too dangerous.”

  “Edgar Saraband didn’t think so.”

  “Edgar Saraband is dead.” He stood up, reaching for the pistol. He didn’t point it at Fever, just let it hang there by his side while he said, “You’re leaving now.”

  “But there are so many things I want to ask you!”

  “Well you can’t. I’m tired. Or busy. Or something.”

  He followed Fever back around the veranda. Angels, who had gathered along the eaves, burst into the sky with clattering wingbeats. Arlo Thursday said, “I want you to promise me something, Fever Crumb. You’ll not speak of me to anyone.”