A Web of Air

by Philip Reeve

  11

  AËROPLANE

  t the Thursday house the gate was still locked, and there were no angels waiting. Fever tugged at the rusty bell pull again without much hope and wondered what else she could do with the remainder of the afternoon. But to her surprise the gate swung open, and as she stepped through it she heard the house rumbling down to meet her.

  “Miss Crumb,” said Arlo Thursday, opening the front door to her as the building came to rest against its buffers. “I thought you’d gone away.”

  “The Lyceum has gone. I decided to stay.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ve been thinking about what you told me,” she said. “About flight.”

  “That can be dangerous,” he said. He was looking past her, scanning the garden, as if wanting to make sure that no one else had slipped in with her. “Even thinking about flight can be dangerous.”

  They stood there on the veranda watching each other. The wind blew in through the open front door and stirred the litter that lay on the floor of the hallway; angel feathers and delicate curls of wood that looked like bits of pasta and rustled like paper as they rolled across the floorboards.

  “You shouldn’t have stayed,” Arlo Thursday said. Then he shrugged. “You’d better come in.”

  He led her through the shady, cluttered house to its kitchen and started making coffee before she found the nerve to tell him that she really only drank boiled water. The smell from the coffee-pot filled the large, low-ceilinged room, and to Fever, whose Scriven senses lent every scent a colour, it smelled as golden as the sunlight which washed in through the dirty windows when Arlo raised the blinds.

  “Once a week I bring the house down here and a delivery boy drops off the stuff I need and picks up payment,” he said. “I’ve got some money left out of what Edgar paid me for designing his flyer. Not much, but enough for bread and cheese and coffee. That’s all I need.”

  Fever gave a sceptical sniff. Bread and cheese and coffee hardly constituted a balanced diet, and she could also think of several other things that Arlo Thursday needed, such as some soap, and a broom, and a feather duster. The faint blue odour of his unwashed body reached her clear across the kitchen, and mingled unattractively with the scent of days-old food mouldering on the plates piled up on the table. Books and papers were heaped up there too, and splashes of bird-lime crusted on shelves and chair-backs suggested that the angels were allowed indoors. The place offended Fever’s sense of order as well her sense of smell, but she did her best to ignore it and concentrate on the model flying machines which swayed above her, hanging on their barely visible threads from the kitchen ceiling.

  He handed her a tin cup filled with coffee. She looked down at it and saw her reflection gawping up at her from its umber surface. It was definitely too late now to tell him that she didn’t approve of coffee, and she wondered what she was going to do with the stuff.

  “I’ve got something to show you,” said Arlo Thursday. “Come on.”

  They went back through the house, past an open doorway which gave Fever an unattractive glimpse of Arlo’s unmade bed and a bedroom strewn with cast-off clothes. He led her to another door, around which the floor was heaped with more of those curls of pale wood she’d noticed earlier. Sawdust lay thickly there, and mice had left wandering trails through the drifts, like the footprints of lost explorers in a desert, vanishing in the draught as Arlo swung the door open.

  He stood back to let her go past him into a big, curtained space which she supposed had once been the old funicular’s dining room. There was rich paper on the walls, though it was old and peeling and the mice had nibbled it. There was an expensive-looking antique dining table which seemed to have been turned into a workbench, its surface completely hidden beneath heaps of tools and piles of papers. Fever barely noticed it. There was only one other thing in the room, but it occupied her whole attention.

  It was a flying machine.

  It was only half finished, the fine blond wooden bones of its wings and body not yet covered with paper, but already it had the grace which Fever had recognized in the models. There was a sense of imminence about it; of some flying thing at rest, readying itself to spring into the air. It looked caged, filling the room, the tips of those skeleton wings touching the walls.

  She looked back at Arlo. He was watching her. She could see the machine mirrored in his eyes. “It is based on the designs I made for Edgar Saraband,” he said, “but I’ve made some improvements.”

  She circled the machine, ducking under the broad wings, running her fingers over the smooth, planed struts. Again she noticed the shape of the wings in cross section; that rounded leading edge and the unmatching curves of the top and bottom surfaces. Still watching her, Arlo said suddenly, “There’s a bit of ancient maths, the Navier-Stokes equations…”

  “They describe the movement of objects in water,” said Fever, startled, for she had never imagined that anyone outside the Engineers would know of the equations. They had been one of the Order’s treasures, unearthed in an old library.

  “The equations work for air, too,” said Arlo. “For any fluid medium. My grandfather was a shipbuilder. He used them to work out the best shape for oars and keels and rudders. That’s what made me think of applying them to wings. Once you know how the air flows round a wing you can shape it to provide more lift…”

  Fever looked at him out of his web of struts and cables. This strange young man had made a leap of reasoning worthy of an Engineer. She touched the propeller, mounted in the heart of the structure, pointing backwards. Still crude, waiting to be planed and sanded, but already roughly shaped and moving easily on its axle.

  She said, “How is it to be powered?”

  Arlo pointed at something among the debris on the table; a dark metal thing like a warrior’s helmet, hinged open to expose crude pistons. She went closer. It was an engine; a Saraband MkI Aëro-Engine, according to the brass plate on its side.

  “Edgar sent that to me just before he died. He sent instructions on how it should be mounted; how it’s linked to the propeller. I’ll launch from a cliff top. The engine will thrust me forward while the wings provide lift.”

  “A cliff top?” asked Fever. “How will you even get your machine out of the house?”

  “In sections. It comes to pieces, and it is quite light. I have a place in mind where I can test it.”

  “I could help you,” she said.

  “It’s dangerous.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You would if you understood. In his last letters to me, Edgar was frightened. And then he was killed. His machine crashed.”

  “An accident. We’ll be more careful.”

  “Not an accident. I’m sure of it. The machine should have flown. I read reports. It climbed, but then it fell. Someone must have tampered with it. Saraband was murdered.”

  “By whom?”

  “There was a man called Lothar Vishniak. Edgar wrote to me about him. A stranger who hung around his workshop. Edgar said at first what a good fellow he was, but later, I think he was afraid. I think that’s why he sent the spare engine to me. So that I could continue his work if he was murdered…”

  Fever saw very clearly in her mind’s eye that tall man who had stood watching her the previous night while she had loitered at Arlo’s gate. Then she shook her head. This was just paranoia. Saraband had been involved in dangerous research, so it was natural that he would have been apprehensive. There was no rational reason to think that he’d been murdered.

  She came right round the machine and back to where Arlo stood waiting by the door. “Senhor Thursday…”

  “Arlo.”

  “Arlo, I could help you. You needn’t do all this work alone. There is another Engineer in Mayda; Dr Teal. I’m sure that if I told him about you, he could put you in touch with our Guild in London…”

  It was the wrong thing to say. Those blinds came down again behind Thursday’s eyes. “I knew you were working for someone!” he
said angrily.

  “I’m not working for anyone…”

  He let out a laugh so bitter that it barely sounded like a laugh at all. “Oh, Fever Crumb,” he said, “I almost believed in you the first time you told me that. But you’re just another spy, aren’t you? That’s why you’re still here even though your theatre’s gone. You’re working for this Londoner, and he sent you to me because he thought I’d be more likely to talk to a pretty girl than an ugly old Engineer.”

  “That isn’t true…”

  “Well, you can tell your London Engineer that I’m not interested.”

  “But he’d want to help, I’m sure,” said Fever, flustered by his sudden show of emotion. “All scientific progress is of interest to the Engineers. They will want to hear all about your discoveries. Dr Collihole will be fascinated to see your machines, and to share his own designs with you. That is the way of true scientists, isn’t it? To share our work, so that our colleagues can point out the flaws in our theories and build upon our discoveries…”

  “Get out!” shouted Arlo Thursday. He snatched a wrench from the table, knocking other tools to the floor. Fever backed away, alarmed by the anger in his eyes. Maybe Dr Teal and Fat Jago had been right about him after all. Maybe, for all his brilliance, he was crazy.

  She hurried to the door, and out into the hallway. “Out!” shouted Thursday behind her. She heard his footsteps and thought he was coming after her, but when she looked back she saw he had turned the other way, into a small room packed with levers, dials and gauges. She felt the house lurch, and heard water splashing beneath the floor as the tanks emptied. The tanks of the counterweight must already have been filled, for by the time she opened the front door the building was in motion, rising slowly away from its buffers. Fever hesitated, then jumped from the moving veranda, landing awkwardly in the long grass beside the track and falling over.

  As she went shakily back through the overgrown garden she sensed something moving through the bushes by the path, and thought for a moment that she heard a noise; a stern ticking, like an angry grandfather clock. But when she stopped to listen, the noise stopped too, and she dismissed it. She went to the gate, and it opened to let her out and closed again behind her with a clang that sounded final this time.

  “Arlo Thursday is deranged,” she told herself, as she stood in his gateway, slowly calming down. “I was wrong to seek him out.”

  But just because he had been unreasonable did not mean that she should abandon reason too. She recited perfect numbers to herself until she felt calmer, then thought about Arlo and his strange past. She had been unfair to him, she decided. Unlike her, he had never had the benefit of an upbringing among Engineers. Indeed, he’d been partly brought up by birds. Clearly it had left him with a deep mistrust of other people. That must be why he lived all alone, with only that gaggle of angels for company. That must be why his only friendship had been conducted by letter, with a man he had never even met. He was frightened of people. That was why he imagined enemies everywhere, and fancied that Saraband’s death must have been murder.

  He needed help. He needed to be protected from his own irrational fears. He might not know it, but he needed Fever Crumb. She straightened her clothes, smoothed back her hair and set off. Whether Arlo wished her to or not, she had a duty to take the news of his discoveries to Dr Teal.

  She was so busy with her own thoughts that she did not notice the tall, shabby man who leaned against the railings on the far side of Casas Elevado and watched her go.

  12

  THE FOUNTAIN

  onathan Hazell, London’s representative in Mayda, was a small man, a quiet man, and in many ways a dull one. He had moved to the city in his youth with vague ideas of romance and adventure, but he wasn’t cut out for those things, and in his rambling house on the Rua Penhasco he lived alone, leading the same small, quiet, dull life that he might have lived in London. Not that he was unhappy. He enjoyed his daily routine: visiting the harbourside exchange each morning to trade and drink coffee with the other merchants, walking briskly home in the middle afternoon to sit in his courtyard garden. On days when the sea was calm he sometimes took his little boat out fishing in the shallow waters between Mayda and the mainland. And he enjoyed his role as London’s official representative in Mayda, which meant that visiting London traders would seek him out, bringing news from home.

  At least, he had enjoyed it until Dr Teal arrived. Dr Teal, who had turned up very late two nights before, striding in his muddy boots across Jonathan Hazell’s polished floors, and announcing that he would be staying. Saying breezily that he meant to make the house his “base of operations” (whatever that might mean!) “for the foreseeable future” (however long that was!). Insisting that Jonathan Hazell send a message off to London, by expensive express courier, with no mention made of compensation.

  Jonathan Hazell had half a mind to throw the impertinent fellow out. But Jonathan Hazell was not the sort of man who threw people out of places. And, angry though he was, he realized that it might not be a good idea to upset this envoy from London, who carried papers signed by the Chief Engineer and by London’s new ruler, the barbarian warlord Quercus. So, eager to show how loyal he was to the new regime, he had let Dr Teal take over his lovely, comfortable bedroom up at the top of the house, and had removed himself to the guest room. Since he had never had any guests he had not realized how lumpy and uncomfortable the guest-room bed was until he slept in it himself – or failed to sleep. For two nights now he had lain awake, listening to the grumble of nearby funiculars going up and down the crater walls.

  He had been too tired and upset to go to the exchange that morning. He had decided to stay at home and catch up on his sleep, and let his Maydan clerks handle business. But no sooner had he dropped off for his afternoon nap than he was woken by a jangling at the doorbell.

  He waited for the servants to answer it. But of course, at this hour the servants were all out. So he got out of the horrible bed and wrestled his dressing gown on and went stalking downstairs, past the breakfast room littered with Dr Teal’s papers, to the door.

  A girl of some sort stood on the step. A tall girl in an odd white coat, with severe hair. Jonathan Hazell supposed that was the fashion among girls nowadays. She had strange eyes. Indeed, she had a strange sort of face altogether. She reminded him faintly of the Scriven, who had ruled London when he was young. Some old, submissive instinct kicked in and stopped him telling her to go away.

  “I am Fever Crumb. I am here to see Dr Teal,” she said primly.

  Well, of course she was. Jonathan Hazell drew himself up to his full height, though it didn’t do him much good as it only brought his nose to the level of Fever Crumb’s sternum. He said, “Well, he isn’t! Isn’t here, I mean. To see you. He’s out. He’s gone out to make drawings, for some reason.”

  “Do you know when he will be back?”

  “I am not Dr Teal’s social secretary!” said Jonathan Hazell sharply. But he wasn’t much good at being sharp with people. This girl was very pretty really, despite her Scrivenish looks, and she seemed so disappointed to find Teal gone that he at once felt guilty for speaking in that hasty way. He remembered something that the Engineer had said at breakfast, while he sat reading Jonathan Hazell’s newspaper and eating rather a lot of Jonathan Hazell’s marmalade.

  “I think he told me that he was going up to the Plaza Del Cielo,” he mumbled. “You will probably be able to find him there. The second stairway on your left at the end of the street will take you to it.”

  “Thank you,” said Fever Crumb, and she walked away along the street through the sunlight and the shadows of the lemon trees, while Jonathan Hazell stood on his front doorstep and watched her go, wondering why such an attractive young person would be seeking out the bumptious Dr Teal.

  The Engineer was sitting cross-legged on the wall of a fountain in the corner of the Plaza Del Cielo. There was a statue in the middle of the fountain which showed the Mãe Abaixo in her sky-godde
ss aspect, surrounded by leaping stone flying fish and fat stone rainclouds. Water from holes in the bases of the clouds fell prettily into the fountain all around the goddess, and sometimes, when the warm breeze gusted, it fell on Dr Teal as well.

  The Engineer had a large notebook open on his lap and he was making a careful drawing in it of a nearby funicular, a house much larger than Arlo Thursday’s, with six sets of rails stretching up the landscaped crater wall behind it. The little crowd of Maydan children who had gathered to watch him work were as quiet as he, absorbed in the strange foreigner and the picture he was making. But they drew aside when Fever came striding up. Dr Teal left off his drawing, snapped his notebook shut and looked up at her, beaming.

  “Miss Crumb! I thought you had gone south with your theatre…”

  Fever couldn’t be bothered to explain again, so she just shook her head. “I have spoken with Arlo Thursday,” she said.

  “Really? And what did you make of him?”

  Fever sat down beside him. The ledge around the fountain was damp, brushed by the drifting spray. She said, “He is very peculiar. Unkempt and agitated. Not at all like an Engineer. Yet I think he has a great deal of knowledge. Have you heard of Edgar Saraband?”

  “Yes. A Thelonan nobleman who killed himself trying to fly some sort of contraption off the cliffs there a few months back…”

  “I believe Saraband’s flying machine was nine-tenths Arlo’s invention. Saraband built the engine, but Arlo designed the wings and body, and he has intriguing ideas about…” She cut herself short. She was babbling. “Dr Teal, I think he has unlocked the secret of flight…”