Scavenger Blood

by Janet Edwards

  Step after step. Higher and higher. Cage must have wondered if there’d ever be an end to the flights of stairs, but he’d finally made it to the top. Once inside the Wallam-Crane family’s mansion, he’d found the Security Control Room, and activated the Citadel defences.

  Donnell had sworn that he’d never lead anyone across the river to Manhattan again, but now we were back, and facing a Citadel that had come to life and was armed to defend Cage against us.

  Chapter Thirty

  “Well, we’re in Manhattan,” said Ghost lightly. “Where are we going now?”

  Donnell pointed to our left. “I want all the division leaders, Tad, and Blaze to climb to the top of the Wallam-Crane Monument with me.”

  We all turned to peer up at the colossal statue of Tad’s ancestor. The Wallam-Crane Monument was based on the old Statue of Liberty here in New York, and depicted Thaddeus Wallam-Crane standing on a pedestal, crowned with a laurel wreath, and holding a globe of the world.

  I furtively glanced from the statue to Tad and back again. I couldn’t see much of a resemblance between them, but Tad was a lot younger than the man depicted in the monument, and he was made of flesh rather than stone.

  Ghost frowned. “Cage won’t be hiding in the Wallam-Crane Monument. I went nosing around inside there years ago. It’s only a shell of a building. Bare stone walls. Bare stone staircases. It originally had glass windows, but some of them have fallen out, letting in the wind and the rain. The place doesn’t even have a power supply, let alone heating, so it’s no refuge for a wounded man.”

  “I’ll explain properly when we get to the top of the monument,” said Donnell. “We don’t want Cage sneaking across and blocking the bridge behind us, so I’ll leave the rest of the party down here on guard duty. Aaron, you’re in charge.”

  Wall gave one of his bellowing laughs. “So we’re going to toil all the way up that monument? I’m sure there’s an impressive view from the top, but it’s a little cold for sightseeing.”

  Donnell didn’t reply to that, just walked towards the entrance to the Wallam-Crane Monument, picking his way carefully between broken sheets of glass and other debris, that had either fallen from the monument itself or from nearby skyscrapers.

  “I’m not eager to climb all those steps,” said Ghost, “but I expect Donnell has a better reason than sightseeing for taking us up there.”

  He went after Donnell, and Ice, Wall, Raeni, Tad, and I followed him. When we joined Donnell at the entrance to the monument, I saw the great arched doorway had two ornate doors. One was still in place and firmly locked, but the other had fallen from its hinges and was lying on the ground.

  Donnell stooped to pick up a rock, then led us through the opening, and into a vast room lit by huge windows. The central window had coloured glass that depicted Thaddeus Wallam-Crane standing next to a primitive portal. Above it, there were words carved into the stone wall, and inlaid with what looked like artificial gold and diamonds.

  “Thaddeus Alexander Wallam-Crane gave humanity portal technology.”

  Donnell made an obscene gesture at the window, and headed for one of the imposing twin staircases that led up through the vaulted ceiling. We climbed upwards to a second chamber, almost identical to the first, but with a different coloured glass window. This one showed an earnest-faced man sitting at a desk. I read the words carved above it.

  “Thaddeus Benjamin Wallam-Crane gave humanity portals on every street corner.”

  Donnell completely ignored Benjamin’s image, moving on upwards to a third chamber. The window here portrayed a younger man, who was standing – rather precariously I thought – on a mass of guns and swords, and had a white dove perched on his right arm.

  “Thaddeus Carmichael Wallam-Crane gave humanity an Earth united in peace and prosperity,” proclaimed the words carved above the window.

  Donnell made the obscene gesture again, and continued up the next staircase. By now, I was expecting the fourth chamber. The man in the image here had a strong family resemblance to the first Thaddeus Wallam-Crane, but his long, curly hair trailed past his shoulders. He was standing looking up at a night-time sky filled with an unlikely number of planets, and the carved words above the window had an extra flourish of diamonds around them.

  “Thaddeus Ignatius Wallam-Crane gave humanity the stars.”

  There was a plaque on a nearby wall. It said something incomprehensible about how ephemeral, five-second drop portals made the first contact with new worlds, which was followed by establishing conventional interstellar portal links.

  I was still trying to make sense of that, when Donnell threw his rock at the head of Thaddeus Ignatius Wallam-Crane. I saw Tad wince as the rock bounced harmlessly off and fell to the floor.

  Donnell sighed. “I thought it would be unbreakable glass, but it was worth a try. It’s probably too dangerous for me to fire my gun at the window.”

  “Far too dangerous,” said Ghost hastily. “Let’s move on.”

  We continued upwards, passing through another chamber where a Thaddeus Liberty Wallam-Crane was depicted in coloured glass. I frowned but moved on to the higher chambers where the windows had plain glass. The builders of this monument had obviously intended them to honour the accomplishments of further generations of the Wallam-Crane family.

  I stopped in the eighth chamber, and Tad came to stand beside me. There was a clattering of feet as the rest of our party kept climbing the stone staircase. I waited until they were out of sight before speaking in a low voice to Tad.

  “This chamber was built for Thaddeus Wallam-Crane the Eighth.”

  He nodded. “This monument was abandoned, but there’s one just like it on Adonis. Its eighth memorial chamber will have a window depicting me one day. My grandfather has already planned the words to go above that window. They’re supposed to say that Thaddeus Paul Wallam-Crane re-invented interstellar portal technology and saved civilization on five hundred worlds.”

  He gave a humourless laugh. “Ever since my grandfather told me about the planned words, I’ve had nightmares about that window. I keep seeing a mob of people standing in my memorial chamber, looking at my image in the window, and the glittering words above it. In my nightmare, those words say Thaddeus Paul Wallam-Crane failed to re-invent interstellar portal technology, so civilization fell on five hundred worlds.”

  “You won’t fail, Tad,” I said. “You came to New York because you needed answers from the Wallam-Crane Science Museum here in Manhattan. You’ve got those answers now. Once we leave New York, you’ll be able to get to America Off-world, and travel to Zeus to build your interstellar portals.”

  Tad sighed. “Yes. Logic tells me that I have a workable interstellar portal design, but there are times when I start imagining all the problems I could hit given the limited technology available on Zeus. Those worries normally hit me in the middle of the night, but standing in this room and looking at that window started me thinking about how history will remember Thaddeus Paul Wallam-Crane.”

  I tried changing the subject. “So you’re Thaddeus Paul Wallam-Crane.”

  “Yes. The first few Thaddeus Wallam-Cranes had middle names that were in alphabetical sequence by pure accident. Given there were usually several generations of us alive at once, it soon became clumsy and confusing to keep referring to us as Thaddeus Wallam-Crane the fourth, or the fifth.”

  He waved his hands. “We began including our middle names, both in conversation and in formal agreements, and keeping them in a vaguely alphabetical sequence was a useful way to show the family seniority. The head of the family, Thaddeus Wallam-Crane Regnant, was the one with the earliest name in the alphabet.”

  “Paul seems a much less pretentious middle name than the others.”

  Tad laughed. “The middle names were all chosen to match that of the original Thaddeus Wallam-Crane. He was Thaddeus Alexander, and Alexander was the name of a famous leader from back in history, so we all had to have ornate historical names too. Liberty was an odd
choice, but her father, Ignatius, was an ... unconventional man.”

  I was glad that Tad had mentioned Liberty. “I noticed the images in the windows showed Liberty was a woman, but her first name was still Thaddeus.”

  “Yes, the Wallam-Crane family inevitably hit the situation where the eldest child of the direct line was a girl. Thaddeus Wallam-Crane was already far more of a title rather than a name, so Ignatius decided to call his daughter Thaddeus Liberty Wallam-Crane after the Statue of Liberty.”

  Tad shrugged. “Since Thaddeus Liberty, we’ve had three generations of the only child being a boy. My grandfather is Thaddeus Napoleon. My father was stuck with being Thaddeus Odysseus and loathed it. My grandfather tried to call me Thaddeus Ptolemy, but my father rebelled and managed to get me called Paul. My grandfather disapproved of the name Paul though, which is why people started calling me Tad rather than Paul.”

  Tad paused. “I’ve always been deeply grateful to my father for giving me a sensible name like Paul. My only memories of my father are a few silly things, like the way he’d lift me onto his shoulders, and the ritual of him reading a bedtime story to me every night. I’d insist on hearing the same story over and over again, and he’d make a joke of grumbling about it.”

  Tad gave an angry shake of his head. “I often think how much better my life would have been if my father hadn’t been murdered. His death was so pointless, and it wasn’t just a tragedy for me but for the whole of humanity. If my father had lived, he’d have built new interstellar portals years ago.”

  There are times when words seem totally inadequate. I took Tad’s hands in mine. “I’m very sorry about your father.”

  We stood there, hands linked, for a full minute before Tad leaned cautiously towards me and we kissed. He drew back again and gave me a wary look.

  “Are we having a relationship again?”

  “We’re having a significant moment,” I said.

  “That’s a start.”

  Tad let go of my hands to hug me closer and kissed me again. There were several more significant moments before Tad reluctantly stepped back.

  “I suppose we should catch up with your father and the others.”

  I sighed. “I suppose we should.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  As Tad and I hurried up the staircase after the others, I murmured words under my breath. “Gun command tracking on.”

  A confusing mass of lines and dots appeared in front of my eyes. The lines were showing the chambers and staircases of the nearest levels of the Wallam-Crane Monument. The turquoise dot of Tad was obviously right next to me. The green dot of my father, and the four white dots of Wall, Ice, Ghost, and Raeni, weren’t as far above us as I’d expected.

  Tad and I spent the next few minutes climbing stairs at full speed. There were some more of the blank-windowed memorial chambers, and then the twin staircases were replaced by a single, wide, gently spiralling staircase, with windows on the right-hand side, and rooms at random intervals on the left. I guessed that we’d reached the top of the monument’s pedestal, and were now continuing up a staircase that circled around the outside edge of the statue itself.

  We’d halved the distance between us and the dots, when the voice of my Armed Agent weapon spoke in my head. “Hostile alien lifeform.”

  The purple dot of a falling star was somewhere above the green and white dots. The temperature was below freezing point, so the falling star would be in the dormant hibernation phase. I couldn’t tell if it was clinging to the outside of the Wallam-Crane Monument, or had crept in through a window that was missing its glass.

  Either way, I didn’t need to worry about the safety of the rest of our party. Donnell would be seeing the falling star on his own gun display.

  “Second hostile alien lifeform,” said my gun, and another purple dot appeared, slightly higher up than the first.

  As we climbed on, the top of the Wallam-Crane Monument came in range of my tracking display, and my gun spoke a third time.

  “Hostile alien lifeforms three and four detected.”

  A second later, there was the sound of shouting voices from above us. Tad stopped climbing and looked up in alarm.

  “What’s going on up there? Are the division leaders fighting each other?”

  The four white dots on my tracking display were right next to the purple dot of the first falling star. The green dot was a short distance away from the others.

  “I think the division leaders are fighting a falling star,” I said.

  We headed upwards again. The noise above us died down, and a couple of minutes later we passed a room where the leathery mass of a dead falling star sprawled across the stone floor. We climbed on upwards, and discovered Donnell sitting on the stone steps.

  He stood up and raised an eyebrow at us. “Thank you for finally joining the rest of us. Dare I ask what you were doing downstairs that delayed you for so long?”

  “I was telling Blaze about my ancestors,” said Tad, in a dignified voice.

  Donnell gave him a sceptical look, turned to lead the way on up the staircase, and groaned as there was another outbreak of shouting from above. “Wall insists on killing the falling stars.”

  A minute later, we reached a doorway on the left. I glanced through it to a large room, where Wall was enjoying himself stabbing the second falling star. The other three division leaders stood watching with resigned expressions.

  “There’s no point in killing them,” said Raeni. “We aren’t going to carry the bodies all the way down the stairs and back to the Parliament House to cook them, are we?”

  Wall paused in his efforts. “Every falling star we kill here is one less that can cross the river to attack us.”

  Donnell was looking out of one of the windows on the staircase. I went to stand next to him, and saw the rest of our party on the Unity Bridge far below us. Some of them were walking around, while others were sitting down and leaning their backs against the walls of the turrets.

  Donnell laughed. “The others look as if they’re getting bored waiting for us. They’ll be far more bored by the time we’ve reached the top of this monument and then gone all the way down again.”

  The four division leaders came out of the room. “It’s dead,” said Wall, in a satisfied voice.

  “Just remember what I said about not killing falling stars on the staircase,” said Donnell. “I don’t want anyone slipping on their digestive juices, tumbling down the stairs, and breaking their arms or legs. Especially Blaze. The last time I brought her to Manhattan, I had to carry her back over the Unity Bridge on a stretcher, and I don’t want to have to do that again.”

  I gave him a startled look. I’d been so dazed on that trip back from Manhattan, hovering on the edge of unconsciousness, that I hadn’t realized one of the men carrying my stretcher was Donnell.

  We continued up the stairs. The third falling star turned out to be plastered on the outside of the building. Its body was blocking one of the staircase windows, so I got a weird view of its underside, showing the pulsating circular area that was its equivalent of a mouth. Wall hesitated when he reached it, but seemed to decide it would be too difficult to attack it in that position, and kept climbing the staircase.

  The fourth falling star was in the entrance to a room. Donnell frowned at Wall. “It’s too close to the staircase.”

  Wall grunted his displeasure, but left the falling star alone. A minute later, we reached the top of the staircase. We stepped through a doorway onto a wide balcony, guarded by a parapet which alternated between being almost as high as my shoulders and only about waist height.

  I walked across to one of the low points, casually looked over the edge, peered down a dizzying distance, and took a rapid step backwards. I turned to gaze up at the top of the monument instead, frowned in confusion, and then realized I was looking at carved stone hair. This balcony must form part of the laurel wreath on Thaddeus Wallam-Crane’s head.

  Donnell looked across Wallam-Crane Squar
e to the monstrous bulk of the Citadel. “I’ve brought you all here because Cage is hiding over there in the Citadel. To be exact, he’s hiding right at the top of the Citadel, living in the rooftop mansion that was once home to the Wallam-Crane family.”

  “How do you know that Cage is hiding in the Citadel?” asked Ice.

  I tensed, wondering how Donnell could answer that without giving away Tad’s identity.

  The speed of Donnell’s reply showed he’d been prepared for someone to ask that question. “When Blaze captured Cage’s sniper rifle, she also found a display label showing it came from the Wallam-Crane family private museum in the rooftop mansion.”

  I blinked.

  “The rifle had been used in an assassination attempt on Thaddeus Ignatius Wallam-Crane,” said Donnell. “The family must have kept it as a souvenir, and of course nobody dared insist on the Wallam-Crane family following the rules about disabling weapons.”

  He paused. “I should have guessed from the start that Cage would be nosing around the Citadel. It’s natural for a man with Cage’s ego to be attracted to what was once the palace of the rulers of the world. Further investigation showed that Cage had got control of the Citadel security system and activated the building’s defences. We can’t risk entering the Citadel when those defences are on, so we’ve come up here to do a job for Machico.”

  “What sort of job?” asked Wall.

  Donnell was clearly prepared for this question too. “The Wallam-Crane family used to make speeches to adoring crowds in Wallam-Crane Square. We need to find one of the cameras used by their old public broadcast system, and make alterations that Machico thinks should allow him to connect to the Citadel security system. The idea is that Machico knows far more about security systems than Cage, so he should be able to take over control of the security system and shut down the defences.”

  Donnell shrugged. “Please don’t ask me for more details on how that will work, because I didn’t understand most of Machico’s explanation. I just accept that we need to alter the camera, which is much too technical a job for Blaze or me. Tad knows a bit about electronics, so he’ll be making the alterations for us.”