by Adam Roberts
‘Well, no you didn’t,’ pointed out Linn. ‘You said we were in Antarctica.’
The Dr looked pained. ‘Atlantic—a,’ he said, after a short pause. ‘Is what I said - Atlantica, which is as everybody knows, or at least everybody should know, is the official Latin name of the, um.’ He paused for a moment, then added ‘of, Atlantica is, um.’
He seemed to dry up. He dropped his gaze to the floor for a while. Nobody said anything for long seconds.
‘Anyway,’ said Linn, turning back to Captain Antenealle. ‘Whether we’re in Antarctica, or aboard a secret HMS warship in the North Atlantic, either way I think I would expect to be just a little surprised to see us.’
‘Well the truth is,’ said the Captain, with a little chivalrous bow, ‘that after all this strange business with the chanting knights in silver armour nothing surprises me any more.’
‘Chanting knights?’ repeated the Dr.
‘In silver armour, yes.’
‘Is that with a k?’
‘Is the armour with a k? Wouldn’t that be karmour?’
‘The knights - are they ker-nights, or just nights?’
‘The former. It’s most peculiar. They seem to be overrunning us. We try our best to fight them off, but bullets don’t seem to stop them - they’re ghosts from the crusades, some of the men say. The men are simple Tommies, of course, not officer class. So whilst they’re brave as lions in the face of physical danger, supernatural danger unnerves them. They say we should all abandon ship.’
‘Ghosts from the crusades, you say?’
‘That’s what the men think.’
‘And you don’t agree?’
‘Not in the least,’ said the Captain, matter-of-factly. ‘I ask myself: why should ghosts from the crusades come dressed up in shiny silver armour to visit a secret Navy ship sculpted from a solid block of ice sailing in the North Atlantic in nineteen-twelve, whilst war with the Germans seems imminent?’
‘You’re awfully free with your secret information,’ I observed.
‘But you’re English,’ said Antenealle, in a there you go! sort of voice.
‘Nineteen-twelve,’ said the Dr. ‘Seems to me that date should be familiar to me. Nineteen-twelve, nineteen-twelve, can’t think why.’
‘You lot had better come with me,’ said the Captain Antenealle. ‘See if we can’t scrounge a cup of tea. If there’s one problem with these Habakkuk craft it’s keeping the tea nice and hot.’
‘Project Habakkuk,’ said the Dr. ‘I always thought it was just a rumour. But here we are, actually aboard one of their craft! Very exciting. Officially, of course, it never got off the drawing board.’
‘You’ve heard of this Habakkuk Project?’ Linn asked.
‘Of course! It’s famous. It was a British Naval plan to sculpt huge ships out of ice. The advantage of ice as a raw-material for shipbuilding is that it is quite unsinkable. Unlike the iron out of which, say, dreadnoughts are built. Iron - and I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this - but iron sinks. Sinks pretty comprehensively, really. Down it goes! But ice . . . well, let me put it this way. If you’ve ever dunked a battleship-shaped chunk of ice-cream into a milkshake, you’ll know that—’
‘Are you sure?’ I said. ‘It sounds daft to me.’
‘Nonsense. It was a brilliant idea; one of the few brilliant ideas the Royal Navy ever had. A very large ice battleship would be a superb weapon of naval warfare. The main drawback would be a certain amount of difficulty in manoeuvre; but on the plus side it would be near-enough impossible for enemy ships to sink the craft ... even if they knocked big chunks off it with artillery shells the remainder would still float along. I just hadn’t realised that the Navy got as far as actually building a prototype ship.’
‘Well we did,’ said Antenealle over his shoulder. ‘We built it, crewed it, and assigned it a complement of marines . . . my men, in fact. We’re on secret manoeuvres here right now. Things were going swimmingly until—’
‘The ghosts from the crusades?’
‘Well I’m a sceptic,’ said Antenealle cheerily. ‘For instance, one thing that makes me doubt the whole ghost theory is the way they bump into things. Slip over, crash into walls, that sort of thing.’
‘Maybe they’re slapstick ghosts?’
‘Never heard of that sort. And the other thing worth mentioning is that they’re pretty heavily armed. I never heard of ghosts going about carrying artillery. Some chains to rattle, maybe. But not, you know, rifles and hand-cannons. And woo-oo-oo! Wooooooo! That’s what you’d expect, isn’t it? An owl-like woo-ooing. Woooooooooooooooo! But that’s not the noise these chaps make at all.’
‘What noise do they make?’ asked Linn.
‘It’s a sort of oo-aah noise. Oo-aah. Very strange.’
‘Ah, Captain!’ declared the officer as we came onto the bridge. ‘Good to see you again. And who are these?’
‘A Doctor and his friends, Commodore Sthree-Tymsa-Lady, ’ said Antenealle. ‘They’re English, don’t worry.’
‘Splendid,’ said Tymsa-Lady. ‘Welcome to the HMS Icetanic! I say, would you three mind awfully pitching in, ma’am, gentlemen? We’re having a touch of bother with these silver fellows. All hands would be much appreciated at the pumps, don’t you know.’
‘Glad to help,’ said the Dr. ‘That’s an interesting surname, by the way. Are you related to the Hampshire Tymsa-Ladies?’
‘Different branch of the family,’ said the Commodore brightly. ‘My grandmother married Henry Sthree, one of the Middlesex Sthrees. They moved to Surrey. I didn’t catch your name, I’m afraid?’
‘I’m called Whom,’ said the Dr.
‘Now that is an interesting surname!’ said the Commodore, clearly impressed. ‘Very distinctive! And your friends?’
‘This is Miss Trout. And this young man is Prose Tailor.’
The Commodore turned to face me. ‘Any relation of Pinny Tailor?’ he asked.
‘Um,’ I said.
The Commodore seemed to take this as a yes. ‘Pinny Tailor! The old donkey! How is he? Still Secretary of State for Imperial Affairs?’
‘I wonder, Commodore,’ the Dr put in, ‘if you could tell me a little about these ghosts supposedly haunting your secret ice-built Habakkuk-project ship. You see, I’m here on a . . . um, government mission to undertake certain . . . secret activities, for the secret services of . . . you know. Government stuff.’
‘Government mission?’ repeated the Commodore.
‘We were dropped onto the ship by, er, hot-air balloon,’ said the Dr. ‘That’s how we’ve suddenly appeared, as if by the magic of matter-transference and rematerialisation, on your ship in the middle of the ocean, without any advance warning. I mean, obviously we haven’t appeared by matter-transference. That would be silly. It’s most definitely, you know. Balloons.’
‘I assumed it would be something like that,’ said the Commodore.
‘Anyway, I was wondering about these apparitions. I’ve a suspicion that they might have a part to play in the ... mission of which I was speaking. Did you say they were silver men?’
‘They’ve practically over-run the ship,’ said the Commodore. ‘The Captain has been down on the lower decks fighting them off. Haven’t you, Antenealle? Down there with all your men?’
‘They’re all dead,’ said the Captain. ‘I’m sorry to say. Every last man-jack marine of them. Is there any tea? I’m parching for a cup.’
‘Oh dear,’ said the Commodore. ‘All of them?’
‘Young Witherspoon was twitching a little when I left,’ said Antenealle, filling a tin mug from a large brass urn. ‘But I daresay he’s a goner now. What with the size of the wound in his head. And also the three missing . . ..’ The Captain paused to slurp his tea and go ‘ahhh!,’ before concluding, ‘limbs.’
‘Oh dear,’ said the Commodore again. ‘So, with all the able seamen gone too, that leaves . . .?’
‘Just us three,’ said Antenealle. ‘And, of course, our new friends.’
‘Ah well,’ said the Commodore. ‘I suppose we’ll just have to do our best.’
‘They’re all dead ?’ cried Linn in a horrified tone.
‘Hmm’ said the Captain.
‘How can you be so extraordinarily blasé,’ Linn demanded, ‘in the face of such terrible loss of life?’
‘Stiff upper lip,’ said the Commodore. ‘Or do I mean swift upper lip? I always get those confused.’
‘Swift upper cut, I think it is, Commodore,’ said Antenealle, taking another slurp of tea.
There was a distant explosion: muffled but unmistakeable. The ship shuddered. I could not contain a little yelp of terror.
‘Don’t worry ma’am,’ said Antenealle, without looking at me. ‘Those explosions might be worrying on a regular ship, but, you see, a Habakkuk-line vessel is literally unsinkable.’
‘Oh the Icetanic is quite unsinkable,’ agreed the Commodore. ‘It’s a miracle of modern design.’
‘Perfectly unsinkable,’ agreed the Captain. ‘Can’t be sunk.’
‘No sinkee-sinkee,’ declared the Commodore.
‘Everything can happen except the kitchen sinking. By kitchen I mean the galley. And all the other parts of the ship too. None of them can sink.’
‘So we’ve nothing to worry about then!’ exclaimed the Dr, cheerfully.
‘Well, there is one tiny little worry,’ admitted the Commodore. ‘My slight worry has to do with these silver men, the ones who’ve now slaughtered the entire crew and whom are now marching about shooting and blowing up everything in sight . . . the worry is that they might be German agents, dressed up in some odd silver armour. They may be trying to seize the ship, to get hold of our military technology for the good of the Kaiser you see. We really can’t allow that to happen. Our problem,’ he went on, a little sorrowfully, ‘is that I can’t scuttle this ship. Normally of course I’d scuttle my ship to prevent her falling into enemy hands. But this ship is unscuttleabubble. I mean, of course, unscutable. Un,’ he said, moving slowly through the syllables, ‘Scut. Tle. A. Ble.’
‘I see your dilemma,’ said the Dr.
There was another explosion, somewhere below us. ‘We’d better get down there,’ said Antenealle, finishing his tea and plonking the mug back next to the brass urn. ‘Come on!’
The Dr made as if to follow, but Linn grabbed his elbow. ‘You’re not going after him are you?’ she hissed. ‘Didn’t you hear what happened to his men?’
‘Of course,’ the Dr hissed back. ‘I feel certain that these strange silver men represent a pretty major grammatical error in the fabric of spacetime. Don’t you? Do you really think that nineteen-twelve Earth should have creatures like that running around?’
‘I suppose not,’ said Linn, sulkily.
He walked smartly off the bridge; and, after exchanging a wary look, Linn and I followed.
No. On second thoughts, that last one looks rather stupid, written down.
Anyway, let’s just say that we could hear explosions. Interspersed amongst those percussive noises was the sound of gunfire, sharp and abrupt as the breaking of old bones: rat, rat-tat, rat-tat. Yes, that’s good. That’s exactly what the gunfire sounded like.
‘We’re definitely moving towards it,’ said Linn, nervously. ‘Those gunshots and explosions. They’re getting louder.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘If all your men are dead, Captain, what are these silver men shooting at?’
‘Just at things in general I think,’ said Antenealle. ‘They don’t seem too particular. They may just really enjoy shooting.’
The corridor opened into a wide ice cavern, a large groined space. Which is to say shaped (perhaps I should add for the sake of clarity) like a female rather than a male groin. Which, I mean, is what I’ve always assumed the phrase ‘groined arches’ to refer to. Unless I’ve got the wrong end of the stick there. That’s very possible, you know.
‘Ah,’ said Antenealle. ‘There they are!’ He sounded pleased. Pulling off one of his mittens and unbuttoning his holster, he drew his gun.
Directly in front of us was a rank of silvery, gleaming, robotic men. Nothing could be imagined that looked less like ghosts than these figures. They were the most solidly metallic and material fellows I ever saw. And what’s more, they were marching slowly towards us.
‘Tally ho!’ said Antenealle. He levelled his pistol and fired three shots in quick succession. Then he started running directly towards the silvery men. There were pinging noises as his bullets ricocheted off their metallic chests.
One of these silver warriors lifted his hand, and a blast of smoke and a blaze of noise slammed Antenealle off his feet. He landed on his back with a large, gooily tomato-coloured hole evident in his chest.
‘Ooo,’ said the Dr. ‘That’s not good.’
‘Is he dead?’
‘Dead right. Perhaps a strategic retreat . . .’ suggested the Dr. We turned to return, back the way we had come, but more of the silver men were visible coming along the corridor.
‘Trapped!’ cried the Dr. ‘Quick!’
The three of us ducked into the left of the wide ice-chamber, passing in front of the row of advancing robotic soldiers and sprinting away to the side. It was obvious to me at once that there was no way out in this direction.
‘What are we going to do?’ demanded Linn, as we slid to a halt. ‘We can’t stay here.’
The menacing-looking, silvery humanoids had wheeled about, and now were advancing upon us in a single rank, marching in perfect step. They moved unhurriedly; implacably; determinedly, deadly-ly. They looked, in fact, like a rank of Nazi stormtroopers parading down Evilstraße, Berlin, in 1938. Except they were all silvery, rather than wearing any kind of black uniform. And that they were marching through a large chamber carved from solid ice, rather than along a city street. And that they wore no insignia, and carried no banners or flags or anything like that. And that they weren’t, to be fair, lifting their legs quite so high as Nazi stormtroopers might have done. So, on reflection, not very like the Nazi stormtroopers then. You see, you need to understand that I chose just now the ‘Nazi storm-trooper’ analogy to convey their sinister orderliness and threat, rather than wanting to create a whole visual picture that would inevitably be more distracting and less expressive.
‘Cydermen!’ cried the Dr. ‘The second most feared evil creature in the galaxy! But what are they doing aboard a British experimental naval craft in nineteen-twelve? ’
‘Cydermen?’ I said ‘What sort of being might they be?’
‘Terrible, implacable creatures,’ said the Dr. ‘Implacably terrible. Their terror really knows no plac.’
The approaching humanoids were chanting something as they advanced: ‘Ooo Aur! OOO AUR!’
‘What are they saying?’ I asked.
‘It’s their war cry. If I remember correctly, Aur means gold in their language.’
‘Gold? That’s their war cry? - gold ?’
‘It has religious significance for them, I believe,’ said the Dr. ‘It means they can always believe in their soul, and that they have the power to be . . . to be, um, very much like a reactively inert and non-corrosive metal.’
‘OOO AUR!’ bellowed the Cydermen, stepping closer with every goosey-gandering step. One of the silvery men lifted his hand. I saw then that it consisted not of fingers and a thumb, but of four silver pistol-barrels and a small thumb-sized cannon. The middle finger detonated, puffing smoke, and the ice-wall behind us burst under brief fire. The ice-chamber rocked, and chunks of ice fell from the ceiling.
‘Also,’ said the Dr, ducking behind a large ridge of ice at the far end of the chamber. ‘They’re allergic to it. Gold, I mean.’
Linn and I were not slow to join him behind the ridge of ice. It was the only cover in the place.
‘What kind of creature is allergic to gold?’ said Linn. ‘Given how perfectly inert and unreactive it is? There’s nothing in it to be allergic to.’
‘A good point,
’ agreed the Dr. ‘Nevertheless, they are. Gold allergic, I mean.’
A second explosion clattered away behind us. Once again, chunks, stalagtites and stalaglufts of ice showered down around us. We were in a situation of some peril.
‘Have you got any gold?’ I asked.
‘Not on me,’ said the Dr. ‘No. Nor, indeed, off me. Neither on me nor off me, do I have any gold. Not really my style, gold, now, is it?’
‘Linn?’ I asked. ‘Do you have any gold?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ she replied.
‘Well that’s not much use,’ I pointed out.
‘OOO AUR! OOO AUR!’ bellowed the advancing Cydermen.
‘If we could get some gold, could we stop these Cydermen?’ I asked the Dr.
‘Easily,’ he said.
‘And what if we can’t get the gold?’
‘Then they will be - literally, as well as metaphorically - unstoppable. They won’t stop until we’re dead. And, actually, they won’t even stop then. They’ll carry on after we’re dead just as implacably as they are presently doing, before our deaths. Nothing will stop them. In conclusion,’ he concluded, ‘they won’t stop.’
I hazarded a look around the side of the ice ridge behind which we were hiding. The Cydermen were continuing their implacable slow advance, their silver limbs moving with weird machinic co-ordination.
‘Do you see their heads?’ the Dr asked.
‘Yes.’ Their crania looked like hard, shiny jar-shaped containers.
‘Slopping with Cyder,’ said the Dr.
‘Cyder?’
‘The cybernetically enhanced conducting fluid that is the medium of their intelligence. You see, the Cydermen used to be men and women, like you and me. Well, like you, at any rate. But one day, they realised that the jelly-like substance that constitutes naturally occurring organic brains was an inefficient conducting medium for intelligence. The neurones are fixed, trapped in static relation to one another. So the reinvented themselves; reconfigured their brains as a true fluid, in which every neurone could connect with every other one as they swirled and swished about - that enables a huge number of possible connections, many more than can ever be the case in the normal, solid brain tissue. The entire race abandoned their grey-matter brains and uploaded their intellect into the fluid of their jars - a special blend of electrolyte enhancer and accelerant, alcohol-derivative, and an organic-based nutrient solution, derived from some fruit or other I think.’