by Philip Webb
Peyto goes, “The river.”
“No way! We’ll get cut off!”
“We won’t. Trust me.”
Before I can hold him back, he’s off, darting toward the river. The Vlads are closing. I can see the red beams from their rifles, and my guts go loose. It’s sheer panic that makes me grab Erin’s arm and charge after Peyto. Stealth’s out the window – we just leather it, not caring about our pounding feet. Peyto’s a fast runner and I have a job keeping up with him, but Erin’s slow. I keep dropping back to stay in touch with her, and she’s stumbling all over the shop. By now the soldiers are shouting – warnings maybe. But we don’t stop.
The paving crumbles away into sludge, and all that’s between us and the river is craters and rubble heaps. Peyto’s bounding over the waste ground ahead, and in front of him I can see the water lit up from search beams. There ain’t nowhere to go. I’m cursing myself for going after him, when Erin struggles up to me.
“What are you stopping for?” she cries.
“We’ve got to get back to the streets. We can’t shake them off here!”
“No, you don’t understand. Follow Peyto!”
She lurches after him, practically cartwheeling into the bog. When I look back over my shoulder, I can see swinging flashlights and then a couple of gunshots crack out. I’m thinking, They’re gonna shoot us down like rats. I slither into the mud and it drags me down. And I know then I won’t even make it to the water. Erin’s just ahead, reaching out to help me. Then I see Peyto hold his flinder up high, and he’s saying something over and over again. It sounds like a chant.
There’s a movement in the water, just a restless bubbling at first, but the skin of the river rises and parts, and out comes this big black shape, plowing up from the depths. I cry out, and all around me there’s these spurts of mud and I realize the soldiers are taking potshots from the road. But that seems like the least of our worries cos this huge humpbacked thing sends a wave slooshing up to our shoulders. But for the mud holding my legs, I’d have been swept away.
I’m so scared I can’t even breathe.
I figure it’s alive, the way it surges round in an arc between us and the bank, its bulk all slick and smooth like a giant fish. But then I hear gunfire bouncing off it.
Thunk! Thunk!
And suddenly a hole opens up and a searing light stabs into my eyes.
THE AEOLUS
It ain’t like we go through the hole of our own accord. It’s more like the thing tips us up and swallows us up in one go, mud and all. I tumble down in a heap with the others and lie there for a moment, not believing any of it, as my eyes get used to the glare. Above me, the hole closes up and we’re moving now, fast and downward. The walls are covered with machines and dials, and in the middle, there’s a ring of six padded seats. Sludge from the Thames slops about on the otherwise clean floor. Peyto and Erin are glued to a couple of screens flickering with diagrams and weird symbols.
At last I go, “When I said, has anybody got a submarine, I was joking.”
“Get into one of those chairs,” orders Peyto. “We’re going to launch in twenty-five seconds.”
“Launch? Launch where?”
“The Aeolus,” goes Erin, like that explains everything.
“All right, I figure we had to get clear of them Vlads sharpish, I get that. And I ain’t even gonna ask how come you got a submarine. And how come you never mentioned it when we was risking our lives crossing the river in the first place. No problem. But for your information, I ain’t launching nowhere. You can just steer it back to the south bank where Wilbur is before the lad freaks out.”
“Can’t do that,” goes Peyto. “Please, Cass, just sit in a chair and strap yourself in …”
I slip-slide over to where he’s gawking at the screens.
“You ain’t listening! My brother is standing on his tod, freezing his buns off, worrying himself half to death about us!”
“I’m not in control! I can’t steer it anywhere!”
Erin’s is the calmest head. “Cass, listen to me. We’re in an evac shuttle – it’s just an offspring vehicle.”
I gape at her. Evac shuttle? It’s like someone’s opened this door to where Wilbur’s comics are real. I think about old Fred the pigherd. Lights in the sky and machine-men.
She holds up her flinder. “When you get in an evac shuttle with one of these, it just takes you back to the mother ship. It’s automatic in case you’ve become injured or you’re unconscious. We should be able to override that setting but, well, there’s some problems with the ship itself …”
“Oh, yeah, and another thing, I ain’t got a clue what you’re talking about.”
“I know you haven’t, but you have to strap yourself in or you could get really hurt. It’s a short journey. We’ll explain everything just as soon as we get out of here, I promise.”
“Explain everything,” I mutter, my voice all shaky. “Yeah, that’d be just peaches, that would. I want a bloody good explanation an’ all. With bells on.”
Both of them guide me to a chair and put these padded belts over my shoulders. When they strap in either side of me, the chairs tip back, then the vehicle starts shaking and humming so hard that everything goes blurry. My head slams back and I feel like a wall’s pressing down on me and there’s this crazy roaring. I yelp out but I can’t even hear my own voice. All this spit dribbles out my mouth but I can’t lift my hand to wipe it off. Next thing the roaring stops, and I feel all light and woozy. My spit sails past, wobbling around in slow motion.
“What the …?”
“It’s all right, you’re just weightless,” goes Erin.
“You mean we ain’t in the Thames no more?”
“No, we’re in orbit about thirteen miles above London.”
Then she just leans forward out of her chair and floats over to the screens.
“A submarine what can fly,” I say out loud to no one in particular.
It’s weird how my voice sounds all dreamy while my heart is thrashing about like a bee in a tin. How is this even happening, for crying out loud? No one’s been in space since the Quark Wars, or so Wilbur says. Them old rockets and stations in the sky have been empty for years. And there just ain’t no way for me to get a handle on this. I think about the run to the river with all the Vlads chasing after us, taking potshots – that just feels like it never even happened. But still, the stink from the river is in my nostrils. And I keep thinking about Wilbur, about how he has to be done in with worry by now. He’d have heard the gunfire for sure.
“We’ve got to get back,” I go.
“We will,” says Erin. “When we dock up to the Aeolus, we’ll be free to return to London just as soon as we reset the shuttle …”
“And just exactly when’s that gonna be?”
“Don’t worry,” Erin says gently. “It’ll take no more than half an hour. Plus, going back is under our control – there’s no emergency protocol or anything. We can navigate straight to where Wilbur is. We’ll be there long before the two o’clock deadline. I promise you.”
I figure I’ve got to trust her. What else can I do? Peyto has kind of clammed up, but Erin’s completely the queen of the flying sub, cos she’s suddenly got this air of confidence.
And the weirdest thing? I slow right down. Bonkers stuff is happening all around, like floating people and flying ships with mothers, but my brain just freezes over and pretends everything’s fine and dandy. Like, that world you knew about all of thirty seconds ago, well, that has just gone, so welcome to this new world. Where your spit don’t stay on the ground where it belongs.
“Right, then,” I go at last. “I’m just about ready for that explanation now.”
Erin taps the screen a couple of times and the view switches to something floating in the night sky. It’s shaped like a bone – narrow in the middle with bulbs at either end – and it’s twirling very slowly.
“What’s that?”
“That is the Aeolus,” sa
ys Peyto without much of a fanfare. “The ship.”
He unstraps me and I float out of my chair. It’s like swimming without holding your breath. But I don’t like it much – it feels like you ain’t really there.
The Aeolus gets bigger till it fills the screen. I can’t tell how large it is, but the surface looks pretty close now, like wrinkled shell and shot through with pink webs and blue streaks. And then these tentacles peel out of the surface, swaying like reeds underwater.
“What are them things?”
“There’s nothing to worry about,” mutters Erin. “It’s just the ship docking with us.”
There’s a soft thump on the roof above us and a squelching noise.
“Them feelers,” I go. “It’s … alive?” “Yes,” answers Peyto. “It’s alive and it’s smart.” “Whoa, that thing’s a creature. And we’re going inside it?” “No, not a creature. It’s an organic machine for space travel.”
“But you’re saying it’s got a brain?”
“Not exactly,” goes Erin. “Its intelligence was designed separately using a machine, then transferred into a living organic shell. The process is like fusing body and mind – we call it birthing.”
I must be gawping like a loon. “You made a spaceship what can live and think?”
Peyto tries to explain. “Not us, our ancestors. Ordinary machines just break down in space. The best way to make a ship really last is to make it alive so it can repair itself.”
“Docking complete,” goes Erin.
Then something grows out of the wall opposite me. It bulges like a giant zit, before popping open and squirting me with a warm gust of cheesy air.
“Blimey, gut rot! Does it usually guff like this?” Erin ain’t amused. “It’s not in prime condition.” “You can say that again – smells like it’s been eating something right dodgy …”
“It doesn’t eat anything,” she sighs.
I suppose that should put my mind at rest a bit, but as we squeeze past the zit flaps into the ship proper, there’s these ridged walls flickering with bluish light, and I can’t help thinking it looks like the inside of a giant gob.
Erin calls out, “Hello?”
Nothing.
“Should it be saying stuff back?” I go. I psych myself for a huge, booming voice to reply.
“It should,” mutters Peyto. “But there’s some kind of communication fault.”
“Like what? Is it deaf or asleep or something?”
“No, the messages are just getting lost in transit, I think. It’s just malfunctioning,” goes Erin. “Communication has been … patchy since the emergency.”
“Emergency?”
“There’s a hull breach.”
“You mean there’s a flippin’ hole in it?” Even I know that ain’t good news. “Ain’t we gonna run out of air or something?”
“Don’t worry, we’re sealed off from where the breach is in the central shaft. We’re safe in here.”
Safe? Inside a wounded space monster? Safe is tucked up in my sleeping bag in our hut … in Elephant and Castle … thirteen miles away. But it seems to me we’re a good deal farther away than thirteen miles.
I glance about at the walls like they’re all set to cave in. “What made the hole?”
“I told you it’s safe,” insists Erin. “The Aeolus might not be a hundred percent, but it’s not ready to fall apart just yet.”
Neither her nor Peyto seems that freaked out right now by the “emergency” – maybe it’s under control. I try to relax a bit.
The main chamber inside the ship is speckled green, and ever so gently it throbs. And it’s wet – not something you really want to touch, but I ain’t got a choice on that front cos the only way to move is to shove yourself off the walls. Waving your arms and legs like you’re underwater just leaves you where you are. The Aeolus walls are warm and stringy – the gunge glues itself to your fingers, but that makes it easier to get a grip on things so you can swing from one hold to the next. It don’t seem to bother Erin and Peyto, but I don’t like the way the gunk clings to your skin.
“So this ain’t normal, then, the way it’s all sick?” I go.
“It’s not an animal, Cass,” answers Erin a tad wearily. “It doesn’t catch illnesses, it doesn’t feel pain, it doesn’t get tired or sleep …”
“But it has changed since we got here,” Peyto chips in. “It’s not the ship we set out in, is it? All perfect and clean …”
“What do you expect?” she goes. “It’s damaged so badly it can’t self-repair. Its systems are in a critical state.”
Just as I’m poking at the walls, I spot a rogue spider that’s hitched a ride on me – it spins away from my sleeve, legs akimbo, paying out thread as it goes. And when it brushes the surface of the ship, it sinks in and disappears.
“Hey! I thought you said it doesn’t eat stuff!”
But just as suddenly as it swallows the spider, it spits him out again right as rain. I scoop him up and he tethers to my collar. Erin smiles at me then. It’s the first time I’ve seen her do that, and just for a second she’s someone else, someone proper beautiful. Then she brushes her ruined earmuffs against the wall, and all the mud from the Thames just drains out of them. They come up fresh as dandelion heads.
We venture farther into the chamber, and it’s much deeper than I first figured. It’s spooking me out cos by now I can’t see if I’m facing up or down. Past my dangling feet I spot where the blue light’s coming from – there’s this diamond shape made from lanterns that flicker together like they’re disturbed by a breeze, though there ain’t no movement in the air. I count up the lights on each side – seven by seven. Except there’s gaps in the grid.
In an effort to get a better look, I lose my balance and end up nudging into Peyto. And that’s lesson number two about this new world – once you’re moving, you don’t slow down, you just float onward till you hit something.
“Keep zigzagging across the chamber till you reach that square of lights,” explains Peyto.
“Easy for you to say. I’m about as good at this as a pig on wheels.”
I’m putting everything into getting my zigzag moves right, so I don’t really get a decent view of the grid of lights till I’m practically on top of it. And so it’s a shock when I see what it’s made up of.
Each light is at the head of something that looks like a long see-through blister.
And inside each blister, submerged in milky-blue liquid, is a body.
A human body.
The faces are pale and empty. And round every neck is a flinder, twinkles of blue and white light. Somehow I know they’re just sleeping, not dead. It’s the way the hair’s sprouting across their arms and legs. And the nails, curling out from fingers and toes, like ribbons. It fills me with dread to think how long they must have been lying like this, not moving, just growing, more like trees than people. Symbols flicker and swarm over the surface of the blisters, casting light and shadows on the skin below, sometimes spinning, sometimes drawing lines or nets. Busy. Watching.
Three of the blisters are open and empty, wrinkled as walnut shells. And then it dawns on me that this was where Peyto and Erin have come from. Except there’s three empty blisters, not two. And I remember Peyto talking by the village well about a woman they needed to find …
Erin comes alongside me. “This is the sleeper bay. Forty-nine of us in total.”
“You live here, like this, asleep?”
“These are the pods. They’re life-support capsules, like a kind of quarantine so no germs can reach the people inside,” explains Peyto. “They’re more preserved than asleep, kept on slow-life –”
“You mean frozen?”
“Sort of … It’s called stasis. You don’t live but you don’t die. Like animals that hibernate. That way the ship can replace your cells when they grow old. It’s the flinders that make it possible, though we don’t really understand how they work.”
“What?”
“The flinde
rs are old, very old,” goes Peyto. “From a time when our ancestors had a greater understanding. But we lost that knowledge aeons ago. We know they’re powerful, but they keep their secrets. Some say that each flinder is itself alive and that it draws the vitality, the soul, of a sleeper deep into its core for safekeeping.”
“But how come you’re asleep in the first place?”
“Because of the distance we traveled,” says Erin. “We’d all have died long ago without stasis. It takes so long to move between stars, between galaxies …”
I just gawp at them. I want to laugh, I want to scream. But what’s the point? I can see with my own eyes that the impossible is real. My turn to make like a mudfish.
“You ain’t from Earth.” Slowly, like a voice waking me up, what that means sinks in. “There’s people on other worlds? Human people?”
“It’s as much a shock to us as it is to you, Cass,” goes Erin. “We came here looking for a new world, a new home. The last thing we expected was to find people.”
The thought that they was born on a different world is so off-the-scale strange that I can’t stop staring at them. How can they be real? Are they really like me? Or are they just acting human? But maybe that’s what they figured when they first clapped eyes on us.
“We’re from Homefleet,” goes Peyto. “It’s an artificial colony of different ships all tethered together.”
I’m still gawping, so he goes, “It’s like a convoy in space … It’s in another galaxy. It’s taken us about a billion of your years to get here.”
All I can do is stare.
“I told you you wouldn’t believe me,” he goes.
I think about him holing up in Big Ben in his pajamas. He’s like a regular Captain Jameson. With a time-traveling galleon. And right now I’m wishing I’d taken a bit more notice of Wilbur’s comics … I feel like I’m one step away from going loopy, and all of a sudden I figure I have to bite my lip on the big questions, the really huge questions. All I can deal with is what’s happening right now.
I look at the sleeper pods. “So how come no one else is awake? What about the adults …” I remember the third empty sleeper pod. “It ain’t just you two, is it? There’s someone else, the woman you’re looking for.”