Planesrunner (Everness Book One)

by Ian McDonald

  “Worst comes to it, we could even hook up to a thunderstorm,” Sen said. “Bit dodgy, though. If you gets that wrong…” She left the sentence unfinished. She looked uncomfortable, as if she had said too much.

  Everett tried to calculate the amount of energy stored in the plates of batteries. There was technology here decades beyond anything on E10. These seemed to use the same carbon nanofibre as the ship's skin, skeleton and lift-cells. Yet their computer technology—their comptator technology—was how Victorians would build computers. Different worlds, different techs.

  “I's taking you to the COG,” Sen said.

  “Centre of Gravity,” Everett said, thinking aloud. “Of course, the cargo and the ballast all has to be equally placed around the centre of gravity to keep the ship stable.”

  “Smart, aincha?”

  “Thank you,” Everett said. His new boots clicked on the spindly spun-carbon catwalk, delicate as spiderweb. That was it. Organic. This was a body. He was inside a living thing, a whale-machine.

  “Tell me about Mr. Sharkey.”

  “What about him? He's first mate and weighmaster.”

  “I mean, those were pretty cool-looking guns.”

  “Cool, were they? Impressed you, did he? Charmed you, didn't he? He's a real charmer, all that Southern gentleman stuff, and the manners, and ‘sir,' and ‘ma'am,' then gives them a big hunk of that hokey Old Testament stuff and they just roll over and let him tickle their bellies. Weighmaster, soldier of fortune, adventurer, gentleman my arse. Miles O'Rahilly Lafayette Sharkey's not even his real name. And he ain't no gentleman. No natural gentleman. Oh he's Miles Sharkey, all right, his da was Reverend Jasper Sharkey, preacher and Bible salesman. He ran travelling tent missions all over Georgia and the Home States—that's where all that Word of the Dear comes from. Soon as he could he bailed and took himself off all over the Confed. That's where yer O'Rahilly Lafayette comes from. You get farther down there if you're a gentleman. The story he tells is that he shot his own da in a duel because he slapped Sharkey's mum at the Peachtree Ball in Atlanta. Now, I reckons he did shoot his da, but it weren't over his dear ol' ma. Reckon the old bugger got hammered on the mint juleps and started mouthing off. Don't like anyone looking cleverer than him, our Sharkey. Been all around the world, he says: debt collector, art dealer, con man, bodyguard, pearl fisherman, barman, diplomat. That's what he said he were when we picked him up in Stamboul. Spun us some tale about working with the tsarists against the Ottomans and the Ottomans against the tsarists, but he knew his way around a lading bill and he can negotiate anyone up. That was back in oh seven; I was a kid then. He's good, our Sharkey; love the omi, but he wants you to like him and sometimes, well, that's not good in a person.”

  “In my world, the Ottoman Empire ended a hundred years ago. And we've got one America: the United States.”

  “Gor, that's dull. We got three. There's the Confederated States of America; that's Sharkey's home. It's a rich rich place. It's all land, you see. No one ever went broke buying land. So now they got all these genetic-whatchermacallit crops and they're making a fortune. They even got this new genetically-thingied bean can produce oil—like your oil. Liquid fuel. Revolutionise the world, they say. ‘Cept I reckons we's gone too far in one direction to be able to turn back and head another direction. Sort of like turning an airship. Needs a long run up and a lot of airspace. Atlanta's beautiful, though, that wall of glass towers all gleaming and goldie in the morning light. Then there's the United States. Which is like what you have, I reckons. They think they're the real America coz they don't recognise the Confed, so they gets really angry if you mention the CSA or Atlanta or anything like that. They was the original and the best, they says. I mean, it's a hundred and sixty years. Get over it. Then on the other side of the Rockies it's Amexica. That's the bit that broke away from Mexico in the last civil war. Now that's a doss. Los Angeles, haciendas and orange trees and cool pools and everything. I could stay there forever. Beautiful. I likes a bit of sun on me back. Oh, and there's a fourth. I's forgetting Canada. Funny how you do that.”

  Sen's toe tapped on metal. Everett looked down to see a small steel medallion set into the mesh. It was engraved with three triangles, superimposed on top of each other.

  “The centre of gravity,” Everett said, looking up around him at the spaces and strut and stresses of the huge airship, all focused here, all balanced in equilibrium around this one point. He touched the little metal medallion. He felt he could balance Everness on the ball of a finger.

  “'Tain't much. Come and see outside,” Sen said. Lateral walk-ways joined the main spine at the centre of gravity. Sen took the right catwalk. They walked between the gas cells, held in their nanocarbon nets.

  “So, who is this Iddler?” Everett said, and remembering Sen's answer the last time he had asked her that question, said, “And don't give me that stupid rhyme again.”

  “What's wrong with that rhyme?” Sen said. “I made it up.”

  Everything she said was a question or a challenge. It was infuriating, it was fascinating.

  “You could just tell me.”

  Sen relented.

  “You know everywhere there's always some big fat bugger who don't exactly run everything, because if he did that, he'd draw attention to himself, but can like, sort things, knows people, makes things go away. And in this business, sooner or later you runs into something you wish you could make go away. Annie, now she tells me things she won't tell another living soul, not even Sharkey—and there was this time, early on, just after we got the ship, and she got this tax bill she couldn't pay. New captain with a bona ship: the only kind of loan she'll get is from a bank wanting to foreclose on Everness and sell her on. So she goes to the Iddler and he makes it go away. Like that. Gone. ‘Cept instead of owing the bank, now she's owing him. So every so often, and it's not that often, he asks her to run a little consignment for him on the QT. Extra special like—there's always some cove of his at the other end to take receipt in out-of-the-way places, kind of off the normal landing sites. ‘Coz we may be big, but I can drop her on the head of a pin.

  “So it's all dally until two months ago, when the Iddler's sharpies come calling and ask her to take a consignment over to St. Petersburg. Annie's not in a position to say no, so she does, but up over Reugen she gets hailed by an Imperial Deutscher Customs cutter. They order us to stand to, drop anchors, and make ground. These consignments, they're not exactly as you might say, bijou. The moment they comes aboard, it'll be in their faces like a dog's bollocks. We daren't outrun and we can't outgun it. So Annie orders me to take her out over the Baltic like we haven't heard, and then on the third hail, as they're getting above us to force us down, we turn and drop the consignment into the sea. In the drink. Oh, sorry Mein Kapitan, radio problems; of course we'll comply. We make ground at Stralsund, they come aboard, and we're clean as a nun's fanny.

  “The problem is, the Iddler don't like it when he loses a consignment. He's out of pocket. He wants compensation. Hard dinari. And our captain, she's not one of the bigger families, like the Gallacellis or even the Bromleys. They got relatives and deep pockets. Us, we got ourselves, and Everness. It's about cash flow—so Sharkey tells me. Dinari coming in quicker than dinari going out. Problem is, it's other way round too much of the time. So, the Iddler's sending his sharpies to give us little reminders.”

  “Would they have cut you up?”

  “Them fruit-boys? Like to see ‘em try. Hey, you're in luck, Everett Singh.”

  The crosswalk ended at a hatch in Everness's skin. Sen peered up through the porthole and waved at something Everett could not see. Sen spun the hatch wheel; lugs unfastened; the hatch swung inwards.

  “Come on then, Everett Singh.”

  Everett stepped out onto a balcony as delicate and elegant as a spider's nest. He resisted the temptation to glance down at what was beneath his feet. He looked out. A hundred metres away lay Everness's neighbour, nosed in at the docking arm. She carried—airsh
ips, Everett had learned, are always female—a crest of three golden crowns on a blue shield and the name Leonora Christine. She was offloading; pallets and containers running down on hoists from her cargo holds into the receiving arms of busy, scuttling forklifts and loaders. The last of the small fast clouds had been cleared from the sky; the wind had dropped; the air was intensely clear and still. The smoke from the eternal chimneys rose straight up, a palisade along the edge of London. Everett shivered at the promise of deep winter cold. It was only six days to Christmas.

  Next he looked along. The balcony was on Everness's exact centreline. To Everett's right were the forward impeller pods and stabilisers. The windows of the bridge and the crew quarters were hidden by the forward curve of the hull. To his left were the aft impellers and the elegant sweep of the tail fins. Everness, you are a beautiful girl, Everett thought. He gripped the railing. This was real. This was here.

  “Look up,” Sen suggested, smiling wickedly. Everett almost went back over the rail with surprise. Mchynlyth's face grinned down into his from a distance of a few centimetres. He was standing on the hull; facing a peeled-back flap of ship-skin a metre on a side. A harness buckled over his baggy orange flight-suit connected him by a line to the rail that ran the length of Everness's back. Mchynlyth was abseiling on the outer hull of an airship. As Everett watched, Mchynlyth rolled down the skin to cover the exposed ribs and then ran what looked like a knife along the edges. Wherever the knife passed, the join vanished. The skin was whole and entire. Mchynlyth noticed Everett and Sen beneath him, grinned between his legs at them, then jumped off the hull, paid out line, and dropped lightly onto the balcony beside them.

  “How did you do that?” Everett asked. “The hull, I mean, it's nanocarbon.”

  Mchynlyth held up his tool. It was indeed a knife, curiously curved. The edge of the blade seemed blurred, like a heat-haze.

  “Skin-ripper,” Mchynlyth said. He held the blade up before his eyes and gazed at it with delight. “Only thing'll cut nano is nano. Cut her open and sew her up again sweet as a wee nut.” Then he folded the blade into its handle and slid it into one of his many pockets.

  “So are we still air-shape and Hackney-fashion?” Sen asked.

  “Sure, she's the sweetest ship running out of this town, and that's including that great nancy Swedish bird over there,” Mchynlyth said, disconnecting the line from his harness. His accent was so thick and his voice so soft Everett had to concentrate fiercely to make out what he was saying. “So, you're for the weigh-in then?”

  “I wish everyone would stop going on about it. It's making me nervous.”

  “Ach, away with your nervousness, you jinny. Sure it's just a formality.” A flick on the line activated a winch high up on the ship's back that reeled it in. He stepped out of the webbing harness and threw it over his shoulder. “Right then, son.”

  They were scales, proper scales, down on the loading dock. Two metres high, two metres across, brass and wood and rivets: scales like the ones the figure of Justice held high above the courts of the Old Bailey. On one side was an antique buttoned leather chair, so old that stuffing sprung through the cracked upholstery. On the other, counterbalancing it, a large glass cylinder. Above the cylinder was a brass tap connected to a run of hose that snaked out of sight among the containers and crates. The whole of Everness's crew had turned out: exactly four. Sharkey stood by the scale.

  “Take a seat, sir.”

  Everett gingerly hauled himself into the leather armchair. The tilt mechanism had been wedged so it only gave a few millimetres beneath him. His feet swung.

  “One moment, Mr. Sharkey.” Captain Anastasia held out her hand. “Mr. Singh, your shush-bag, please.” Everett reluctantly handed Dr. Quantum over to Captain Anastasia. “It is mandatory that all prospective crew members be mass-rated. Mr. Sharkey.”

  Sharkey kicked a lever, the scales clanked and Everett's feet hit the ground.

  “'Thou hast been weighed in the balance,'” Sharkey said ominously, and turned the wheel on the metal faucet. Water gushed into the glass cylinder. The sound of gurgling pipes and surging water was the only noise in the huge cargo deck. Faces were grave. Then Everett felt his knees stretch and his feet leave the deck. He rose into the air, bobbed up and down a few times while Sharkey fine-tuned the inflow, then came to rest.

  “What is the displacement, weighmaster?” Captain Anastasia asked. Sharkey ran a finger along the brass scale.

  “One hundred and two pounds, twelve ounces of ballast,” Sharkey announced. There was a small round of applause. Everett understood now. Airships were not balloons. They couldn't heat air to ascend and vent it to descend. Every gramme of lift was sealed in those gas cells above him. Everness flew by neutral buoyancy. Her mass equalled the mass of air she displaced. Basic physics. She naturally neither floated nor sank. The impellers and the steering vanes would lift her to cruising height; she would float there as readily as at ground level. Every gramme of mass that came aboard Everness affected its buoyancy. A fourteen-year-old boy would not send Everness's two-hundred metre envelope crashing out of the sky, but his mass would still need to be accounted for, to the gramme.

  “Release the ballast, Mr. Sharkey.”

  “Aye, ma'am.”

  Sharkey released a catch, and the brass bottom of the ballast cylinder fell open. The rush of water vanished through the floor mesh and splashed away down drains and channels. Everett banged down hard on the deck. He imagined the water jetting from a waste vent in the hull, like a big dog having a tiny pee.

  “Welcome to Everness, Mr. Singh,” Captain Anastasia said. She offered a hand. Everett took it. Her grip was very firm and her eyes were true and unwavering. “Now, what's for supper?”

  They had been watching the tower for two days. There was a sweet spot behind a pillar in Rumbold and Sachs's department store cafe, a little table for two among the potted palms with a clear view of the entrance to the Tyrone Tower. A place where you could see but not be seen. A place where you could sit all day, watch and take notes, and not be disturbed.

  “Have you not got enough by now?” Sen complained. She was not a good staker-out. She got bored and fidgety sitting, watching, and taking notes, from opening hour to closing time. She looked around her or went off on extended expeditions around the store—“bona togs in here”—or tried to engage Everett in conversation when he was concentrating on syncing the photographs he had taken on his phone with Dr. Quantum.

  “What?”

  “I said, do you want some tea?”

  “I've just had tea.”

  “I know. Do you want some more?”

  “No thanks.” Everett had drunk so much tea on the stake-out that his bladder felt like it was turning to leather. What, who might he have missed on his too-frequent trips to the bathroom?

  “Are you sure?”

  “I'm sure.”

  “I'm having some.”

  “You have some.”

  “Would you like a bijou bun?”

  “No!” Everett snapped. “I would not like a bijou bun.”

  Sen sat up and bristled in offence.

  “Well, I'm having a Viennese whirl,” she declared, and got up noisily.

  “Sen, sorry…”

  She was as quick to forgive as to anger.

  “Are you really really really sure you don't want one?”

  She went to the self-service counter without waiting for his answer. For all its discreet view, the table in the third-floor coffee nook was second-best. When Everett had scoped out places to spy on the Plenitude headquarters, he had quickly sussed the sweetest spot of all: a bay window table in the Sweet Afton Tea Room on the second floor. It was closer to the street, closer to the faces, better positioned, and better concealed among the London ladies with their ribbon-bound boxes and striped bags of Christmas shopping. Everett had no sooner hidden Dr. Quantum behind the menu than a waiter, apron gleaming white, matching napkin folded over his arm, came up to the table.

  �
��I'd like some coffee,” Everett said. “A cafetiere of the Sumatra please.”

  “Tea,” Sen said. “And buns. Could you bring that there trolley over?”

  “I don't think so,” the waiter said.

  “Pardon?” Everett said.

  “I don't think so. You two, out.”

  “I want to order some coffee.”

  “Out,” the water repeated, leaning close so as not to be overheard by the other tables. “We don't serve your types in here.”

  “What?” Everett said, loud enough to make the morning coffee ladies look round.