by Ian McDonald
The crowd turned into Canal Place. Even icy Charlotte Villiers was taken aback for a moment. Men stood ten, twenty deep; barrel staves, bottles, cobblestones, pieces of furniture from the Knights of the Air fight in their hands. That fight had not ended properly. It had not been resolved, not the Hackney way. Its energy still hung in the streets like smoke. It clung to the fists of the mob. At their head was ‘Appening Ed, a small, squat terrier of a man—a union rep, a barroom lawyer (even if his barroom had been smashed to matchwood by the Bromley/ Everness brawl), a troublemaker, a man who had to be at the centre of everything. He was the closest thing Hackney Great Port had to a politician. He had anger management issues.
“Stop,” Charlotte Villiers said. The mob stopped dead. ‘Appening Ed's mouth fell open, such was the tone of command in Charlotte Villiers's voice.
“You don't tell us what to do, polone,” ‘Appening Ed shouted. “This is Hackney.” The mob murmured its agreement.
“Silence,” Charlotte Villiers said. And there was silence, by that same absolute authority. She stepped forward to confront ‘Appening Ed. “This is a Plenitude affair. Do not interfere.”
“Don't care if it's the Dear Almighty's affair, you don't march in here with your sharpies like you own the place. You don't have the jurisdiction.”
“I would strongly advise you not to obstruct us in the execution of our operation,” Charlotte Villiers said. But all the people heard was the word “execution,” and a ripple ran through the crowd that turned into a mutter, into a surge of voices. Fists punched the air, waved cobblestones and clubs in the direction of Charlotte Villiers. A bottle smashed at Charlotte Villiers's feet. She did not flinch. In a flicker of movement, a gun was in her grey-gloved hand. This was not the elegant, decorative piece she had pulled on Everett to try to stop him from jumping through the Heisenberg Gate. This was small and black and alien.
“Oh, now we see the violence in the system,” ‘Appening Ed said. “Well, polone…” He strode toward Charlotte Villiers, a head and a half shorter than her, chin jutting, finger jabbing, bristling fury. “I'm going to take that little toy pop-gun and I'm going to shove it—”
There was a high-pitched whine in Everett's ear, sharp and painful, like a needle up his auditory nerve. He saw a disc of light engulf ‘Appening Ed. And he was gone. Vanished.
“Oh the Dear oh the Dear,” Sen said. “I didn't think they were real.”
“What's real?”
“A jumpgun. Oh the Dear. Oh my God.”
Whatever a jumpgun was, the moment of shock passed. The crowd gave a deep, animal roar and surged forward. Charlotte Villiers calmly levelled her weapon.
“I can set the focus as wide as I like,” she said. The crowd stopped.
“Where's Ed?” a voice shouted, and another: “Bring him back. Right now, you bitch!”
Charlotte Villiers smiled.
“Even if I wanted to, I couldn't do that. You see, I've absolutely no idea where he is.”
Sticks and bottles came arcing from the back of the crowd. Cobbles crashed and rolled around Charlotte Villiers's feet. Bottles exploded like grenades. Nothing touched her. She held a steady aim.
“Leave now. I will shoot. Do you want to see your children, your lovers ever again? Leave us.”
“What is that thing?” Everett whispered, up on the catwalk.
“It doesn't kill you. It just sends you away and you can't get back.”
Then a bottle spinning through the air broke the standoff. It struck Charlotte Villiers hard on the cheek. She staggered. The crowd cheered, deep in its throat. Charlotte Villiers touched her fingers to her cheek and drew them back red. She stared in amazement at the blood. The police rushed forward, batons raised to charge, and surrounded her. Under a hail of missiles, they withdrew around the corner of the warehouse back on to Andre Street. A few of the younger, bolder Airish gave chase, then remembered the power of Charlotte Villiers's little gun and stopped at the corner to throw stones and jeers after the retreating sharpies.
“Let's get back to Everness,” Sen said. She didn't wait for the elevator but tracked back across the warehouse roof to the gallery around the canal wharf.
“I still don't know what she did there,” Everett called after her. “I still don't know what a jumpgun is.”
Sen stopped up on the roofline, silhouettes against the hard winter sky.
“It's a Plenitude weapon. It's supposed to be kind. It doesn't kill you. It just sends you into the same location in a random parallel universe. Biff boff gone. And you don't come back again. That's the story. Some kind of kind, that is. ‘Coz it ain't just one of the Nine—sorry, Ten Worlds. It's any of ‘em, all them what you got in your comptator, Everett Singh. It could be like, no air, or the middle of the ocean, or all ice, or in a war, or the Dear knows what. But hey, it's not like she actually shot you or anything.”
Everett's imagination raced as he followed Sen over the rooftops and dropped down onto the gallery, then down to street level and into the bustle and throng of Hackney Great Port. Charlotte Villiers knew he was here. Through the Iddler she knew exactly what ship at what berth. Her retreat was only temporary. She would be back, cleverer, more powerful. She wouldn't stop. She'd come straight to Everness next time and she would come with strength, that no one could humiliate her again. He had to move now. That talk with Captain Anastasia; that would have to be now. The Iddler, the Bromleys, now Charlotte Villiers and her secret organisation. Everyone was after Anastasia Sixsmyth. He had to tell her she would never be safe in Hackney Great Port again. Berlin: he'd overheard her talking with Sen about how much she loved Berlin, the fun they had there. Get out to Berlin. Even Berlin might not be far enough. Soon, very soon, sooner than he had planned, he had to get Tejendra, get to the gate, get Laura and Victory-Rose, and get out of the Plenitude altogether. Get somewhere they could never find and could never follow, like being hit with a jumpgun. Except that it wouldn't be random. It would be carefully picked, oh so carefully. The jumpgun. What kind of insane weapon was that? E3's jump technology was advanced, but this was a handgun-sized Heisenberg Gate, one you could slip into a pocket or a clutch-bag. This came from somewhere else. Was it purely random, or could it be programmed? What if he connected it to the Infundibulum? A gun that could shoot you anywhere in the Panoply? Mad stuff. Mad ideas. Think about Captain Anastasia. You're about to tell her that her world is over. How are you going to do that? Everett stopped in the middle of the street. His elbows and shoulders ached. What, why? He had been so tied up in plans and strategies and possibilities that he'd forgotten he was still carrying the shopping bags. Groceries for a Christmas dinner no one would ever eat. But if he dumped them, Captain Anastasia would ask questions before he had time to prepare convincing answers. She might never get the pheasant makhani, but she might like the sari.
Everett was at the sink, drying coffee mugs (no two of them matched, every one of them was chipped) when he felt the change. It was small, an almost imperceptible disturbance that didn't even throw him off balance or send much more than a ripple across the dish-washing water, but in the pit of his stomach Everett knew he was no longer connected to the ground. He went to the porthole. The slates and glass skylights of the warehouses were sliding beneath him. The service arm that had bound Everness to the docking hub swung in to the side of the gantry, dripping ballast water from the pipes. Sparks crackled around the electricity charge port. A dockhand in an orange hi-viz, a leather helmet, and goggles spoke into a walkie-talkie and raised a hand in farewell as Everett drifted over him. Engine pods swivelled on their mountings. Everness turned as she lifted. She drifted over the back of Leonora Christine, gaining height all the time. As the airship spun around her axis, Hackney Great Port played in panorama across the galley's small, half-steamed-up porthole. From above, moored four to a docking hub, the airships looked like petals, Hackney Great Port a field of titanic flowers. Railway lines ran like silver veins on their viaducts and elevated tracks. The roofs went on forever;
here was a glinting thread of canal, there the connecting weave of power lines. Now the great, monolithic mass of Haggerstown passed in front of his view. Higher now and the towers of London came into view, from the corporate blocks of the city, shouldering like thugs up to St. Paul's, bullying it with their cast of gods and angels and gargoyles, down the length of Fleet Street to the Strand and the river front to the government palaces at Whitehall. Highest of all, so slim and improbable it looked like a cut-scene from a Japanese RPG, was the spire of Sadler's Wells Skyport, heavy with docked airships. To the west were the clustered skyscrapers of Bloomsbury. Everett picked out the jagged spike of the Tyrone Tower. Exhilaration turned to horror.
“You can't lift now!” Everett yelled in the small wooden coffin of the galley. “You can't go now! I have to…Go back go back go back!” He banged his fists against the hull. The nanocarbon weave took his blows and did not even give back as Everness continued to ascend, smooth and stately, as if being airborne were the most natural thing in the world. Now he could see the reservoirs and marshes sparkling with frost, the loop of the river at Greenwich and the long run down to the sea. The engine pods swivelled into horizontal flight. But Sharkey had said he was a day from completing loading. This was an unscheduled lift. Everett burst from the galley onto the curving forward catwalk, took the spiral staircase up to the control level two steps at a time. The bridge door was open. Every screen was alive, every monitor glowing, green displays flickering through the magnifier screens. Sharkey glanced up from his station at the radio deck at the sound of Everett's approach. Sen stood at the helm, a control lever under each hand. Captain Anastasia stood at the great curved window, hands clasped behind her back, Hackney Marshes and the great silver bow of the Thames at Woolwich at her feet.
“What is this, where are we going? You can't go, not now,” Everett shouted.
Captain Anastasia did not turn, did not even move a muscle to acknowledge the interruption.
“Mr. Sharkey,” she said in an even, low, utterly dangerous voice. “Escort Mr. Singh to the galley. If he displeases you in any way, confine him there for the duration of the flight. Mr. Singh, I allow nothing on my bridge that I do not believe to be beautiful or know to be useful. Your unseemly language has failed you in the first part: I'm giving you a chance to comply in the second. Hot chocolate. On this bridge, quick smart.”
“What's going on? I've never heard her like this,” Everett said as Sharkey planted a hand firmly in his back and steered him off the bridge. The weighmaster did not reply until out of earshot, and then in a low voice: “'Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions.' Oh, I heard her like that. Not often, and always memorably, but I heard her, and I seen her.” Sharkey opened the galley door for Everett and closed the two of them in the tiny cabin. “You better make the best damn hot chocolate in your life, sir. And I'll take one as well.”
Everett melted chocolate, whipped in cream until it was thick and glorious, dripped in chilli-warmed sugar syrup. Everness was climbing steadily over the great docks at Silverton, a geometric waterland of wharves and basins and locks.
“So why are we flying? Where are we going?”
Sharkey sucked in his lower lip. “To Goodwin, sir. The Goodwin Sands. ‘Why, yet it lives there uncheck'd that Antonio hath a ship of rich lading wrecked on the narrow seas; the Goodwins, I think they call the place; a very dangerous flat and fatal, where the carcasses of many a tall ship lie buried…'”
“Is that from the Bible?”
“No, Shakespeare. The Merchant of Venice. I know Shakespeare too, and Milton, and Moby Dick, but I generally stay away from them. Psychos and freaks and sociopaths quote Shakespeare. The Goodwin Sands, six miles off the coast of Kent. And it's as true for many an airship as for Duke Antonio's trading ships. They say you can see their ribs and spars, their spines and skeletons, sticking out of the sand at low water. And that's where we're going, friend. Amongst all those things Miss Sen been teaching you about the Airish way of life, did she ever mention the word kris?”
“I've heard of amriya.” Everett poured Sharkey a tiny cup of thick, sweet, chilli-warm chocolate. Sharkey took a sip and closed his eyes in pleasure.
“That sir, is God's own chocolate. Kris, well you are partly correct; in some ways it's like an amriya, in that it can't be refused. Not with honour. A kris is a challenge to a duel. A duel of airships. No one's called kris in a generation, but Ma Bromley, the evil old bitch, she prides herself that she's the heart and soul of Hackney Great Port, the only one who remembers the old ways. She remembered that one well enough. She served the challenge right proper and pretty, all properly served by the youngest son. Master Kyle Bromley. Master Prettyface Kyle. Called out Anastasia's names three times, and the scroll all neatly tied with three red ribbons and all properly worded in the most formal and correct language. ‘For the many insults, injuries, and affronts that I have endured from the hearts and hands and lips of the master and commander of Everness, I call and conjure Captain Anastasia Sixsmyth in kris: that it is meet, right and her bounden duty to offer satisfaction to the Master and Commander of the Arthur P in aerial combat, me and mine, thee and thine, thither and yon, ship to ship and hand to hand and heart to soul, in the time-honoured place at 3 o'clock this avvo. And if she sheweth herself not, then let her skin be pierced with many barbs and her gas deflated, her spine broken and her engines bent, and let her name be shamed and dishonoured, so that all flee from her very shadow, down all the generations.' Good mouth-filling stuff, and apparently correct in every detail. She's thorough, is Ma Bromley. If only her sons had inherited her spunk.”
“When did this happen?”
“While you were out buying in our Christmas comestibles. Kyle Bromley in person, the little bastard, with a big grin all over his face. He can count himself lucky he still has a face, after the drubbing Mchynlyth and I gave his siblings. Of course, that does make me partly to blame…. ‘For the many insults, injuries, and affronts…' You thought you saw the captain angry with you when you sassed her up on the bridge there—foolish, sir, foolish. You should have seen her when that snivelling little piss-drip handed her the challenge. Him, marry Captain Anastasia?”
“Duelling airships,” Everett said, carefully pouring Captain Anastasia's cup of chocolate and wiping away a drip from the rim with a piece of kitchen paper.
“The rules are pretty simple. The victor either tows the defeated party back to port, or they lie broken and smashed on the Sands of Goodwin. How we work that is entirely up to us.” Sharkey drank down the remainder of his chocolate. “Let's get back to Annie. She's going to need all hands, even yours, Mr. Singh.”
Captain Anastasia was still standing by the window when Everett reentered the bridge, more discreetly this time. Once again she did not acknowledge him but put out her hand. Everett gave her the mug of hot chocolate and stepped back. Captain Anastasia took a sip. Everett heard her intake of breath.
“In your world, Mr. Singh, do you have anything to compare with this?”
Everness followed the line of the Thames, gliding over the frozen fields of Thamesmead and Erith, now coming up on the bright, silvery gap the river cut at Dartford in the wall of power plants and chimney stacks. Beyond it the river broadened to the sun-shimmer of the estuary. Airships flew lower and slower than aeroplanes; cruising height was a thousand metres. Everett tried to work out the speed from the gentle processing of fields and roads and villages under his feet. One hundred and fifty, two hundred kilometres per hour? He gave up. The slow stately flight was hypnotic. Aeroplanes lifted you too high; you couldn't read the details, you were disconnected from the earth. From Everness's bridge Everett could see trains dashing along their lines, rails flashing as they caught the low sun. Cars and vans wound through the narrow village streets. Smoke rose from house chimneys; straight as a pencil line in the still air. A great steam-powered tractor puffed across a field; seagulls followed the plough as it turned the hard earth f
or early wheat. And quiet. So quiet: the electric impeller engines made almost no noise. He could hear the clack and clatter of a train, the cries of the gulls, the tolling of an iron church bell. This was how you flew when you dreamed of flying, when you just lifted your arms and because it was a dream, you lifted from the ground. Light as air.
“No, ma'am,” Everett said. “Nothing like this.”
Everett thought Captain Anastasia might have smiled.
“Miss Sixsmyth!”
“Ma'am,” Sen called from her piloting station.
“Maintain heading. Standard altitude for crossing the Smoke Ring.” To Everett, Captain Anastasia added, “Bad air, Mr. Singh.”
“Standard six thousand feet, ma'am.” Sen pulled back on the altitude control levers. The ground dropped away without any physical sensation of tilt or movement. Everness approached the great wall of chimneys and cooling towers. From this greater height Everett could see the curve; not a line across the world, but a wall. Shutting in or shutting out? he wondered. Sen took the ship through the layer of orange smog where the individual plumes from the smokestacks mingled and merged and exchanged chemicals. Everness trembled in the eddies of smoke and hot air from the cooling towers. Captain Anastasia's cup rattled on its saucer. She took another sip, daring Everett to reach for a handhold to steady himself. He looked down into the mouths of the chimneys, the gaping black maws of the cooling towers. Everness shook again; then they were over the Smoke Ring.
“Bona air, Mr. Singh,” Captain Anastasia said.
“I have Arthur P on camera ten,” Sharkey said.
“Screen six, if you please, Mr. Sharkey.” A monitor hanging on a pivot arm above the window flickered to display a view out over Everness's tail fin. A big airship was approaching head-on, flat and menacing as a shark. The crest on its brow was a dragon coiled around a crowned orb.