Planesrunner (Everness Book One)

by Ian McDonald

  Mchynlyth: out on the hull under this crystal sky, swinging on his line high above the spires of London, laughing like a devil as he worked the engineering trickery they would need to fool Dunsfold Air Traffic control. Mchynlyth: Glasgow-born but not Scottish; Indian DNA but not Punjabi. Airish. You are what you choose to be.

  Captain Anastasia: grace, power, and dignity even with half her ear ripped off. Sassy, classy, daring. She terrified Everett; he adored her. He could bring her hot chocolate with chilli forever. You are everything I admire, Everett thought. I would love to be like you. I would love to be you.

  Sen. He couldn't look at her. So light and frivolous, decking Everness out in Christmas decorations—lights blinked from every hook and nook on the bridge. So serious and focussed at the helm, guiding the ship over the Christmas lights of London. Her sulks that broke into grins; her cunning and her spontaneity; her pride that spun on its heel into offence. Her delight in everything shiny and bona.

  Family is what works, Captain Anastasia had said. Would his family work when he pushed it all back together again, on some world that looked enough like the one they came from for some version of the life they had to be possible? But that life hadn't worked. His mum and dad had split up. Who was he to force them to try again, in a whole new world? Would they split again? Would Laura even want to come with them? Would he just cause the ultimate split: Mum and Victory-Rose, Dad and Everett, forever apart in separate universes? It was a deep, dark shock, a fist clenched around the heart, for Everett to realise that every decision he had made, every action he had taken, had caused someone to pay a high and terrible price. It was never like that in the action movies. There were never any consequences.

  “Mr. Sharkey,” Captain Anastasia ordered.

  Sharkey thumbed a switch.

  “Dunsfold Control, Dunsfold Control, this is LTA Everness.”

  “Roger, Everness, this is Dunsfold.”

  “Request flight plan Hackney Great Port-Bristol Great Port.”

  “Roger that; is Captain Annie going home for Christmas?” the air-traffic controller said. He had a cocky, knowing voice. Everett could hear cheering in the background. Captain Anastasia pulled down a microphone on its boom arm.

  “No, Dunsfold. Repair docks.”

  “Don't they have repair docks in Hackney?” said the cheeky controller.

  “Not as cheap,” Captain Anastasia said. More laughter in the air-traffic control. On Everness's bridge, the mood was serious and edgy.

  “Okay, Everness, you are clear to proceed initial bearing two-sixty-eight degrees, twelve minutes, thirty seconds to Bristol Air Traffic handover; standard western flyway altitude,” the controller said. “By the way, Captain, I don't know how you did it, but whatever you did to Arthur P: fantabulosa, as you'd say.”

  “Thank you, Dunsfold. Out.” Captain Anastasia clicked off the radio. “Make it so, Miss Sixsmyth. Two hundred metres. Mr. Sharkey, activate our radar beacon. We don't want to graze the paint-work of any of those fine, shiny passenger liners.”

  The lights of London wheeled before Everett as Everness turned on her axis. As she turned she gained altitude. Sen played the impellers as sweetly as a musical instrument. Everness came on to her heading; Sen pushed forward the thrust levers and the great ship. Two hundred metres was tower-top height, skyscraper-scraping height. Everett held his breath at the parade of winged Victories and Nemesises with swords and shields and blindfolded Justices with scales all crowned with the recent snow, domes and crosses and spires and globes, seemingly just beneath his feet. He could look down into the street and see the steely shine of the city—ahead was the floodlit dome of St. Paul's, dazzling under its cap of snow, now Fleet Street and the Strand bright with flickering Christmas neons. He could see the cars, the trains, the people pushing on through the late snow, the river darting with fast hydrofoils and hovercraft. Sen touched the controls and nudged Everness a hairsbreadth towards the elegant terraces and snow-white squares of Bloomsbury. Light beamed up through the glass dome of the British Library. Ahead, the Tyrone Tower rose like a steel hand, its buttresses and gargoyles and cornices lit ghost-blue by floodlights. A single shaft of light stabbed skywards from its summit.

  “Take us in, Sen,” Captain Anastasia whispered. “Easy does it. We are supposed to be crippled.” Tottenham Court Road was a slash of neon; to the south, Soho a glowing knot of light. A few stray snowflakes blew across the great window and fell sparkling through the street glow; winter was closing in again. “Full stop, Miss Sixsmyth.” Sen pulled all the levers back. They clicked into neutral. Everness hung motionless half a kilometre east of the Tyrone Tower. “Mr. Sharkey, declare the emergency.”

  “Dunsfold, Dunsfold, LTA Everness declaring an emergency,” Sharkey said into the microphone. “We have lost main power. We have no motive power.”

  “Everness, we read,” said the Dunsfold air-traffic controller. It was the same man who had congratulated Captain Anastasia on her defeat of the Bromleys. He did not sound so chirpy now. “Are you drifting?”

  “We can hold station,” Sharkey said.

  “Notify us of your position.”

  Sharkey read out a string of digits.

  “Thank you, Everness. We have your radar beacon as well. Do you have an estimate?”

  “Two hours to restore main motive power,” Sharkey said.

  “We will issue a standard navigation hazard warning to all air traffic. At least you picked a quiet night for it, Everness.”

  “We'll notify you when we restore power. Out.”

  Captain Anastasia waited for two breaths, then picked up the intercom.

  “Mr. Mchynlyth, we're ready for you. Deploy the drone. Mr. Sharkey, on camera please.”

  The overhead screens lit, but Everett, in his favourite place by the glass, had the clearest view. The drone darted out from underneath Everness, hung a moment in the open air, then swivelled its fans and, under Mchynlyth's guidance, buzzed towards the Tyrone Tower. It was a little insect-like inspection drone, designed to go to those places on the outside of the ship unsafe for humans. There was no place that Mchynlyth considered unsafe, but he kept the drone because it was a clever, well-made piece of technology and he liked clever, well-made things. In design it was almost identical to the camera drone Everett had seen on the video clip Colette Harte had given him; jumping in from an aerial survey of E2: four fans, legs, and a processing core. Functional design was functional design, whatever the universe.

  The drone towed a line, a nanocarbon filament thin as a hair, strong as diamond. When Mchynlyth had shown the reel to Everett he had warned him to keep his fingers away from it. “Take them right off, snick-snack,” he said. “So clean you wouldn't even feel it.” So fine it was invisible on the low-resolution cameras, but Everett thought he glimpsed a gleam of light, like sun catching a strand of spider silk, as the line crossed one of the floodlight beams. Now the monitors switched to the drone camera. Mchynlyth brought it in low and low to the twenty-second floor and dropped the grapnel at the end of the line around the shoulders of a severe-looking helmeted warrior woman standing beside a shield. He cast off.

  “Mr. Sharkey, Mr. Singh, to the cargo deck.”

  Everett had never heard Captain Anastasia's voice so solemn. Now. The time was now. He wasn't ready. He had to prepare himself; he had to think himself into what he was going to do. No time. He had to be ready. There were words he had to say. There were good-byes; huge good-byes. He saw that Sen realised this too, that the time had come for them to be parted forever, that in a few moments he would walk off the bridge and be gone.

  “Everett Singh!”

  He had never seen a face so white, eyes so ice-pale.

  “Sen…”

  “I'm coming with you.”

  “Stay here!” Captain Anastasia thundered.

  “I'm coming. I want to be with Everett.” Her jacket was buttoned up, one glove already pulled on, her shush-bag slung across her shoulder.

  “Stay with th
e ship.”

  “No!” She stepped away from the controls.

  “Everness is yours, Miss Sixsmyth. You have the command.”

  The bag slipped from Sen's shoulder to the floor. She stepped back. As mother, Anastasia could not have stopped Sen. As captain, without even issuing a direct order, Sen could not disobey her. This was the ship. Her eyes looked as if the darkest thing in the world had reached through them and torn her heart out. Her lips were open in incomprehension.

  “Mr. Singh.” Captain Anastasia's grip on Everett's shoulder was iron as she pushed him onto the main catwalk. Almost, he thought to tear himself free, to break every one of her fingers, scream into her face. Almost he thought of looking back to Sen stunned, heart cracking on the empty bridge against the winking Christmas lights. That would have killed him inside. Anastasia Sixsmyth was right. All good-byes should be sudden. Then he saw the look on her face, her mouth tight, the corners of her eyes bright with moisture. It wasn't about him or Sen. It was about her keeping her daughter safe, the kid she'd rescued from the destruction of the Fairchild, keeping the promises she had made on that burning hulk. She understood that none of them might return to her.

  Mchynlyth had lowered the cargo hatch a metre to allow the drone to slip out. The drop down was easy; the greater drop beyond, to the teeming traffic wheeling around Grafton Place, would have frozen Everett rigid only a few days ago. Since then he had run rooftops, leaped alleyways, swung from containment netting over sharp-edged steel, jumped across empty air to land on a ribbon of nanocarbon no wider than his outstretched arms. He landed easily. Mchynlyth had already rigged the zip-line harnesses to the fibre. They looked alarmingly as if they were hanging on nothing. Everett reached up to test the harness. Mchynlyth slapped his hand away.

  “Don't touch the line!” He strapped Everett into the zip-line harness, then took the one behind. “Brake is here; harness release is here. Don't mix them up.”

  “Ready, Mr. Mchynlyth,” Captain Anastasia said. She was directly ahead of Everett on the line. Sharkey would make the run first. Mchynlyth touched a remote. The cargo bay door opened fully. Everett hung from the near-invisible line. In front of him the dark was filled with gusting snow. With his Confed war-yell, Sharkey launched himself into the night.

  “Come on, Mr. Singh,” Captain Anastasia said. She smiled at him over her shoulder, then raised a hand, and in a moment was a tiny doll-figure hurtling towards the Goth-scape of the Tyrone Tower. Everett touched the brake. In a breath he was out in the air. The cold, the speed took his breath away. Snow smeared in his face; he wiped it away with frozen fingers. Beneath him were the rooftops, the chimneys, the electricity pylons and terraces and gardens of Bloomsbury. Someone had decked out a balcony with Christmas lights; here a Christmas tree had been fastened into a flag-holder; in this roof garden a man and woman stood, drinks in hand, looking up at the falling snow. They did not notice the line-riders crossing the sky. The line riders were specks among swirling specks. He was high, he was invisible, he was invulnerable. Everett flew through sound. London was a symphony around him; the traffic rumble beneath him, the hooting of car horns, the sound of pop music from apartments, the clank and clack of trains, distant emergency sirens, the distant purr of Everness's engines, the hiss of the line running through the diamond bearings on his harness, and now—coming in waves from far, and farther, and farthest—the bells of London Town, ringing out from the steeples and the spires and the belfries for Christmas. Everett glanced back. Behind, Mchynlyth rode the line. He looked as if he sat in thin air. He was grinning like a madman. Beyond him, flecked by snow, hung Everness. Her bridge twinkled with fairy-lights. Did he see a figure at the window? Everett snatched his attention away and looked ahead. The Tyrone Tower was coming up fast, a jagged wall of buttresses and cornices and long concrete finials and spires. Sharkey was already down on the twenty-second-floor balcony Everett had identified from his spy mission. Captain Anastasia came to a stop and dropped to the balcony below. Which was the brake, which was the release? Everett hit a button. Overhead the bearings shrilled as the brakes dug in. He came to a halt, swinging gently, looking up into the stern face of the stone guardian angel.

  “Out of the way, ya bassa!” a voice shouted behind him. Everett hit the release and dropped to the balcony as Mchynlyth's boots whistled in over his head. In moments all four of the rescue mission were crowded together on the narrow balcony. Disturbed pigeons flew up, wings clattering.

  “You did remember to bring…the youknowwhat?” Mchynlyth said.

  Everett slapped his backpack. Sharkey had already picked the window lock. They stepped through into the half-built elevator lobby Everett had seen on Sen's spy-camera. The images on Dr. Quantum could not convey the smell of dust, concrete, plaster, wood.

  “Lead on, Mr. Singh,” Captain Anastasia said. Everett called up his graphic of the Tyrone Tower and zoomed in on the twenty-second floor. He held the tablet up and compared the photograph with the reality.

  “Through these dust sheets,” Everett said. He had set up Dr. Quantum so that the map reoriented at every turn of the corridor.

  “Do you think there'll be guards?” Mchynlyth asked. He rested his hand on a pant pocket that bulged with the unmistakable outline of a thumper-gun.

  “I didn't see any,” Everett said. Captain Anastasia raised an eyebrow. “I mean, Sen didn't see any.” But he did see Sharkey pull his coattails close around him, and that they moved heavily and stiffly, as if rigid steel barrels were stowed there. “Right here. This is the corridor.” The only difference between picture and reality was the chambermaid's trolley. “Last door on the left.” And now he was here. On the twenty-second floor, in the corridor, only a door between him and his dad. Yet again, it had been so sudden, with too much happening for Everett to be ready, to feel ready.

  Captain Anastasia rapped on the door with a knuckle.

  “Dr. Singh?”

  No answer.

  “'Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him,'” Sharkey said.

  “Button it, Mr. Sharkey.” Captain Anastasia rapped again. “Dr. Singh. I am Captain Anastasia Sixsmyth of the LTA Everness. I have your son here with me; Everett.” She nodded to Everett.

  “Dad?” Everett touched his cheek to the door. “Dad? Can you hear me? It's me, Everett. Are you in there?” No answer. Not a sound of movement from inside. What if he weren't there? What if he'd been taken away somewhere else while Everett shopped for Christmas dinners and escaped over rooftops and fought Bromleys and made rescue plans? What if he'd left it too long? They might have taken him to another, more secret and secure place; they might have taken his dad off this world entirely.

  Captain Anastasia rapped the door again.

  “Dr. Singh, I'd advise you to stand back. Mr. Mchynlyth, take it down.”

  “Ma'am.” From another of his many pockets, Sharkey took a tool. He handled it carefully, as if it were a small and delicate but very venomous snake. He squatted down at the door lock. Everett could not make out what the device was; it looked very simple, two flat paddles the length of his little finger, as thick as a sheet of paper. Both tapered at one end to a fine point. Mchynlyth pushed both paddles into the crack between the door and the frame just above the lock, one above the other. The lower he pushed all the way until it vanished. He took a hook from another pocket and fiddled around under the lock, muttering under his breath, until he caught the paddle and pulled it out, underneath the deadbolt.

  “Stand back,” he said, took a paddle in each hand, and pulled firmly towards himself. The door swung gently inwards. Mchynlyth held up a paddle. The second one swung below it, suspended on an invisible line. Nanofibre, Everett realised. “And that's why you keep yer fingers away,” Mchynlyth said. The lock bolt had been cut clean through.

  Captain Anastasia pushed the door open. This was the first of a suite of rooms. The room was dark; Everett had a sense of sofas, chairs, work desks, a compta
tor station. A bicycle stood in a trainer rig. A Milani full-carbon Shimano headset road bicycle. A bicycle Everett had last seen going into the back of an Audi on the Mall. A door led to a more brightly lit room beyond. A figure stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the light. It carried a table lamp in its hands like a weapon.

  “Dad?” Everett said.

  The figure raised a hand. Lights blazed on, blinding the rescue party. Everett blinked his vision clear. A short man, brown skin, brown eyes; slightly built, trim, not running to upper body fat like many middle-aged Indian men. He wore Canterbury track-bottoms and a T-shirt. His feet were bare, as if he had just got out of bed and pulled on what came to hand. Him. Him oh so him, completely him, utterly him, absolutely him. Then all thought ended and Everett rushed to his dad.

  Tejendra raised the table lamp like a club.

  “Stop there. I don't know who you are.”

  “It's me. Everett. Everett.”

  “Yes. Maybe. But are you my Everett? My son?”

  There is not one you, Tejendra had said, on a fine summer night as they sat up on Parliament Hill, looking down over heat-hazy, lazy London. There are many yous.

  “Of course I am!” Everett shouted.

  “You would say that.”

  He had told Sen that he thought Charlotte Villiers and the fair-haired man in the good suit were the same person in parallel worlds. Charlotte and Charles. They would think nothing of bringing another Everett Singh from another plane to fool Tejendra. Back, way back on his home world, Everett had drunk cappuccino on a rain-swept Covent Garden piazza while Colette Harte told him about a plane, E4, that was identical in almost every way to E10—apart from politics, and something that had happened to the moon. There could be an Everett Singh on that world.