Shiv was still looking at Col, suspiciously, probingly. Col wished he could fade into the background. Then Shiv turned back to Riff and the officer.
‘So we’re done with him now?’ He gestured towards the officer’s throat with the point of his knife.
‘No.’
‘He’s told us all he knows.’
‘And I said I’d let you kill him if he didn’t.’ Riff was obviously ready to spring into action again. ‘Besides, he hasn’t finished yet. He can tell us how the coal-loading works.’
She spoke to the officer, while keeping one eye on Shiv. ‘You show us what to do, and we’ll let you live.’
Shiv wasn’t happy about that, and an argument started up. Shiv claimed that Riff had no right to make promises until the Council made a decision; Riff countered that he had no right to execute anyone without approval from the Council.
Col stood back a pace and let them fight it out. He watched the expressions on Shiv’s face: the instinctive defensiveness, the pinched and wary look. For Shiv, the officer was an enemy to be eliminated, and just at that moment perhaps Riff was too. Lye had described him as ‘small’ and ‘riddled with little fears’, and much as Col hated Lye, the description fitted. Shiv was small, but a dangerous sort of small, like a rat.
Col urged Riff on in his mind, and she appeared to be winning. Then a movement on the embankment diverted his attention.
‘Someone’s coming,’ he announced.
A Filthy was running towards them, a young girl. Riff and Shiv broke off their argument.
‘Looks like urgent news,’ muttered Shiv.
‘News from Liberator,’ said Riff.
The girl was panting for breath as she ran up. ‘All the other juggernauts!’ she cried. ‘Wireless telegraph! Messages intercepted! All the other juggernauts coming against us!’
The girl, whose name was Ellet, told the full story as soon as she got her breath back. The operators in Liberator’s wireless telegraph offices had intercepted messages from the Imperialist juggernauts communicating among themselves, after an SOS message from Botany Bay.
‘They must’ve sent off their SOS before the Residence burned down,’ said Riff, and flicked her eyes towards the charred ruins.
‘Every juggernaut in two thousand miles is heading top speed to Botany Bay.’ Ellet waved her arms, wide-eyed. ‘The Russians and French and Austrians and more.’
‘They know about us now,’ Shiv commented.
Other Filthies came hurrying up to hear the news, and Col retreated to observe from a distance. There was a great deal of excited discussion, followed by much issuing of orders.
Twenty minutes later, organised teams set to work burying the dead and tending to the injured. Col would have liked to help, but he didn’t want to be recognised. He wandered off as far as the storage area and found himself a secluded spot beside a stack of rusty metal drums.
The injured were carried back along the embankment on makeshift stretchers. Col thought he spotted Dunga on one stretcher. The juggernaut’s cranes and scoops began lifting up the injured and lowering more Filthies to swell the work parties.
For two hours, Col stayed watching the activity, which proceeded with perfect efficiency. The Filthies had learned the art of co-operation through long practice in the terrifying conditions of Below. Col was no longer surprised by anything they could do.
When all of the injured had been transported and most of the dead had been buried, a new operation started up on the other side of the embankment. One of the huge, spidery steel coal-loaders was moving. Col stared in fascination as the girders telescoped out and out.
Obviously the Filthies still intended to refuel Liberator. Perhaps the Imperialist juggernauts were many days’ travel away; perhaps their intercepted messages would reveal when they were getting near.
As the loader extended and expanded towards Liberator, so Liberator changed too. A flap opened up in the smooth surface of its hull, exposing a wide rectangular hole. Col guessed that the hole was on a level with Bottom Deck, where the coal bunkers were.
He decided to take a closer look. Avoiding the teams of Filthies, he cut across the embankment and over the coal-blackened ground on the other side. Now he had a better view of the loader and its spindly legs – except that white clouds of steam obscured the very bottom of the structure.
The grinding, grating sound he could hear was obviously the sound of telescoping girders. But there was a second sound as well, like the chuff and chug of engines. The second sound seemed to come from out of the middle of the steam.
Again he moved forward. He was thirty yards away when he saw a vague, dark shape through the blanketing whiteness. He walked on into the steam and the shape resolved into an outline of lumps and domes.
So this was probably one of the engines they’d seen on their way to attack the Residence. It laboured along with glacial slowness, puffing out vast quantities of steam. Col stood to watch as it went past. It was attached by cable to the girders of the loader, and he realised that it was actually hauling the whole structure forward.
There were two Filthies operating the engine from a footplate at the back, but they were so wrapped up in noise and steam, he hardly thought they’d notice him. He was wrong, however. One of the two jumped down and stepped up to him.
‘Why are you dawdling? Don’t you have work to do?’
She had lost most of the blacking from her face, and he staggered with the shock. It was Lye!
He could only hope that his own ink-blackened face was a better disguise. He spun on his heel to hurry away. But he had gone only three paces when she snapped out a direct command.
‘Wait!’
Reluctantly, he stopped and turned. She stood very upright, in that odd stance of hers. The remnants of the blacking made her features more gauntly beautiful than ever. She was studying his breeches, which were not quite the same as the Filthies’ loose pants. No one else had noticed – but Lye had.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘Wash your face.’
‘It’s ink. It doesn’t come off.’
‘Ink?’ She pointed to a puddle nearby. ‘Wash. There.’
Col had no choice. He went across, squatted and scooped up water. He hoped the ink would refuse to move, but in fact it washed off easily enough.
Meanwhile, the haulage engine had trundled on and vanished from sight. However, by the time Col stood up again a second haulage engine was chugging forward, looming out of the steam. Apparently it took more than one of them to pull the loader.
Lye’s lip curled when she recognised Col. She muttered something under her breath, then swung round at the sound of the approaching engine. One Filthy rode on the footplate while another walked alongside.
‘Look what I found,’ she called to the one walking alongside. She spoke as if Col were something she’d discovered on the sole of her shoe.
His heart sank further when he realised she was addressing Padder.
‘Porpentine?’ Padder halted. ‘What’s he doing here?’
‘Dunga let me join her team,’ Col retorted. ‘You can ask her.’
‘No one will be asking her anything for a very long time,’ said Lye. ‘Not until she recovers.’
Padder snorted. ‘Why would Dunga want you on her team?’
‘I saved you,’ said Col. ‘It was me that let the convicts out.’
‘Don’t believe you.’ Padder shook his head.
‘He’s a liar,’ said Lye. ‘The convicts broke free by themselves. He’s a liar, same as all Swanks are liars.’
‘It’s the truth. I—’
‘And he has no right to be out here,’ Lye cut Col off short. ‘Someone should march him back on board.’
‘Right.’ Padder agreed willingly, though he didn’t seem so eager to act.
Lye turned suddenly on Col. ‘Stop that!’ she snapped.
‘What?’
‘Stop looking at me!’
Col gaped in amazement.
‘I can’t bear him leering at me,’ she confided to Padder. ‘Nasty greasy little Swank eyes crawling all over my skin. It makes me sick.’
Padder swung towards Col with his fist raised. Col shrugged and looked away.
‘He’s always doing it,’ Lye went on. ‘It’s the same with your sister. I’ve seen him pawing her over in his mind. She’s sick of it too. I know she is.’
Col had so many different denials jostling on the tip of his tongue that he couldn’t manage to utter any of them.
An angry red colour suffused Padder’s face. ‘I’ll deal with him.’
‘You’ll march him back on board?’
‘Right this minute.’
‘Good, then,’ said Lye.
She turned her back and walked on after the haulage engines. Padder continued to watch her retreating figure. He was the one leering at her if anyone was, thought Col. But of course Padder wasn’t a Swank.
When he spoke to Col, it was as though he returned to an unpleasant reality. ‘You come with me,’ he growled.
When Col got back to the Norfolk Library, everyone already knew about the Imperialist juggernauts converging on Liberator. Septimus drew Col aside.
‘We’ve been researching the other juggernauts, you know,’ he said. ‘The Professor and I found out all the facts. You ought to tell the Council.’
‘They won’t listen.’
‘Riff will.’
Col shrugged. ‘What did you find out?’
‘The other juggernauts were built later than Worldshaker, not quite as big but faster and more powerful. They carry all kinds of special weapons. Mortars, toxic gas, pedal-bombs, loblights, pufferbugs . . .’
‘We don’t?’
‘Worldshaker was built right after the Fifty Years War, in a period of peace. Nobody wanted to think about armaments. We only have rifles and Maxim guns.’
‘Maxim guns?’
‘They fire non-stop with a belt of bullets.’
Col thought back to the Liberation. ‘I remember seeing one of them three months ago. Where are they stored?’
‘No idea. Books don’t tell you things like that.’
At that moment, Gillabeth came bustling up with a pile of books in her arms. Her Porpentine chin jutted towards Septimus. ‘You left these lying on the floor,’ she said accusingly.
Septimus blinked. ‘Only a minute ago.’
‘You left them. Tidy them away.’
She thrust the books into his arms and marched off with an air of civic duty performed.
Septimus chewed at his lower lip, then went across and deposited the books on the central table. Col followed and sat down beside him.
Septimus looked at Col, looked away, looked back at him again.
‘What’s on your mind?’ Col asked at last.
‘I . . . um . . . doesn’t matter.’
‘What?’
‘You and Riff.’ Septimus checked that no one was listening, leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘How does it feel to be in love with someone?’
Col was half amused and half embarrassed. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, do you want to be close to Riff all the time? Is it the most wonderful feeling in the world?’
Lye’s recent words echoed in Col’s head: She’s sick of it too. He didn’t believe Lye, not for a moment, yet . . .
‘I don’t know about wonderful,’ he said. ‘Just as often miserable. Lots of little things hurt you.’
‘But it must be intense, even when it hurts. I could put up with the hurt if my whole life was heightened. Is it? Is it like being on top of the world?’
Col wanted to say, It’s more like being turned into a pathetic, helpless moron who never knows what’s going on. But Septimus was so earnest, Col didn’t have the heart to deflate him. So he said nothing.
‘Do you think about Riff every second of every day? Does the thought of her make you go all hot and cold? I know I shouldn’t be asking, you don’t have to answer, but . . .’
Col shook his head. ‘You shouldn’t be asking me about love. I’m not very good at it.’
‘Don’t say that.’ Septimus’s eyes shone with innocent envy and admiration. ‘I bet you—’
Professor Twillip burst upon the conversation out of nowhere. The woolly white fleece of his hair stuck out like a halo. ‘Look at this!’
He set down a massive leather-bound tome on the table. It was open at a page of diagrams coloured red, black and blue.
‘It’s a medical text,’ he announced. ‘That’s a human head.’
‘So . . . ?’
‘It shows where limiters are implanted in the brain. There. And there. And there.’ The Professor jabbed a chubby pink finger at points in the diagram. ‘See, deep inside the skull. It shows how Filthies were changed into Menials.’
Col shuddered to recall the time he’d helped Riff escape from that horrific operation in the Changing Room. He couldn’t make much sense of the diagram, but Septimus studied it, then turned a few pages forward, a few pages backward.
‘It’s more diagrams than explanations,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ Professor Twillip agreed, ‘but if there’s one medical text like this, there are sure to be others. We have to search for them.’
He could hardly wait to begin, rocking back and forth on his toes. Though well past middle age, he was like a ten-year-old when a new enthusiasm seized hold of him.
‘We’ve finished with juggernauts, then?’ asked Septimus.
‘Yes! Come on!’
As the Professor bounded away, Septimus turned to Col with a grin. ‘Care to join us?’
‘No, thanks.’ Col knew there was no system for locating books in the library. A search like this could go on for days, even weeks.
Septimus followed the Professor in among the bookshelves. Col heard thuds and thumps as they clambered over mattresses, then a crash as one of them knocked over a chair.
He wished they could have kept on researching juggernauts. If only there was a way to find out where the Maxim guns were stored, that would be something to tell the Council. What was the point of researching how Menials were made in the past?
Next day, Professor Twillip’s new interest took an unexpected turn. He made his announcement over lunch, when the library’s residents were gathered for a meal of cold rusks, cheese, dried fruit, and hot tea boiled up on their kerosene stove.
‘I want to look at the Menials on Garden Deck,’ he declared. ‘I need to examine their skulls.’
‘Garden Deck?’ Col frowned. ‘Might not be a good idea.’
‘Why not? We can go anywhere on the juggernaut, can’t we?’
Orris nodded. ‘The Filthies trust us. We’re all on the same side now.’
There was no denting the Professor’s blithe enthusiasm or Orris’s idealised opinion of Filthies. Col shrugged.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘Perhaps you’ll see Missy Jip there,’ mused Quinnea. ‘I do so wish she was still with me.’
As often, Quinnea seemed adrift in her memories. Orris cleared his throat to speak, but she forestalled him.
‘I know, I know, I shouldn’t be saying things like that. You don’t need to tell me it was wrong to have Menial servants. But Missy Jip was always so nice and helpful.’ She turned to Col. ‘Look out for her on Garden Deck. I’d like to hear that she’s still all right.’
Septimus and Orris added themselves to the expedition, which set out for Garden Deck after lunch. Col led the way along corridors and down staircases little used by the Filthies.
Professor Twillip carried a sketchpad and tape measure, while Septimus carried the three medical texts they’d discovered so far.
It was a while since Col had seen Garden Deck. The transformation was amazing. Before the revolution, the area had been a large park divided into varying botanical zones and re-creations of rural scenes from the Old Country. Now it was turned over to farming, so that Liberator could produce its own fresh vegetables. The trees in their buried pots remained, but the lawns had been dug up and converted to a thousand small patches of onions, carrots, tomatoes, potatoes and cucumbers.
It was peaceful and pretty in the afternoon sunlight: the light green of shoots and leaves, the brown soil, the darker green of foliage overhead. The Menials moved among the vegetable patches with trowels or buckets or watering-cans. They still wore their grey, pajama-like uniforms and still shuffled along with hunched shoulders. They appeared contented enough, though it was hardly a very human form of contentment.
Col turned to Professor Twillip. ‘How many skulls do you need to inspect?’
‘Dozens.’ The Professor pointed. ‘Let’s start there.’
On the other side of a patch of marrows, two Menials rested on a wooden bench. One was bald, the other was fast asleep and snoring.
Professor Twillip led the expedition around the marrow patch. He studied the two Menials over the top of his glasses.
‘I suppose there’s no point asking for their consent?’ he said.
‘They couldn’t answer,’ said Col. ‘They can only obey orders.’
Professor Twillip stood before the sleeper and started to sketch his head. Septimus opened up all three books on the grass.
Col left them to it. Since Garden Deck was fifty acres in area and there were probably three or four hundred Menials altogether, his chances of finding Missy Jip were slim. Still, he could try. He wandered at random among the vegetable patches, enjoying the sun on his face.
In fact, he never did find Missy Jip. But he found another Menial he recognised: Wicky Popo. Compared to the waif-like individual almost starved to death by Ebnolia Porpentine, the liberated Wicky Popo was solid and well built.
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