by Philip Reeve
Quercus said nothing.
“How many Stalkers do we have left now?” asked Wavey. “Fifty, is it?”
“Fifty-six. Another sixty in the north with Rufus Raven’s Lazarus Brigade.”
“Well there you go. You could do with some more, I’m sure. Steepleton and Lark know nothing about Stalkers. I am the only one qualified to investigate this site. If you lend me a landship I could be there and back in a few weeks and bring home all sorts of wonders. Dr Crumb and his colleagues are perfectly capable of continuing the work on London while I am away.”
Quercus scratched his chin and studied the map.
“If I don’t go there, someone else will,” Wavey warned. “Native taboos may keep nomads and snowmads away, but news that the tower is open is sure to spread. When it does, adventurers from Paris and Hamsterdam and Bremen will set off, hoping to secure its secrets for their cities.”
Those three cities were London’s main rivals. They had scoffed at Quercus’s plan when it was first announced, but now they were growing worried; in the past year they had all stopped selling steel and other raw materials to London. Paris was rumoured to be building a huge chassis of its own.
“Very well,” said Quercus suddenly. That was his way; he considered things deeply, made decisions swiftly, and stuck to them. “Take a landship, and my blessing. Dr Crumb will serve as Acting Chief Engineer in your absence. We shall tell no one your real reason for going.”
Wavey smiled in the calm, contented way she always did when she had just got something that she wanted. “I shall set out with Master Borglum. We can tell people that I am going to visit friends in the north.”
Dr Crumb started to protest again. He had never been further north of London than his old childhood home at Lesser Wintermire, and Lesser Wintermire had been quite bad enough. The far north was a wild place, where science and reason were unknown. But he had never been able to get his own way with Wavey, not since that first long-ago day when she decided that he was to be her lover, and he didn’t now: she hushed him, and she and Quercus began discussing arrangements and the best route north.
Fever went to the window. The rain was still falling. Out in the sodden street a passing apprentice Engineer paused to peer at the house, probably wondering why the Lord Mayor’s chair and bodyguards were waiting outside. She caught his glance, his eyes dark as charcoal smudges. Charley Shallow. . . Why did that boy always make her feel guilty? she wondered. It wasn’t as if she had tried to murder him. . .
He saw her watching him and went hurrying on his way, trying to pretend that he had not been looking at the house at all.
It wasn’t his fault, Fever decided. It was just London, so dingy and crowded, so full of upsetting memories. She felt caged here; had felt it ever since they brought her home from Mayda. A view opened in her mind of worldwide moors under a high sky; curlews calling, ice on the skyline like a long white wave, curtains of light dancing in the dusk. She could almost see Skrevanastuut itself; a black pyramid on a bare hill. North. Even the word sounded clean and free.
She turned, and her mother stopped talking and looked up expectantly at her.
“Wavey,” she said, “when you go north – can I come with you?”
“Oh, that would really not be—” Dr Crumb began.
But Wavey bared all her many teeth in a brilliant smile and said, “Fever, I was hoping you would say that!”
9
PIES, SPIES AND LITTLE WHITE LIES
n the lower slopes of Ludgate Hill, round on the St Kylie side where the houses already wore white crosses to show that they were marked for demolition, there was a long, low, salvage-plastic eatery called Nye’s Pies. Who Nye was, and whether he existed at all or had just been dreamed up by some former owner looking for a name that rhymed with “pie”, nobody knew and nobody cared. All that mattered about the place was this: it had a long counter, at which labourers queued to buy their pies, and fourteen greasy tables where they sat to eat them.
“The table nearest the window,” that was what Charley had been told by the London Underground before they booted him out of the robing room behind the temple of St Kylie and let him find his own way home. “Someone will be waiting.” So here he was, scurrying through the chill, half-hearted rain, shoving the pie-shop door open and stepping inside, blinking at the steam and warmth. The place smelled of damp overalls and unwashed bodies, which at least served to mask the smell of the pies. Big, grimy men sat at every table except the one by the window, which was occupied only by a girl in worker’s gear, dark hair escaping in random curls from under her orange headscarf.
Even from the doorway Charley could tell she was a looker, and he grinned, congratulating himself on the way his luck had turned. He watched another man approach the table and the girl send him away. “I’m waiting for a friend,” he saw her say, reading her lips. Then she looked at Charley and nodded. “There he is.”
Charley squeezed his way between the chairs and tables. The girl had already bought two pies. She slid one to him as he sat down. “You’re Charley Shallow,” she said, not smiling, black eyes flicking across his face and clothes. A gypsy-looking girl with a long nose and rosy cheeks and a small, red, serious mouth. Older than Charley, but not too much older.
As if she had caught his thoughts she said, “How old are you, Charles Shallow?”
“Eighteen,” said Charley.
“Never.”
“Seventeen then. I don’t properly know, to tell the truth. I was brung up at the old Mott and Hoople on Ditch Street, back before they knocked it down. I dunno when my birthday is nor how many I’ve had or nothing.”
“Fifteen, more like,” the girl said. Charley could tell she was his sort of person, a good London guttersnipe, not some posh bit from the top of the hill. He leaned back in the rickety chair and grinned easily at her and said, “If you want to hear what I know you’d better get listening quick, before I get any younger.”
The girl frowned. “I don’t want to hear nothing. Not here. How do I know I can trust you? How do I know you wasn’t followed? Eat your pie, then we’ll go somewhere we can talk.” She picked up her own pie and took a big bite from it, and the grease of its nameless filling ran down her pointed chin.
Charley blushed, angry at himself for being stupid and at her for pointing it out. Spies and terrorists didn’t just discuss their secrets in pie shops. She’d met him here so it would look natural, just a girl meeting her boyfriend for a bite of dinner. Then she’d lead him off somewhere secret, where the rest of her gang would be waiting. He liked the idea that all the people in the pie shop would imagine she was his sweetheart. It cheered him up. He said, “Don’t I even get to know your name? Since you know mine an’ all?”
The girl took a second bite while she thought this over. “Gwen Natsworthy,” she said with her mouth full.
“Then I’m pleased to meet you, Gwen.”
“Eat your pie.”
So he ate his pie and when he was done he followed Gwen Natsworthy through some of the mean little alleys that were still standing in that quarter of the city until she was satisfied that they were not being followed, and then out across the endless, windswept, empty lots which had once been Whitechapel and Shadwell, until they came to a hole. There were steps leading down into it and a brick-lined portal at the bottom. Weeds grew round it. It gave Charley the creeps. Reminded him of that nasty tunnel he’d slunk along once in search of Fever Crumb, the day the Movement came. Still, he wasn’t going to let Gwen Natsworthy see that he was scared, so he went down the steps and she followed, and in a little maze of forgotten cellars down there her friends were waiting for him.
There were five of them. One was the priestess-like woman he had met before, but he did not know the others. They were men, and they all wore workers’ slops, those stiff garments of blue and blue-grey hemp that had become the unofficial uniform of London these past few years. One man was smoking a pipe and the fug from it hung between their faces and Charley’s so
that it was hard to see them clearly, and he wondered if that was deliberate.
Gwen Natsworthy followed him in and kicked a door shut behind her. The lantern flames wavered, throwing odd shadows up the walls, and for a moment he felt uneasy again ’cos they could kill him down here and who’d ever know. Who’d come looking for Charley Shallow? No one, that was who.
“This is the boy,” said the priestess (though Charley wasn’t sure she was a priestess now; the mark had gone off her forehead and she was in normal clothes like all the rest).
“The Skinner’s boy, as was,” said one of the men.
“Still am, master,” said Charley. He had got the impression at his first meeting that these Undergrounders had it in for Wavey Godshawk, and he thought he could use his background as a Skinner to impress them. “I work for the northerners, but I’m a Londoner through and through: a proper Mockney, born within earshot of Bowie Bells. I just been biding my time, waiting for a chance to bring some harm to that speckled witch.”
“Good lad,” a man said.
“No.” It was the pipe-smoker who had spoken. He had a posher way of talking than the rest. He took the pipe out of his mouth and pointed at Charley with its stem. “That sort of talk is no good. It’s not Wavey Godshawk that we hate. Her speckled skin does not concern us. Quercus and his northerners don’t offend us because of their northern-ness. You mustn’t get the idea that we are crackpot London-for-the-Londoners fanatics, peddling hate for hate’s sake. The only thing that we are against, the thing that we are sworn to destroy, is the new city.”
The others muttered their agreement. Even the man who’d called Charley a good lad said, “Sorry, Doc, yeah.”
“Doc’s tellin’ it right,” said Gwen Natsworthy. “My old street got cleared away to make that new city. It’s nothing but waste and lunacy and wickedness.”
“My street too,” said one of the men. “All our homes are gone. Quercus promises new homes for all aboard that monstrosity of his, but who’d want to live in them? Eh? Who?”
“Nobody,” said Charley obediently, although secretly he was thinking that quite a lot of people would, given how airy and neat the houses on the new city were compared with the slums that Quercus had cleared. But he wasn’t going to risk offending these people. This was the most interesting thing that had happened to him for months. He was looking forward to seeing where it would lead.
“We want this new city stopped, see?” said a third man; an old plastic-smith judging by the way he wheezed, his lungs ruined by the fierce fumes from the blending vats. He reminded Charley a bit of Bagman Creech; same phlegmy whine; same mad light in his eyes. “We want it stopped, and London put back the way we liked it; the way it always was.”
“The way it was but better,” insisted Gwen Natsworthy. “With trees and stuff, and good homes for all, and parks where the kids can play.”
Yeah, and fountains of wine and gingerbread houses and pavements made of gold, thought Charley, but he didn’t say it.
“Now, Charley,” said the one called Doc, with an air of someone calling things to order. “Now then, you spied on Wavey Godshawk’s meeting with this short chappie, this Borglum. Is that so?”
“’Tis,” said Charley, peering at the old man through his haze of pipe smoke. His face seemed familiar. Take off that greying beard, that shock of hair, and. . . Who had he been? Someone used to better things than brewing bitter plots in basements, that was for sure.
“I heard the dwarf say he had some news from the north,” he explained. “News about a power. That’s all.”
“I am thinking Arkhangelsk,” said the priestess. “Arkhangelsk is the chief power in that region.”
“Could mean trouble,” said Doc, and sucked thoughtfully at his pipe so that an ember glowed bright red inside its bowl.
“All depends who the dwarf works for,” said the plastic-smith. “We can’t be sure he’s Quercus’s creature.”
“But we know the Godshawk woman is,” said the priestess. “So if the dwarf brings news to her it must surely be news that helps Quercus, or can harm our friends.”
“Could mean trouble,” said Doc again.
“I’ll tell you something else,” said Charley. “Whatever this news is, it’s got Wavey all fired up. She’s sent a note to Quercus himself asking for leave of absence. I heard a couple of the Guildsmen talk about it at the Engineerium. They say she’s going north herself.”
“The Chief Engineer?” Doc said. “Going north?”
They all stared at Charley and he thought, They ain’t much of a conspiracy if they didn’t know that! Well, that was all right with him. If they weren’t much good it only made it easier for him to impress them, and he liked to impress people, specially when it was easy and some of them looked like Gwen Natsworthy.
“She’s taking her daughter with her,” he said. “I don’t know what it’s about. She says it’s a holiday, but everyone knows she’s got some hush-hush business going on up there.”
One of his listeners turned to Doc and said, “Our friends must be warned! Great gods, do you think she knows about the alliance?”
“Quiet, you flap-jawed cloot!” growled the plastic-smith, his eyes on Charley.
“It’s all right,” said Doc. He stepped forward and put a hand on Charley’s shoulder, and Charley looked up into his big, kindly face and suddenly knew where he had seen him before. Take off the beard and that shock of steel-wool hair and he’d be Dr Stayling, the one who was Chief Engineer until Quercus dismissed him and gave his job to Wavey Godshawk. So this was where he’d ended up!
“It’s all right,” he said again, looking seriously at Charley. “I think we can trust Charles. I think this a great day for our movement. At last we have a friend, an operative indeed, inside the Guild of Engineers.” He paused, looking rather pleased with himself; he had been waiting for a chance to use the word “operative”. “The information that he has already shared with us may prove vital to our friends in the north. We shall send word at once to warn them of this new development. And Charles, we shall ask you to keep listening. You are close to Dr Crumb, and Dr Crumb is close to Quercus. Keep your ears wide, and tell us everything that you hear.”
“Oh, I will, sir,” Charley said, “I will!” Nobody had placed such trust in him since old Bagman died, and he felt a little bit guilty about letting them think he was as fired up as them over this moving city business, when in truth he didn’t care tuppence whether London moved or not so long as he was safe and prospering. He told himself it was only a white lie. He’d just said what they wanted to hear. It pleased him to see the smiles that he’d put on their faces as they came crowding round to congratulate him.
“Welcome,” they said.
“Welcome, Charles!”
“Welcome, mate.”
“Good to have yer with us.”
“Welcome to the London Underground!”
10
NORTHWARD HO!
he Guild of Engineers had rescued many odd and interesting books from houses that were being demolished by the salvage gangs; in one of them, Dr Crumb had found a few meandering notes which had enabled him to rediscover the Ancient art of Photography. He had built an experimental camera, and constructed a darkroom in a former closet at Number One Bishopsgate. There, by the light of lanterns with red glass panes, he patiently dipped the plates he had exposed into vats of pungent chemicals. He had made several portraits of Fever in shades of grey and silver, staring at the camera lens with hawkish concentration. He had tried a few of Wavey, too, but Wavey was not good at sitting still. His photographs of her always came out blurred; a shadow-woman with uncertain eyes and other faces peering around the corners of her own, her restless hands transforming into fans of light.
He made one last picture of them both on the day of their departure, setting up his camera outside the Movement landship which would be carrying them north, and hiding beneath a black cloth to open and close the aperture while they posed stiffly in their new cold-we
ather clothes; their fleece-lined boots and catskin hats, Wavey’s ermine cloak. Then they went aboard the landship, and Dr Crumb followed it as far as the foot of Ludgate Hill, waving to them as they stood on the open upper deck, sometimes calling out last-minute advice: “Shallow breathing is recommended in very cold regions!” or, “The savages of the high north may be pacified by gifts of fat or salt!”
He had been arguing hard against the trip all week, sure that the north was far too dangerous, even after Rufus Raven’s victories. But that morning he had changed his mind. He could see how eager Fever was to go. He had been worried about his sad and beautiful daughter. Perhaps he had been wrong to make her leave her friends on their irrational theatre barge and bring her home. This expedition of Wavey’s would do her good, he thought, and he stood at the end of Bishopsgate watching the landship pull away into the haze, waving and waving until he could see it no more.
Then he went home to develop his photograph, which he would keep by his bedside to help him remember them until they came home again. Fever peering at him all solemn and owlish from between the fur flaps of her hat; Wavey, as usual, a blur.
The new London took much longer than the old to disappear. All morning the landship and Borglum’s barge travelled across the low, dun-coloured hills of Hamster’s Heath, past Slugg’s Pottage and on into the Wintermires, and still when the passengers looked back they could make out the upper levels of the new city rising faint and hazy in the distance. No wonder the people of the roadside villages seemed nervous and oppressed. This had been a country of small independent market towns and farmsteads that had gone on unchanging through generation after generation. Now it was part of the territory of the Movement. The New North Road sliced through farm and town alike, cobbled with the rubble of old London and forever busy with the Movement’s traffic. The strong young men who should have been working the fields had gone south to join the construction teams, leaving their elders to sow and reap the corn that fed London. By night the lights of the new city peered at them over the shoulders of the land. Fever thought that it must be like living under the gaze of a newborn monster.