by Philip Reeve
“Destroyed with all. . .” Dr Crumb stood blinking at him.
“They are both dead, Dr Crumb.”
“Oh. . .”
A woman who had been sitting in the shadows – one of Quercus’s senior wives – now rose silently and came to lay her hand upon the engineer’s arm. He looked at her in surprise. Quercus said, “It is all right, Mree. The good doctor is a rational man. He does not need comforting. It is a terrible thing. But accidents will happen, won’t they, Dr Crumb? I’m sure that as a rational man you must accept that accidents will happen.”
He watched Dr Crumb with interest. He had always found them curious, these London Engineers, with their faith in reason and experiment and their careful avoidance of feelings. He was glad of this chance to conduct a small experiment of his own. He noticed that Dr Crumb appeared to be trembling.
“You are certain, Lord Mayor? There can be no mistake?”
“It seems not. We don’t yet know who the attackers were. Raven is moving some of his forces west to deal with them. But there is no hope for Wavey and Fever. Both dead.”
“I see,” said Dr Crumb, very quietly.
“I had thought of keeping this information to myself until the tests were complete,” Quercus said. “I would not want your grief to put you off your work at such a vital time. But then I thought, Dr Crumb is a rational man; he will feel no grief at all, or, if he does, he will be able to suppress it. Are you able to suppress it, Dr Crumb?”
“Indeed, Lord Mayor,” said Dr Crumb, distracted for a moment by a memory of Fever as a tiny girl, playing with a pile of cogs under his desk at Godshawk’s Head.
“Excellent. Take the rest of the day off, Crumb, if you wish. And if there is anything I can do, anything you need. . . But of course, there isn’t, and you don’t. You are a rational man.”
“Yes, Lord Mayor,” said Dr Crumb. And, “With your permission, Lord Mayor, I shall return to my work. There is still much to be done.”
“Of course, Dr Crumb. Oh, and by the way, I should like you to take over your late wife’s post as Chief Engineer. She will be missed, of course, but her role was always a symbolic one; you and your fellow Engineers have always been the brains behind our work here, am I right?”
Charley Shallow was sitting on an empty crate in the Engine District, eating a cheese and pickle sandwich. He was supposed to be at work, but he found it easy enough these days to persuade the other apprentices to cover for him. If he had known that you could win people over so easily by knocking them down and poking knives in their faces, he would have started doing it years ago. But of course it hadn’t just been that; lately, since he’d started walking out with pretty Gwen Natsworthy, he’d become a kind of rebel hero to them – he smiled to himself, remembering the way their wide eyes had followed her when she came into the Engine District that morning to bring him these very sarnies. Lately they’d started coming to him to ask what the best places to buy cheap wine and tobacco were, and whether he could put in a good word for them with the bar girls at the Laughing Nomad. It was like they were kittens and he was a wily old stray, wise in the ways of the backstreets of Tent Town. . .
So he lounged on his upturned crate in the snick between two of London’s huge new engines and ate his sandwiches while they did his work for him, and doodled in his notebook until he was distracted by the sight of Dr Crumb coming back from his meeting with the Lord Mayor. He’d been feeling angry at Crumb for the past few weeks, still having had no answer to his kind offer of moving back in to Bishopsgate. He’d been trying not to think of him, reckoning his best hopes lay with Gwen and her friends. But something about the way that Dr Crumb was moving struck Charley as odd, and when he came close enough for Charley to get a look at his face and see the expression there, well, that was odder still. Dr Crumb usually looked pretty vague as he wandered among the engines, because he was always thinking about work rather than where he was going, but today he was shuffling along like a sleepwalker. Like he’d been emptied out, thought Charley, and there was nothing behind those eyes at all. . .
He stuffed the remainder of the sandwiches into his pocket, snapped shut the notebook and swaggered out into the man’s path, trying to look as if he was a hard-working young ’prentice, making his way from one job to the next. “Morning, Dr Crumb.”
“Ah,” said the Engineer, pausing and blinking at him in that irritating way he had. His face was just about the colour of the cheese in Charley’s sandwiches.
“Any word from Mistress Crumb and Miss Fever?” asked Charley brightly, for he had a pretty good idea what might have led his old master to look like that. He was right, too, he could tell at once, because Dr Crumb flinched at the sound of their names as if Charley had just slapped him.
“No, Charley,” he said softly. “There isn’t. I do not yet have all the data but. . . It appears they are dead. . .”
“Dead?” said Charley, like an echo. “Blimey, I’m sorry to hear that, Doctor Crumb.”
Dr Crumb said nothing at all.
“If there’s anything I can do,” said Charley earnestly, “any help you need, like. Sorting things out, and so forth. . .”
“Thank you, Charley,” Dr Crumb mumbled. “You are most thoughtful. I shall bear it in mind. . .”
Charley felt pleased. After all, with Fever gone, the Doc would need a new apprentice, wouldn’t he? No harm in reminding him that Charley Shallow was ready and willing. He’d make himself useful at this difficult time. He liked that phrase; it sounded sincere and serious, like something in a letter of condolence. “Anything at all, Doctor!” he said. “Anything I can do to help at this difficult time.”
He watched as the Engineer went on his way to the little tarpaper hut that served as his office. Another apprentice ran up to him with a question, but Dr Crumb did not even seem to notice him. The streets of the Engine District were always littered with straw, which spilled out of the crates in which new components were brought from the factories. The wind that gusted through the unfinished city blew the straw in clumps around Dr Crumb’s feet, and it looked for a moment to Charley as if he had been stuffed with straw all along, like a scarecrow, and now some vital seam had split and all the stuffing was spilling out of him and blowing away.
Half of Charley felt sorry, remembering the kindness that Dr Crumb had shown him once, and sad at seeing him so low. The other half felt a sort of awe at his own power that slowly turned into something rather like glee. I did that, he thought. It was me told Stayling, and Stayling sent word north, and now Rufus Raven has murdered the Snow Leopard and her half-breed daughter. . . The thought of Fever and her mother killed checked him for a moment. Of course, I mustn’t blame myself, he thought. Raven would have got to hear that they were in his country anyway. I thought he’d just capture them, not kill ’em. Not both of ’em. He wondered what Raven’s men had done to them, and wished he had been there to see it. Course, it’s a terrible thing; a terrible thing. . .
But he didn’t really think it was a terrible thing. Charley was starting to realize that he didn’t feel things as much as other people did. He’d found it with Gwen, these past few days. Part of him was thrilled that she was his girl, and he strolled around the Engine District with a new confidence when he’d been to see her, everything round him seeming brighter and more interesting. Then he’d look at her sometimes while they were kissing or whatever and realize that he wouldn’t mind all that much if he never saw her again. Oh, he’d pretend he did, but he knew there’d be other girls; he wouldn’t really care. He was starting to sense how that gave him an edge over people; because if you didn’t care about anything except yourself, then there were fewer ways they could have power over you.
All them old Engineers, training themselves up to be free of feelings, and look what one bit of bad news does to them, he thought scornfully, watching Dr Crumb stumble into his office with the straw blowing round his feet. He looks like he’s aged twenty years in one morning. No, if you wanted to free yourself of feeling
s you didn’t want to be an Engineer. Growing up parentless on Ditch Street, though; that would really do the trick.
Dr Crumb called a sedan chair and went back to his house; to the silence of his house. It had been peculiarly quiet ever since Wavey and Fever went away, as if it were waiting for them to return. It would wait for ever now, and the silence seemed to have deepened, muffling the sounds of the city outside, muting his footsteps as he paced through the empty rooms. From the wall of his office his photographs of Wavey and Fever gazed at him, pale and silvery as ghosts. Upset by the feelings that they aroused, he thrust the stupid thought away, took down the pictures, turned them to the wall.
He had always known that Wavey would not stay with him for long. She needed excitement, and he was not an exciting man. Ever since her return he had felt as if he was flotsam and she was the sea, and known that she would one day abandon him on some strange shore. But not Fever. Not Fever, whom he had carried back to Godshawk’s Head that evening in her basket when she was so small and helpless. Even when she had run away with those theatre people he had always been sure that her rational nature would bring her back to London, and he had been proved right. But reason could not return her to him now; nothing could do that. Dimly, he began to understand why simple people sought consolation in fairy tales of gods and afterlives.
Well, there was no consolation there for him. He would find his consolation where he had found it years ago, after the Skinners’ Riots, when he had first thought Wavey dead. He would find it in rationality and hard, productive work. There was tomorrow’s test to think of, and it was sure to reveal a thousand faults and glitches which would need correction. . . He began gathering files and papers from the shelves behind his desk. He could not concentrate in this house, with its unsettling smells and memories. He would move the things he needed to the Engine District, and let the demolition gangs take this place; it was high time anyway that they made a start on Ludgate Hill.
He found a box and started filling it with papers, notebooks, card folders full of blueprints. He would need things from Wavey’s office too; her scrappy, eccentric plans and drawings. It would be a long job, sorting it all out. He would need help, but not from his fellow Engineers. He did not think he could face their condolences and knowing looks.
He thought of Charley Shallow. The boy showed promise as an Engineer, and he seemed eager to help. Certainly he could fetch and carry well enough. The only reason Dr Crumb had dismissed him was that he had upset Fever, and Fever was beyond upsetting now. I shall send someone to fetch Charley Shallow here at once, he decided.
There was much to be done: boxes of papers to be manhandled downstairs to the street door, a wagon to be arranged for transferring them across Tent Town to the new city. It fell to Charley to do all of it, for Dr Crumb seemed only half there, moving slowly, taking ages to hear anything that Charley asked him, as if time was solidifying around him. “It’s so quiet without them, Charley,” he complained. In the end it even fell to Charley to give the servants their final wages, and lock up the abandoned house. He did it angrily, twisting the key in the lock like a knife, as if he hoped to hurt the old place. He’d got to be Crumb’s assistant, at last, but he’d lost his chance of living at Bishopsgate; the old cloot was intent on moving into one of those little modern cells aboard new London, and Charley hadn’t enough hold over him yet to change his mind.
But that’ll change, he promised himself. That’ll change.
He turned from the door and found a boy standing in the street, watching him. For an instant he felt afraid, as if the lad could have somehow guessed what he was thinking. Indeed, in the twilight, it seemed to him for an instant that this was his younger self, a ragged Ditch Street urchin, come to gawp at the new and grown-up Charley.
But it was just some merchant’s boy off a land-barge, who stepped forward holding up a sealed and folded letter. “Looking for Dr Crumb,” he said. “I got this for him.”
“I’m Dr Crumb’s private secretary,” said Charley importantly, and took it from him. “Brought in by Master van Cleef, the northland merchant,” said the boy, waiting expectantly while Charley studied the address. That prim, cramped handwriting looked awfully familiar. Frowning, he tipped the boy a half-quid coin. (It was a generous tip, but Charley was determined to be generous now that he was a man of substance; he’d not forget his humble roots.) That handwriting kept nagging at him, and as the boy scampered happily away he suddenly thought, Well, if I’m Crumb’s private secretary, I ought to read his mail for him, oughtn’t I? See if it’s important or just someone wasting his time. . .
He broke the seal with his thumbnail, reasoning that he could tell Dr Crumb it had already been broken when the boy gave it to him. Wavey is dead, he read. I was injured, but I am recovering. . . He skimmed down the page to the signature: yr daughter, Fever Crumb.
“Blogging Hell!” he said aloud. Would he never be rid of Fever Crumb? Once her father read this he’d mobilize half London to bring her back, and as soon as she came home it would be goodbye Charley all over again.
Then he remembered that he was the only person who had seen this letter; the only one in London who knew that she still lived. This was the only proof, fluttering in his hand as the breeze gusted off the Brick Marsh. If Dr Crumb never read it, he would never know, and perhaps with all the dangers in the north Fever would never make her own way home. “You keep this to yourself, Charley,” he said, and ripped the letter in half across the middle. He was about to throw it away when he changed his mind and slipped the torn halves carefully into his pocket, next to Bagman’s knife. It was a trophy; a sweet little reminder of Fever’s misfortunes and his own power over Dr Crumb.
17
RUNNING TRUE
harley had a special place of his own aboard the new London. He had found it soon after he moved into the Engineerium, when he needed somewhere to go that was away from the other apprentices. A steel cage had been raised right up through the planks of Tier Two, up into the giant’s climbing-frame of girders and scaffolding that would one day be Tier Three. It was meant to hold one of the new funicular elevators, but there had been a change of priorities, and so the cage had been capped with a wooden platform and left standing there while the men who had built it busied themselves completing the Engine District and the housing on the lower levels.
Charley had found out that you could reach that platform, and that if you did you could look down on the new city like a king; like a god.
In early sunlight on the day of the test he met Gwen outside the shack she shared with her family and went with her aboard the new city and up the freight elevators to Tier Two, flashing his Guild of Engineers badge at anyone who questioned him, confident that on that particular morning, with so many Engineers hurrying about on so many different errands, they would not be stopped. Then it was across a few work-platforms, up some scaffolding, a long climb up a ladder, and they were in his eyrie, with all London spread out beneath them.
“Look at that, Charley!” said Gwen, peeking over the edge. “Look at all them people!”
Far below, among the factories and the tight-packed tents, thousands and thousands of tiny specks showed in the growing light. Charley couldn’t think what they were at first. Then he understood. The whole of London had turned out to watch the trial.
“Are you sure it’s safe, Charley?” Gwen asked. “Dr Stayling says that when the engines are turned on this whole city will shake itself to pieces. He says the noise will deafen everyone aboard, and drive people mad.”
“We’ll be all right up here,” said Charley.
“What if something goes wrong?”
“It won’t. Not with Crumb in charge. He’s been working all night, like a man possessed. Like he thinks if he works hard enough it’ll stop him thinking about that wife and kid of his.”
“We mustn’t feel sorry for him, Charley.”
“I didn’t say I did, did I? Anyway, he’s driving everybody hard, making last checks, making sur
e everything’s clean and shiny and ready to run true. You know how picky Engineers can be.”
“What about you? Won’t you be missed?”
“I told Ronnie Coldharbour to tell anyone who asks I’m on an errand for Dr Mainbrace. Unless it’s ol’ Mainbrace who asks, in which case I’m on an errand for Dr Whyre. . .”
He took off his coat and spread it on the platform so that they could sit down. There they waited, while the sun rose higher. Gwen lay on her back and let the light fall across her face. She lay on her front and peeked over the edge of the platform and tried to pick out her family’s shack, and told Charley where all the parks and playgrounds would go once the real London was built again. He watched her talk, and tried to imagine what she would be like after the revolution. Tried to imagine what they would both be like; young heroes of London, him standing beside her while she cut the ribbon which opened some new public garden. Who’d take charge once Quercus was gone? Old Stayling was too dull. Mistress Shamflower was only a woman, and anyway, the followers of other gods would never allow a priestess of St Kylie to run London. Maybe they’d want someone young and lively. He recalled that old fairy tale about the geezer who’d heard a voice say, “Turn again, Livingstone, Thrice Mayor of London,” and thought, Mayor of London . . . I quite fancy that.
Far below him, in a circular chamber at the heart of the Engine District on Base Tier, fifty burly Mechanics stepped up to fifty long brass levers. Behind them Dr Crumb and some of his fellow Engineers checked their pocket-watches, made notes on clipboards, or gnawed worriedly at their fingernails. Behind them, the Lord Mayor took his seat in a padded chair positioned at the exact centre of the chamber, the exact centre of the city. He waved aside his aides and wives and beckoned Dr Crumb to him.