‘What on earth was that?’
March's eyes are wide. ‘Parliament’s flagship. The Smog.’
‘Where are they all going?’
‘That’s what I’m wondering.’ He pulls the strap of his rifle onto his shoulder and nods towards the grey streets of Binary ahead. ‘We should get a move on. I need to find out what’s happening. Not much further now.’
‘Something to do with June, do you think?’
‘I hope not.’
March jogs across another identical intersection, passing the hissing grey hulk of a bus spraying water, and I follow behind as quickly as I am able. For once, there is a signpost, and it reads PARLIAMENT, directing us down the next street. Only… March begins to slow, a look of horror across his face, as it becomes apparent that something terrible has occurred ahead. There is fire, streaming out through the drizzle and smoke. I feel my heart sink.
*
Where Parliament should be is a vision of destruction.
It takes a while simply to take in. There is fire, smoke, and ruined and blackened masonry everywhere. It might be the remains of one enormous building, or maybe an entire block – it is difficult to tell. In the distance I can hear the wail of sirens approaching. Here the sky is grey, the surrounding buildings are grey, and the fire is flickering orange and yellow and red.
There is another great boom as something collapses in the wreckage, and I am startled from my stupor. March is wearing a grim expression. ‘This isn’t good,’ he says.
Casting my eyes over the destruction, I am horrified to glimpse the body of a man trapped beneath a burning beam of wood. Without any hesitation, I rush across, keeping my coat over my mouth to protect my lungs from the smoke, skittering over hot rubble. I hear March call after me, but I miss the words he says. I can feel the heat of the flames as I approach. I lean down, grab a section of the beam that is not on fire and heave. The figure of the man, wearing a grey suit, wriggles beneath it.
I find that I am able to keep a grip. My fingers tingle.
There is a hand on my shoulder and I am pulled away. The beam settles back into place. March has a scarf wound around his face. ‘Don’t,’ he tells me.
‘What are you doing?’ I am angry with him, turning back to try again.
‘Don’t!’ he says again, keeping hold of my arm. ‘Let him wake, Will. Look at him. Just let him wake up.’ And I pause, and do look at him – the man beneath the beam. He could be anyone. Another dim face in the grey city. There is soot on his face, and I realise that he is not wriggling to be free of the beam trapping him. He is reaching out for his suitcase, on fire beside him. I stumble back, and as I do, the flames take hold of his jacket, and he crumbles into a fine dust, whirling away among the ruins. The man is awoken.
I turn on the spot. The grey city looms around me, and I can see hundreds of people doing nothing. They stand at crossings that no longer lead anywhere, and shuffle along the streets as if there is no great disaster here. I want to wave at them, to call them over, to tell them that we need help, but I know that it will make no difference. They are all too absorbed in their own little hells to notice the world burning down around them.
Keeping his hand on my arm, March leads me through the ruins.
‘What happened?’ I ask him. ‘Terrorists?’
‘Not terrorists,’ he says. ‘Just… breaking up communications. Now I can’t get messages out to the others. Parliament’s not… it’s not a real government. How do you govern dreams? It’s just a bunch of non-Sleepwalkers trying to help us out. And they do that by keeping the paperwork, passing messages along and keeping tabs on where everyone is. At least, they did…’ He shrugs. ‘Hard to terrorise a city that doesn’t care if you blow it up.’
Ducking beneath a gout of smoke, we come to a rise in the rubble, and from there we are able to observe a bizarre phenomenon. At the heart of the ruins is a winter forest. It is bright, and the frost and snow covering it glistens as if it sits beneath a winter sun – only, above it, the grey sky continues raining its perpetual gloom. Pine trees litter the ruins thickly. Frost engulfs the flames.
‘What is that?’ I ask.
March lowers his scarf and grins at me. ‘That’s November’s dream.’ He almost skips down the rubble towards the edge of the forest. ‘She’s conjuring it to put out the fires. Come on, Will!’
I follow hesitantly, and as I do I notice that the forest is growing. Veins of frost are slowly clutching the rubble at its edge – rivers of ice filling the gaps and instantly sapping the heat out of the ruins. At the edge, I step through, and feel the bitter cold of the place. I immediately wish that I had brought a thicker coat.
Glancing at his compass, March scowls. ‘Too many survivors. Okay, Will, you go that way, and I’ll go this way, and if you spot November first, let her know I’m here.’
Crunching through the snow I have to tread carefully – the ruins still lie beneath. Here, a statue is half embedded in a tree, and there, an enormous collapsed pillar looks like a fallen tree-trunk, covered in frost and snow. There are people, as well. The worst is a man still sat at his half-burned desk, his frozen hands locked onto his ruined typewriter. I do as I am told and leave him be. At the entrance to a different section of the forest, I turn and see him collapse into dust and awakening.
I climb a hill surrounded on all sides by trees, and realise I am leaving the ruins behind. The dream of the forest remains disconcerting, however. The sky above should contain a gleaming white winter sun, but does not. And the sound is all wrong. I should be able to hear the flames, the sirens and the ambient noises of the city, but instead all I can hear is the bitter wind and the crunching of twigs and snow.
At the top of the hill the trees widen into a clearing. I see a woman.
She has a gush of silver hair, and she is wearing a white fur coat. Held between her gloved hands is a heavy-looking silver revolver. I watch as she aims the barrel of it at the head of a businessman half buried in a mound of snow and smartly executes him. No red sprays onto the white, though; he is awoken, turning to dust, and the blackbirds in the trees around the clearing all rise at once in a black rushing of wings.
The woman holds a compass. She studies it as I emerge from the forest path.
‘Excuse me,’ I say. Immediately, she fixes her revolver upon me, narrowing her eyes. I raise my hands and halt. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, but she sighs and lowers her gun – holstering it at her side gunslinger style. She looks me up and down, and frowns.
‘You don’t belong here,’ she says.
‘I’m just passing through,’ I tell her. ‘You must be November?’
‘That I am.’ Her accent is soft, dulled around the edges. Swedish.
‘March is here. We were looking for you.’
‘Is he now?’ She takes another glance at her compass. ‘This way, then,’ she says, and strides away among the roots of the forest. I struggle to keep up with her; by now my feet have turned numb from the cold. But before long we come to the foot of the hill, where March has dug a folder of frozen-looking papers out from the snow, and is thumbing through them. November halts at the edge of the clearing – a wasteland of icy office equipment – and hails him.
March looks nervous in November’s presence.
‘Hi, November,’ he says, glancing at me and then back at her. ‘It’s been a while.’
‘Long enough,’ she says. Then, ‘The fleet is compromised. An army of nightmares, I am told – came from the doors, woke the crews and stole their ships. I am concerned about the Smog in particular. She has enough guns to threaten the tower. But no Parliament. No means of leaving messages. I must send out messengers myself, just as we did in the old days.’ She smiles, and I realise that she is older than she looks – skin so pale and winter-scarred that it lends her youth. ‘You are here, though. Perhaps the two of us can rally the others quickly.’
‘Was it June?’ he asks. ‘Was it her nightmares?’
November sighs. ‘Of course it was
June. It’s always June.’
‘In that case, I think I know where she’s going with all those ships. And it’s not Babel.’
‘Where?’
‘Solomon’s Eye.’
November’s face turns blank. I would imagine that if there was any colour in her cheeks, then it would be draining from them. ‘But… how? How did she get a map?’ she asks, and her gloved hand instinctively goes to rest on the hilt of her silver revolver. I notice that the metal of that revolver steams, and I am reminded of the way that I saw March’s bullets steaming. I find myself frowning.
‘November, I’d like you to meet William Manderlay, the map.’ He nods at me.
The icy Sleepwalker turns to look at me.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘but I was wondering… why is your gun so cold?’
The two Sleepwalkers appraise me, and as they do, November idly answers my question. ‘Ice-silver,’ she says. ‘A rare metal that nightmares hate. So we make guns from it, and bullets from it, and we hunt them with it. It hurts them; they are unable to even touch it. But it only can be found in one place. A rare luxury, for us.’ Then, blinking, she turns back to March. ‘A map. Fine. You have a skyship, then? You can follow her?’
‘That’s the plan. We’re moored up at the East Dock because Reid wanted some cover, and I’m glad we did. By my reckoning we’ve got the only damn skyship left in the city.’
‘Good. This is good. Stop her, at all costs, please. In fact…’ November pauses, looking thoughtful. ‘Yes, I will come with you. I will come with you both, and help you stop her. Go now. Return to your skyship. Reid means you have the Metronome, no? A fine choice. A flighty bird. I will put out the last of these fires, send messages to the others and then join you both.’ She seems pleased with this decision, and nods to herself. ‘Yes. We will stop June together. She cannot be allowed to reach Solomon’s Eye.’
At this, March draws his feet together and snaps off a smart salute. He quickly lowers his hand when he sees the expression across November’s face. It is odd seeing him so nervous; he does not seem to know how to conduct himself around the older Sleepwalker. ‘All right,’ he says, instead, and the two of us quickly rush away, in search of the edge of the forest and the way back to the Metronome.
*
The crew of the Metronome have opened up a partition wide enough to receive cargo in her side, and the two of us stand to one side of it, sheltering from the rain and keeping a close eye on the docks for any sign of November, while large cages filled with a very peculiar cargo are brought on board around us.
‘Why birds?’ I ask March.
The boy soldier has spent every moment since we arrived back at the ship cleaning his kit – trying to look impressive for November, perhaps. Currently he is polishing his boots while he wears them, dabbing a rag into a tiny portable tin of polish. He glances up when I speak to him. ‘No idea,’ he tells me.
From beyond the uneven opening in the side of the Metronome come the crew, carrying the birds. There must be hundreds of feathered bodies vying for space. The cages are not cramped, and have special little ledges upon which they can perch, but there is something close to a dozen birds per cage, of all different shapes and sizes. They are noisy, colourful and brilliant.
The hold behind us is slowly filling up with them.
The Bosun, who is overseeing the loading, has also chosen to remain in the dry interior of the ship. He taps his pipe and grunts at me. ‘From what I hear,’ he says, ‘sometimes, birds get lost and end up in Binary. Bit jarring seeing a bloody great parrot larking about when everything else is grey. Disturbs the locals. So they have this special team they put out with nets, to catch ’em. Sounds like a bloody waste of time, if you ask me. Why not have a little colour?’ The Bosun takes his time to remove his pipe and spit, making absolutely certain that his missile hits the grey concrete of the docks. ‘Hell if I know what we’re gonna do with ’em all,’ he grumbles. ‘Callister’s orders.’
I do have to admit that I am enjoying the presence of the birds. It is a mad and chaotic colourful vision, making the Metronome feel even more alive.
Before too long the stream of noisy cargo stops, and the crew make to roll the doors shut.
March stops them. ‘Hold on,’ he says. ‘We’re waiting on an arrival. Leave it for now.’
The Bosun glares at him. ‘How much longer?’ he grumbles.
March can only shrug.
It is obvious that nobody wants to stay here any longer than absolutely necessary. There is no approach, however. I think that I was expecting the swift arrival of November, striding through the rains triumphantly, and I get the impression that March was expecting the same. Every now and then, he will glance up with a small frown upon his face. Eventually March runs out of things to clean, and stands tall instead, restlessly clutching at his rifle and peering into the rains.
‘You take good care of your equipment,’ I say, making conversation.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘The last March always told me that if you look after your kit, it’ll look after you. He hasn’t been wrong yet.’
‘What was he like? The old March, I mean.’
March looks thoughtful. ‘The best guy I ever knew, honestly,’ he says. ‘He turned up one night in my dream, out of nowhere. Same dream every night, like you saw. Can’t seem to shake it. And then this guy walks in, looking like something out of an old war film. You know, with the wooden rifle, and dented metal helmet. World War Two kinda thing. And he sits with me, and shows me his compass, and just talks for hours and hours. He tells me about dreams, and the doors between them, and that his name is March and that he’s something called a Sleepwalker. And then he says to me, hey, you look like a bright young lad, want to learn how to do what I do?’ March grips his compass tightly and watches the needles spin. ‘I didn’t realise he was training me to replace him. But I guess he must have known he was going to die soon. I miss him, a lot. It’s hard,’ he says.
‘It’s hard leaving my dream every night, chasing nightmares and using his name, like I’m pretending to be him. Like I’m pretending to be one of them. I’m not… I’m no November, you know? Most of the time I barely know what I’m doing.’
I squint out at the rains. I am not certain how to reply – whether attempting to be comforting would be patronising or not. Instead, I leave March to his thoughts, and hope that November shows up soon. I am firmly of the belief that we will all be better off once we have left the gloomy city of Binary far behind us.
An unusual quiet falls over the scene. The pattering of the drizzle seems to soften, as does the ticking of the ship’s engine behind us, and the noisy calling of birds ceases altogether.
‘What in hell’s name…’ March mutters. His voice sounds distant.
The far edge of the docks is wreathed in shadows, and from somewhere inside them comes the sound of heavy boots stomping. The birds behind us have flapped to the backs of their cages, as if to get as far away as possible from the approaching noise.
‘Oh, shit.’ March raises his rifle.
From the darkness lurches a heavy shape, and the shadows seem to linger upon it a little longer than they should, as if reluctant to let it go. It looks like some kind of bizarre ancient diving suit, heaving its heavy boots, one after the other, swinging its metal gauntlets and labouring under an enormous metal helmet with a porthole window.
March strides out and on to the docks to intercept it, his head angled across the sight of his rifle. I notice his thumb flick the safety catch above the trigger. ‘Stop where you are!’ he calls. ‘Stop right there!’
The nightmare diver has no breathing apparatus. There are no pipes leading from its helmet, and there is no oxygen pack across his back. And yet, this is not the worst there is to see. Because it appears that the diver’s helmet is filled with darkness.
The enormous diver’s boots come to a clomping halt a few feet away from March, and it slowly raises one of his gauntlets, within which is a scroll of paper.
>
March’s rifle is steady. With the utmost caution, March steps as a dancer might, the end of his rifle trained on the diver’s helmet, around to where he is able to snatch the scroll.
‘Will!’ calls March. ‘Can you come and read this for me?’
I am afraid to approach the stand-off, but I cross the divide and take the scroll from the nightmare-hunter. I untie the fastening and read through.
‘March,’ I say. ‘This says that November sent him. His name is Slint, and that he will help us recover the Smog.’ I read it again to make certain. My throat feels heavy, and the drizzle from above makes streaks of some of the letters, but it is true. November has sent a nightmare to help us. ‘I’m sorry, March,’ I say. ‘It says that she’s not going to be able to join us. That nightmares are rioting back in Babel, and she needs to deal with it. But… she wishes us luck. And she says that this nightmare… this Slint, is a trusted ally. That he will obey orders without question.’ My second sweep of the scroll done, I roll it up again in order to preserve it from the rain, and step back. It seems like a cruel joke and I am sorry to have been a part of it.
March takes a while to digest this news. He does not lower his rifle.
‘Bosun!’ he calls. ‘Fetch the Captain!’
Grabbing the scroll from me, the heavyset Bosun seems more than happy to dash away. And in that moment, I realise that I too want to be away from this - that I have had enough of the grey city and its despair. I step back inside, and waver, watching the stand-off between the nightmare hunter and the nightmare inside the diving suit, wondering if I should stay and help. But then I see one last thing, and it is enough to cause me to retreat.
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