by Philip Reeve
"I am glad to see you safe, Miss Crumb," he said.
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Fever could not hide the surprise she felt, that he should know her name. Quercus laughed softly. "Don't worry, I'm not a sorcerer. My agents have been in touch with Dr. Stayling, and keep me informed by means of technomancy. It was a bold move of the Engineer's, putting you aboard that flying machine. Luckily he was able to warn us that you were coming. I am sorry about your companion, Master Salent."
"Solent," said Fever. "He died saving me. He was very brave."
Quercus nodded. "His soul is in the High Halls, then."
Fever thought she should tell him that there were no such things as souls, then decided that she had better not.
"He will be treated with honor," Quercus promised.
"He's dead."
"Nevertheless, we have certain rites and rituals with which we honor the bodies of the courageous dead, here in the Movement."
Fever bit her lip and supposed she should feel grateful. Funeral rites were silly religious nonsense, and it seemed pitiable that a man like Quercus should believe in gods and souls and rituals. But Kit Solent had not been an Engineer. She remembered the candles under Katie's portrait in his drawing room, and thought that perhaps it would have comforted him to know that the Movement would treat his remains with ceremony.
Quercus nodded, dismissing the matter. He held out his arm to Fever. "Come. I must take you to meet the Snow Leopard."
"Who?"
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"My chief technomancer. We call her the Snow Leopard. You know her perhaps by a different name, as Wavey Godshawk."
"My mother?" said Fever, suddenly hesitant, afraid. "But that's ..."
She stopped herself. She had been about to say, "That's impossible." But it was not impossible. When Dr. Crumb told her his story she had recognized that there must be a chance Wavey had survived. She had accepted that she might have a mother, somewhere in the world. She just had not expected to have the question resolved so soon. It was one thing to have a theoretical mother, quite another to be asked to meet her.
Quercus's smile grew broader as he watched the expressions flit across her face. "Come. She waits for you."
***
How long had it been traveling, that fortress of the Movement? Even the Movement had forgotten. Back when they were first driven from their homeland by ice and enemies, it had been the ox-drawn wagon of their chieftain. It had grown as they moved on, acquiring first steam and then petrol engines from the cities that they conquered, putting on turrets and funnels, gun decks and cabins, spires and jaws and sally ports. It was too big now to be powered only by its primitive engines, and its under-decks were filled with massive treadmills, worked by regiments of slaves.
But still the Movement recalled how, long ago, they had lived in Arctic oak forests during some brief, lost era of warmth, and
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worshipped the gods and spirits of the trees. They had brought one tree with them on their journeyings -- age-old, long dead -- to remind them of their origins. It stood in a chamber of its own, near the castle's stern, a place which seemed quiet even when the engines were pounding and the big guns boomed. Centuries had passed since it last bore leaves or acorns, but the stumps of its branches were decorated with thousands of little scraps of colored rag, the funeral ribbons of everyone who had died during the Movement's wanderings.
Beneath the oak that evening sat a woman. She wore one of the simple gowns that Movement women favored, a gray gown that left her throat bare and displayed a curious sepia birthmark beneath her ear and another in the hollow above her collarbone, like a puddle of spilled ink. Nervously her long hands rose to tuck her hair behind her ears. Then she changed her mind and untucked it again. Her hair was gray-white, the color of wood ash. There were faint crows' feet at the corners of her eyes. In every other way she looked just as she had on the day that Gideon Crumb rescued her from the crowd in St Kylie. Years lay lightly on the Scriven.
One of the big oak doors at the chamber's end opened. The girl came in, and Nikola Quercus came in behind her and softly shut the door again.
"Fever Crumb," he said.
Fever and her mother looked at each other.
"Fever," said Wavey Godshawk, after a little while.
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She had thought of Fever often during the years since she fled London, but she had always pictured her as a little girl, like the little girl she had once been herself. She had not prepared herself to meet this spindly teenager with her shaven head and her strange, familiar face.
"My child," she said, after a little longer.
"You have grown up!" she said, wondering.
"What have you done to your hair ?" she asked.
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***
30 The Snow Leopard
My mother, thought Fever numbly. She went toward her, but did not take the slender hands that Wavey Godshawk stretched out to her. My mother. She could smell her perfume, a subtle, blue-gray scent that matched her dress. And what a strange face she had! It wasn't just those few small speckles. The cheekbones were too high, the eyes too large, the jaw too long, the wide mouth filled with far too many teeth (though very straight, thanks to the brace she'd worn when Dr. Crumb had met her). It was easy to see why people had believed that the Scriven were a new species. It was easy to see why the Scriven had believed it themselves. She isn't human, Fever kept thinking. And she is my mother....
"You could have sent word," she said. "Dr. Crumb doesn't even know that you are still alive!"
"I thought it better not to," said Wavey Godshawk. "What
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good could it have done? I could not return to London alone. I had to wait until Quercus was ready. Sit, my dear; sit ...
She patted the bench and Fever sat down beside her. She reached out and touched Fever's face, smoothing a thumb over her lips, brushing a smut from her forehead. Fever flinched away from her touch, feeling an irrational anger build inside her. What right did this stranger have to prod and stroke her, as if she were a pet or a doll?
Wavey Godshawk sensed her feelings. "Oh, Fever," she said, sitting back and folding her hands in her lap, smiling. "Oh, but you must think me a terrible mother! To abandon you. To abandon your father before he even knew that he was a father.... But I had to abandon him. Godshawk was furious when he found out I was in love with Gideon. He sent Gideon away, and he told me that if I tried to contact him he would be killed. He sent me away, too, said he couldn't stand the sight of me, and packed me off to live at the Barbican.
"Then, when he learned that I was going to have a baby, he softened. I think that he had long been wanting me to have a child who would continue the House of Godshawk. He had spent years finding a good husband for me, and when Odo Bolventor rejected me perhaps he was glad that Gideon Crumb had been there to provide him with an heir. But still he would not let me contact Gideon."
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Fever could picture her as she had looked in those days. The way she had worn her hair, the clothes she'd favored. She had no memories of Wavey from her own babyhood, of course, but there were other memories, scores of them, from earlier times. Wavey as a little girl, and as a young woman. Wavey in her white coat, her hair tied back, careful and serious and the best laboratory assistant a man could ask for. Wavey fastening those thick leather wristbands, frowning as she tightened the screws of the helmet around Fever's head...
No , not my head! Not my wrists! These aren't my memories....
Wavey kept on smiling at her, and reached out impulsively to touch her hand. "You were never comfortable in my womb, Fever, dear. There was some mismatch between your human and your Scriven halves. How you struggled and squiggled! Elbows and heels jabbed me. I was feverish always. You arrived early, one spring night in my apartment at the Barbican, long before you were looked for. A small little purple monkey you looked, barely longer than my hand, and the Scrivener hadn't made even one single mark upon you. Nobody dreamed that you wou
ld live. But Godshawk took you away with him to his laboratories at Nonesuch House, and although I was too weak to go and see you there, he sent word to me by a servant every day.
"Every day I woke up fearing that they would tell me you were dead, but every day they said, 'She's still alive. She's still alive. Your father is doing all he can. Medical machines not seen since Ancient days...'
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"And then, in early summer, when the blossom was still on the trees, he brought you home to me. You were in your little basket. Your eyes had changed -- two different colors. He said it was a side effect of the surgery he had performed, and I did not complain. I was just so happy to see you. And so grateful to Godshawk for having saved you.
"But we had so little time together, Fever! There were riots in the city, and the mercenaries whom Godshawk had hired to protect us betrayed us and joined with the rioters instead.
"You and I were still living at the Barbican, and so were other Scriven, friends of Godshawk, sheltering from the riots. One morning he had us all gather in the basement and showed us the secret passage to Nonesuch House. We begged him to come with us, but he refused. He said he would stay and seal up the tunnel entrance, then organize a last stand against the Skinners. They can't kill me,' he said, as we set off along the tunnel. 'Just keep that baby safe, daughter!'
"That night, from the windows of Nonesuch House, we heard their horrid cheering drifting across the marshes, as if the whole of London was celebrating, and we knew that Godshawk was dead.
"We stayed there, hidden, for nearly two weeks. At first we felt sure that some Scriven noblemen would have survived the riots, that they'd retake London and come to rescue us. But slowly we realized we were alone.
"There was not much to eat. The others squabbled. Some said
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I should not keep you, Fever, that it was wrong to let a half-human hybrid eat food real Scriven needed. When they were not arguing and blaming one another and inventing hopeless schemes to win the city back, the men went out and cut the causeway to make sure no looters reached us, though there was enough loot on Ludgate Hill to keep the commons busy for a long time.
"At the end of the second week the Skinners came for us. My companions shot at them from the gardens and thought they'd killed them all -- how they jeered and laughed, flinging stones at the bodies afloat in the lagoon! But one had survived, and that night he came to the house.
"As the panic grew, I took you from your basket and ran and hid. I snuggled down with you on the floor of a cupboard in one of the bedrooms and listened to the men as they shouted to one another, asking where the Skinner was, and the clang of his spring gun as he appeared out of the shadows to shoot them down one by one, and the screams. Gradually, the house grew quiet. A horrible silence. I whispered lullabies to you, and your little hands pulled at my nose and ears. And you made a sound. Not crying, just a little baby gurgle. And the Skinner heard you.
"I could sense him padding toward us through the house. I put my hand over your face, but I dared not hold it too tight for fear I'd smother you. And you were happy, Fever, snuggled up with me there in that place full of soft things. You started laughing. You made trilling sounds, and little wicked chuckles.
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"And then, bang. A hole appeared in the cupboard door, just in the place where my head would have been if I'd been standing up. Light was coming in. The force of the shot made the door swing open. I tried to stop it. I clawed at the wood, but my fingers couldn't find a purchase on it. The door swung wide open, and there outside it stood the Skinner, with his long black coat and his black hat and his pale eyes and his spring gun.
"I held you so tight, Fever. You sensed, I think, the danger we were in. Or else his first shot had shocked you quiet; quiet you were, anyway. I watched him, waiting for him to raise that gun. And I waited. And after a while he let out a long breath, and a cough -- he'd been sunk in the marsh all day -- and he put the gun away.
"'Well,' he said, looking around the room as if I weren't there. 'I suppose I'd better burn this place. It'll take me ten minutes, I reckon, to set the fire.'
"And he turned and went out of the room.
"For one whole minute I just sat there. Then I jumped up, and rummaged in the cupboard for an outdoor coat, and found some boots down on the floor -- I'd been wondering what they were, digging into my bottom, all the time that we'd been hiding there. I pulled on the boots and wrapped that cloak around us both and I was off, down the hill and out across the marshes. And after ten minutes I looked back and there was fire in all the windows of Nonesuch House.
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"When morning came I struck out for a dig I knew, owned by a man named Unthank who had worked for my father sometimes. He welcomed me, but he said he couldn't hide me long. I decided to go north and seek shelter among the nomad empires. But I knew I couldn't take you with me. You were too small for such a journey, and besides, what if my Skinner had regretted his mercifulness and told his friends of me? What if the Skinners' Guilds and the new guards on the Moatway were all looking out for a woman with a baby girl?
"There was only one thing to do, Fever, dear. I left you there with Unthank, and I told him to call Dr. Crumb there on some pretence. 'Dr. Crumb is a good man,' I told him. 'He'll take care of the child.'
"And he did, didn't he, Fever Crumb? Because look at you. You're a young woman, nearly. And I've no doubt you're just as sweet and clever as your father."
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***
31 H idden T reasures
Mother," said Fever, very quietly and self-consciously, because it was the first time she'd ever used the word. "What did Godshawk do to me?"
Wavey's dark eyes darkened further; she glanced away. "What do you mean?"
"I remember things. Things that happened to him, not to me."
There was a little silence. They could hear people moving around somewhere below them in the fortress's engine rooms; the clangs and clatter of refueling. Nikola Quercus stirred and shifted, over by the chamber door. "What does the girl mean?" he asked. "You never told me anything of this."
"Godshawk did something to me, didn't he?" Fever prompted. "He performed some operation on my brain, to give me his memories."
"Oh, Fever," said Wavey, wondering.
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"Is this true?" asked Quercus, coming nearer. "She has the old man's knowledge in her? His thoughts?"
Wavey looked quickly at him, then back to Fever. "It might be. It is possible...."
"And you were keeping this secret to yourself perhaps, Snow Leopard?"
"I did not know," said Wavey. "At least, I could not be certain. I guessed that he had placed some engine in her head. There was that scar, still fresh when she came back to me. But I did not know what its purpose was...."
She pursed her lips, shook her head, looked down, and looked up at Fever. She reached out to fondle the faint, scratchy stubble of the girl's regrowing hair. She said, "Godshawk spent decades studying the brains of Stalkers. He made expeditions to the uttermost north, where the old Stalker builders lived in the years after the Downsizing. He traded with the natives there for certain artifacts; rare Stalker brains of strange design taken from temples on the high ice. Things made in the long ago, by people for whom Stalkers were much more than the mere fighting machines we know today. Machines which could capture and curate memories, even the memories of the dead.
"For years Godshawk and his friend Unthank studied them, back at Nonesuch House. Godshawk did not want to die, you see. And he was convinced that he did not have to. He hoped to copy his consciousness into one of those ancient brains and install it in a new body when his old one failed. He talked of doing the same
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with all the Scriven. Then we truly will be Homo superior,' he used to say. 'Immortal, unperishing. Imagine the things a man might do if he had eternity to do them in, not just our present measly span of years.'"'
"But it didn't work, did it?" Fever asked.
&nb
sp; Another shrug. A shy, wry smile. "I helped him to imprint his mind onto the brains. That worked, as far as he could tell. But when he tried to put those brains in new bodies, something always went wrong. He placed them in dead men, and they remembered nothing, just like ordinary Stalkers. He put them into living men -- slaves and Skinner prisoners -- and they simply died. I thought he had given up, moved on to other projects...."
"But then ... said Fever, "he put one into me... ."
Wavey nodded. The tears that had been forming in her eyes spilled out and trickled down her face. "And you did not die. A young body, perhaps that was what it required. A newborn body, where the Stalker brain would have plenty of time to bed in before it was activated by the tides of adolescence."
"He told you that?" said Fever, actually ducking to avoid a memory Wavey's words called up of Godshawk's own adolescence, and a girl he'd kissed at Rag Fair on a snowy afternoon.
"I'm guessing," said Wavey. "It might have been simple desperation that made him try it. The Skinners' Guilds had grown horribly strong by the time you were born, and he knew his days were numbered. You were on the brink of death anyway,
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poor little thing. What had he to lose by putting the device in your head? He would have injected you at the same time with microscopic machines that he harvested from the bodies of ancient Stalkers. They would have helped to repair the damage to your brain, and stop infections forming. At least, that was his belief. They never worked in his other subjects. But here you are, alive!"
"Here I am," said Fever numbly. But was she? Was this her, or was it Auric Godshawk? She reached behind her head and let her fingers trace the faint, rippled line of the scar, the zipper where Godshawk had opened her skull and slipped in his machine. The shape of a walnut, the size of an almond. The spring from which all those unfamiliar memories flowed. More washed over her now; memories of Wavey, mostly, pleasant memories, but still upsetting, because she wanted to get used to the idea that this woman was her mother, but she kept seeing her as someone younger than herself, a little girl, a favorite daughter, a workroom protégée.