Mortal Engines Read online

  Praise for Philip Reeve’s novels

  “Big, brave, brilliant”

  Guardian

  “Phenomenal… Violent and romantic, action-packed and contemplative, funny and frightening”

  The Sunday Times

  “A marvellous book, utterly captivating in its imaginative scope and energy. The only flaw I can see is the difficulty of putting it down between chapters”

  Daily Telegraph

  “Witty and thrilling, serious and sensitive, the Mortal Engines quartet is one of the most daring and imaginative adventures ever written”

  Books for Keeps

  “Reeve is a terrific writer”

  The Times

  “A masterpiece”

  Sunday Telegraph

  “Mind bogglingly well-imagined”

  Independent

  “If you’ve never read a Philip Reeve novel before, you’re in for a treat. His storytelling is accomplished and his use of language most ingenious and irreverent”

  Waterstone’s Books Quarterly

  “Philip Pullman fans will love Mortal Engines… I didn’t want it to end”

  Daily Telegraph

  “Intelligent, funny and wise”

  Literary Review

  “Philip Reeve is a hugely talented and versatile author… the emotional journeys of his characters are enthralling, never sentimental and always believable”

  Daily Telegraph

  “A magnificent story and one of the most compelling things I have read so far this year”

  Bookseller

  “Wonderful fantasy… Reeve has managed to marry the hugeness of his imagination with an utterly compelling story line”

  Anthony Horowitz

  “Ripping and intelligent”

  The Sunday Times

  “Astonishing”

  Scotsman

  “Reeve’s writing style is as spare and muscular as a whippet”

  Geraldine McCaughrean

  “Beautifully written without a dull word”

  Independent

  “When I first read Mortal Engines, I felt as if the pages themselves were charged with electricity”

  Frank Cottrell Boyce, Guardian

  “Extraordinary… The book has pace, depth, action and violence”

  The Sunday Times

  “There’s a fabulous streak of frivolity running through everything that Reeve writes…Like many of the great writers who can be read happily by both adults and children, Reeve uses the frivolity to hide his own seriousness”

  Guardian

  “Much more than a ripping yarn”

  Books for Keeps

  “Reeve writes with confidence and power. He is not only a master of visceral excitement, but at every turn, surprises, entertains and makes his readers think”

  Books for Keeps

  “Its violence, conflict and rivalries are beautifully offset by its wit and jocular mischief… sparkling, brilliantly paced pages”

  TES

  “Post-apocalyptic fiction does not come much more entertaining than this”

  Irish Times

  “A brilliant central conceit… The story has a dreamlike intensity”

  Independent

  “Electrifying”

  Booktrust.co.uk

  “Superbly imagined”

  The Times

  “A staggering feat of award-winning storytelling aplomb”

  John McLay

  “The idea behind Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines books has other authors crying ‘I wish I’d thought of that!’”

  Geraldine McCaughrean, Daily Telegraph

  “Original, vivid and thrilling”

  Scotsman

  “Reeve’s villains are never wholly bad, nor his heroes wholly good, and his messages linger long”

  Independent

  “He conveys big truths while being witty and playful, and the vocabulary is rich”

  Nicolette Jones, The Sunday Times

  About the Author

  PHILIP REEVE was born in Brighton in 1966. After school he went to art college, then returned to Brighton to work in a small, independent bookshop. Some years later he became an illustrator – providing cartoons for various books, including several of the Horrible Histories series. He has been writing since he was five, but Mortal Engines was his first published book. He lives with his wife and son on Dartmoor.

  www.philip-reeve.com

  www.philipreeve.blogspot.com

  www.mortalengines.co.uk

  By Philip Reeve

  Mortal Engines

  Predator’s Gold

  Infernal Devices

  A Darkling Plain

  Fever Crumb

  A Web of Air

  Scrivener’s Moon

  Here Lies Arthur

  No Such Thing As Dragons

  Larklight

  Starcross

  Mothstorm

  PHILIP REEVE

  For Sarah

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Praise for Philip Reeve’s novels

  About the Author

  By Philip Reeve

  Title Page

  Dedication

  PART ONE

  1 THE HUNTING GROUND

  2 VALENTINE

  3 THE WASTE CHUTE

  4 THE OUT-COUNTRY

  5 THE LORD MAYOR

  6 SPEEDWELL

  7 HIGH LONDON

  8 THE TRADING CLUSTER

  9 THE JENNY HANIVER

  10 THE 13TH FLOOR ELEVATOR

  11 AIRHAVEN

  12 THE GASBAG AND GONDOLA

  13 THE RESURRECTED MAN

  14 THE GUILDHALL

  15 THE RUSTWATER MARSHES

  16 THE TURD TANKS

  17 THE PIRATE SUBURB

  18 BEVIS

  19 THE SEA OF KHAZAK

  20 THE BLACK ISLAND

  21 IN THE ENGINEERIUM

  22 SHRIKE

  23 MEDUSA

  PART TWO

  24 AN AGENT OF THE LEAGUE

  25 THE HISTORIANS

  26 BATMUNKH GOMPA

  27 DR ARKENGARTH REMEMBERS

  28 A STRANGER IN THE MOUNTAINS OF HEAVEN

  29 GOING HOME

  30 A HERO’S WELCOME

  31 THE EAVESDROPPER

  32 CHUDLEIGH POMEROY SEES IT THROUGH

  33 WINE AND NIBBLES AND THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA

  34 IDEA FOR A FIREWORKS DISPLAY

  35 THE CATHEDRAL

  36 THE SHADOW OF BONES

  37 THE BIRD ROADS

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  PART ONE

  1

  THE HUNTING GROUND

  It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.

  In happier times, London would never have bothered with such feeble prey. The great Traction City had once spent its days hunting far bigger towns than this, ranging north as far as the edges of the Ice Waste and south to the shores of the Mediterranean. But lately prey of any kind had started to grow scarce, and some of the larger cities had begun to look hungrily at London. For ten years now it had been hiding from them, skulking in a damp, mountainous, western district which the Guild of Historians said had once been the island of Britain. For ten years it had eaten nothing but tiny farming towns and static settlements in those wet hills. Now, at last, the Lord Mayor had decided that the time was right to take his city back over the land-bridge into the Great Hunting Ground.

  It was barely halfway across when the look-outs on the high watch-towers spied the mining town, gnawing at the salt-flats twenty miles ahead. To the people of London it seemed like a sign from the gods, and even the Lord Mayor (who didn’t believe in gods
or signs) thought it was a good beginning to the journey east, and issued the order to give chase.

  The mining town saw the danger and turned tail, but already the huge caterpillar tracks under London were starting to roll faster and faster. Soon the city was lumbering in pursuit, a moving mountain of metal which rose in seven tiers like the layers of a wedding cake, the lower levels wreathed in engine-smoke, the villas of the rich gleaming white on the higher decks, and above it all the cross on top of St Paul’s Cathedral glinting gold, two thousand feet above the ruined earth.

  Tom was cleaning the exhibits in the London Museum’s Natural History section when it started. He felt the tell-tale tremor in the metal floor, and looked up to find the model whales and dolphins that hung from the gallery roof swinging on their cables with soft creaking sounds.

  He wasn’t alarmed. He had lived in London for all of his fifteen years, and he was used to its movements. He knew that the city was changing course and putting on speed. A prickle of excitement ran through him, the ancient thrill of the hunt that all Londoners shared. There must be prey in sight! Dropping his brushes and dusters he pressed his hand to the wall, sensing the vibrations that came rippling up from the huge engine-rooms down in the Gut. Yes, there it was – the deep throb of the auxiliary motors cutting in, boom, boom, boom, like a big drum beating inside his bones.

  The door at the far end of the gallery slammed open and Chudleigh Pomeroy came storming in, his toupee askew and his round face red with indignation. “What in the name of Quirke…?” he blustered, gawping at the gyrating whales, and the stuffed birds jigging and twitching in their cases as if they were shaking off their long captivity and getting ready to take wing again. “Apprentice Natsworthy! What’s going on here?”

  “It’s a chase, sir,” said Tom, wondering how the Deputy Head of the Guild of Historians had managed to live aboard London for so long and still not recognize its heartbeat. “It must be something good,” he explained. “They’ve brought all the auxiliaries on line. That hasn’t happened for ages. Maybe London’s luck has turned!”

  “Pah!” snorted Pomeroy, wincing as the glass in the display cases started to whine and shiver in sympathy with the beat of the engines. Above his head the biggest of the models – a thing called a blue whale that had become extinct thousands of years ago – was jerking back and forth on its hawsers like a plank-swing. “That’s as may be, Natsworthy,” he said. “I just wish the Guild of Engineers would fit some decent shock-absorbers in this building. Some of these specimens are very delicate. It won’t do. It won’t do at all.” He tugged a spotted handkerchief out of the folds of his long black robes and dabbed his face with it.

  “Please, sir,” asked Tom, “could I run down to the observation platforms and watch the chase, just for half an hour? It’s been years since there was a really good one…”

  Pomeroy looked shocked. “Certainly not, Apprentice! Look at all the dust that this wretched chase is shaking down! All the exhibits will have to be cleaned again and checked for damage.”

  “Oh, but that’s not fair!” cried Tom. “I’ve just dusted this whole gallery!”

  He knew at once that he had made a mistake. Old Chudleigh Pomeroy wasn’t bad as Guildsmen went, but he didn’t like being answered back by a mere Third Class Apprentice. He drew himself up to his full height (which was only slightly more than his full width) and frowned so sternly that his Guild-mark almost vanished between his bushy eyebrows. “Life isn’t fair, Natsworthy,” he boomed. “Any more cheek from you and you’ll be on Gut-duty as soon as this chase is over!”

  Of all the horrible chores a Third Class Apprentice had to perform, Gut-duty was the one Tom hated most. He quickly shut up, staring meekly down at the beautifully buffed toes of the Chief Curator’s boots.

  “You were told to work in this department until seven o’clock, and you will work until seven o’clock,” Pomeroy went on. “Meanwhile, I shall consult the other curators about this dreadful, dreadful shaking…”

  He hurried off, still muttering. Tom watched him go, then picked up his gear and went miserably back to work. Usually he didn’t mind cleaning, especially not in this gallery, with its amiable, moth-eaten animals and the blue whale smiling its big blue smile. If he grew bored, he simply took refuge in a daydream, in which he was a hero who rescued beautiful girls from air-pirates, saved London from the Anti-Traction League and lived happily ever after. But how could he daydream, with the rest of the city enjoying the first proper chase for ages?

  He waited for twenty minutes, but Chudleigh Pomeroy did not return. There was nobody else about. It was a Wednesday, which meant the Museum was closed to the public, and most of the senior Guildsmen and First and Second Class Apprentices would be having the day off. What harm could it do if he slipped outside for ten minutes, just to see what was happening? He hid his bag of cleaning stuff behind a handy yak and hurried through the shadows of dancing dolphins to the door.

  Out in the corridor all the argon lamps were dancing too, spilling their light up the metal walls. Two black-robed Guildsmen hurried past, and Tom heard the reedy voice of old Dr Arkengarth whine, “Vibrations! Vibrations! It’s playing merry hell with my 25th Century ceramics…” He waited until they had vanished around a bend in the corridor, then slipped quickly out and down the nearest stairway. He cut through the 21st Century gallery, past the big plastic statues of Pluto and Mickey, animal-headed gods of lost America. He ran across the main hall and down galleries full of things that had somehow survived through all the millennia since the Ancients destroyed themselves in that terrible flurry of orbit-to-earth atomics and tailored-virus bombs called the Sixty Minute War. Two minutes later he slipped out through a side entrance into the noise and bustle of the Tottenham Court Road.

  The London Museum stood at the very hub of Tier Two, in a busy district called Bloomsbury, and the underbelly of Tier One hung like a rusty sky a few feet above the rooftops. Tom didn’t worry about being spotted as he pushed his way along the dark, crowded street towards the public Goggle-screen outside the Tottenham Court Road elevator station. Joining the crowd in front of it he had his first glimpse of the distant prey; a watery, blue-grey blur captured by cameras down on Tier Six. “The town is called Salthook,” boomed the voice of the announcer. “A mining platform of nine hundred inhabitants. She is currently moving at eighty miles per hour, heading due east, but the Guild of Navigators predicts London will catch her before sundown. There are sure to be many more towns awaiting us beyond the land-bridge; clear proof of just how wise our beloved Lord Mayor was when he decided to bring London east again…”

  Tom had never felt his city move at such an astonishing speed, and he longed to be down at the observation deck, feeling the wind on his face. He was probably already in trouble with Mr Pomeroy. What difference could it make if he stole a few more minutes?

  He set off at a run, and soon reached Bloomsbury Park, out in the open air on the tier’s brim. It had been a proper park once, with trees and duck-ponds, but because of the recent shortage of prey it had been given over to food production and its lawns grubbed up to make way for cabbage-plots and algae-pans. The observation platforms were still there though, raised balconies jutting out from the edge of the tier where Londoners could go to watch the passing view. Tom hurried towards the nearest. An even bigger crowd had gathered there, including quite a few people in the black of the Historian’s Guild, and Tom tried to look inconspicuous as he pushed his way through to the front and peered over the railings. Salthook was only five miles ahead, travelling flat out with black smoke spewing from its exhaust-stacks.

  “Natsworthy!” called a braying voice, and his heart sank. He looked round and found that he was standing next to Melliphant, a burly First Class Apprentice, who grinned at him and said, “Isn’t it wonderful? A fat little salt-mining platform, with C20 land-engines! Just what London needs!”

  Herbert Melliphant was the worst sort of bully; the sort who didn’t just hit you and stick your head do
wn the lavatory, but made it his business to find out all your secrets and the things that upset you most and taunt you with them. He enjoyed picking on Tom, who was small and shy and had no friends to stick up for him – and Tom could not get back at him, because Melliphant’s family had paid to make him a First Class Apprentice, while Tom, who had no family, was a mere Third. He knew Melliphant was only bothering to talk to him because he was hoping to impress a pretty young Historian named Clytie Potts, who was standing just behind. Tom nodded and turned his back, concentrating on the chase.

  “Look!” shouted Clytie Potts.

  The gap between London and its prey was narrowing fast, and a dark shape had lifted clear of Salthook. Soon there was another and another. Airships! The crowds on London’s observation platforms cheered, and Melliphant said, “Ah, air-merchants. They know the town is doomed, you see, so they are making sure they get away before we eat it. If they don’t, we can claim their cargoes along with everything else aboard!”

  Tom was glad to see that Clytie Potts looked thoroughly bored by Melliphant: she was a year above him and must already know this stuff, because she had passed her Guild exams and had the Historian’s mark tattooed on her forehead. “Look!” she said again, catching Tom’s glance and grinning. “Oh, look at them go! Aren’t they beautiful!”

  Tom pushed his untidy hair out of his eyes and watched as the airships rose up and up and vanished into the slate-grey clouds. For a moment he found himself longing to go with them, up into the sunlight. If only his poor parents had not left him to the care of the Guild, to be trained as a Historian! He wished he could be cabin-boy aboard a sky-clipper and see all the cities of the world: Puerto Angeles adrift on the blue Pacific and Arkangel skating on iron runners across the frozen northern seas, the great ziggurat-towns of the Nuevo-Mayans and the unmoving strongholds of the Anti-Traction League…