A Darkling Plain me-4 Read online

  “We must be patient,” said Tom, but he could not help feeling uneasy. It did not seem like Wolf Kobold to be late… He circled again. The Jenny felt light and playful, as if pleased to be back in the sky. Her holds were empty, on Wolf’s instructions; presumably he envisaged himself flying home from the wreck of London with a shipload of loot. But where was he?

  The radio gave a sudden crackle and began to squeal. It had been tuned in advance to a frequency that Wolf had provided, so it seemed safe to assume that the shrill, ear-splitting noise coming out of the speakers was the call sign of Harrowbarrow’s homing beacon.

  Tom scrambled over to turn down the volume, while Wren ran back to the windows. The land below them was as featureless as ever. “I can’t see any suburbs,” said Wren. “It must still be over the horizon.”

  “Can’t be,” said Tom, wincing as the signal increased again. “It sounds as if we’re right on top of it.”

  It was Wren who spotted the movements in a broad track mark about a mile to the east. The pools of water there were emptying away, and the trees and bushes that had grown around them were starting to move, turning and twisting and falling one against another. The floor of the track mark heaved upward into a high dome of earth, which split and slithered and fell away to reveal a bank of immense, spiraling drill bits and then a scarred, armored carapace. A gray fist of exhaust smoke punched into the sky. “Great Quirke!” murmured Tom.

  In the Wunderkammer at Anchorage-in-Vineland there had been the shell of something called a horseshoe crab. Later, when she was trying to explain what Harrowbarrow looked like, Wren would often compare it to that crab. The suburb was small—barely a hundred feet across, and about three times that in length. It was entirely covered by its armored shell. The front end was a broad, blunt shield, into which the drill bits were being retracted now that it was on the surface. (The shield also covered Harrowbarrow’s ugly mouthparts, and could be raised when it wanted to tear chunks off the small towns it hunted, or gobble up a Green Storm fort.! Behind the shield, Harrowbarrow tapered to a narrow stern, protected by overlapping plates of armor. Several of the plates were sliding aside, and Wren glimpsed heavy tracks and wheels beneath them, and a metal landing apron that slid out slowly on hydraulic rams, flickering with landing lights.

  “Is that where we’re meant to put down?” asked Wren.

  Tom said that he supposed it must be. “Kobold said his place was specialized,” he said wonderingly, “but I had no idea…”

  He didn’t like the look of this place, but he told himself that it was just the first step on the way to London, and guided the Jenny carefully down onto the landing platform.

  Wolf Kobold was waiting, ready to answer all their questions. It was nearly a week since Wren had seen him, and she had forgotten just how striking he was. The gray dawn and the landing lights and the wind flapping his coattails about made him look more handsome and piratical than ever. But Wren had always had a soft spot for pirates, and at least Wolf’s smile was friendly and welcoming.

  Not so his town. All she could see beneath the folded-back armor were blocks of drab gray flats, punched with tiny windows. The people looked gray and drab too as they hurried forward to take the travelers’ bags; stocky scowling scavengers in capes and overalls, with goggles or beetlish dust masks shielding their eyes from the gathering daylight.

  “No, Harrowbarrow does not exactly burrow,” Wolf was saying, in answer to something Tom had asked him. “We cannot bore through bedrock or anything like that—it would be far too slow a way to get about! But there are great many nice deep track marks crisscrossing our world, and their bottoms are mostly filled with loose shale and silt and tumbledown; more than enough of it to hide this little place.”

  They watched while his men secured the Jenny Haniver to the mooring apron, and then followed him through an alley between the metal buildings and forward along Harrowbarrow’s central street. Stairways rose from it to the second storys of the buildings, poky tenements squashed in under the armored roof. Others led down through the deck plate to engine rooms, whose heat came up through the pavement and the soles of the travelers’ boots. An alcove between the snaking air ducts held an eight-armed image of Thatcher, all-devouring goddess of unfettered Municipal Darwinism.

  “Is this your first visit to a harvester?” Wolf asked, watching his guests’ faces as they walked along beside him. “We make no pretense at gentility here, as the larger cities do. It’s a good, sound place, though. It was a scavenger once, till it got captured by a hunting city up in the Frost Barrens. They thought it might be useful for the war effort, so they delivered it to Murnau whole, and my father gave it to me to knock into shape. I’ve recruited people from other harvester suburbs to help me. Rough types, but loyal.”

  The whole place smelled like a stove: smoke and hot metal. Wren thought that if she had to live underground, she would take every chance to go outside and breathe fresh air, but the Harrowbarrovians did not seem inclined even to venture out onto the landing apron; they stayed in the shadowed parts of their suburb, and those whose business took them into the daylight hid their eyes behind sunglasses and goggles and wrapped themselves up against the cold in pea jackets and gray felt mufflers.

  “Not many women aboard,” said Wolf, with a sideways look at Wren. (She couldn’t tell if he was apologizing to her for the lack of female company or hinting at how pleasant it was to have a visit from a pretty aviatrix. Both, maybe.) “No families live here. It’s a hard life aboard Harrowbarrow. You mustn’t mind my lads if they stare.”

  And stare they did, their mouths hanging open in their stubbly faces, as their young mayor led his visitors up a rackety moving staircase into the town hall, a crescent-shaped building that stood on stilts, overlooking the dismantling yards inside the suburb’s jaws. It was ugly, and rather small, but Wolf had furnished it well. There were hangings and tapestries to hide the metal walls, and well-chosen works of art, and when his servants closed the shutters to hide the views of machinery outside, it had a homey feel.

  Wolf took them to a long, narrow dining room, the ceiling painted blue with little white clouds as a reminder of the sky outside. “You have not breakfasted, I trust?” he asked, not waiting for an answer as he ushered them to seats around the dining table, making sure that Tom took the place of honor at the head. Another man entered: elderly, short, and sallow, with pocked skin and complicated spectacles. Wolf greeted him warmly and held out a chair for him, too. “This is Udo Hausdorfer, my chief navigator,” he explained. “When I am away, it is he who keeps things running smoothly. One of the best men I know.”

  Hausdorfer nodded, blinking at each of the guests in turn. If he was one of the best men Wolf knew, Wren would not have liked to meet the rest, for Hausdorfer looked like a villain to her. But she could see that Wolf liked him; more than liked him—if she had not known better, she would have taken them for father and son. She could not help thinking how much more at ease Wolf was with this shifty-looking old scavenger than he had seemed with his real father.

  Serving women with eyes like bruises moved silently about carrying plates and dishes and pots of coffee. Kobold smiled at his guests and raised his cup.

  “My friends! How pleasant to have new faces at my table! I am happy to say that we have real, fresh coffee, taken from a scavenger town we ate last Tuesday. The fruits of the hunt!”

  “You are still hunting?” asked Tom. “I thought the Traktionstadtsgesellschaft had sworn not to eat other towns until the war was won.”

  Wolf laughed. “A silly, sentimental notion.”

  “I thought it rather noble,” said Tom.

  Wolf looked thoughtfully at him as he slurped his coffee. Then, setting down his cup with a clatter, he said, “It may be noble, Herr Natsworthy, but it is not Municipal Darwinism.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Tom.

  “I mean that I have lived aboard Murnau, and I have seen at first hand the way our great Traction Cities have tied themselv
es up in petty rules and taboos.” He speared a kipper with his fork and used it to point at Tom. “The big cities are finished! Even if they win this war, do you think the Traktionstadts will ever hunt again as real cities should? Of course not! They will cry, ‘Oh, we must not hunt Bremen; Bremen gave us covering fire when we bogged down on the Pripet salient,’ or ‘It would be wrong to chase little Wagenhafn, after all that Wagenhafn did for us in the war.’ That is why they cannot defeat the Mossies, you see. They insist on helping each other, and as soon as you start helping others, or relying on others to help you, you give away your own freedom. They have forgotten the simple, beautiful act that should lie at the heart of our civilization: a great city chasing and eating a lesser one. That is Municipal Darwinism. A perfect expression of the true nature of the world: that the fittest survive.”

  “And yet you’re part of their alliance,” argued Tom. “You fight in their war.”

  “For the moment, because it suits us. The Storm must be smashed. But I never let my people forget that we are free. We hunt alone, and we eat whatever we can cram into our jaws.”

  Tom looked unhappy. Wren hoped he was not about to say something that would offend Wolf. “You make Harrowbarrow sound no better than a pirate suburb,” he mumbled at last.

  Wolf was not offended. He laughed. “Thank you, Herr Natsworthy! I have always suspected that piracy is the purest form of Municipal Darwinism!”

  “But you’re only temporary mayor of this place, aren’t you?” asked Wren. “I mean, you’re heir to Murnau…”

  Wolf shrugged and ate his kipper. “I shall never take over my father’s job. Not if he begged me. Why rule a lumbering mountain full of merchants and old women when I could be out here, hunting, free? Places like this are the future now. When the Mossies and the big cities finish tearing one another to pieces in this endless war, Harrowbarrow and others like it will inherit the earth.”

  “Gosh, well, I hadn’t thought of it like that,” Wren stammered. She was sure he was wrong, but he was so certain of himself that she could not think of a counterargument.

  Wolf laughed again. “I’m so sorry. I should not talk politics at breakfast time! And I have not even filled you in on the details of our journey. We shall set off soon, heading due east across no-man’s-land. If all goes well, we should reach the Storm’s outer defensive line sometime after midnight. I have found just the place for the Jenny Haniver to cross unnoticed. Until we reach it, you must make yourselves at home. You are my guests.”

  He bowed, and his eyes were fixed on Wren. Tom wondered if there was still time to pull out of this expedition; or at least to find some excuse to take Wren back to Murnau, away from this attractive, dangerous young man. But he so wanted her to see London…

  And anyway, it was too late. Through the thin walls came the scrape and boom of the suburb’s armor sliding shut, and the dull bellow of its engines starting up again. Harrowbarrow crawled on its way along the bottom of its chosen track mark, gathering speed, shoving its bank of drills into the earth, working itself deeper until it was just an unlikely, moving mound, like a rat under a rug, grinding eastward toward the rising sun.

  Chapter 16

  Fishcake on the Roof of the world

  Remember little Fishcake and his Stalker? Not many people do. The death of Brittlestar and the theft of the Spider Baby had been a surprise to Brighton, but the other Lost Boys had instantly started to squabble among themselves for possession of Brittlestar’s slaves and houses, and by the time the bullets and the Battle Frisbees stopped flying, nobody remembered the odd events that had sparked all the trouble.

  A few days later a raft town cruising in the crater maze east of the Middle Sea reported losing fuel from its storage tanks, and the captain of a submersible diving for blast glass on the crater floors claimed to have seen a strange craft swim by above him, silhouetted against the sunlit surface. But the captain was a drunkard, and the few people who believed his story just shook their heads and muttered that the Lost Boys must be up to their old tricks again.

  From crater to flooded crater the Spider Baby crept north and east. It crossed a spur of the Great Hunting Ground, swimming along flooded track marks and scuttling nervously over the ridges between them, while the ground shook beneath the weight of prowling cities. It crept through the Rustwater Marshes and found its way at last into the Sea of Khazak. The sea had been a battlefield not long before, and there were sunken suburbs and drowned airships lying all over its silty floor. Fishcake burgled their rusting fuel tanks and surfaced in a cleft on the rocky shore of the Black Island to recharge the limpet’s batteries. Then he submerged again and pressed on eastward.

  The Spider Baby had passed beyond the edge of Lost Boy charts weeks earlier, but Fishcake’s Stalker seemed to have a map of this country in her mind. Beyond the sea a broad river curved down out of the eastern hills. Fishcake did as she told him, following the river east, past Green Storm airbases and under bridges rumbling with convoys of half-tracks and armored trains. Pontoons had been stretched across the river in case townie raiders tried to sneak inland in boats, but the Spider Baby slid under them, passing like a ghost through the lands of the Storm.

  “Why don’t you make yourself known?” asked Fishcake, looking through the periscope at settled statics, farmland, the green lightning-bolt banners flapping confidently from forts and temples. “These are your people, aren’t they? When they see that you’re alive—”

  “They betrayed me,” his Stalker hissed. “The Once-Born have failed me. They follow Naga now. I shall make the world green again without them.”

  “But you’ll have me, won’t you?” said Fishcake nervously. “I can help you, can’t I?”

  His Stalker did not answer him. But later, while he was resting, he woke to find her sitting at his side. She was Anna again, and she touched his hair with her cold hand and whispered, “You are a good boy, Fishcake. I am so glad of you. I should have had a son of my own. I should have liked to watch a child grow, and play. I never see you play, Fishcake. Would you like to play a game?”

  Fishcake felt himself turn hot with shame. “I don’t know any games,” he murmured. “They didn’t—at the Burglarium— I mean, I don’t know how to.”

  “Poor Fishcake,” the Stalker whispered. “And poor Anna.”

  Fishcake huddled himself on her lap, wrapping his arms around her battered metal body and laying his head against her hard chest, listening to the tick and shush of the weird machines inside her. “Mummy,” he said quietly, just to find out what shape the word made in his mouth. He did not remember calling anybody that before. “Mummy.” He was crying, and the Stalker comforted him, stroking his head with her clumsy hands and whispering an old Chinese lullaby that Anna Fang had heard in her own childhood, on the bird roads, long ago.

  And Fishcake slept, and did not wake until she turned into the Stalker Fang again and stood up, dumping him onto the floor.

  Mile by mile, up rivers, through marshes, clumping on its eight steel feet through empty valleys, the Spider Baby edged its way eastward. One night, when Fishcake went out onto the hull to breathe fresh air, the moonlit mountains of Shan Guo stretched along the horizon ahead of him like a white smile.

  The river shallowed, choked with rocks and boulders that spring floods had washed from the overhanging hillsides. The Spider Baby moved only by night, stalking up white rushing rapids in the starlight, hiding at dawn in the dense forests of pine and rhododendron that cloaked the riverbanks. The Stalker Fang grew impatient during these delays; she bared her claws and listened enviously to the convoys of Green Storm airships that passed overhead from time to time. But when she was Anna, she liked the forests. She held Fishcake’s hand and led him down the quiet, resin-scented aisles between the trees, or turned girlish and silly and threw pine-cones at him. “We’re playing!” she whispered excitedly, as he chased after her laughing, throwing pinecones of his own. “Fishcake, this is what playing feels like!”

  Fishcake lived
for the times when she was Anna. He hated the Stalker Fang, and Anna did too. “She scares me,” she told him once. “The other one. So cold and fierce. When she comes, I can’t even hear myself think…”

  But the Stalker Fang was scared of Anna, too. Each time she regained control, her first question was always, “How long was I malfunctioning? What did the Error do? What did it say?” That was her name for the Anna part of her: the Error.

  “This unit is damaged,” she declared. “I need repair.”

  “I don’t know how,” whined Fishcake. “I don’t know anything about Stalker brains.” If he had, he would have shut down the Fang part of her and made her be Anna all the time. Then they could take the Spider Baby away into the empty mountains somewhere and live there and be happy together, the Lost Boy who wanted a mother and the dead woman who wanted a child. But he knew it was hopeless. If the Fang part of her found out that Fishcake had tried to help the Error, she would kill him.

  So he went east and north with her, following her whispery directions, while the river grew steeper and narrower, until one night the Spider Baby surfaced in the plunge pool beneath a tall white waterfall and Fishcake realized that it could carry them no farther. At first he felt relieved. But the Stalker Fang was not disheartened for a moment. “We shall leave the limpet here and walk,” she whispered.

  “Walk to where?” asked Fishcake.

  “To talk to ODIN.”

  “How far is it?”

  “It is two hundred and ninety-four miles away.”

  “I can’t walk that far!” protested Fishcake.

  “Then stay here,” his Stalker said. She left the limpet and started to feel her way up the steep, spray-wet ladder of rocks beside the cataract. Fishcake quickly filled a burgling bag with provisions, ready to go after her. When he scrambled out onto the hull, he found her waiting for him. She was still the Stalker Fang. She had decided that he might be useful to her after all.