Fever Crumb Page 15

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  "Careful!" shouted Dr. Collihole, bustling about like a rheumatic hen. For years he had been studying the possibility of flight, inspired by the discovery of the great complex at Eefrow, to the west of London, from whose broad runways he believed Ancient machines had once sped into the air. His own scrap-paper invention looked hopelessly small and childish now, compared to the great rusted bird-shapes that archaeologists had uncovered there. He had only ever meant it to be a beginning; a first, tentative step on the ladder that would carry men back into the sky. Now everything was suddenly rush and hurry, and Fever's life depended on him. He wished that he had time to go below and check his calculations one last time. "Don't let the braziers burn too hot!" he insisted. "We must not let the whole thing catch ablaze!"

  ***

  Godshawk's surviving notebooks were kept in a locked case deep in the stacks, as if even the Order of Engineers considered them dangerous. Dr. Isbister brought the key and kept watch over Fever and Dr. Crumb as Fever pulled out the notebooks one by one. The books were circular, like the one she had seen at Kit Solent's house, and with typical Scriven perversity their titles were written only on their front covers, not their spines. At last she found one that looked promising. On Stalkers, Godshawk had scrawled across its binding. Isbister had labelled it neatly vol 86.

  She pulled it down from the shelf and sat on the floor and opened the book on her lap, while Dr. Isbister fussily rearranged

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  the other volumes she had upset in her search and Dr. Crumb stood over her holding a 'lectric torch. Its light fell upon page after page of intricate diagrams and Godshawk's tiny, crabbed handwriting.

  "He knew so much," whispered Fever, turning and turning the pages. Careful drawings traced what happened when a Stalker brain was inserted in a corpse's skull; weird wiry tendrils unfurling to colonize the dead man's nervous system, wrapping like bindweed round the spinal cord.... "No wonder Godshawk wanted immortality. He could not just let all this knowledge vanish. He had to do something...."

  She lost patience and began flicking through the packed pages, past images that jogged a cascade of memories, until she reached blank, empty leaves at the end. She flicked back and found the last picture in the book. A tiny object, drawn life-size in a corner and again, much larger, in the middle of the page. The shape of a walnut. The size of an almond.

  "That is the thing he showed me in the garden!" said Dr. Crumb.

  Fever flicked back through the final pages, but they were as blank as before. "He lost interest in Stalkers after he found that. It set him off on a new course, in a new notebook...."

  Dr. Crumb went back to the shelf, almost shoving Dr. Isbister aside in his eagerness to grab the next volume. He came back empty handed. "It's not there. Lost in the riots, I expect."

  "Shhhhh!" said Isbister abruptly.

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  They fell silent, listening.

  From somewhere nearby came odd sounds. Crinklings. Scratchings. Tiny, papery creaks. Mouse noises, not out of place among so many books and papers, but too deliberate, somehow. The sound of someone or something keeping much too quiet.

  "Have the rioters broken in?" asked Fever, and the puzzle that had been coming together in her mind fell apart again. How could she think about her past when her future looked set to be so brief and violent?

  "Who's there?" called Dr. Crumb.

  "Keep your voice down, Crumb, you're in a library!" hissed Dr. Isbister.

  In the sudden silence, the sound of dust settling. "We should leave," said Dr. Crumb.

  "After first replacing the books," Isbister reminded him in a whisper.

  Behind the librarian a white figure stepped out of an impossibly narrow gap between two bookcases. It was exactly the same size and shape as Fever.

  "Dr. Isbister!" she shouted.

  "Shhh!" said the librarian, pointing upward at the silence sign that hung above them. The paper boy lunged forward and drew a needle claw across his neck. "Ow!" he shouted. "I mean, ow!" he whispered. He turned, but the paper boy's venom was already taking effect; stumbling drunkenly, he crashed sideways into the shelves which held Godshawk's books. Glass starred and

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  shattered, dropping with him in long blades as he slid to the floor, shuddering, choking, dead.

  The paper boy, with a tiny ripping sound, stuck out a second claw. Fever stared at it. She was remembering how it had felt to glue its two halves together and carry it out onto the roof to dry. She remembered how it had felt to lie on that paper while Dr. Crumb drew her outline around her. It was like being menaced by her own shadow. Dr. Crumb, more practiced than her in the art of keeping calm, just snatched a heavy book and threw it. The near-weightless paper boy was carried backward and trapped beneath the book as it thudded to the floor. Its arms and legs flapped helplessly. It rattled like a paper bag caught on a branch in a gale.

  "Come on, Fever!"

  "But Dr. Isbister ...

  "He's dead. And if the rioters have access to the New Council's store of paper boys there may be many more of them in here with us...."

  Fever started to follow him between the stacks, and as she went she heard the awful sound of paper footsteps keeping pace with hers along a neighboring aisle.

  "How many do you think there are?"

  "There were seven in that last batch we made...."

  They rounded a corner in Ancient History and a paper boy rose up in front of them and stood there swaying like a cobra. Its claw lashed out at them, missed, and snagged in the leather

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  binding of an old grimoire. Before it could free itself, Dr. Crumb grabbed it by its head and one shoulder and pulled as hard as he could. Paper ripped. The torn boy freed its claw and raked it across his coat, but it did not pierce the fabric. Dribbles of venom shone for a moment in the weave of the cloth. In another moment he had wrenched its head off.

  Fever watched, surprised. She had never imagined Dr. Crumb doing such things. She would have to revise her whole picture of him.

  "Fever!" he shouted.

  She snatched up a big book to use as a shield. Two more paper boys were rustling along the aisle. Fever turned, and two more blocked the way behind her. They crouched and came creeping slyly forward while their flat white faces wove from side to side.

  "Oh, Dr. Crumb ...

  ***

  "They have her!" screeched Thaniel Wormtimber, crouched in his chair, eyes on his screens and fingers on the paper boys' controls. Ted Swiney, standing just outside, bellowed, "They've got her!" and Charley, who stood next to him, heard the news spread outward through the crowd; "They've got her!"

  "She's cornered!"

  "She's dead meat now!"

  None of them noticed the balloon inflating on top of Godshawk's Head.

  ***

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  Fever shoved a line of books from a shelf beside her and the paper boys drew back, wary now of being trapped or torn. Dr. Crumb toppled a stack into the path of the two confronting him and they went whispering away, circling round among the high bookshelves, looking for an easier way to reach their prey.

  Father and daughter stood breathing hard, listening to the rustlings and flutterings that the paper boys made as they crept along neighboring aisles. Fever stuffed away her feelings and groped in her pockets, looking for something that might be of use. Usually she carried a small penknife, but she had left home that day in such a hurry that she had not thought to bring it. Instead her hand closed on the box of matches that she had taken with her when she left Godshawk's vault.

  She took the box out. Dr. Crumb said, "Fever, it would be most unwise to use fire against them, here among all this dry paper and other flammable materials...."

  "Better unwise than dead," said Fever. She stopped and ripped a page out of one of the books she had thrown down, screwed it into a spill, and held it between her teeth while she lit a match.

  Behind some nearby books, a rasp, a rustle. The dry slither of paper
being slipped through a crack in the back of a bookcase.

  The match would not strike. Fever discarded it and tried another. Twice it scraped uselessly over the rough strip on the matchbox side, but on the third attempt it lit, and she put down the box and held one end of her paper taper into the match

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  flame. It flashed into fire at once, and just in time. Out from between some large, leather-bound volumes of journals on a nearby shelf, a paper boy's hand came groping. Fever scrambled away from it, holding the burning paper out in front of her. The paper boy slid his whole body out into the aisle and rose up quivering.

  Fever thrust the burning paper at him, and he drew back a little. She made another lunge, and again he fell back. "It works!" she told Dr. Crumb. But just then the flames reached her fingers and she squeaked and dropped the page. The paper boy started toward them again, but as it stepped over the fallen paper a lemon-yellow flame stood up wavering among the books on the floor. The paper boy looked down as the flame spilled up its leg. It patted at the fire with its hands, but they caught fire, too. Its legs crumpled into ash and it curled backward and flopped to the floor, spreading flames to other fallen books.

  Fever raised a hand to shield her face from the brightness and the startling surge of heat. "Fever!" Dr. Crumb was shouting. She turned and he grabbed hold of her and dragged her along the aisle, stumbling over the spilled books there, the rising flames stretching their shadows ahead of them.

  What had she done? All those books! Those thousands of pages, those millions of words, stacked up like tinder in the Head...

  Sparks jetted into the shadows above the shelves; flags of burning paper floated like gaudy jellyfish from aisle to aisle, spreading

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  the fire. Another paper boy, his blazing arms windmilling, struggled toward the fugitives, leaving trails of flame behind him. He crumpled into drifting ash before he reached them, and his charred brain disc came rolling past Fever's feet like a spent Catherine wheel.

  They reached Isbister's desk, and Fever snatched from behind it a long pole with an S-shaped metal hook on the end that Dr. Isbister sometimes used for opening the library windows in fine weather. She used it to flail aside a paper boy who had stationed himself between the desk and the door. He scrumpled, turned, and charged at her again, but she stuck the iron S through him, hoicked him over her head, and held him up like a marshmallow before the flames which now filled the library. He struggled for a moment on the pole's end, but then Dr. Crumb pulled the door open, and the inrush of air made the fire roar up fiercer and brighter than ever. Flames rushed across the ceiling, lapping over one another like waves of golden water. The paper boy charred and ignited, and Fever dropped the pole and ran.

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  ***

  25 heads will roll

  There was fire on the roof, too, but it was controlled, directed fire. The balloon stood upright now. The Engineers had attached a basket to the ropes that dangled from its sides. A brazier was bolted above the basket on a metal tripod and the glow of the burning charcoal came softly through the paper, reminding Dr. Collihole of the floating lanterns which used to drift across the city from the Godshawk place out in the Marshes, and which had first led him to ponder the lifting properties of hot air, all those years ago. Well, his project was ready now. It shifted and shivered. It took all the strength of his fellow Engineers to hold it down.

  "We're ready!" Dr. Stayling shouted. "Where are Crumb and the girl?"

  Kit Solent had fallen into a chilly half-sleep, crouched at the roof's edge in the wind. He was wandering in his memories of

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  Katie and the children, and he felt desperately sad when Dr. Stayling's voice roused him and he found himself back in the present, cold, and stiff, and in pain, and trapped on a giant head. Smelling smoke, he glanced down over Godshawk's brow.

  "What in the name of-- ? Dr. Stayling! Fire! "

  Godshawk's Head blew a plume of white smoke out of either nostril. A jack-o'-lantern glow came from its eyes and lesser windows, lighting up the rioters below.

  When Fever and Dr. Crumb reached the roof a minute later the tar paper was already beginning to grow tacky in the heat. The Head let out weird metallic booms and groans, snorting dragonish showers of sparks, which drifted across the crowds in front of it.

  "Crumb! We cannot remain here much longer!" shouted Dr. Stayling, clinging to one of the ropes of the restless balloon.

  "What will the rest of you do?" Fever asked, as Dr. Crumb helped her into the balloon basket, where Kit Solent already waited, reaching out to help her. Dr. Collihole fussed about, muttering about lift-weight ratios and checking the bags of ballast that were tied around the edges of the basket.

  "We shall go down the fire escape and seek safety on the ground," said Stayling. "People laughed when I installed a fire escape in this Head. They will not laugh when they see what an eminently rational precaution it was...."

  Fever rolled over the side of the basket and dropped in next to

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  Kit. Instantly the basket slumped down onto the roof, where Fever felt it sink stickily into the liquefying tar. Smoke started to come up through the wicker floor.

  "Dr. Collihole, what is wrong?" asked Dr. Crumb.

  Dr. Collihole shook his head nervously. "I must have miscalculated! We must shed some ballast...."

  Hurriedly, Engineers fumbled with the knots that tethered the big, gravel-filled sacks of ballast. One splodged down onto the melting roof, then another, and the balloon shifted and reluctantly began to rise, tethered to the roof only by a few thick strands of tar which stretched like scorched toffee and at last gave way. Fever gripped the edge of the basket with both hands and leaned out, shouting Dr. Crumb's name.

  He turned and waved. "Good luck!"

  "Steady on, Crumb," warned Dr. Whyre. "This is no time for emotionalism!"

  "When you get there tell them where you come from!" shouted Dr. Stayling. 'Tell them you're an envoy from Stayling and the Engineers!"

  The balloon rose unsteadily into the sky, and the crowd below saw it, and greeted it with a hoarse, raw-throated roar. Bricks and stones were flung up at it, and a few guns went off, but the wind caught it and wafted it beyond their range. Looking down, Fever saw people streaming like insects through the narrow streets. She looked ahead, and saw rows of tall tenements on the slopes of Clerkenwell Hill. The balloon was headed toward them,

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  on a level with the chimney pots, and already the insect mob was swarming darkly up onto their rooftops, waiting with pikes and gaffs and guns for the wind to bring it to them.

  "Kit!" she shrieked. "We have to go higher!" She leaned over the edge of the basket and started to claw at the tight, wet knot that held the nearest bag of ballast in place. Kit did the same on the other side; she heard him shout with pain as his bag came free and he took its weight for an instant, wrenching his wounded shoulder. Then his was falling, down, down, down, and Fever's close behind it, smashing tiles from a roof down there, and the balloon lurched upward.

  At the back of the Head, unnoticed, the Engineers hurried down their spindly fire escape to safety, jumping sections where the steps had collapsed, scorching their fingers on the hot handrails, but stumbling out at last onto the rubbly ground. No one tried to stop or harass them as they opened a gate in the fence and scattered into the crowd. All eyes were raised skyward, watching the balloon, and most of the mob was streaming north, as if hoping to catch it when it fell.

  Once he was a good distance from the Head, Dr. Crumb turned to watch it, too. He was feeling rather irrational that afternoon, and it seemed to him that Godshawk's Head looked wonderful, lit from within by the glow of the fire, with firelight shafting out of every vent and window and the balloon rising palely from its crown like a thought bubble, one last idea wafting free in the updraft from that mighty brain.

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  Someone seized him by the arm. He turned with a start to see Dr. Stayling thru
sting a filthy, flattened hat at him, cramming it onto his head. Behind him the others of the Order were almost unrecognizable under the hats and scarves and shawls of sacking which they had picked up from the littered ground and used to hide their bald, distinctive heads.

  "Come on, Crumb. This is no place for men of reason...."

  Just then, with an enormous noise, the timber props under Godshawk's chin gave way. There was a long groan, and the ground lurched. The remaining crowds scattered backward, barging and trampling one another.

  Wormtimber's chair, its bearers having fled, was left alone on the stretch of ground in front of the tilting head. Ted Swiney stood beside it, his angry little eyes still fixed on the balloon. Charley pulled at his sleeve. "Ted! The Head! It's coming down!"

  Ted looked up at Godshawk's enormous face, which glared back at him with flame-filled eyes. The timbers of the tram platform groaned as they took the whole of the Head's huge weight. " Cheesers Crice! " Ted shouted (it was the name of some obscure cockney god) and knocked Charley sprawling in his hurry to get away. Charley got up, yelled a warning to Master Wormtimber, and ran after him.

  The Master of Devices opened his chair door and jumped out, just as the tram platform gave way and the Head started to topple. He squealed, started to run, then realized that there was

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  not time, and darted back inside the chair, slamming the door behind him.

  The Head fell forward, slowly at first and then very fast. It smashed the chair and all its contents flat with one colossal headbutt, and hammered the splinters deep into London clay. Charley dropped to the ground, overshadowed but not quite crushed by the curve of the statue's brow. The air was crammed with dizzy sparks and streaked by embers, thick with flung divots of earth and gobs of molten tar.