Traction City Page 4

  He looks down. In the light that spills past him through the hole he can see bits of the Collector strewn in the net beneath the city. A hand; a blank-eyed head. The body, or whatever was left of it, is gone. Presumably that’s what tore the immense hole in the net, right under Anders’s dangling size nines.

  His fingertips slip another eighth of an inch closer to the edge of the hole. He says a quick prayer to Peripatetia, the goddess of mobile cities, in whom he does not really believe.

  Like an answer, a small voice from above says, “Sarge?”

  Smiff is looking down at him over the edges of the hole. His small hands sieze Anders’s right wrist and tug, trying uselessly to haul him up. Anders is afraid that if the boy doesn’t let go, they’ll fall together. “Go!” he says. “Fetch help!” Knowing that he’ll be long gone before Smiff can bring any help to this remote portion of the deck. Unless Fang or Nutter are still around. But Nutter’s too badly hurt to help, and Fang will be far away by now if she has any sense. . .

  Then, just as the hand Smiff’s clinging to loses its grip entirely, strong fingers grip his other wrist, and there she is, her pretty face quite ugly with the effort as she strains to heave him up. And somehow, between them, her and Smiff, they do it; like snow-mad fishermen landing a walrus through a hole in the ice, they drag him up and lie there beside him, gasping, panting, laughing with relief on the hot deck, listening to the shouts and footsteps of the approaching emergency crews.

  10

  Afterwards, when Nutter has been taken off to the infirmary and they are all back at Airdock Green, she tells him, “I heard what you said to the Collector. About your wife and daughter.”

  Anders is studying the list Pym made of her airship’s cargo, and the “wanted” note from Arkangel which he has paperclipped to it.

  Fang says, “My father once docked our airship on a little ice-town, to wait out a storm. But in the storm’s heart great Arkangel came and ate the town, and we were caught, and set to work as slaves aboard Arkangel. They treat slaves hard there. My parents. . . All that kept me alive was knowing that one day I would escape, and I would destroy Traction Cities.”

  Anders says, “With me, it was a silly accident. The town I lived on, it was pretty, but it wasn’t well-built. Some of the tier supports gave way when London ate it, and Lise and Minna were caught in the collapse.” He looks up from the grainy photo on the “wanted” note to her real face, across his desk. “You can’t fight cities on your own, you know. If that’s your ambition, you should go to Shan Guo, Kerala, Zagwa. The lands of the Anti-Traction League. They have armies and air-fleets to keep cities at bay. At least you wouldn’t be on your own.”

  Fang says, “I thought I was your prisoner, policeman.”

  Anders carefully tears the papers in half, and then in half again, and again. He drops the pieces into the red recycling bin under his desk. “It’s been a busy night,” he says with a yawn, “and I still haven’t got round to filing a report on you.”

  Fang watches him with those dark, dark eyes of hers. After a while she says, “You can come with me if you like. You can join the Anti-Traction League too.”

  “Me?” Anders chuckles. “Why would I do that? I’m a townie through and through.”

  “But London killed your family!”

  “It was an accident.”

  “An accident caused by this stupid system, this insane, evil system, this Municipal Darwinism that makes city chase city. . .”

  Her voice grows shrill and scratchy. How wonderful it must feel, thinks Anders, to be so young, so angry and so certain that you’re right.

  “I have work to do here,” he says gently. “I don’t know if it was a good idea of Quirke’s to start cities moving all those years ago, but I do know there are plenty of good people aboard London, and somebody has to protect them from the bad ones. This is my city.”

  “But. . .”

  Anders yawns and swings his chair around to face away from her. “Goddess, but I’m tired! Do you know, if a prisoner chose to make a break for freedom now, I don’t think I could do a thing about it.”

  There is a long silence behind him. Then he hears her footsteps cross the room, and the sound of the door opening. He feels the breath of engine-scented air as it swings slowly shut. He is alone.

  He gives her ten minutes, then goes outside. The motion of the city has changed; it’s no longer climbing. Smiff and Constable Pym are walking towards him from the direction of the hospital on Crumb Street. He greets them.

  “Corporal Nutter is going to be all right,” says Smiff.

  “And what about the girl?” asks Pym.

  “Girl?” Anders looks blankly at him. “I’ll teach you something about good police work, Constable: don’t let yourself get distracted by unimportant details. Concentrate on the big picture. Which at this present moment means going inside and starting to work out how we can report last night’s events to the Council of Guilds without mentioning mysterious girls or disagreements with Engineers.”

  “Yes, sarge,” says Pym, saluting smartly.

  “What about me, sarge?” asks Smiff, lifting his grubby face.

  “You can go with him,” Anders says. “I’m sure Pym can find some work for you. We’ll be short-handed around Airdock Green till Corporal Nutter’s fit for duty again. Who knows, there might even be enough money in the petty-cash tin to pay you, once we’ve bought a new biscuit tin.”

  They leave him. He walks on alone to the air dock and out along one of the quays into the grey, cool, early morning air at the edge of the city. The little red airship has gone from her berth. He looks up to see if he can catch a glimpse of her flying away, but cloud wraps the Shatterhorns. He’ll not see Anna Fang again. He grabs hold of the handrail at the quay’s end to steady himself and stands there in the cold, clean wind. London is tilting forward now, starting down the southern slopes. All the things which had slid to the back of the city on its way up will now be sliding forward again. The girl was right, thinks Anders; it is a strange way to live. But he knows no other.

  The clouds ahead of London thin and part. The sun is coming up over the plains of Italia. The daylight gleams on lakes and rivers and slow, fat, unsuspecting towns.

  One of the greatest fantasy worlds ever created. Read them all…

  Aboard London, lowly apprentice Tom Natsworthy longs to be part of the next attack. When he saves his chief from a mad assassin, he is suddenly flung from the speeding city with a mysterious scar-faced girl. They must run for their lives through the wastelands, tracked by an unstoppable cyborg programmed to kill them…

  A lone, frozen city speeds across the northern Ice Wastes. Far above, a tiny, crippled aircraft falls from the sky. Tom and Hester seek refuge from enemy gunships in ghostly Anchorage. But the silent city is full of deadly secrets…

  The mighty engines of Anchorage are dead. Life on the static city is worlds away from the terrors of Tom and Hester’s war-torn past. But their teenage daughter Wren longs for adventure. One ebellious act unleashes a lethal conflict that threatens to destroy them all…

  The greatest predator city of them all lies in ruins. London is dead, but rumours spread that its metal corpse hides incredible secrets. Tom and Hester have been torn apart by war and treachery. And the next generation of adventurers is about to face the final battle as their world explodes around them…

  THE PREQUELS

  Thousands of years from now, a baby is abandoned in the ruins of London. Rescued by some eccentric Engineers, Fever Crumb grows up unaware that she is the keeper of an explosive secret. Are the mysterious powers she possesses the key that will save London from a new and terrible enemy?

  In a faraway corner of a ruined world, a mysterious boy is building a flying machine. Birds help him, and so does a beautiful, brilliant engineer called Fever Crumb. Powerful enemies stalk them – either to possess their fantastic invent
ion, or to destroy the secrets of flight forever.

  In a future land once known as Britain, nomad tribes are preparing to fight a terrifying enemy - the first-ever traction city. In the chaotic weeks before battle begins, Fever Crumb must journey to the wastelands of the North in search of a mysterious black pyramid, whose secrets will change her world forever.

  First published in the UK in 2011 by Scholastic Children’s Books

  This electronic edition published in 2012 by Scholastic Children’s Books

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  Text copyright © Philip Reeve, 2011

  The right of Philip Reeve to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him.

  eISBN 978 1407 12995 2

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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