Predator's Gold Page 9

  Professor Pennyroyal had made a full recovery, and had moved into the chief navigator’s official residence, in a tall, blade-shaped tower called the Wheelhouse which stood in the precincts of the Winter Palace, near the temple. Its top floor housed the city’s control bridge, but below was a luxurious apartment, into which Pennyroyal settled with an air of satisfaction. He had always thought himself a rather grand person, and it was pleasant to be aboard a city where everybody else thought so too.

  Of course, he had no idea how to actually steer an ice city, so the practical day-to-day work of guiding Anchorage was still done by Windolene Pye. She and Pennyroyal spent an hour together each morning, poring over the city’s few, vague charts of the western ice. The rest of the time he relaxed in his sauna, or put his feet up in his drawing room, or went scavenging in the abandoned boutiques of Rasmussen Prospekt and the Ultima Arcade, picking out expensive clothes to suit his new position.

  “We certainly fell on our feet when we landed on Anchorage, Tom, dear boy!” he said when Tom came visiting one night-dark arctic afternoon. He waved a bejewelled hand around his huge sitting room, with its ornate carpets and framed paintings, its fires aglow in bronze tripods, its big windows with their views across the rooftops to the passing ice. Outside, a fierce wind was rising, driving snow across the city, but in the chief navigator’s quarters all was warmth and peace.

  “How is that airship of yours coming along, by the way?” Pennyroyal asked.

  “Oh, slowly,” said Tom. In truth, he had not been near the air-harbour for several days and did not know how the work on the Jenny Haniver was progressing. He didn’t like to think about it too much, for when the repairs were complete, Hester would want to leave, dragging him away from this lovely city and from Freya. Still, he thought, it’s kind of the prof to show an interest.

  “And what about the journey to America?” he asked. “Is everything going well, Professor?”

  “Absolutely!” cried Pennyroyal, settling himself on a sofa and rearranging his quilted silicone-silk robes. He poured himself another beaker of wine and offered one to Tom. “There are some excellent vintages in the chief navigator’s cellar, and it seems a waste not to get through as much as we can before … well…”

  “You should keep the best to toast your arrival in America,” Tom said, sitting down on a small chair near the great man’s feet. “Have you decided on a course yet?”

  “Well, yes and no,” Pennyroyal said airily, gesturing with his beaker and slopping wine over the fur throws on his sofa. “Yes and no, Tom. Once we get west of Greenland it’ll be plain skating all the way. Windolene and Scabious had planned something very complicated, wiggling between a lot of islands that might not even be there any more, then running down the west coast of America. Luckily, I was able to show them a much easier route.” He indicated a map on the wall. “We’ll nip across Baffin Island into Hudson’s Bay. It’s good, thick, solid sea-ice and it stretches right into the heart of the North American continent. That’s the way I came on my journey home. We’ll whizz across that, hoist up the stern-wheel and simply roll on our caterpillar tracks into the green country. It’ll be a doddle.”

  “I wish I was coming with you,” sighed Tom.

  “No, no, dear boy!” the explorer said sharply. “Your place is on the Bird Roads. As soon as that ship of yours is better you and your, ah, lovely companion must return to the sky. By the way, I hear Her Heftiness the margravine has lent you a few of my books?”

  Tom blushed at the mention of Freya.

  “So what do you make of them, eh?” Pennyroyal went on, pouring himself more wine. “Good stuff?”

  Tom wasn’t quite sure what to say. Pennyroyal’s books were certainly exciting. The trouble was, some of the Alternative Historian’s history was a little too alternative for Tom’s London-trained mind. In America the Beautiful he reported seeing the girders of ancient skyscrapers jutting from the dust of the Dead Continent – but no other explorer had described such sights, which would surely have been eaten away by wind and rust aeons ago. Had Pennyroyal been hallucinating when he saw them? And then, in Rubbish? Rubbish! Pennyroyal claimed that the tiny toy trains and ground-cars sometimes found at Ancient sites weren’t toys at all. “Undoubtedly,” he wrote, “these machines were piloted by minute human beings, genetically engineered by the Ancients for unknown reasons of their own.”

  Tom didn’t doubt that Pennyroyal was a great explorer. It was just that when he sat down at a typewriting machine his imagination seemed to run away with him.

  “Well, Tom?” asked Pennyroyal. “Don’t be shy. A good writer never objects to constrictive crusticism. I mean, consumptive cretinism…”

  “Oh, Professor Pennyroyal!” cried the voice of Windolene Pye, blaring from a brass speaking tube on the wall. “Come quickly! The lookouts are reporting something on the ice ahead!”

  Tom felt himself grow cold, imagining a predator city lurking out there on the ice, but Pennyroyal just shrugged. “What does the silly old moo expect me to do about it?” he asked.

  “Well, you are chief navigator now, Professor,” Tom reminded him. “Perhaps you’re supposed to be on the bridge at a time like this.”

  “Honorararary Chief Nagivator, Tim,” said Pennyroyal, and Tom realized that he was drunk.

  Patiently he helped the tipsy explorer to his feet and led him to a small private elevator, which whisked them up to the top floor of the Wheelhouse. They stepped out into a glass-walled room where Miss Pye stood nervously beside the engine district telegraph while her small staff spread charts out on the navigation table. A burly helmsman waited at the city’s huge steering wheel for instructions.

  Pennyroyal collapsed on the first chair they passed, but Tom hurried to the glass wall and waited for the wiper-blade to sweep across so that he could catch a glimpse of the view ahead. Thick flurries of snow were driving across the city, hiding all but the nearest buildings. “I can’t see –” he began to say. And then a momentary break in the storm showed him a glitter of lights away to the north.

  In the emptiness ahead of Anchorage, a hunter-killer suburb had appeared.

  14

  THE SUBURB

  Freya was trying to sort out a guest list for dinner. It was a difficult business, for by long tradition only citizens of the highest rank could dine with the margravine, and these days that meant just Mr Scabious, who was nobody’s idea of good company. The arrival of Professor Pennyroyal had cheered things up no end, of course – it was quite acceptable for the city’s chief navigator to sit at table with her – but even the professor’s fascinating stories were beginning to wear a little thin, and he had a tendency to drink too much.

  What she really wanted (although she tried not to admit it to herself as she sat there at her desk in the study) was to invite Tom. Just Tom, alone, so that he could gaze at her in the candlelight and tell her how beautiful she was; she was sure he wanted to. The trouble was, he was only a common aviator. And even if she broke with all tradition and asked him, he would bring his nasty girlfriend, and that wasn’t the sort of evening she wanted at all.

  She slumped back in her chair with a sigh. Portraits of earlier margravines gazed down kindly at her from the study walls, and she wondered what they would have done in a situation like this. But of course, there had never been a situation like this before. For them the ancient traditions of the city had always worked, providing a simple, infallible guide to what could and could not be done – their lives had ticked along like clockwork. Just my luck to be left in charge when the spring breaks, thought Freya gloomily. Just my luck to be left with a load of rules and traditions that don’t quite fit any more.

  But she knew that if she took off the armour of tradition she would have to face all sorts of new problems. The people who had stayed aboard her city after the plague had done so only because they revered the margravine. If Freya stopped behaving like a margravine, would they still be prepared to go along with her plans?

  She we
nt back to her guest list, and had just finished doodling a small dog in the bottom left corner when Smew burst in, then burst out again and gave the traditional triple knock.

  “You may enter, Chamberlain.”

  He came in again, breathless, his hat back to front. “Sorry, Your Radiance. Bad news from the Wheelhouse, Radiance. Predator, dead ahead.”

  By the time she reached the bridge the weather had closed in completely and nothing could be seen outside but the swarming snow.

  “Well?” she asked, stepping out of the elevator before Smew could announce her.

  Windolene Pye bobbed a frightened little curtsey. “Oh, Light of the Ice Fields! I am almost sure it’s Wolverinehampton! I saw those three metal tower blocks behind its jaws quite clearly, just as the storm struck. It must have been lying in wait up here, hoping to snap up whaling-towns on the Greenland run…”

  “What is Wolverinehampton?” asked Freya, wishing she had paid more attention to all her expensive tutors.

  “Here, Your Radiance…”

  She had not noticed Tom until he spoke. Now, seeing him, she felt a little warm glow inside her. He held out a dog-eared book and said, “I looked it up in Cade’s Almanack of Traction Cities.”

  She took the book from him, smiling, but her smile faded as she opened it at the page he had marked and saw Ms Cade’s diagram and the legend underneath:

  WOLVERINEHAMPTON: An Anglish-speaking suburb which migrated north in 768 TE, to become one of the most feared small predators on the High Ice. Its enormous jaws, and its tradition of staffing its engine districts with shamefully ill-treated slaves, make it a town best avoided.

  The deck beneath Freya’s feet juddered and shook. She snapped the book shut, imagining Wolverinehampton’s great jaws already closing on her city – but it was only the Scabious Spheres shutting down. Anchorage slowed, and in the eerie quiet she could hear sleet pecking at the glass walls.

  “What’s happening?” asked Tom. “Is something wrong with the engines?”

  “We’re stopping,” said Windolene Pye. “Because of the storm.”

  “But there’s a predator out there!”

  “I know, Tom. It’s terrible timing. But we always stop and anchor when a really big storm blows in. It’s too dangerous not to. The wind on the High Ice can gust up to five hundred miles per hour. It’s been known to overturn small cities. Poor old Skraelingshavn was flipped on to its back like a beetle in the winter of ’69.”

  “We could lower the cats,” suggested Freya.

  “Cats?” cried Pennyroyal. “What cats? I have allergies…”

  “Her Radiance is referring to our caterpillar tracks, Professor,” Miss Pye explained. “They would provide extra traction, but it might not be enough, not in this storm.”

  The wind howled agreement, and the glass walls bowed inwards, creaking.

  “What about this Wolverinetonham place?” asked Pennyroyal, still flopped in his seat. “They’ll be stopping too, will they?”

  Everyone looked at Windolene Pye. She shook her head. “I’m sorry to say they won’t, Professor Pennyroyal. They are lower and heavier than we. They should be able to run right through this storm.”

  “Yikes!” whimpered Pennyroyal. “Then we’ll be eaten for sure! They must have got a bearing on our position before the weather closed in! They’ll just follow their noses and gollop!”

  Tipsy as he was, the explorer seemed to Tom to be the only person on the bridge talking sense. “We can’t just sit here and wait to get eaten!” he agreed.

  Miss Pye glanced at the whirling needles of her windspeed indicators. “Anchorage has never moved in a wind this strong…”

  “Then maybe it’s time to start!” Tom shouted. He turned to Freya. “Talk to Scabious! Tell him to turn out the lights, alter course and run on as fast as he can through the storm. It would be better to capsize than get eaten, wouldn’t it?”

  “How dare you talk to Her Radiance like that!” cried Smew, but Freya felt touched and pleased that Tom should care so much about her city. Still, there was tradition to consider. She said, “I’m not sure if I can, Tom. No margravine has ever ordered such a thing before.”

  “But no margravine has ever set out for America, either,” Tom pointed out.

  Behind him, Pennyroyal heaved himself upright. Before Smew or any of the others could stop him he shoved Tom aside and lunged at Freya, grabbing her by her plump shoulders and shaking her until all her jewellery rattled. “Just do as Tim says!” he shouted. “Do as he says, you silly little ninny, before we all end up as slaves in the belly of Wolverteeningham!”

  “Oh, Professor Pennyroyal!” shrieked Miss Pye.

  “Get your filthy paws off Her Radiance!” shouted Smew, drawing his sword and levelling it at the explorer’s knees.

  Freya shook herself free, startled, indignant, furious, wiping Pennyroyal’s spittle from her face. No one had ever talked to her in that way before, and for a moment she thought, This is what happens when I break with custom and appoint a commoner to high office! Then she remembered Wolverinehampton, racing towards her city through the storm, its massive jaws probably open by now, the furnaces of its gut alight. She turned to her navigators and said, “We will do as Tom says! Don’t stand there staring! Alert Mr Scabious! Change course! Full speed ahead!”

  The city’s anchors tugged free of the snow-swept ice, and the strange turbines in the hearts of the Scabious Spheres began to whirl again. The fat banks of caterpillar tracks which jutted from Anchorage’s skirts on hydraulic arms jerked into motion amid a spray of vapour and anti-freeze. They were lowered until the studded tracks gripped the ice. Wobbling slightly as the wind hammered at its superstructure, Anchorage swung on to a new course. If the Ice Gods were kind Wolverinehampton would not detect the manoeuvre – but what Wolverinehampton’s own course was, what it was doing out there in the swirling murk, only the Ice Gods knew, for the storm had settled in now, a wild arctic tempest that ripped shutters and roof panels from the abandoned buildings of the upper tier and sent them whirling high into the sky, while Anchorage put out its lights and ran on blindly into the blind dark.

  Caul was filling his burglar’s bag with machine parts from an empty workshop in the engine district when the city changed course. The sudden movement almost made him overbalance. He clutched his bag tight against him so the booty inside would not rattle and crept outside and quickly along the maze of now-familiar streets towards the heart of the district and the pit where the Scabious Spheres were housed. Crouching between two empty fuel-hoppers, he heard the workers shouting to each other as they hurried to their stations, and slowly understood what was happening. He hunched himself deeper into the shadows, wondering what to do.

  He knew what he should do; Uncle’s rules were very clear. When a host city was in danger of being eaten, any limpet attached to it must decouple and escape at once. It was part of the big rule: Don’t Get Caught. If even one limpet were to be found, and the cities of the north learned how they had been preyed on and robbed these many years, they would start posting guards and taking security measures. The life the Lost Boys led would become impossible.

  And yet Caul did not start back towards the Screw Worm. He didn’t want to leave Anchorage; not yet, and not like this. He tried telling himself it was because this city was his patch: there were still good pickings to be had, and no stupid predator-suburb was going to snatch that from him. No way was he going to take his first command home early and defeated, with her holds barely half full!

  But that wasn’t the real reason, and he knew it in the depths of his mind even as the surface seethed with anger at the impertinence of Wolverinehampton.

  Caul had a secret. It was a secret so deep and dark that he could never begin to tell Skewer or Gargle about it. The terrible truth was, he liked the people he was burgling. He knew it was wrong, but he couldn’t help himself. He cared about Windolene Pye, and sympathized with her secret fear that she was not good enough to steer the city to America
. He worried about Mr Scabious, and was moved by the courage of Smew and the Aakiuqs and the men and women who staffed the engine district and the livestock and algae farms. He felt drawn to Tom, because of his kindness and the life he had led in the sky. (It seemed to Caul that if Uncle hadn’t taken him to be a Lost Boy he might have been a lot like Tom himself.)

  As for Freya, he had no word to describe the mixture of new feelings she stirred up in him.

  The howl of the Scabious Spheres rose in pitch. The city lurched and jittered, heavy objects crashing to the deck and rolling somewhere in the streets behind Caul’s hiding place, but he knew he couldn’t leave. He couldn’t abandon these people, now that he had come to know them so well. He would take his chances and wait out the chase. Skewer and Gargle wouldn’t decouple without him, and even if they could see him hiding here, they couldn’t know what he was thinking. He’d tell them he hadn’t dared try to get back to the Screw Worm through all this chaos. It would be all right. Anchorage would survive. He trusted Miss Pye and Scabious and Freya to see it through.

  Tom had often watched town-hunts from the observation decks on London’s second tier, cheering his city on as it raced after small industrials and heavy, lumbering trade-towns, but he had never experienced a chase from the prey’s point of view before, and he was not enjoying it. He wished he had a job to do, like Windolene Pye and her staff, who were busily laying out more charts and weighting the curly corners down with coffee mugs. They had been drinking endless mugs of coffee since the chase began, and kept darting prayerful glances at the statuettes of the Ice Gods on the Wheelhouse shrine.