He steered them past the bandstand toward the looming, armored walls of the Rathaus, but halfway there they were headed off by a formidable-looking lady in a gown of gray silk so stiff and pointy that she looked armored, too. “Wolf, dear heart,” she said sweetly, “everyone is asking me who your friends are.”
Wolf bowed neatly and indicated Wren and her father. “Mother, let me present Tom Natsworthy, an aviator, and his daughter, Wren. Tom, Wren, my mother, Anya von Kobold.”
“Delighted,” said his mother, though she seemed rather pained as she looked Tom and Wren up and down, as if it physically hurt her to meet anyone so common. “Wolf has developed such quaint, democratickal notions since my husband gave him command of Harrowbarrow, one simply doesn’t know whom he is going to bring home next. Aviators. How very interesting…”
“Ignore her,” said Wolf, as his mother moved on to greet a clump of aldermen and their wives. “She knows nothing of life out here on the line. She deserts Murnau whenever the fighting starts, and flies off to a hotel on the upper tiers of Paris. All she knows or cares about are clothes and pastries.”
He spoke loudly enough for his mother to hear, and a lot of the other guests looked around, shocked and disapproving. Tom, embarrassed, asked innocently, “Harrowbarrow? Is that the name of your suburb? I don’t believe I’ve heard of it…”
Wolf stopped glaring at his mother’s broad back and smiled. “It is very small, sir, barely a suburb at all; just a little specialized place that came into Murnau’s possession during the war. But it is my own, you know, and I have hopes for it, high hopes.”
As he ushered them into the Rathaus, Wren wondered what sort of place it might be, this Harrowbarrow. The fighting suburbs she had seen on the journey east had looked horrible: low, vicious, and armored like wood lice. Yet Wolf spoke of his with affection. She supposed it was the same sort of pride you met among aviators, who would never hear a bad word about their own ship, even if she was just some leaky sky tug…
Once they were inside, the sounds of the garden party quickly faded. Wolf took his guests into a large, silent room where slender metal pillars held up the roof, giving Wren the feeling that she had stepped into an iron forest. There were chairs, and they all sat down while Wolf rang the bell for a servant and ordered refreshments. Then he waited a moment, studying Tom and Wren as if he were not quite sure that he had done the right thing in bringing them here.
“London,” he said at last. His face twisted into the same wry grin it had worn the previous day when he was listening to Pennyroyal’s story. “I understand that you were once a Londoner yourself, Herr Natsworthy?”
Tom nodded, and told him about his training in the Guild of Historians and how he had happened to be out of the city when the MEDUSA device went off.
“Interesting,” said Wolf when he had finished. Then, rather cautiously, he said, “I have my own London story, you know. That is why I came to listen when I heard what old Pennyroyal was saying yesterday. Look…” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small disk of metal, which he tossed to Tom. “If you are who you say you are, Herr Natsworthy, you will know what that is.”
Tom turned the disk over in his hands. It was the size of a large coin, and there was a coat of arms embossed on it. He had not seen such a thing for nearly twenty years, but he knew it at once, and gave a little gasp. Wren saw tears in his eyes when he looked up again at Kobold. “It is a rivet head from one of London’s tier supports,” he said. “From one of the lower tiers, I’d guess; it’s only iron, and the ones on the upper levels were all brass…”
Wolf grinned. “My souvenir of London,” he said.
“You’ve been there?” asked Tom.
“Briefly. About two years ago, before I was given my own suburb, I persuaded Father to let me join a kommando of the Abwehrtruppe on a raid deep into Mossie territory. We were attempting to destroy their central Stalker works. Unfortunately we never got there; we were attacked, and my own ship was forced down on the plains not far from Batmunkh Gompa. Alone, I sought shelter in the wreckage of London. I was scared, of course, for I had heard nothing but ghost stories about that dreadful old place. But the Mossies were hunting for me, and it seemed better to take my chances with the ghosts than let them catch me. So I wandered into that landscape of rust, looking for water and food and a place where I might shelter…”
He paused. Music from the party drifted through the corridors of the old building, faint and ghostly.
“It is a curious place, the debris field,” he said. “I saw only the very southeasternmost fringe of it. The wreckage is terribly twisted and flung about. Hard to believe that it was once a great city, although here and there one sees something familiar: a door, a table, a pram. Those rivet heads, for instance; they were scattered everywhere. I pocketed that one you are holding, thinking that if I ever made it home, I would want some proof to show my friends that I had been inside the wreck of London.
“Toward nightfall, as I struck north into the interior where the ruins rise high and eerie, something happened. I’m not sure what. I noticed movements in the wreckage. Too deliberate to be animals. They seemed to follow me. After a while there were noises, too, unearthly groans and wailings. I drew my revolver and loosed a couple of shots into the shadows, and the noises stopped. In the silence I became aware of another sound. It seemed like machinery, although it was far off, and never clear enough for me to be certain. I sat down amid the debris to rest and … I blacked out. Later I seemed to remember someone coming up behind me—but perhaps that was only a dream; the memory is very unclear.
“The next thing I knew, I was ten miles away, lying in the open country west of the wreck, hidden from Mossie patrols beneath the foliage in an old track mark. My wounds had been bandaged with field dressings; my canteen had been filled with water and my pack with bread and fruit.”
“By whom?” asked Tom eagerly.
Wolf looked sharply at him. “You do not believe me?”
“I didn’t say that…”
Wolf shrugged. “I have never told anyone of this before. All I know is there is somebody inside the wreck of London. They are not Mossies, or they would have killed me when they had the chance. But they have their secrets, and they guard them well.”
Wren looked at her father. She thought Wolf’s story far spookier than Pennyroyal’s. “Who could it be?” she asked.
Tom didn’t answer her.
“I have often wondered,” said Wolf. “I’ve asked around. Some of my lads aboard Harrowbarrow are ex-scavengers who’ve lived rough in some bad places, and seen some strange things there. They’ve never heard of scavs living inside London. But a couple of times I’ve heard mention of the Geistluftschiff—the phantom airship. It crosses no-man’s-land in silence, when the wind’s from the west, and flies off into Mossie territory. No markings. Not part of any known unit, ours or theirs.”
“Ghosts again,” said Wren.
“Or the Archaeopteryx” said Tom. His voice trembled slightly. He was trying not to make his feelings too obvious, but he was moved and excited by what Wolf had told him, and what he suspected it might mean. “The Archaeopteryx, flying home to London.”
Wolf leaned forward. “I believe your theory, Herr Natsworthy. I believe survivors of MEDUSA live on secretly inside the wreck.”
“But why would anyone want to?” asked Wren. “There’s nothing left there, is there?”
“There must be something,” said Wolf. “Something that makes it worth staying there, and guarding. I have done a little research of my own into Cruwys Morchard since I heard you ask about her. Our intelligence corps keeps a file on most ships that pass through these skies, and their notes on the Aerial Merchant Vessel Archaeopteryx made interesting breakfast-time reading. It seems your Ms. Morchard has been buying a lot of Old Tech in the last few years.”