Jean-Pierre shrugged. “If anyone can. He’s a deviser, you know.”
“Ah. Well, that explains everything, doesn’t it?” Harris shook his head dubiously . . . and caught sight of what was tacked up on the wall behind him: a map. A map with the recognizable outlines of the continents.
He read some of the names printed there . . . and suddenly found himself standing on his sofa, both palms pressed against the map as he stared disbelievingly at it.
There was Manhattan, but the name Neckerdam was printed next to it, and some of the other boroughs were colored more like park than city. And New York State wasn’t outlined with familiar borders. Its boundaries reaching about as far north as Albany should be, and much farther south, to the Philadelphia area (“Nyrax”); the whole area was labelled Novimagos.
Farther north, Nova Scotia and some of whatever province was next to it—New Brunswick? Harris couldn’t remember—were labelled Acadia. To the south, much of Central America was labelled Mejicalia, a name that at least looked a little familiar, but few borders were drawn in that area of the map. Southeast of Mejicalia, what was Aluxia?
Things were no better in Europe. Most of central Spain was taken up by Castilia, a name Harris thought he remembered from school. All of England and Ireland were labelled Cretanis. These nations were further broken up into hundreds more small territories with names he didn’t know. So was all the rest of Europe.
There was no sign of Hawaii, or most of the islands of the South Pacific, just the words “Many Islands” and a picture of a sea serpent.
Harris turned away from the map, feeling faint and not entirely able to accept what he’d just seen. He sank back down to sit on the sofa, feeling the gaze of the others on him, and didn’t bother to ask them if that thing on the wall were a joke.
Nearly a thousand feet below, a dozen men entered the lobby of the Monarch Building. They paid no attention to the doorman who admitted them, to the veined white marble walls and reflective black marble floor, to the bustle of people moving in and out of the building even at this late hour. With the nonchalance of office workers familiar with the building, they moved straight to the elevators and boarded the first available car.
But they weren’t office workers. The green-uniformed elevator operator took a look at the large instrument cases they carried, at the cheap red suits they wore, and sighed. Musicians. Rowdy musicians with their bad tips. Still, he adjusted his cap and put on his most professional face, and as the band entered his car he said, “Floor, goodsirs.”
The smallest of the musicians, the one who stood right by the door with the trumpet case in his hands, smiled winningly at him. “Roof.”
“I’m sorry, this car only goes up eighty-nine. The remaining floors are private property.”
The trumpeter frowned. “Private? We have an engagement on the roof. A wedding.”
The elevator operator tried not to look as confused as he was. “I don’t think so, sir. There’s no place up there to have a wedding. A talk-box reception tower and some machinery, I think.”
“Then what’s that black thing on your uniform?”
The uniformed man looked down at his front and finally showed confusion. “Sir, there’s nothing—”
He did not see the other musician wield the blackjack. He did feel blinding pain as the lead shot-filled weapon rapped down on his uniform cap, and that was the last he knew. His legs gave way and he thudded onto the carpeted floor of the elevator car.
The trumpeter tipped his hat at the unconscious elevator operator, then nodded at the sap-wielder. “Now. Take us up.”
The big man pocketed the sap. He took the car’s control handle. “He was telling the truth. You know whose building this is.”
“Yes.”
“So this car won’t go up past up eighty-nine. You know he has to be higher than that.”
“Yes. Take us up eighty-nine.” The trumpeter smiled and patted his instrument case. “Everything we need is in here. Trust me. Trust him.”
The big man grimaced, then set the car into motion.
Noriko tilted her head to the side, concentrating. “Rotorkite,” she announced. “Doc is here.”
The others listened. At first Harris could hear nothing but a constant, dull wash of noise—the faint remnants of street sound from a thousand feet below. Then he caught the sound that had alerted Noriko: a faint thup-thup-thup that began to grow louder. It sounded just like an incoming helicopter.
Noriko and Jean-Pierre were up in an instant, headed out through the nearest door in the wall; Harris and then Alastair followed. The door nearest the sofas opened into a dim, carpeted corridor, and Noriko and Jean-Pierre led the way to a nearby bank of elevators.
One elevator was already open. They piled into it, Jean-Pierre sliding shut first the gratelike outer door and then the matching inner door, pulling up on the handle that sent the elevator upward.
The elevator rose three stories into what had to be a hangar. It was enormous, taking up at least two building stories; the floor was concrete and splashed with oil. There were work-benches and tools, rolling carts, and what looked liked oversized car engines hanging from chains and pulleys. On one side of the big chamber was a strange carlike vehicle, a rounded lozenge forty feet long and ten wide; it rested on a series of struts with wheels at the bottom, and a large, irregular mass of what looked like tan sails lashed to the top.
Noriko headed over to a wall-mounted board of large mechanical switches and pushed one up.
There was an immediate grinding noise from overhead and the lights dimmed briefly. Then, slowly and ponderously, one large section of roof, directly over the flooring, began to open up. It was a huge door powered by mechanical hinges. Above it, Harris could see a widening stripe of nighttime sky, clouds reflecting the city lights below them. It had clouded up in the time since he was brought here. It was sprinkling, and a stray breeze tossed droplets of rain into their faces.
The thup-thup-thup grew louder. It took Harris a moment to spot its source: a vague, dark shape with tiny red and green lights glinting on its belly. It got bigger until light from the hangar bathed the underside.
It descended into the hangar, a diamond shape all in dark blue, with a helicopter-style rotor at either end. It was about as large as a Coast Guard rescue helicopter, but broader in the middle where the diamond shape was at its widest. It touched down on four wheels.
As the rotors spun down, Noriko returned the switch to its original position; the overhead door groaned and began to close again. On a narrow end of the helicopter—rotorkite? that’s what Noriko had called it—a gullwing door opened. A man climbed out and dropped to the hangar floor.
He was tall—taller even than Harris, the first man Harris had seen here who didn’t make him feel like some sort of Viking invader. He was broad-shouldered but otherwise built lean, and moved as gracefully as a dancer.
He wore loose-fitting dark slacks tucked into high leather boots, and was bundled into a waist-length coat of yellow leather worn over a white shirt with an elaborate frilled collar. As he turned toward Harris and the others, he tugged off a yellow leather helmet fitted with archaic glass goggles; out tumbled shoulder-length hair. Hair that was pure white, the precise white and softness of thick clouds. Hair that didn’t quite conceal the most sharply pointed ears Harris had yet seen.
His features were young, of a man perhaps thirty, but there was nothing youthful in his unsettling, pale blue eyes.
He saw Harris and stopped. With a trace of curiosity in his expression, he looked Harris over before turning to the other three.