The Screw Worm slid into the tunnels. Automatic doors opened ahead and closed behind. “The emergency power must be on,” said Caul. “That’s something…”
“It could be a trap,” said Hester. “They might be waiting for us.”
But no one was waiting for the Screw Worm. It surfaced in one of the moon-pools in the floor of the limpet pen, and its passengers scrambled out into cold, stale air. The darkness was broken only by a few dim red emergency lights. Air pumps wheezed asthmatically. The big space, which Tom remembered as being filled with Lost Boys and limpets, was deserted. Docking cranes stood mournfully above the empty moon-pools like the skeletons of dinosaurs in an abandoned museum. A fat cargo submarine wallowed in a dock on the far side of the pens, her hatches open. A half-dismantled limpet lay in a repair yard, but there was no sign of the mechanics who should have been working on her.
Tom fetched an electric lantern from the Screw Worm’s hold and went ahead, still trying to hope that he would find Wren here somewhere, alive and safe and running to hug him. He shone the lantern into the inky shadows under the cranes. Once or twice he thought he glimpsed a crab-cam scuttling away from the light. Nothing else moved.
“Where is everybody?” he whispered.
“Well, here’s one of them,” said Hester.
The big door at the back of the pens stood half open, and on the threshold lay a boy of Wren’s age, curled up, staring, dead. Hester pushed past Tom and stepped over the body. In the corridor outside the pens lay a half dozen more, some killed by sword thrusts, others by metal spears from harpoon guns.
“Looks like the Lost Boys have been fighting among themselves,” she said. “Nice of them to save us the trouble.”
Tom stepped gingerly over the dead boy and looked up. Cold drops of water pattered on his upturned face. “This place is leaking like a rusty tin can,” he murmured.
“Uncle will know how to fix it,” said Caul. The others turned to look at him, surprised by the confidence in his voice. He felt surprised by it himself. “Uncle built Grimsby,” he reminded them. “He made the first few rooms airtight and built the first limpet all on his own, without anyone to help him.” He nodded, fingering his neck. The old rope burns were still there, hard under his fingertips, reminders of how much he had feared and hated Uncle at the end. But before that, for a long time, he had loved him. Now that he was here again, and the Burglarium was a ruin and the Lost Boys gone, he found that the fear and the hate had gone as well and that only love was left. He remembered how safe he used to feel, curled up in his bunk while Uncle’s voice whispered from the ceiling speakers through the long night shift. The world had been simple then, and he had been happy.
“Uncle Knows Best,” he murmured.
A sudden movement in the shadows farther down the corridor made Hester swing her gun up. Freya grabbed her arm before she could shoot, and Tom yelled “Het, no!” The echoes of his voice went booming away, up staircases and down side passages, and the face that had been pinned for an instant in his lantern beam vanished as its owner darted backward into the shadows.
“It’s all right,” said Freya, moving past Hester, her hands held out in front of her. “We won’t hurt you.”
The darkness was suddenly full of soft footfalls, rustlings. Eyes glinted in the lantern light. Out from their hiding places the children of Grimsby came creeping, smudged white faces pale as petals. They were newbies, too young to take their places yet among the Lost Boys. A few were as old as nine or ten; most were much younger. They stared at their visitors with wide, scared eyes. One girl, older and bolder than the rest, came close to Freya and said, “Are you our mummies and daddies?”
Freya knelt down so that her face was level with the children’s. “No,” she said. “No, I’m sorry, we’re not.”
“But our mummies and daddies are coming, aren’t they?” whispered another child.
“There was a message…”
“They said they were near,” said a little boy, tugging at Caul’s hand and looking up earnestly into his face. “They said we should go to them, and a lot of the big boys wanted to, even though Uncle said not to…”
“And when the other boys tried stopping them, they fought them and killed them dead!”
“And then they went anyway. They took all the limpets.”
“We wanted to go with them, but they said there wasn’t room and we were only newbies…”
“And there were explosions!” said a girl.
“No, that was later, silly,” said another. “That was the depth charges.”
“Bang!” shouted the smallest boy, waving his arms about to demonstrate. “Bang!”
“And all the lights went out, and I think some water got in…”
All the children were talking at once, crowding into the light from Tom’s lantern. Hester held her hand out to one of them, but he backed away and went to snuggle against Freya instead.
“Is Wren here?” Hester asked. “We’re looking for our daughter, Wren.”
“She’s lost,” Tom explained. “She was aboard the Autolycus.”
Small faces turned toward him, blank as unwritten pages. The older girl said, “Autolycus ain’t come back. None of the limpets that went out these last three weeks has come back.”
“Then where’s Wren?” shouted Tom. He had been terrified that he would find Wren dead. The prospect of not finding her at all was almost as bad. He stared from one bewildered little face to another. “What in Quirke’s name has been happening?”
The children backed away from him, frightened.
“Where’s Uncle?” asked Caul. Freya smiled at him to let the children see that he was a friend and they should answer his question.
“Maybe he left too,” said Hester.
Caul shook his head. “Don’t be stupid. Uncle wouldn’t leave Grimsby.”
“I think he’s upstairs,” said one of the boys.
“He’s very old,” said another doubtfully.
“He doesn’t ever leave his chamber now,” agreed a third.
Caul nodded. “Good. We’ll talk to him. He’ll be able to tell us what’s happened, and he’ll tell us where to find Wren.” He could feel the others staring at him. He turned to them and smiled. “It’ll be all right. You’ll see. Uncle Knows Best.”
Chapter 16
Those Are Pearls That Were His Eyes
They made a strange procession, climbing the cluttered stairways of Grimsby, where salt water dripped from hairline fractures in the high roof and ran in rivulets from step to step. More bodies lay on the landings, forming dams that the dirty water pooled behind. Overhead, crab-cameras clung to ducts and banisters. Now and then, one turned to follow the newcomers with its Cyclops eye.
Hester went ahead. Behind her, Tom, Caul, and Freya were surrounded by children, small hands clutching theirs and reaching out to touch their clothes as if to reassure themselves that these visitors from the world above were real. They were especially drawn to Freya. In shocked, whispery voices, they told her all sorts of secrets. “Whitebait picks his nose.”
I do not!
“My name’s Esbjorn, but the big boys at the Burglarium said I had to be called Tuna, only I think Tuna’s a stupid name, so can I change back now that all the big boys have got killed dead and run away?”
“He sticks his finger right up there. And he eats the boogers.”
“I don’t!”
“Children,” asked Freya, “who was it who blew up the Burglarium? How long ago did it happen?”