But the children couldn’t answer that: A few days, said some, a week, reckoned others. Their chatter faded as they neared the upper floors. They looked into an enormous chamber, new since Tom and Caul were last in Grimsby, made by knocking a dozen of the old rooms together. It was stuffed with fine furnishings: plunder from burgled town halls and looted statics. Huge mirrors hung on the walls, and swags of silk and velvet curtained the colossal bed. Clothes and cushions were strewn across the floor, and mobiles made from beach stones and antique seedies hung from the ducts on the ceiling.
“This was Gargle’s quarters,” explained the children. “Gargle ran things from here.”
“Remora made the mobiles,” said a little girl. “She’s pretty and clever, and she’s Gargle’s favorite.”
“I wish Gargle would come back,” a boy said. “Gargle would know what to do.”
“Gargle’s dead,” said Hester.
After that, the only sounds were the pad of their feet on the wet carpets and a faint voice somewhere ahead, tinny and fizzing, as if it were coming through loudspeakers. It said, “We only want a chance to see our dear lost boys again…”
Up a final stairway to the chamber of screens, where Grimsby’s founder kept watch over his underwater kingdom. The last time Tom had been here, it had been guarded; this time the guards were gone and the door was not even locked. Hester kicked it open and went through it with her gun out.
The others crowded in behind. The chamber was large and high-ceilinged, lit blue by the ghostly glow of the screens that covered the walls. They were of every shape and size, from giant public Goggle Screens to tiny displays ripped from Old Tech hospital equipment, all linked together by a jungle of wires and ducts. Up above, in the dark dome of the roof, hung a portable surveillance station: a midget cargo balloon dangling a globe of screens and speakers. And every screen was showing the same picture: a crowd of people on the windswept observation platform of a raft city. “Children of the deep,” the voice from the speakers pleaded, “if you can hear this message, we beg you, come to us!”
“Why did they fall for it? Why did they go? Did they prefer a bunch of old Drys to me?”
In the middle of the chamber an old man stood with his back to the door, shouting at the recording on the screens. In his hand was a remote-control device; he raised it and pressed a switch that made all the screens go blank and silent, then turned to face Hester and the others.
“Who are you?” he demanded petulantly. “Where’s Gargle?”
“Gargle’s not coming back,” said Tom as gently as he could. He had bad memories of Uncle, but that did not stop him feeling sorry for the stooped old man who was shuffling I48 toward him in a pair of threadbare bunny slippers. The tortoiselike head, poking out from layer upon layer of moldy clothes, blinked shortsightedly at him. Uncle’s eyes were clouded with age, and Tom noticed that many of the screens that surrounded him had big magnifying lenses bolted in front of them to make their pictures clearer. He suspected that Uncle was almost blind. No wonder he had come to depend on Gargle.
“Gargle has passed on,” he said.
“What, you mean… ?” Uncle came closer, peering at him. “Dead? Gargle? Little Gargle what gave himself such airs and graces?” His face showed grief, then relief, then anger. “I told him! I warned him not to go looking for that rotten book. He wasn’t cut out for burgling, Gargle wasn’t. More of a planner. He had brains, Gargle did.”
“We know,” said Hester. “We saw them.”
Uncle recoiled from the sound of her voice. “A woman? There’s no females allowed in Grimsby. I’ve always been very strict about that. Gargle always backed me up on that. No girls allowed. Bad luck, that’s all they bring. Can’t trust them.”
“But Uncle…” said Freya gently.
“Eugh, there’s another one! The whole place is crawling with females!”
“Uncle?” asked Caul.
The old man twitched around, frowning, as if the sound of Caul’s voice had tripped a rusty switch inside his head. “Caul, my boy!” he said, and then, with a snarl, “This your doing, is it? You got something to do with this? Tell the Drys how to find us, did you? You alone, or are there more?”
He limped away, stabbing at his remote control until the jumbled screens were filled with views of Grimsby, thrusting his parchment face close to the glass to stare at the empty corridors and chambers, the empty limpet pen, the flooded, ruined halls of the Burglarium.
“It’s just the four of us, Uncle,” said Caul. “We barely know what’s happened here. It has nothing to do with us.”
“No?” Uncle stared at him, then let out a high-pitched cackle. “Gods, then you’ve picked a fine time to drop in for a visit!”
“We’ve come for Tom and Hester’s daughter,” Caul said patiently. “Her name’s Wren. She was taken from Vineland by the newbie who was with Gargle aboard the Autolycus.”
“Fishcake? Fishcake, that was his name…” Uncle hung his head. When he spoke, he sounded close to tears. “The Autolycus is missing. They’re all missing, Caul, my boy. The fools got that message about their mums and dads and they went haring straight off to Brighton.”
“To Brighton?” Tom had heard of Brighton. A resort town, a bit bohemian, but not a bad sort of place. If Wren was there, she might be all right.
“Why would Brighton want them?” asked Hester suspiciously.
Uncle shrugged and spread his hands and made various other twitchy gestures to show that he had no idea. “I told my boys it was a trap. I told them. But they wouldn’t hear it. Maybe if Gargle had been here. They listen to Gargle. Don’t listen to their poor old Uncle anymore, what’s slaved and worried for them all these years…” Tears of self-pity went creeping down his crumpled old face, and he blew his nose on his sleeve. His gaze slid listlessly over Tom and Hester, then settled on Freya again. “Gods, Caul, is that great fat whale the girl you ran off to Anchorage for? She’s let herself go! Come to think of it, you don’t look too good yourself. I like my boys to be well turned out, and you… Well, you’re shabby, that’s the truth of it. Gargle told me you’d gone to make something of yourself among the Drys.”
Caul felt as if he were a newbie again, being told off for forgetting part of his burgling kit. “Sorry, Uncle,” he said.
Freya moved to his side and took his hand in hers. “Caul has made something of himself,” she said. “We couldn’t have built Anchorage-in-Vineland without his help. I’d like to tell you all about it, but first I think we all have to leave this place.”
“Leave?” Uncle stared at her as if he’d never heard the word before. “I can’t leave! What makes you think I’d want to leave?”
“Sir, this place is finished. You can’t keep the children here…”
Uncle laughed. “Those lads aren’t going anywhere,” he said. “They’re the future of Grimsby.”
The children edged in closer to Freya. She let go of Caul’s hand to stroke their heads. Everyone could hear the faint groan of stressed metal from the lower floors, the distant splatter of water spilling in.
“But Mr. Kael,” said Freya. She had remembered something Caul had told her once. Before Uncle became Uncle, he had been Stilton Kael, a rich young man from Arkangel. Freya hoped that by using his real name, she might be able to get through to him, but it only made him hiss and glare. She pressed on anyway. “Mr. Kael, this place is leaking. It’s half flooded, and the air smells stale. I don’t know much about secret underwater lairs, but I’d say Grimsby’s future is going to be pretty short.”