He pushed on through the crowds, heading for the address that the girl at the aquarium had given him. He knew that Hester would be cross with him later for going without her, but he had been far too anxious to wait any longer for her at the Pink Café. Besides, he kept remembering what she had done to Gargle, and it made him feel uneasy about how she might react when she learned Wren’s fate. He wanted to talk calmly to this Shkin fellow. He might turn out to be a reasonable man who would give Wren back to her parents when he learned the truth. If not, Tom would arrange to buy her back. Either way, there should be no need for violence.
When he saw the Pepperpot, he felt even more optimistic. Most slavers’ dens were dingy places, tucked away on unmentionable tiers of savage salvage towns, not elegant white towers. Outside the glass front door, a guard in smart black livery politely stopped him and ran a metal detector over him before letting him into a reception area as calm and tasteful as a hotel lobby. There were soft chairs, and hard metallic-green potted plants, and a plaque on the wall that read THE SHKIN CORPORATION, and underneath, in smaller letters, AN INVESTOR IN PEOPLE. The only real clue to what sort of place it was were the angry, muffled shouts and clanging sounds that came up faintly through the sea-grass carpet.
“I’m sorry about the noise,” said a well-dressed woman sitting behind a black desk. “It is those filthy Lost Boys. They were very meek when we first brought them aboard, but they are growing more troublesome and contumelious by the day. Never mind. The autumn auctions begin tomorrow, so we shall soon be rid of them.”
“Then you have not sold them yet?” cried Tom. “I’m so glad. I’m looking for my daughter. Wren Natsworthy. She was with the Lost Boys, and I think you might have taken her by mistake…”
The woman had penciled-on eyebrows as thin as wire, and she raised them both in surprise. “One moment, please,” she said, and leaned across her desk to whisper into a brass-and-Bakelite intercom that Tom thought very futuristic. The intercom whispered back, and after a moment the woman looked up at Tom and smiled and said, “Mr. Shkin will see you in person. You may go up.”
Tom moved toward the spiral staircase that led up through the ceiling, but the woman pressed a button on her desk, and a narrow door slid open in the wall. Tom realized that it was a lift. It looked nothing like the huge public elevators he remembered from his boyhood in London; it was just a posh cupboard, paneled in mother-of-pearl, but he tried not to look too surprised, and stepped inside. The door slid shut. He felt his stomach lurch. When the door opened again, he was in a quiet, luxurious office where a man was rising to meet him from behind another black steel desk.
“Mr. Shkin?” asked Tom, while behind him the door closed softly and the lift went purring down.
Nabisco Shkin bowed low and extended a gray-gloved hand. “My dear Mr. Natsworthy,” he said softly. “Miss Weems tells me you are interested in one of our slaves. The girl named Wren.”
It made Tom angry to hear Wren called a slave so calmly, but he controlled himself and shook Shkin’s hand. He said,
“Wren is my daughter. She was kidnapped by one of the Lost Boys. I’ve come to get her back.”
“Indeed?” Shkin nodded, watching Tom carefully. “Unfortunately I had no idea of the girl’s history. She has already been sold.”
“Sold?” cried Tom. “Where is she? Is she still aboard Brighton?”
“I shall have to check my files. We have processed so many slaves this month…”
The elevator door opened again, and the room began to fill with men, armed guards in black livery. Tom, taken by surprise, barely realized what was happening before one of the men slammed the handle of a truncheon into his side and two more caught him as he doubled over, breathless and choking.
Nabisco Shkin moved around the room, pulling down canvas blinds to hide the long windows. “A lot of pleasure craft in the sky today,” he said conversationally. “Wouldn’t want any happy holidaymakers peeking in on us, would we?” The room grew shadowy. He returned to his desk and spoke into the intercom. “Monica, send the boy here. Let’s find out if this wretch is really who he claims to be.”
Tom’s captors twisted his arms painfully behind him and held him tight, but they need not have bothered, for he was in no state to stand, let alone try to overpower four strong guards. He felt his heart flutter and thump, pain twisting through his side. Shkin came closer, pulled up Tom’s sleeve with a look of faint distaste, and removed his wedding bracelet.
“That’s my property!” Tom gasped. “Give it back!”
Shkin tossed the bracelet up in the air and caught it again. “You don’t have property anymore’ he said. “You are property unless you have papers to prove that you are a free man. But if you are who you say you are, you won’t.” He held the bracelet up and squinted at it. “HS and TN,” he read. “How touching…”
The lift bell rang again and another of Shkin’s black-clad guards stepped out. This one was just a boy, dressed up like the rest in a black uniform and a peaked black cap with a silver SHKIN logo on the front.
“Well, Fishcake?” Shkin asked him. “Do you recognize our guest?”
The boy stared at Tom. “That’s him, all right, Mr. Shkin,” he said. “I saw him on the screens when we was at Anchorage. That’s Wren’s dad.”
“How do you… ?” Tom started to ask, and then realized suddenly who this boy must be. Fishcake. That was the lad Uncle had talked about, the newbie who had kidnapped Wren! Tom knew he should feel angry with him, but he didn’t. He just felt more angry than ever with Shkin, because he could see the logo branded on the back of the boy’s thin hand. What sort of a man would do that to a child? What sort of a city would let a man like that grow rich and prosperous? He said, “Fishcake, please, is Wren all right? Was she hurt at all? Do you know who bought her?”
Fishcake was about to reply, but Shkin said, “Don’t answer him, boy.” One of the guards hit Tom again, knocking the air out of his lungs in a loud, wordless woof.
“Fishcake has learned obedience,” said Shkin. “He knows that if he disobeys me, I shall put him back in the holding cells with his friends, and they will rip him to pieces for betraying Grimsby.” He tore open Tom’s waistcoat, pulled up his shirt, and traced with one gray-gloved finger the scars that had been left by Windolene Pye’s amateur surgery. There was something like a smile on his face.
“The mayor of this city is a very irritating man, Mr. Natsworthy,” he said. “I believe that you may be able to help me expose him as a fraud and a liar. But first your daughter will help me to retrieve something he has stolen from me. Who knows—if you cooperate, I might let you both go free.” As he turned to his desk, he tossed the bracelet up into the air and caught it again. Leaning down to the brass mouthpiece of the intercom, he said, “Miss Weems, arrange a cell on the midlevels for Mr. Natsworthy, and have a bug ready to take me to the Old Steine at seven thirty. I think I shall be attending His Worship’s ball after all.”
Hester had already looked in through the front door of the pretty little tower once without seeing any sign of Tom. She had looked for him everywhere else that she could think of, hoping that he might have gone back to the Screw Worm before attempting to talk to the slavers, or circled back to the Pink Café. Now she was back outside the Pepperpot, feeling angry and faintly scared. She was sure Tom was in there, and that something bad had happened to him. The blinds had been drawn across the windows on one of the upper stories, and there was a bunch of black-overalled guards in the reception area, chatting to the snooty-looking woman there. Hester wondered if she should barge in and confront them, but she did not want to walk into the same trap as Tom.