10. THE 13TH FLOOR ELEVATOR
It rained that night on London, but by first light the sky was as clear and pale as still water, and the smoke from the city’s engines rose straight up into the windless air. Wet decks shone silver in the sunrise and all the banners of Tier One hung limp and still against their flagpoles. It was a fine spring morning, the morning that Valentine had been hoping for, and Katherine had been dreading. It was perfect flying weather.
Although it was so early, crowds had gathered all along the edge of Tier One to watch the 13th Floor Elevator lift off. As Gench drove Katherine and her father over to the air-quay she saw that Circle Park was crowded too; it looked as if the whole of High London had come to cheer Valentine on his way. None of them knew where he was going, of course, but as London sped eastward the city’s rumour-mills had been grinding night and day: everyone was sure that Valentine’s expedition was connected with some huge prize that the Lord Mayor hoped to catch out in the central Hunting Ground.
Temporary stands had been erected for the Council and Guilds and, when she and Dog had wished Father goodbye in the bustling shadows of the hangar, Katherine went to take her place with the Historians, squeezed between Chudleigh Pomeroy and Dr Arkengarth. All around her stood the great and good of London: the sober black robes of Father’s Guild and the purple of the Guild of Merchants, sombre Navigators in their neat green tunics and a row of Engineers robed and hooded in white rubber, looking like novelty erasers.
Even Magnus Crome had risen to the occasion, and the Lord Mayor’s ancient chain of office hung gleaming around his thin neck.
Katherine wished they had all just stayed at home. It was difficult saying goodbye to someone when you were part of a great cheering mob all waving flags and blowing kisses. She stroked Dog’s knobbly head and told him, “Look, there’s Father, going up the gangplank now. They’ll start the engines in a moment.”
“I just hope nothing goes wrong,” muttered Dr Arkengarth. “One hears stories about these air-ships suddenly going off bang for no reason.”
“Perhaps we should stand a little further back?” suggested Miss Plym, the Museum’s twittery curator of furniture.
“Nonsense,” Katherine told them crossly. “Nothing is going to go wrong.”
“Yes, do shut up, Arkengarth, you silly old coot,” agreed Chudleigh Pomeroy, surprising her. “Never fear, Miss Valentine. Your father has the finest airship and the best pilots in the world: nothing can go wrong.”
Katherine smiled gratefully at him, but she kept her fingers crossed just the same, and Dog caught something of her mood and started to whimper softly.
From inside the hangar came the sound of hatches slamming shut and the rattle of boarding-ladders being dragged clear. An expectant hush fell over the stands. Along the tier’s edge High London held its breath. Then, as the band struck up “Rule Londinium”, Valentine’s ground-crew began dragging the 13th Floor Elevator out into the sunlight, a sleek, black dart whose armoured envelope shone like silk. On the open platform at the stern of the control gondola Valentine stood waving. He saluted the ground-crew and the flag-decked stands and then smiled straight at Katherine, picking her face out of all the others without a moment’s hesitation.
She waved back frantically, and the crowd cheered themselves hoarse as the 13th Floor Elevator’s engine-pods swivelled into take-off position. The ground crew cast off the mooring-hawsers, the propellers began to turn and blizzards of confetti eddied in the down-drafts as the huge machine lifted into the air. Some Apprentice Historians spread out a banner reading Happy Valentine’s Day! and the cheers went on and on, as if the crowds thought it was their love alone which was keeping the explorer airborne. “Val-en-tine! Val-en-tine!”
But Valentine took no notice of the noise or the flags. He stood watching Katherine, one hand raised in farewell, until the airship was so high and far away that she could not make him out any more.
At last, when the Elevator was just a speck in the eastern sky and the stands were emptying, she wiped away her tears, took Dog’s lead and turned to go home. She was already missing her father, but she had a plan now. While he was away she would make her own enquiries and find out who that mysterious girl had been, and why she scared him so.
11. AIRHAVEN
Once he had washed and slept and had something to eat, Tom began to decide that adventuring might not be so bad after all. By sunrise he was already starting to forget the misery of his trek across the mud and imprisonment in Speedwell. The view from the Jenny Haniver’s big forward windows as the airship flew between golden mountains of dawn-lit cloud was enough to make even the pain of Valentine’s betrayal fade a little. At breakfast-time, drinking hot chocolate with Miss Fang on the flight deck, he found that he was enjoying himself. As soon as the Jenny Haniver was safely out of the range of Speedwell’s rockets the aviatrix had become all smiles and kindness. She locked her airship on course and set about finding Tom a warm fleece-lined coat and making up a bed for him in the hold, a space high up inside the airship’s envelope, heaped with a cargo of sealskins from Spitzbergen. Then she led Hester into the medical bay and went to work on her injured leg. When Tom looked in on her after breakfast that morning the girl was sleeping soundly under a white blanket. “I gave her something for the pain,” explained Miss Fang. “She will sleep for hours, but you need have no fear for her.” Tom stared at Hester’s sleeping face. Somehow he had expected her to look better now that she had been washed and fed and had her leg fixed, but of course she was as hideous as ever.
“He has made a mess of her, your wicked Mr Valentine,” the aviatrix said, leading him back to the flight deck, where she took the controls off their automatic setting.
“How do you know about Valentine?” asked Tom.
“Oh, everyone has heard about Thaddeus Valentine,” she laughed. “I know that he is London’s greatest historian, and I also know that that is just a cover for his real work: as Crome’s secret agent.”
“That’s not true!” Tom started to say, still instinctively defending his ex-hero. But there had always been rumours that Valentine’s expeditions involved something darker than mere archaeology, and now that he had seen the great man’s ruthless handiwork, he believed them. He blushed, ashamed for Valentine, and ashamed of himself for having loved him.
Miss Fang watched him with a faint, sympathetic smile. “Hester told me a great deal more last night, while I was tending to her wound,” she said gently. “You are both very lucky to be alive.”
“I know,” agreed Tom, but he could not help feeling uneasy that Hester had shared their story with this stranger.
He sat down in the co-pilot’s seat and studied the controls; a baffling array of knobs and switches and levers labelled in mixtures of Airsperanto, Anglish and Chinese. Above them a little lacquered shrine had been fixed to the bulkhead, decorated with red ribbons and pictures of Miss Fang’s ancestors. That smiling Manchu air-merchant must be her father, he supposed. And had that red-haired lady from the Ice Wastes been her mum?
“So tell me, Tom,” asked Miss Fang, setting the ship on a new course, “where is London going?”
The question was unexpected. “I don’t know!” Tom said.
“Oh, surely you must know something*.” she laughed.
“Your city has left its hidey-hole in the west, come back across the land-bridge, and now it is whizzing off into the central Hunting Ground ‘like a bat out of Hull’, as the saying goes. You must have heard at least a rumour. No?”