It had been hard work finding him, but luckily the staff in the records office at the Guild of Salvagemen, Stokers, Wheel-Tappers and Associated Gut Operatives were happy enough to oblige Thaddeus Valentine’s daughter. If there was an Apprentice Engineer near the waste-chutes that night, they said, he must have been supervising convict labourers, and if he was supervising convict labourers he must have come from the Engineers’ experimental prison in the Deep Gut. A few more questions and a bribe to a Gut foreman and she had a name: Apprentice Engineer Pod.
Now, nearly a week after her meeting with the Lord Mayor, she was on her way to talk to him.
The Deep Gut Prison was a complex of buildings the size of a small town which clustered around the base of a giant support pillar. Katherine followed signposts to the administration block, a spherical metal building jacked up on rust-streaked gantries and slowly revolving so that the supervisors could look down from its windows and watch their cell-blocks and exercise yards and algae-mat farms spin endlessly around them. In the entrance hall, neon light glimmered on acres of white metal. An Engineer came gliding up to Katherine as she stepped inside. “No dogs allowed,” he said.
“He’s not a dog, he’s a wolf,” replied Katherine, with her sweetest smile, and the man jumped back as Dog sniffed at his rubber coat. He was prim-looking, with a thin, pursed mouth and patches of eczema on his bald head. The badge on his coat said, Gut Supervisor Nimmo. Katherine smiled at him, and before he could raise any more objections she showed her gold pass and said, “I’m here on an errand for my father, the Head Historian. I have to see one of your apprentices, a boy called Pod.”
Supervisor Nimmo blinked at her and said, “But… But…”
“I’ve come straight from Magnus Crome’s office,” Katherine lied. “Call his secretary if you want to check…”
“No, I’m sure it’s all right…” mumbled Nimmo. Nobody from outside the Guild had ever wanted to interview an apprentice before, and he didn’t like it. There was probably a rule against it. But he didn’t want to argue with someone who knew the Lord Mayor. He asked Katherine to wait and scurried away, vanishing into a glass-walled office on the far side of the hall.
Katherine waited, stroking Dog’s head and smiling politely at bald, white-coated passers-by. Soon Nimmo was back. “I have located Apprentice Pod,” he announced. “He has been transferred to Section 60.”
“Oh, well done, Mr Nimmo!” beamed Katherine. “Can you send him up?”
“Certainly not,” retorted the Engineer, who wasn’t sure he liked being ordered about by a mere Historian’s daughter. But if she wanted to see Section 60, he would take her there. “Follow me,” he said, leading the way to a small elevator. “Section 60 is on the underdecks.”
The underdecks were where London kept its plumbing. Katherine had read about them in her school books so she was prepared for the long descent, but nothing could have prepared her for the smell. It hit her as soon as the elevator reached the bottom and the door slid open. It was like walking into a wall of wet sewage.
“This is Section 60, one of our most interesting experimental labour units,” said Nimmo, who didn’t seem to notice the smell. “The convicts assigned to this sector are helping to develop some very exciting new ways of recycling the city’s waste products.”
Katherine stepped out, clamping her handkerchief over her nose. She found herself standing in a huge, dimly-lit space. Ahead of her were three tanks, each larger than Clio House and all its gardens. Stinking yellow-brown filth was dribbling into the tanks from a maze of pipes that clung to the low ceiling, and people in drab grey prison coveralls were wading chest-deep in it, skimming the surface with long-handled rakes.
“What are they doing?” asked Katherine. “What is that stuff?”
“Detritus, Miss Valentine,” said Nimmo, sounding proud. “Effluent. Ejecta. Human nutritional by-products.”
“You mean … poo?” said Katherine, appalled.
“Thank you, Miss Valentine; perhaps that is the word for which I was groping.” Nimmo glared at her. “There is nothing disgusting about it, I assure you. We all… ah … use the toilet from time to time. Well, now you know where your … um . … poo ends up. ‘Waste not, want not’ is the Engineers’ motto, Miss. Properly processed human ordure makes very useful fuel for our city’s engines. And we are experimenting with ways of turning it into a tasty and nutritious snack. We feed our prisoners on nothing else. Unfortunately they keep dying. But that is just a temporary set-back, I’m sure.”
Katherine walked to the edge of the nearest tank. I have come down to the Sunless Country! she thought. Oh, Clio! This is the land of the dead!
But even the Sunless Country could not be as terrible as this place. The slurry swilled and shifted, slapping at the edges of the tanks as London trundled over a range of rugged hills. Flies buzzed in thick clouds beneath the vaulted roof and settled on the faces and bodies of the labourers. Their shaven heads gleamed in the dim half-light, faces set in blank stares as they skimmed the thick crust from the surface and transferred it into hoppers which other convicts wheeled on rails along the sides of the tank. Grim-faced Apprentice Engineers looked on, swinging long, black truncheons. Only Dog seemed happy; he was straining at his leash, his tail wagging, and every now and then he would look up eagerly at Katherine as if to thank her for bringing him somewhere with such interesting smells.
She fought down her rising lunch and turned to Nimmo. “These poor people! Who are they?”
“Oh, don’t worry about them,” said the supervisor. “They’re convicts. Criminals. They deserve it.”
“What did they do?’
“Oh, this and that. Petty theft. Tax-dodging. Criticizing our Lord Mayor. They’re very well-treated, considering. Now, let’s see if we can find Apprentice Pod…”
While he spoke, Katherine had been watching the nearest tank. One of the men working it had stopped moving and let go of his rake, holding his head as if overcome by dizziness. Now a girl apprentice had also noticed him, and stepping up to the edge of the tank she jabbed at the man with her truncheon. Blue sparks flickered where it touched him, and he thrashed and howled and floundered, finally vanishing under the heaving surface. Other prisoners stared towards the place where he had sunk, too scared to go and help.
“Do something!” gasped Katherine, turning to Nimmo, who seemed not to have noticed.
Another apprentice came running along the edge of the tank, shouting at the prisoners below him to help their comrade. Two or three of them dredged him up, and the new apprentice leaned down into the tank and hauled him out, splattering himself with slurry in the process. He was wearing a little gauze mask, like many of the warders, but Katherine was sure she recognized him, and at her side she heard Nimmo growl, “Pod!”
They hurried towards him. Apprentice Pod had dragged the half-drowned convict on to the metal walkway between the tanks and was trying to wash the slurry from his face with water from a stand-pipe nearby. The other apprentice, the one who had jabbed the poor man in the first place, looked on with an expression of disgust. “You’re wasting water again, Pod!” she said, as Katherine and Nimmo ran up.
“What is going on here, Apprentices?” asked Nimmo crossly.
“This man was slacking,” the girl said. “I was just trying to get him to work a bit faster.”
“He’s feverish!” said Apprentice Pod, looking up plaintively, covered in stinking muck. “It’s no wonder he couldn’t work.”