Katherine knelt beside him and he noticed her for the first time, his eyes widening in surprise. He had succeeded in washing most of the slurry from the man’s face, and she reached out and laid her hand on the damp brow. Even by the standards of the Deep Gut it felt hot. “He’s really sick,” she said, looking up at Nimmo. “He’s burning up. He should be in hospital…”
“Hospital?” replied Nimmo. “We have no hospital down here. These are prisoners, Miss Valentine. Criminals. They don’t require medical care.”
“He’ll be another case for K Division soon,” observed the girl apprentice.
“Be quiet!” hissed Nimmo.
“What does she mean, K Division?” asked Katherine.
Nimmo wouldn’t answer. Apprentice Pod was staring at her, and she thought she saw tears trickling down his face, although it might have been perspiration. She looked down at the convict, who seemed to have slid into a sort of half-sleep. The metal decking looked terribly hard, and on a sudden impulse she pulled off her hat and folded it and slipped it under his head as a pillow. “He shouldn’t be here!” she said angrily. “He’s far too weak to work in your horrible tanks!”
“It’s appalling,” agreed Nimmo. “The sort of prisoners we are being sent these days are just too feeble. If the Guild of Merchants made more of an effort to solve the food shortage they might be a bit healthier, or if the Navigators pulled their fingers out and tracked down some decent prey for once… But I think you have seen enough, Miss Valentine. Kindly ask Apprentice Pod whatever it is your father wishes to know, and I shall take you back to the elevators.”
Katherine looked round at Pod. He had pulled down his mask, and he was unexpectedly handsome, with big dark eyes and a small, perfect mouth. She stared at him for a moment, feeling stupid. Here he was, being brave, trying to help this poor man, and she was bothering him with something that suddenly seemed quite trivial.
“It’s Miss Valentine, Miss, isn’t it?” he said nervously, as Dog pushed past him to sniff at the sick man’s fingers.
Katherine nodded. “I saw you in the Gut that night when we ate Salthook,” she said. “Down by the waste-chutes. I think you saw the girl who tried to kill my father. Could you tell me everything you remember?”
The boy stared at her, fascinated by the long dark strands of hair that were falling down across her face now that her hat was off. Then his eyes flicked away to look at Nimmo. “I didn’t see anything, Miss,” he said. “I mean, I heard shouting and I ran to help, but with all the smoke and stuff… I didn’t see anybody.”
“Are you sure?” pleaded Katherine. “It could be terribly important.”
Apprentice Pod shook his head, and wouldn’t meet her eye. “I’m sorry. …”
The man on the deck suddenly stirred and gave a great sigh, and they all looked down at him. It took Katherine a moment to understand that he was dead.
“See?” said the girl apprentice smugly. “Told you he was for K Division.”
Nimmo was prodding the body with the toe of his boot. “Take him away, Apprentice.”
Katherine was shaking. She wanted to cry, but she couldn’t. If only she could do something to help these poor people! “I’m going to tell my father all about this when he gets home,” she promised. “And when he finds out what’s going on in this dreadful place. . .” She wished she had never come here. Beside her she heard Pod say again, “Sorry, Miss Valentine,” and wasn’t sure if he was sorry because he couldn’t help her or sorry for her because she had learned the truth of what life was like under London.
Nimmo was growing edgy. “Miss Valentine, I insist that you leave now. You shouldn’t be here. Your father should have sent an official member of his Guild if he had business with this apprentice. What did he hope to learn from the boy anyway?”
“I’m coming,” said Katherine, and did the only thing she could for the dead convict: she reached out and gently shut his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” whispered Apprentice Pod, as they led her away.
17. THE PIRATE SUBURB
Late that night, and deep in the Rustwater Marshes, Tunbridge Wheels finally caught up with its prey. The exhausted townlet had blundered into a sinkhole and the suburb hit it side-on without bothering to slow its thunderous speed. The impact tore the townlet to pieces and splinters came raining down into the suburb’s streets as it turned and sped back to swallow the wreckage. “Meals on wheels!” the pirates howled.
From their cage in the suburb’s gut, Tom and Hester watched in horror as the dismantling-engines went to work, ripping the townlet into heaps of scrap without even bothering to let the survivors off. The few who did come stumbling out were grabbed by the waiting pirates. If they were young and fit they were dragged off to other tiny cages like the one in which Hester and Tom had been imprisoned. If not, they were killed, and their bodies were added to the rubbish heap at the edge of the digestion yard.
“Oh, great Quirke!” Tom whispered. “This is horrible! They’re breaking every rule of Municipal Darwinism…”
“It’s a pirate suburb, Natsworthy,” said Hester. “What did you expect? They strip their prey as quickly as they can and make the captives slaves in their engine-rooms. They don’t waste food and space on people who are too weak to work. It’s not really so different from what your precious London gets up to. At least this lot have the honesty to call themselves pirates.”
The flash of a crimson robe out in the digestion yards caught Tom’s eye. The mayor of the pirate suburb had come down to take a look at his latest catch, and he was strutting along the walkway outside the cells, surrounded by his bodyguards. He was a tiny little man, stooping and hunch-shouldered, a bald head and scrawny neck jutting from the cat-fur collar of his gown. He didn’t look friendly. “He looks more like a moth-eaten vulture than a mayor!” whispered Tom, tugging at Hester’s sleeve and pointing. “What do you think he’ll do with us?”
She shrugged, glancing up at the approaching party. “We’ll be slung into the engine-rooms, I suppose…” Then she stopped short, staring at the mayor as if he was the most amazing thing she had ever seen. Shouldering Tom aside she thrust her face against the bars of the cage and started to shout. “Peavey!” she hollered, straining to make herself heard over the thunder of the gut. “Peavey! Over here!”
“Do you know him?” asked Tom, confused. “Is he a friend? Is he all right?”
“I don’t have friends,” snapped Hester, “and he’s not all right; he’s a ruthless, murdering animal and I’ve seen him kill people for just looking at him in a funny way. So let’s hope the catch has put him in a good mood. Peavey! Over here! It’s me! It’s Hester Shaw!”
The ruthless, murdering animal turned towards their cage and scowled.
“His name’s Chrysler Peavey,” Hester explained hoarsely. “He stopped to trade in Strole a couple of times when I lived there with Shrike. He was mayor of another little scavenger town. The gods alone know how he got himself a flash suburb like this… Now hush; and let me do the talking!”
Tom studied Chrysler Peavey as he came stalking over to peer at the captives, henchmen clustering behind. He wasn’t much to look at. His lumpy scalp reflected the glare of furnaces and the sweat draining off it made pale stripes in the grime on his face. As if to make up for his bald head he had hair almost everywhere else; grubby white bristles pushing out of his chin, thick grey tufts sprouting from his ears and nostrils, and a pair of enormous, bushy, wriggling eyebrows. A tarnished chain of office hung round his neck, and on one shoulder perched a scrawny monkey.
“Who’re they?” he said.