They climbed out of darkness into darkness, Bevis Pod’s torch flittering on stair after identical metal stair. Their big shadows slid up the walls of the shaft. They didn’t speak much, but each listened to the other’s steady breathing, glad of the company. Katherine kept looking back, expecting to see Dog at her heels.
“Five hundred steps,” whispered Bevis, stopping on a narrow landing and shining his torch upward. The stairs spiralled up for ever. “This must be Tier One. Halfway.”
Katherine nodded, too out-of-breath to speak, too on-edge to rest. Above them the Lord Mayor’s reception must be in full swing. She climbed on, her knees growing stiff, each intake of breath a cold hard ache in the back of her throat, the too-heavy satchel banging against her hip.
Through the windows of the airship Hester could see the Out-Country streaming past, only a hundred or so feet below, scarred with the same ruler-straight trenches that she and Tom had stumbled along on the days after they first met. And there was London, red tail-lights in the darkness, dimming as Tom brought the airship up into the thick poison-fog of the city’s exhaust. He was good at this, she realized, and thought what a pity it was that his plan was not going to work.
The radio crackled into life; London Docks and Harbour Board, demanding their identity codes.
Tom looked back at her, scared, but she knew how to handle this. She went to the radio and flipped the “transmit” switch up and down quickly, garbling her message as if the communications system was shot. “London Airship GE47,” she said, remembering the code name that had come crackling over the inn’s loudspeakers in Airhaven all those weeks before. “We’re taking Shrike back to the Engineerium.”
The radio said something, but she snapped it off. Black smog pressed against the windows, and water droplets condensed on the glass and went quivering off this way and that, leaving wriggly trails.
“I’ll circle the city for twenty minutes and then come in and pick you up,” Tom was saying. “That should give you time to find Valentine and…”
“I’ll be dead in twenty minutes, Tom,” she said. “Just get yourself safe away. Forget about me.”
“I’ll circle back…”
“I’ll be dead.”
“I’ll circle back anyway…”
“There’s no point, Tom.”
“I’ll circle back and pick you up.”
She looked at him and saw tears shining in his eyes. He was crying. He was crying for her, because she was going into danger and he would not see her again, and she thought it was strange that he cared about her that much, and very sweet. She said, “Tom, I wish…” and, “Tom, if I…” and other little broken bits of sentences that petered out in silence, because she didn’t even know herself what she was trying to say, only that she wanted him to know that he was the best thing that had happened to her.
A light loomed out of the swirling dark, then another. They were rising past Tier Three, and very close. Tier Two slid by, with people staring up from an observation deck, and then Circle Park with lanterns strung between the trees. Tom fumbled with the controls and the Jenny went powering forward, low over the rooftops of Knightsbridge and up towards the aft edge of Top Tier. He glanced quickly at Hester. She wanted to hug him, kiss him, something, but there was no time now, and she just gasped, “Tom, don’t get yourself killed,” slammed the hatch-controls to “open” and ran to it and jumped as the airship swung in a shuddery arc over the rim of Top Tier.
She hit the deckplate hard and rolled over and over. The Jenny Haniver was pulling away fast, lit by the sparkling trails of rockets from an air-defence battery on the Engineerium. The rockets missed, darkness swallowed the airship, and she was alone, scrambling into the shadows.
“A single airship, Lord Mayor.” It is a nervous-looking Engineer, a shell-like radio clipped to his ear. “It has pulled clear, but we believe it may have landed a boarding party.”
“Anti-Tractionists on Top Tier?” The Lord Mayor nods, as if this is the sort of little problem that crops up every day. “Well, well. Dr Twix, I think this might be a good opportunity to test your new models.”
“Oh, goody!” trills the woman, dropping a plate of canapes in her excitement. “Come along, my chicks! Come along!”
Her Stalkers turn with a single movement and form up behind her, striding through thrilled party-goers to the exits.
“Bring me the boarders alive!” Crome calls after her. “It would be a pity if they missed the big event.”
34. IDEA FOR A FIREWORKS DISPLAY
T om wiped at his eyes with the heel of one hand and concentrated on his flying, steering the Jenny away from London and up. He wasn’t frightened now. It felt good to be doing something at last, and good to be in charge of this huge, wonderful machine. He turned her eastwards, pointing her nose towards the last faint gleam of day on the summit of Zhan Shan. He would circle for twenty minutes. It felt as if half that time had passed already, but when he checked the chronometers he saw that it was less than two minutes since Hester jumped down into London and-
A rushing, brilliant thing slammed into the gondola, and the blast plucked him out of his seat. He clung to a stanchion and saw papers and instrument panels and sputtering lengths of cable and the shrine with its photographs and ribbons and Miss Fang’s half-read book all rushing out through a jagged hole in the fuselage, tumbling into the sky like ungainly birds. The big windows shattered and the air turned sharp and shimmery with flying glass.
He craned his neck, peering up through the empty windows, trying to see if the envelope was burning. There were no flames, but overhead a great dark shape slid past, moonlight slithering along its armoured envelope. It was the 13th Floor Elevator, pulling past the Jenny and performing a lazy victory-roll far over the foothills of Shan Guo before it came sweeping back to finish him.
Magnus Crome watches his guests crowd out into the square, gazing up at the glare and flicker of the battle taking place above the clouds. He checks his wrist-watch. “Dr Chandra, Dr Chubb, Dr Splay; it is time to deploy MEDUSA. Valentine, come with us. I’m sure you are keen to see what we’ve made of your machine.”
“Crome,” says the explorer, blocking his path, “there is something I must say…”
The Lord Mayor raises an eyebrow, intrigued.
Valentine hesitates. He has been planning this speech all evening, knowing that it is what Katherine would want him to say. Now, faced with the Lord Mayor’s arctic eyes, he falters, stammering a moment. “Is it worth it, Crome?” he says at last. “Destroying the Shield-Wall will not destroy the League. There will be other strongholds to defeat, hundreds of fortresses, thousands of lives. Is it really worth so much, your new hunting ground?”
There is a ripple of amazement among the bystanders. Crome says calmly, “You have left it rather late to have doubts, Valentine. You worry too much. Dr Twix can build whole armies of Stalkers, more than enough to crush any resistance from Anti-Tractionist savages.”
He starts to push past, but Valentine is in front of him again. “Think, Lord Mayor. How long will a new hunting ground support us? A thousand years? Two thousand? One day there will be no more prey left anywhere, and London will have to stop moving. Perhaps we should accept it; stop now, before any more innocent people are killed; take what you have learned from MEDUSA and use it for peaceful purposes…”