“He doesn’t know, ” said Caul wearily. “He suspects, that’s all. And he doesn’t even know what he suspects, he’s just got an idea that something’s going on.”
Skewer looked at him in surprise, then laughed. “You know what he thinks pretty well, don’t you?”
“I’m just saying you haven’t got to worry about him, that’s all,” muttered Caul.
“And I’m just saying we have, and maybe we ought to do him in. Make it look like an accident. How’d you like that?”
Caul said nothing, refusing to rise to the bait. It was true that the burglars had had to be a lot more careful since Tom started his investigations, and it was delaying them. Skewer was keen to prove that he’d been right to take command, and determined that when he took the Screw Worm home to Uncle she’d be bulging with loot, but although he and Caul went upstairs nearly every night they dared not steal anything too obvious for fear of arousing Tom’s suspicions further. They’d had to remove their lamprey-hoses from the fuel-tanks at the air-harbour, too, and that would become a problem soon, since the message-fish and most of the Screw Worm ’s systems ran on stolen aviation fuel.
The Lost Boy part of Caul knew Skewer was right. A knife between Tom’s ribs on a lonely street, the body heaved off the stern-gallery, and normal burglary could be resumed. But the other part of him, the kinder part, couldn’t bear that idea. He wished Skewer would just give up and go back to Grimsby, leaving him here alone to watch Tom and Freya and the others. Sometimes he even wondered about giving himself up; throwing himself on the mercy of the people of Anchorage. Except that, for as long as he could remember, he had been told that the Drys had no mercy. His trainers in the Burglarium, his comrades, Uncle’s voice whispering out of the speakers in the Grimsby canteen, all agreed that however civilized the Drys might seem, however comfortable their cities, however pretty the girls, they would do horrible things to a Lost Boy if they caught him.
Caul wasn’t sure any more that that was true, but he hadn’t the courage to go up and find out. How could he? Hello, I’m Caul. I’ve been burgling you…
The telegraph machine at the rear of the cabin began to chatter excitedly, breaking in on Caul’s thoughts. He and Skewer both started at the sudden noise, and Gargle, who had grown jumpier than ever under Skewer’s harsh leadership, squealed with fright. The little machine jerked its brass limbs up and down like a mechanical cricket, and a long ribbon of punched white paper began to spew out of a slot in its glastic dome. Somewhere far beneath Anchorage a message-fish from Grimsby was swimming, beaming a signal up through the ice.
The three boys looked at each other. This was rare. Neither Caul nor Skewer had ever been aboard a limpet which had received a message from Uncle. In his surprise, Skewer forgot his new role for a moment and looked worriedly at Caul.
“What do you think it is? You think something’s gone wrong at home?”
“You’re the captain now, Skew,” Caul replied. “Better check.”
Skewer crossed the cabin, shoved Gargle aside and grabbed the curling ribbon of tape, his eyes narrowing as he studied the patterns of holes. His smile faded.
“What is it, Skew?” asked Gargle eagerly. “Is it from Uncle?”
Skewer nodded, looked up, then back at the tape, as if he could not quite believe what he had read there. “Of course it’s from Uncle, you gowk. He says he’s read our reports. We’re to return to Grimsby at once. And he says we’re to bring Tom Natsworthy with us.”
“Professor Pennyroyal!”
The great explorer had become a rare sight in Anchorage these past few weeks, keeping to his quarters and not even showing up for meetings of the Steering Committee. “I have a cold!” he had explained, in a muffled voice, when Freya sent Smew to knock upon his door. But as Tom emerged from the engine district stairway on to Rasmussen Prospekt that night he saw Pennyroyal’s familiar, turbanned figure stumbling through the snow ahead of him.
“Professor Pennyroyal!” he shouted again, breaking into a run, and caught up with him near the foot of the Wheelhouse.
“Ah, Tim!” said Pennyroyal, with a pallid smile. His voice was slurred, and his arms were full of bottles of cheap red wine which he had just borrowed from an abandoned restaurant called Nosh o’ the North. “So glad to see you again. No luck with that airship I suppose?”
“Airship?”
“A little bird told me you were asking Aakiuq about his air-tug. The Crapulous or whatever he calls it. About using it to escape these boreal realms and flit back to civilization.”
“That was weeks ago, Professor.”
“Oh?”
“It didn’t work out.”
“Ah. Pity.”
They stood in awkward silence, Pennyroyal swaying slightly.
“I’ve been looking for you for ages,” Tom said at last. “There’s something I wanted to ask you. As an explorer and historian.”
“Ah!” said Pennyroyal wisely. “Ah. You’d better come up.”
The Honorary Chief Navigator’s official residence had gone to seed since Tom last saw it. Piles of papers and dirty crockery had sprouted like fungus from every flat surface, expensive clothes lay crumpled on the floor and ranks of empty bottles ringed the sofa, flotsam washed up on a spring-tide of pilfered wine.
“Welcome, welcome,” said Pennyroyal vaguely, waving Tom towards a chair and rummaging in the debris on his desk for a corkscrew. “Now, what can I help you with?”
Tom shook his head. It sounded silly, now he came to say it aloud. “It’s only,” he said, “well, during your travels, have you ever come across stories of intruders aboard ice cities?”
Pennyroyal almost dropped the bottle he was holding. “Intruders? No! Why? You don’t mean there’s someone aboard…”
“No. I’m not sure. Maybe. Someone’s been stealing stuff, and I don’t see why it would be one of Freya’s people — they can have anything they want; they’ve no reason to steal.”
Pennyroyal opened the wine and took a long drink straight from the bottle. It seemed to steady his nerves. “Maybe we’ve picked up a parasite,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Haven’t you read Ziggurat Cities of the Serpent-God, my breathtaking account of a journey through Nuevo-Maya?” asked Pennyroyal. “There’s a whole chapter on parasite towns: Las Ciudades Vampiras. ”
“I’ve never heard of a parasite town,” said Tom doubtfully. “Do you mean some sort of scavenger?”
“Oh no!” Pennyroyal took a seat close to him, breathing hot gusts of wine-fumes into his face. “There’s more than one way to prey on a city. These vampire towns conceal themselves in the litter of the Out-Country until one passes over them. Then they spring up and attach themselves to its underside with gigantic suction-cups. The poor city goes trundling on with no idea what’s clinging to its belly, but all the while the parasite people are sneaking aboard, draining fuel tanks, stealing equipment, murdering the menfolk one by one, carrying off beautiful young women to sell in the slave-markets of Itzal as sacrifices to the volcano-gods. Eventually the host city comes shuddering to a halt, an empty shell, a husk, its engines stripped out, its people dead or captured, and the fat vampire town crawls off in search of fresh prey.”
Tom thought about that for a while. “But that’s impossible!” he said at last. “How would a city not know it had an entire town hanging underneath it? How would they not spot all these people running around pinching stuff? It doesn’t make sense! And… suction cups? ”
Pennyroyal looked shocked. “What are you saying, Tom?”
“I’m saying that you… you made it up! Just like the stuff in Rubbish? Rubbish! and the old buildings you said you saw in America… Oh, Great Quirke!” Tom felt cold suddenly, even though the apartment was warm and stuffy. “Did you ever even go to America? Or was that all made up, too?”
“Course I did!” said Pennyroyal angrily.
“I don’t believe you!” The old Tom, brought up to honour his elders and respect all historians, would never have dared to say such things, even to think them. Three weeks without Hester had changed him more than he realized. Standing, he looked down into Pennyroyal’s puffy, sweating face and knew that he was lying. “It was just a fantasy, wasn’t it?” he said. “Your whole trip to America was a story spun out of aviators’ yarns and the legend of old Snori Ulvaeusson’s disappearing map, which probably never existed in the first place!”