Hester glanced at Sathya, but Sathya would not look at her, just followed Popjoy towards a door in the far wall. It was fitted with a magnetic lock like the ones on the door of the Memory Chamber. The Engineer’s long fingers went spidering over the ivory keys, punching in a code. The lock clunked and whirred, and the door swung open to reveal a cave of ice where strange statues waited under plastic covers.
“You see, those old Stalker builders lacked imaginative flair,” explained Popjoy, his breath smouldering as he scurried around the big freezer-cabinet, unveiling his creations. “Just because a Stalker needs a human brain and nervous system, that doesn’t mean it has to be limited to a human shape. Why stick to two arms and two legs? Why only two eyes? Why bother with a mouth? These fellows don’t eat, and we haven’t built them for their sparkling conversation…”
The frosty plastic sheets were dragged aside, exposing steel-plated centaurs with twenty arms and caterpillar tracks instead of legs, spider-Stalkers with clawed feet and machine-gun turrets in their bellies, Stalkers with spare eyes in the back of their skulls. On a slab near the front of the cabinet lay something half-finished, made from the corpse of poor Widgery Blinkoe.
Hester put a hand to her mouth, gulping and gasping. “That’s the man who drugged me at Arkangel!”
“Oh, he was only a paid agent,” said Sathya. “He knew too much. I had him liquidated the night he brought you in.”
“And what if all his wives come searching for him?”
“Would you come searching for Blinkoe, if you were his wife?” asked Sathya. She wasn’t even looking at the dead spy; her gaze lingered on the other Stalkers, and on Popjoy.
“Anyway!” said Popjoy brightly, flicking the shrouds back into place. “Better step back outside, before these chaps overheat; there’s a slight danger of decomposition before they’re quickened.”
Hester couldn’t bring herself to move, but Sathya pulled her back into the laboratory, saying, “Thank you, Dr Popjoy, this has been most interesting.”
“A pleasure, dear lady,” replied the Engineer, with a flirtatious little bow. “Always a pleasure. And soon, I’m certain, we shall find a way to restore your friend Anna’s memory… Goodbye! And goodbye, Miss Shaw! I shall look forward to working with you after your execution.”
Out of the laboratory, down a short tunnel, through a door which opened on to a rusty walkway running across the cliff-face. The wind boomed, roaring down over the ice from the top of the world. Hester gauged its direction before she leaned over the handrail to be sick.
“You asked me once why the Green Storm was backing my work here,” said Sathya. “Now you know. They’re not interested in Anna, not really. They want Popjoy to build them an army of Stalkers so that they can seize power inside the League and begin their war against the cities.”
Hester wiped her mouth and stared down at the tumbled creamy tongues of foam licking through narrow passages in the rocks. “Why tell me?” she asked.
“Because I want you to know. Because when the bombs start falling and the Green Storm’s Stalkers are unleashed, I want someone to know that it’s not my fault. I did all this for Anna. Only for Anna.”
“But Anna would have hated it. She wouldn’t have wanted a war.”
Sathya shook her head miserably. “She thought we should attack cities only when they threatened our settlements. She never agreed that city people were all barbarians; she said they were just misguided. I thought that when Anna was herself again she would show us all a new way; something stronger than the old League and less fierce than the Green Storm. But the Storm are becoming more and more powerful, their new Stalkers are almost ready, and Anna is still lost…”
Hester felt her face twisting into a sarcastic smile and looked quickly away before Sathya noticed. It was hard to stomach all these ethical worries coming from a girl who had murdered old Blinkoe without a qualm, but she sensed an opportunity. Sathya’s doubts were like a loose bar in a gaol window; a weakness which she might be able to work at. She said, “You should warn the League. Send a messenger to the High Council and tell them what your friends are doing here.”
“I can’t,” said Sathya. “If the Storm found out about it I’d be killed.”
Hester just kept looking at the sea, tasting the salt spray on her lips. “Then what if a prisoner escaped?” she asked. “They couldn’t blame you for that, could they. If a prisoner who knew what was happening here escaped and stole an airship and flew away, that wouldn’t be your fault.”
Sathya looked up sharply. Hester felt herself trembling at the sudden prospect of escape. She could leave this place! There would still be time to save Tom! She felt proud of the way she was preying on Sathya’s unhappiness; it seemed to her a clever, ruthless thing to do, and worthy of Valentine’s daughter.
“Let me escape, and take the Jenny Haniver, ” she said. “I’ll fly to League territory. Find someone trustworthy, like Captain Khora. He’ll bring warships north and retake this place. Throw Popjoy’s new creatures into the sea before they can be used.”
Sathya’s eyes shone, as if she could already imagine the handsome African aviator leaping from the gondola of his Achebe 9000 to help her out of the trap she had made for herself. Then she shook her head.
“I can’t,” she said. “If Khora saw Anna in her present state — he might not understand. I can’t let anything disrupt my work with her, Hester. We’re so close now. Sometimes I can feel her, looking out at me from inside that mask… And anyway, how can I let you go? You helped to kill her.”
“You don’t still believe that,” said Hester. “Not any more. Or you’d have killed me already.”
Two tears went tracking down Sathya’s face, silvery against the darkness of her skin. “I don’t know,” she said. “I have doubts. But I have doubts about so many things.” Suddenly she hugged Hester, pulling her face against the starched, scratchy shoulder of her tunic. “It’s good to have someone to talk to. I’m not going to kill you. When Anna is better, she will be able to tell me herself whether you were to blame for her death. You must stay here until Anna is better.”
26
If you could look down on the world from somewhere high above — if you were a god, or a ghost haunting one of the old American weapon platforms which still hang in orbit high above the pole — the Ice Wastes would look at first as blank as the walls of Hester’s cell; a whiteness spread over the crown of the poor old Earth like a cataract on a blue eye. But look a little closer, and there are things moving in the blankness. See that tiny speck to the west of Greenland? That is Anchorage, a screen of survey-sleds spreading ahead of it as it wriggles its way between glacier-slathered mountains and across uncharted stretches of sea-ice. Wriggles carefully, but not too slow, because everyone aboard carries with them the memory of the parasite which stole poor Tom away, and the fear that more might erupt at any moment through the ice. Watches are set in the engine district now, and patrols inspect the hull each morning, searching for unwelcome visitors.
What no one aboard suspects, of course, is that the real danger comes not from below but from another speck (larger, darker) which is creeping towards them from the east, skids up, tracks down, hauling its great bulk across the hummocked spine of Greenland. It is Arkangel. In its gut Wolverinehampton and three small whaling towns are being torn apart, while deep in its Core, in the ivory-panelled office of the Direktor, Piotr Masgard is urging his father to increase the city’s speed.