When they got closer, he saw there was a small cleared area the size of several office units, bordered by massive vertical iron beams in each corner, with similar horizontal beams above at the next level of offices, and more beyond that, a square strut of iron box-work that went up and up and up.
In the middle of this shaft, two chains hummed and groaned and rattled. One went up and one went down, through a grilled hole that every few seconds emitted a waft of steam and smoke.
The chains were not like the one Arthur and Suzy had ridden up from the oil warehouse. They were more like bicycle chains, huge bicycle chains, with each link six feet wide and six feet high. In the space in the middle of each link, there were rings welded to the inside wall. Sometimes there were frayed ropes tied to these rings, and sometimes even a welded iron chair or a bench.
Both chains moved at the same rate – about as fast as Arthur could run, he gauged. As soon as he saw them, he knew that this was how the grease monkeys were going to get higher up in the tower.
Alyse stopped and gestured, and the line of grease monkeys spread out to gather around her.
‘You know the drill,’ she said. ‘But we’ve got two washed-between-the-ears folk with us today, so we’ll go over it again. This is the north-east Big Chain, which provides the main motivation power for all the north-east Little Chains. Because it’s the Big Chain, we can travel two per link. We get on together, and we leave together. If you see the link looks oily or has a problem, you shout “Wait” before your partner gets aboard it, and you take the next. Now, let’s see-’
She took a piece of paper out of a pocket and unfolded it, at the same time hopping to the right to avoid a sudden downsplash.
‘We’re helping the automatons do a move today. There’s someone going up from Level 6995 to Level 61012, and across forty-two offices on the diagonal chain. We’ll do the vertical first and make it as quick as we can – we don’t want to give this lucky chap’s neighbours time to cause trouble. So we get off at 6995. Everyone got that? Suze and Ray?’
‘Yes,’ said Arthur. Suzy nodded.
‘Good,’ said Alyse. ‘Ray, come over here. You’ll jump on the first link with me, and Suze, you jump on the second with Vithan.’
Arthur splashed over to Alyse’s side. She held out her hand commandingly and took his, almost dragging him toward the rising chain before he caught up.
‘The trick is not to jump, because you’ll probably fall,’ Alyse cautioned. ‘You just sidle up close and then step onto the rising link as it comes up.’
‘Whatever you say,’ said Arthur.
It wouldn’t be so bad if only the chain wasn’t going so fast, he thought. I could get my leg torn off here...
‘Come right up to it,’ Alyse instructed. They walked closer to the chain, moving around so they faced the open link and were only a step away. Arthur could feel the rush of the chain’s movement, too close for comfort if a link swayed out of line. It still looked to be going too fast to simply step on.
‘You ready?’ asked Alyse.
‘Yes,’ said Arthur, and he was – until a huge shower of water landed on top of him, so much water that the peak of his cap collapsed into his face and he leant back and almost went down on one knee. In the middle of it all, he heard Part Six of the Will.
Arthur! You have to come and get me in the –
With a jerk, Alyse pulled him forward. Blinded by his collapsed cap and all the water in his eyes, Arthur had no choice but to step out, not knowing whether he was with her or had fallen that deadly half a step behind that would mean he would miss the inside of the link and instead fall into the grate and be mashed to bits by the next massive piece of the monster chain.
He stretched out and his foot went down...
THIRTEEN
LEAF’S EYES NARROWED and she blinked hard several times. Arthur had vanished. One second he was there, and then he wasn’t.
She looked around and scowled. Not only had Arthur disappeared but everyone else had become frozen –
The army is going to fire nukes at somewhere very close by, Leaf suddenly remembered. At one minute past midnight. So why I am standing here with my mouth open like some stupid goldfish?
‘Arthur!’ she shouted again. Then she started running, out through the ward with its frozen statues of sleepers. ‘Arthur!’
No one answered her. Leaf stopped at the end of the ward and looked around. Not only was everyone frozen, but there was also a kind of weird red light around them. Like a faint aura that she could only see when she looked out of the corner of her eyes. That same red glow was around the ward clock, high on the wall, which was stuck at three minutes to twelve.
Or not stuck. As Leaf looked, the red haze vanished. The minute hand sprang forward, and simultaneously the ward came alive with shuffling sleepers. Leaf heard someone call out from the office. Not Arthur – a woman’s voice. Probably Vess or Martine.
Two minutes! thought Leaf in panic. There’s not enough time to do anything. We’re all going to die!
The clock stopped. The sleepers became petrified once more. The red aura effect came back.
But Leaf could still hear the woman’s voice, and it got louder and louder until Martine burst into the ward.
‘What is going on? Where’s Lord Arthur?’
‘I don’t know,’ Leaf said. ‘Is there anything underneath this hospital? I mean underground levels... even a bomb shelter?’
‘I haven’t been here for twenty years!’ exclaimed Martine. ‘Ask Vess.’
Leaf looked around, then pointed. Vess was standing frozen in a corner of the ward.
‘Oh,’ Martine said. ‘Well, twenty years ago there were operating theatres on B3, and there was a bomb shelter once. I mean, this place was built in the fifties, so what do you expect?’
‘We have to get everyone down there,’ said Leaf firmly. ‘You and me. As quickly as we can.’
‘But they’re like statues...’
‘We’ll wheel them in beds. Two or three to a bed. I wonder if the elevators work? The lights do.’ Leaf saw the hesitation on Martine’s face. ‘Come on – help me load these two into this bed.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Martine said. ‘I thought that once I finally got back home, everything would be all right. But I still don’t understand anything. Why are we taking everyone downstairs? Why do we need a bomb shelter?’
‘Arthur said the army is going to nuke East Area Hospital at 12:01 because it’s a plague nexus. And East Area is not so far from here. Arthur’s done something to stop time, I guess, but it restarted a moment ago. It could restart again in a second, or a minute, who knows? Please, we have to get going!’
‘No,’ said Martine. ‘No.’
She turned and ran away sobbing, crashing through the swing doors and disappearing.
Leaf stared after her for a microsecond, then went and examined the closest hospital bed. It had wheels with brakes on them, which she clicked off. There was already a sleeper in the bed, so she grabbed hold of the rail and pulled the bed out and swung it around. It was harder than she’d expected, possibly because the bed had not been moved in a long time.
‘You’re number one,’ she said to the man asleep in the bed. ‘We’ll pick up Aunt Mango on the way, and that’ll be two. After you, I’ll only have approximately one thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight people to get to safety. In two and a half minutes.’
It took Leaf a lot longer than two minutes to find the elevators, and then she was dismayed to find that they weren’t working. Clearly, things that stayed the same from one moment to the next – like lightglobes – continued to work while things that moved were stuck in place. Luckily, there was a map next to the elevator bank that showed where there was a wheelchair ramp to get to the lower floors.
She’d loaded not only her aunt Mango but two other people onto the bed. They were the two smallest she could find in the immediate vicinity of her aunt, but even so, her back ached from dragging them across the floor and then levering them onto the bed. They actually were like statues to move, though fortunately ones made of flesh and blood, not marble. Still, their rigidity made them difficult to shift and manoeuvre.