A Darkling Plain (29 page)

(See pages 2, 24)

Theo took the paper and leafed quickly through the first few pages. '"Many experts have long believed that "Professor" Pennyroyal's archaeological work is suspect,'" he read. '"No proof has ever surfaced to support "Professor" Pennyroyal's

stories of his adventures in America and Nuevo-Maya...."' Then he turned to the end of the article and gave a cry of surprise, for there was Wren. The photograph was small, and she had done something to her hair since he'd last seen her (or had she been standing on a slope when it was taken?) but it was her. He scanned the paragraphs beneath the picture and glanced nervously at Hester before he read them aloud.

'"Mr. Thomas Natsworthy, a respectable air trader, is none other than the husband of Hester Shaw, whose death Pennyroyal describes so touchingly in the closing chapters of his best-seller
Predator's Gold.
Fans of that book may be surprised to learn that Ms. Shaw was alive and well last Moon Festival, when she and her husband separated, and that the couple have a charming daughter, Miss Wren Natsworthy (15), who says of Pennyroyal, "He does tend to exaggerate a little."

'"It is the opinion of this writer, and of an increasing number of the professor's readers, that Pennyroyal exaggerates more than a little; that he is in fact nothing more than a fraud, a charlatan, a confidence trickster, a lounge lizard, and a master of deceit whose presence upon Murnau's upper tiers offends against every tradition of that noble city.'"

Hester chuckled appreciatively behind her veil.

"You see?" said Pennyroyal. "The little minx! Talking to Spiney like that behind my back! Or did he trick her? Twist her words about? I wouldn't put it past him. He will use any ammunition to hurl at me. I would set my lawyers on him, but alas, all proofs of my adventures burned with Cloud 9. Now Werederobe and Spoor are claiming that I have deceived them and want me to repay the advance on my latest

memoir. And I can't! I've spent it! Already warrants have been issued for my arrest in Murnau and Manchester! Where am I to go? What am I to do? I fled here hoping my friend Dornier Lard would take me away aboard his sky yacht, but he refused to know me! And I dare not try to buy passage on any common trade ship, lest the aviators recognize me and alert my creditors. Unless ..." He gawped at Hester, trying to hide his fear of her and look plaintive and appealing. "Do you have a ship, Mrs. Natsworthy? Perhaps, for old times' sake ... Theo, dear boy, you remember how we got off Cloud 9 together; you and me taking turns to pilot the dear old
Arctic Roll...."

"Money," said Hester firmly.

"Oh, of course I can pay my way!" Pennyroyal began to fumble his clothes open, exposing his bulging, white-furred belly and a canvas money belt with many pouches. He took off the belt and started emptying coins onto the floor. "Just a little portable wealth I carry with me in case of emergencies," he explained. "Only pocket money, really, but you are welcome to it if you can take me away from here, and keep quiet about it."

"Pocket money?" Hester stirred the heaps of coin with the toe of her boot. "There must be four hundred shineys here, Pennyroyal."

"Five hundred!" said the old man eagerly, pulling a roll of coins out of the lining of his coat and throwing it down with the rest.

"It's a wonder you could walk."

"Well, it's all yours, if you can help me."

Hester nodded, thanking him. "Take it, Theo," she said.

"But it's not enough--"

"It's enough to get me aboard the
Humbug.
Once I'm past those heavies on the quay, I'll improvise."

Theo still didn't see how she planned to satisfy Varley's greed with five hundred in assorted gold bits, but he crouched down anyway and started shoveling the coins into his pockets. Pennyroyal watched with a strange expression, both pained and hopeful. "Which quay is your ship on?" he asked. "What is she called? Is she fast? I was wondering about Nuevo-Maya; I don't believe
The Speculum
is very widely read in Nuevo-Maya."

"You're not coming with us," said Hester.

"But you said--"

"I didn't say anything, Pennyroyal. You've been doing all the talking yourself, as usual. I wouldn't trust you aboard my ship, and even if I did, you wouldn't want passage to where I'm going."

Pennyroyal started to whimper. "But my money! My money!"

"You can't do this!" cried Theo, turning to Hester. Pennyroyal had kept him as a slave once, and he knew he should be glad that the gods had finally punished him for all his lies. But he didn't feel glad; he felt as if he were robbing a helpless, frightened old man. "We can't just take his money!"

"Think of it as a charity donation," said Hester, pulling the door open.

"I shall inform the authorities!" wailed Pennyroyal. "What, and give your hiding place away? I don't think so."

"It's for a good cause, Professor," promised Theo, lingering behind as Hester strode out of the room. He touched the old

man's trembling hand and said gently, "We'll pay it back. Lady Naga's a prisoner in a ship here. We're going to get her to Shan Guo. When we do, General Naga will be so grateful ... he'll pay back ten times what we took from you."

"Lady Naga?" whined Pennyroyal. "What are you talking about? She's dead!"

"Theo!" shouted Hester, halfway down the stairs.

With a last worried glance at Pennyroyal, Theo turned and followed her out of the room, out of the Empyrean Hotel, out into the chilly, starry night.

The clerk at the front desk watched them go, then wound the handle of the hotel's telephone and asked the operator to connect him to his brother, who worked in Airhaven's radiotelegraph office. "Lego?" he whispered. "It's me, Duplo. Can you send a message down to Murnau, double-quick?"

Alone in Room 128, Pennyroyal took a few deep, shivery breaths to calm himself. Curiosity was starting to get the better of his self-pity. What had young Theo meant? Could Naga's wife really still be alive? Was she really in Airhaven? And if she was, what would the Traktionstadts not give to get her for themselves? Why, the man who captured her would be a hero, no matter what alleged irregularities lay in his past....

Pennyroyal poured himself a brandy to steady his nerves, and lifted the stained curtain aside to look out at the big, sleepy shapes of the moored airships down on the docking ring.
Humbug:
That was the name Hester had let slip. He'd not heard of her, but it would be easy enough to find out what strut she lay at. And there were sure to be some burly

townies in the High Steet taverns who could help him out if things turned nasty.

In his mind's eye the beastly stories that
The Speculum
had printed about him finally began to fade, and a new, more favorable headline appeared; something along the lines of "Pennyroyal Captures Leading Mossie...."

***

LOW CLOUD, BLOWING IN from the west on the night wind, spread like a white carpet fifty feet beneath Airhaven, hiding the Earth below and all but the uppermost tiers of the largest cities there. An air yacht in the midnight-blue livery of Murnau came gliding through the cloud tops, curving toward a berth on the far side of the docking ring; probably some toff from the Oberrang come up to risk his inheritance in the casinos. As she leaned over the handrail of an observation deck on the High Street, the smell of mist reminded Hester of a night at Rogues' Roost, long ago.

Beneath her was Strut 13. The
Humbuglay
alongside, the three guards lounging at the foot of her gangplank. A light showed in her gondola, another in a window low down in her envelope.

Hester turned to Theo. "Go back to our ship. Get her

ready to pull out. If all goes well, I'll be coming aboard with Lady Naga in a few minutes."

"You can't go down there alone!" Theo protested. "What if something goes wrong?"

"Then you'll leave without me. Go east and tell your General Naga what really happened to his wife." Hester was eager to get Theo safely out of the way so that she could start doing what she did best. She leaned over and kissed his cheek, feeling the warmth of his skin through her veil. Everything was so intense in these moments before action, as if her brain wanted to drink in everything--every sound, every smell.

Theo nodded and started to say something, then thought better of it. He walked away fast along the High Street, dodging the crowds of aviators who meandered between the bars and cafes. Hester watched till he was out of sight, thinking how badly she would have fallen in love with him if she'd been twenty years younger. Then, cursing herself for a sentimental goose, she ran down the stairway to Strut 13.

The men on guard were as bored and dozy as she'd been hoping. They were the sort of shabby, down-at-heel aviators who hung around the High Street bars looking for work. Varley must have hired them to guard his precious cargo, but they would rather have been off drinking than standing out here in the cold. She considered just killing them, and keeping hold of Pennyroyal's gold for herself, but she couldn't take them all down without a fight, and she didn't want to risk that yet. She called out, "Where's Varley?"

The men came to life, trying to look hard and competent.

***

"Who's asking?" said one, pointing a spring-loaded speargun at her.

Hester shook the bag she was holding and let them hear the chinkle of Pennyroyal's gold.
Is chinkle a word?
she wondered. She always grew very calm at times like this, and small questions like that became intriguing.
Tom would know....
But she mustn't think about Tom.

One of the guards was backing up the
Humbug
s gangway, calling through an open hatch to someone inside. After a moment he jerked the speargun at Hester, and the others stood aside to let her go aboard.

In the
Shadow Aspect's
gondola Theo was warming up the engines, testing the rudder controls, and hoping that no one aboard Airhaven would notice, for he had not asked anyone's permission to depart. Behind him Grike paced to and fro, his heavy footfalls shaking the deck. "she should not have gone alone ," the Stalker said. "I told you--"

"you are not to blame, theo ngoni. but she should not have gone alone." He let out a grating, mechanical noise that Theo supposed was the Stalker equivalent of a Sigh. "i should be helping her to free dr. zero. in other times i would have done it easily. taken out the airhaven power plant, sown confusion, and gone aboard the

HUMBUG
while the once-born were looking elsewhere.... but i could not do that without killing."

"You wouldn't get far afterward, either," Theo pointed out.

Grike didn't seem to hear him. He stood at a porthole,

staring out at the night and the silent, tethered ships, "I AM GOING TO HELP HER."

"But you can't! If you're seen ..."

"I WILL BE CAREFUL."

Before Theo could stop him, Grike opened the hatch and jumped down onto the docking strut. No one was about. He crossed the strut in two long strides and dropped over the edge, his armor rippling with reflections from the harbor lights as if he were made of quicksilver. The underside of the strut was in shadow, hatched with girders. Grike crept along them until he was beneath the docking quays, and waited while a puttering dirigible balloon taxi passed beneath him on its way to the central ring. Then he began to pull himself along Airhaven's underbelly toward Strut 13.

The dirigible taxi pulled in against one of the docking platforms in the center of Airhaven, and its wicker gondola creaked as Sampford Spiney scrambled out, followed by Miss Kropotkin and her enormous camera. The journalist had been at a dinner on the Oberrang when he received the message from Airhaven, and he had not had time to change out of his formal robes. He swayed slightly as he made his way across the mooring platform to where the clerk from the Empyrean was waiting.

"Well? Are you the one who claims to have seen Pennyroyal?"

"He's been staying in my hotel, sir."

"Is he there now?"

"No, sir. He ran out not long after I sent word to you...."

"Ran where?"

"I don't know, sir. Some people came to talk to him. Then he went running off. I can show you his room, sir...."

"His room? His room? Great Thunderer! I can't interview a room! Find me Pennyroyal himself, or you'll not see a cent out of
The Speculum."

The clerk hurried toward the stairs that led up to the High Street, and Spiney went with him, snapping at his photographer to follow. "And make a note, Miss Kropotkin," he added as they climbed. "I'm pretty sure that was the kriegsmarschall's sky yacht we passed as we came in. What's the old man doing in Airhaven? Gambling? Seeing a woman? Could be a story in that...."

The
Humbug's
gondola reeked of wet nappies. The living quarters at the stern were full of them, draped on lines strung above the heating ducts. Poorly made bookshelves covered the walls, sagging under the weight of Varley's self-help books. In one corner a slimy-nosed baby snuffled and started to cry. "Hush, hush, hush," his mother said, looking up nervously as one of Varley's heavies pushed Hester in.

Varley was waiting for her, looking more feverish and ferrety than ever, a half-eaten supper on the table in front of him. He'd taken off his jacket. His trousers were held up by snakeskin braces. "On your own this time?" he asked Hester. "Got my ten thousand?"

"Five," said Hester. "That's all we can get hold of."

"Then I'll be selling your Lady Naga to another buyer."

"Oh, yes, I noticed the enormous queue all up the gangplank when I came aboard," said Hester. "That was sarcasm," she added as Varley sprang up to peer through a porthole.

"Face it, you haven't got any other buyers. You'll have to do business with me, before someone bigger and tougher hears who you've got stashed in your hold and comes to take her off your hands for free."