A Darkling Plain (40 page)

Another pallid flicker of light came from the western sky. It seemed brighter this time, and Tom thought he saw a white blade of light slice across the stars, striking down at the Earth from some immeasurable height. Again, faintly, he heard that roaring, shrieking sound. "Great Quirke!" he whispered.

"They didn't muck about, those Ancients."

"Was Lurpak right? Is it really up in orbit somewhere?"

"It's possible," said Pomeroy. "There is all sorts of stuff still circling up there. The old records list a few weapons that the Ancients were supposed to have hung in heaven. The Diamond Bat, Jinju 14, the Nine Sisters, ODIN. Most of them must have been destroyed in the Sixty Minute War, or fallen out of the sky in all the millennia since. But I suppose it's possible that one's still up there, and Naga's people have managed to awaken it."

"ODIN," said Tom. "I've heard that name somewhere...."

"Quirke preserve us! You must have actually been paying attention during one of my lectures, Natsworthy!" chuckled Pomeroy, but he sounded weary, and Tom started walking again, thinking that it could not be good for the old Historian to be hanging about here in the chill air. The white light had gone now, anyway; there was nothing to see but a sinister, reddish glow in the west.

"The name stood for Orbital Defense Initiative," Pomeroy said as they strolled on together. "It was part of the American Empire's last, furious arms race with Greater China. I wonder where on earth our Mossie friends dug up the access codes."

"Quirke Almighty!" Tom said suddenly, with such concern

in his voice that Pomeroy stopped again and turned to peer at him.

"Everything all right, Natsworthy?"

"Yes," said Tom, but he was lying. He had remembered why the name ODIN sounded familiar. That had been the only legible word among the thousands of numbers and symbols scratched on the pages of the Tin Book of Anchorage, the relic that Wren had helped the Lost Boys steal from Vineland. Tom had almost forgotten about the book; he had assumed it was destroyed when Cloud 9 fell. Naga's people must have taken it with them to Shan Guo, and used it to arouse the dreadful weapon in the sky.

"Please," he said, "don't mention any of this to Wren."

Pomeroy chuckled again and nudged him. "Don't want to spoil her romance, eh? Don't blame you, Natsworthy. It's good to see that our young people are getting on with the serious business of falling in love with each other, despite all these trivial distractions. And I like that Theo Ngoni. They'll be good for each other."

"If they live through this," said Tom. "If any of us do."

"The forces of History will decide that," said Pomeroy. "I've studied History all my life, and the one thing I've learned for certain is that you can't stand against it. It's like a river in flood, and we are just swept along in it. The big people, like Naga, or those Traktionstadt fellows, may try to swim against the current for a time, but little people like us, the best we can hope for is to keep our heads above water for as long as we can."

"And when we go under?" asked Tom. "What then?"

Pomeroy laughed. "Then it's someone else's turn. Your

daughter and her young man, for instance. A London Historian's daughter and an Anti-Tractionist. Maybe they're the future."

They were drawing close to his comfortable little book-lined hut. As he turned and took Tom's hand, Tom said suddenly, "Mr. Pomeroy, if anything happened to me, you would look after Wren, wouldn't you?"

Pomeroy frowned. He seemed about to say something flippant but then realized how serious Tom was, and nodded instead. "Wren has Theo to look after her," he said. "But yes, I'd do my bit, if she needed me. So would Clytie; so would every other Londoner. You needn't worry about her, Tom."

"Thank you."

They stood for a moment side by side. Then Pomeroy said, "Well, good night, Apprentice Natsworthy."

"Good night, Lord Mayor. You're sure ..."

"Don't fuss," said Pomeroy amiably. "I'm perfectly capable of putting myself to bed. And don't worry too much about the Storm, or Harrowbarrow, or any of the rest of it. London can take it."

He shambled off, and Tom went slowly home to his own hut, where Theo was to be staying now as well. But as he reached the door, he heard Wren's and Theo's voices inside, where they must be waiting for him to return. They were talking too softly to make out any words, but he knew what they were saying. They were telling each other all the things he and Hester had told each other once; all the things that lovers had always said to one another, imagining that they were the first people ever to say them.

Not wanting to interrupt, Tom turned away and went out into the open air again. He walked up into the rust hills,

going slowly to spare his heart. The western sky looked bruised.
I ought to do something,
he thought.
I have done so little for New London; just brought trouble, really. I should try to do something about this. It's my responsibility in a way; a family matter. But how could I hope to stop ODIN? I don't even know where the Storm control it from....

And then he thought,
I might not be able to stop ODIN, but perhaps I could stop them using it on New London.

General Naga was a good man--Wren had often spoken about how he had treated her on Cloud 9; how fair and civilized he'd been. Perhaps he was using the weapon only because he was scared, and desperate. Perhaps he was the sort of man who would listen to reason. If he could meet a Londoner, and hear firsthand about New London, surely he would understand that the Storm had no cause to fear it?

Tom was shaking so much that he had to sit down. Could it be done? He supposed it could. There was fuel enough in the
Jenny Haniver's
tanks to reach Batmunkh Gompa. And then he remembered Theo telling him how Hester had rescued Lady Naga. Was
she
in Shan Guo, even now? Might she be able to help persuade General Naga to listen to what Tom had to tell him?

He walked back to Crouch End. He had been gone far longer than he'd realized; Wren and Theo had fallen asleep waiting for him. Tom went quietly past them to his pack, found paper and a pencil, and wrote a letter for his daughter. He left it beside her and stood looking down at her for a while, listening to her breathe, watching the small, sleeping movements of her fingers, just as he used to when she was a baby. He kissed her forehead, and she smiled in her sleep

and snuggled closer to Theo.

"Night night, little Wren," Tom said. "Sleep tight. Sleep tight."

Then he went out of the hut and shouldered his pack and left Crouch End, heading for the Holloway Road and the place where the
Jenny Haniver
was moored.

On the plains west of London, Wolf Kobold stood on his favorite observation post, up on Harrowbarrow's armored spine. The harvester was stationary, buried in a long hill of loose shale with just a few well-camouflaged gun emplacements and watchtowers protruding. It had traveled only by night since it broke away from the Murnau pack, for although the Green Storm's armies were collapsing, these lands were still enemy territory; Wolf did not want his trip to London interrupted by any foolish battles.

But tonight, as the suburb prepared to move, a different sort of interruption had occurred.

Wolf swung his field glasses and counted seven ... nine ... twelve immense bonfires blazing in the west. He was too young to remember MEDUSA, but that was the name that came into his mind. His lookouts--trusted men--had reported a blade of light striking down from the sky and setting off those firestorms. He tilted his head, staring at the stars. They looked innocent enough now.

A nearby hatch squeaked open. Hausdorfer emerged.

"Well?"

"Talked to the radio boys," said Hausdorfer. "They've been trying Manchester, Winterthur, Koblenz. Nothing. Some kind of distress signal from Dortmund, then they went dead too."

Wolf stared at the burning horizon. "What of Murnau?"

"Can't say. There's interference on every frequency now. But it looks like the Mossies have found themselves a new toy." He waited for an order. None came. "Do you want us to turn back, or what?"

"Turn back?" The notion was mildly surprising to Wolf. He considered it for a while, then shook his head. "Do you know what survived best after the Sixty Minute War, Hausdorfer? Rats and roaches. It's true. I read it in a history book. Cockroaches and rats. So let the old cities burn. It's Harrowbarrow's time now. A time for cunning, creeping things. Fire up the engines. Steer straight on to London."

***

HESTER AND HER COMPANIONS had watched from the gun slits of General Xao's new headquarters as the fire from the sky reached down and touched the cities that were closing in on Forward Command, turning them one by one into plumes of blazing fuel and incandescent gas. Grike was with them but saw nothing. The pulses of energy from the mysterious weapon upset the equally mysterious machines inside his head, making his eyes go blank and his armored body shudder helplessly. Lesser Stalkers, who did not have Grike's strength or Oenone Zero on hand to tend to them, fared even worse. At dawn the defenders of Forward Command found their battle-Stalkers scattered in the trenches like fallen lead soldiers. But by then it did not matter, for on the western plains, where cities and suburbs and flocks of airships had been massed, there was now nothing but smoke.

"What have they done to the sky?" asked Hester, looking from the window at breakfast time. She was still feeling weak from her head wound. She thought at first that the marbled haze that hung over the rooftops was the first sign of a relapse; something gone wrong with her eye or her brain. But a glance at the frightened faces of Oenone and Pennyroyal told her that they could see it too.

The sun rose, pink and shrunken. Flakes that looked like snow were drifting down everywhere. "Snow?" Pennyroyal complained. "In summertime?"

"it is ash ," announced Grike. " the sky is full of ash."

General Xao took advantage of the lull in the fighting to have the
Fury
repaired. "We cannot make contact with Shan Guo," she told her guests. "The new weapon seems to have interfered with our radio sets. So I am sending you home to Naga with a message. We need orders. Are we to advance? Recapture the ground they took from us? Or do we simply wait for them to surrender?"

Oenone looked at the columns of smoke rising from the dead Traction Cities. She said, "I can't believe Naga had such a thing and never told me of it. I can't believe he used it. All those lives gone. It's horrible!"

Xao bowed. "Personally, I agree. But let's not say it too loudly, Excellency. My people are most impressed with the new weapon."

And it was true; as they walked to the docking pan where the
Fury
lay, the four companions could hear the cheers and songs of victory rising from the lower levels of Forward Command and from all the trenches and fortifications around about. Gunshots popped like champagne corks as relieved

Green Storm soldiers loosed off some of the ammunition they had been saving for the cities at the sky instead. When a bullet skipped off the metal pavement a few feet ahead of them, they assumed at first it was a spent round falling. "Sweet Poskitt!" cried Pennyroyal indignantly. "They'll have somebody's eye out in a minute!"

Only when a flushed, furious-looking soldier lurched out into their path, working another round into the chamber of his carbine, did they understand that the bullet had been aimed at Oenone.

"Aleutian!" the soldier shouted. He pointed her out to his comrades, who were hurrying up behind him. "There she is, friends! The Aleutian traitor who tried to destroy the Wind-Flower and set up Naga in her place!"

Grike stepped in front of Oenone and unsheathed his finger-glaives. The soldier's companions drew back hastily, but he held his ground, still shouting. "Your time is over, Aleutian! She is risen! We have all heard the stories! A Stalker killing a thousand townies aboard Brighton! An amphibious limpet found on the sacred mountain! The Stalker Fang has returned!"

Hester pulled out her gun, but Oenone caught her wrist before she could shoot the angry soldier. "No. Leave him. Who knows what he's been through?"

Already some of General Xao's men were hurrying from the docking pans to pull the troublemaker away. As they seized him, the man screamed, "Naga could not have made the cities burn like this! This is
her
victory! The Stalker Fang has returned to Tienjing and killed the crippled coward! Fly home, Aleutian, so she can kill you, too!"

Xao's men bundled him away. Oenone was shaking. Hester took her arm and guided her quickly toward the docking pan. "Don't worry. He's mad. Or drunk."

"I have heard the same rumors from other once-born here," said Grike. " the idea that their old leader had returned was a comfort to them when defeat seemed inevitable."

"But Fang is dead, isn't she?" Pennyroyal said, trying to shield himself behind the Stalker. "You smashed her."

"She is dead," said Oenone. "She
must
be...."

But she was still trembling slightly half an hour later as the
Fury
carried her into the stained sky and began the journey homeward to Tienjing.

London. The night giving way to lightless dawn. Fog everywhere. Fog on the edge of the wreck, where the debris merges into green scrub country; fog in the wreck's heart, where it rolls among the steep mounds of corroded deck plate. Fog on the Womb road, fog on the rust hills. Fog creeping into the cabins and huts of Crouch End, fog hovering around blind lookout posts and lifeless windmills, fog drooping on the steering vanes and rigging of the
Archaeopteryx
in her secret hangar. Fog piled so deep over the plain that Stalker-birds on watch above can see nothing of London beyond a few tall spires of debris that rise out of the vapor like jagged islands breaking from a white sea.