Glass (25 page)

CHAPTER 22

Subadwan approached the window, trying to attract the attention of the fat, pseudo-sentient bats that hung just outside; speaking in sign language. Soon one was pawing at her window. Subadwan waved at it, not knowing what else to do. She neared the window and tried a high-pitched whistle, then more signing. With sapphire claws the bat scratched a circle in the glass then punched it out. Subadwan jumped back, saving her feet from being sliced off. She clambered out, ensuring her skin did not touch the sides of the hole, pulling her clothes to her body so that they were not ripped by the glittering razor edges of the hole. Outside, the bat followed her to the edge of the balustrade. The other bats ignored them.

Inside the cockpit she saw an extended finger of pyuter controls – pads and knobs mostly – and behind that the glinting golden disk of an aeronautic pyuter.

Apprehensive, but encouraged by the bat’s obsequious manner, Subadwan settled her slim body into the clinging bucket seat, which in response wrapped itself around her. The seat was warm, like a bed wrap.

‘Hello, bat?’ she said. None of the controls were labelled, unlike the bat she had imagined in Gwmru.

‘Hello, mistress,’ came the buzzing electric reply.

‘I am your new pilot,’ Subadwan said, hoping she was not pushing her luck.

‘Where do you want to go, mistress?’

‘The Baths. And don’t speak to any other bats, please.’

‘I will do as you say. Please give me the flight plan.’

Subadwan hesitated. Her scheme felt as though it was faltering, and doubt took her. ‘Flight plan?’

‘Yes. The aerial route, if you will, mistress.’

Subadwan said, ‘Fly directly there.’

With a jerk and a pop of its engines the bat flung itself off the edge of the Archive roof, and frigid air swirled around her body. Automatically, she tensed herself as the Nocturnal Quarter appeared below her, that dark mass twinkling at the edges with lights, criss-crossed with luminous veins, impenetrably black at its centre. Noticing the faintest remnants of violet cloud to the west, she guessed it was early evening.

Vistas of glass glittered below her like a frozen sea. Towers rose up, splintered like transparent icebergs.

Swiftly, descending in minute increments, they flew north, arriving above the Baths after only a few minutes in the air. Subadwan directed the bat to land in a deserted courtyard behind the main building, which it did, faultlessly. ‘Wait here,’ Subadwan said, clambering out of the enveloping seat.

‘I will, mistress,’ said the bat.

Subadwan added, ‘Don’t obey anybody else’s command. Just do as I say.’

‘As you say.’

Subadwan peered into the alley that connected the quadrangle and the rear courtyard of the Baths. Nobody about. She passed along the splintered alley, through the courtyard, which was also empty, then crept along the passage leading around the Baths to Peppermint Street and the front door. Along the street a few Crayans trudged, nervously looking over their shoulders, stepping around splotches of ochre that seemed to be infecting the street plastic itself. Seeing this, Subadwan, with racing heart, examined her own boots, to find splatters of ochre gel. She pulled the boots off. The stuff had not eaten through. Weak with relief she thanked Gaya then tip-toed to the front door, noticing with a shiver of horror that the marble base blocks were turning to glass.

She could hear voices reverberating around the Baths as she hurried inside. From a rail she grabbed a green gown, the hood of which she pulled over her head. It was an imperfect disguise, but better than nothing. It worked, however, since nobody stopped or even looked at her, and soon she was at the entrance to Liguilifrey’s room. She tapped at the door.

‘Who is it?’ Subadwan wondered if Liguilifrey was alone. ‘Who is it?’ Liguilifrey repeated, louder. Subadwan pressed her ear to the door but heard no voices.

‘It’s me,’ she said.

The door opened. Subadwan hugged Liguilifrey, and in seconds she was inside. ‘It’s only me,’ she said, over and over again, as they clasped one another.

Liguilifrey was overjoyed to have Subadwan back. ‘Some sort of mental trick took me away,’ Subadwan explained, ‘some trick of Umia’s.’

‘He’s dead,’ Liguilifrey said, proceeding to update Subadwan on recent events. In reply Subadwan told Liguilifrey everything she knew about Gwmru, and about what would, if she did not stop it, happen soon.

Liguilifrey did not believe that something awful was about to happen to Cray and its citizens. ‘You need help,’ she remarked. She hesitated. ‘I’m afraid Aquaitra is the new Lord Archivist of Gaya.’

‘I’d guessed that,’ Subadwan lied, her heart sinking. She had hoped Umia’s words to be part of a ruse. She took a deep breath. ‘But I need help now. This is urgent.’

‘How will you destroy these aeromorphs?

‘I’ll explode them.’

‘Flying in a bat?’

‘Yes,’ Subadwan said. ‘It’s quite tame. Anyway, it’s all I’ve got, isn’t it?’

‘The street aeromorphs will attack you,’ Liguilifrey warned. ‘Umia sent out bat fighters when they came, and not one of the aeromorphs was destroyed.’

‘I’ll have to be careful,’ Subadwan said, shrugging. She glanced down at her stockinged feet. ‘Got any boots my size?’

Then an idea. The ochre plague. lt attacked substances.

She asked Liguilifrey, ‘This yellow plague, is it still infecting everything?’

‘It’s a terrible thing. I daren’t go out. And if it’s not yellow goo, it’s vitrescence.’

‘
That’s
the answer,’ Subadwan said. ‘Thank Gaya! One blob of yellow stuff on each aeromorph and they’ll transmute. Problem is getting the stuff up there. A gun holding it would soon transform–’

‘You want a goo gun?’ Liguilifrey said. ‘Mogyardra will make you a goo gun.`

‘Who?’

‘My old guardian, if he’s still alive. He was an armourer who used to be a Triader, before the Triad demoted him to lesser status, on account of his cheating his accounts and stealing living parts for rifles.’

‘Find him, find him,’ Subadwan urged.

Liguilifrey turned to the dusty audio-rig at her side. ‘Find Mogyardra,’ she said. Flute music began, the bass part soon detuning by a quarter tone. Liguilifrey frowned at this and said, ‘Then look under weapons.’ After some seconds a baritone voice sang out a code. ‘Call him,’ Liguilifrey instructed.

Liguilifrey, still blind, asked Subadwan to put water in the rig screen. It lit up, and at the same time the face of an aged man peered out from within the ripples. ‘Mogyardra?’ said Liguilifrey.

‘Is that really you, Liguilifrey?’

‘It is! You’re still going, you old duffer.’

‘You dotty old termagant,’ the old man replied, his creased face stretched into a smile. He plucked at a discoloured beard and moustache. ‘What are you doing calling me at this hour?’

‘We urgently need to borrow your skill at weapons manufacture. This lady here is Subadwan of Gaya, and she needs you to make a special gun. Come on over to the Baths.’

‘Expect me in half an hour.’

He arrived on time. He was a small man, only a few inches taller than Subadwan, and just as slim, though where Subadwan gave the impression of small-scale dynamism, Mogyardra was decidedly frail. He possessed the mysterious aura of a solitary pyuton. However he entered the Baths armed with a rifle, a dagger and a miniature pistol. Liguilifrey said they had not met for over a year, but they got on as if yesterday they had spent all night talking in the quarter’s courtyards. They spoke, laughed, then returned to Liguilifrey’s chamber.

‘Where’s your eyes?’ Mogyardra asked.

‘Gone for ever.’

Subadwan said, ‘Gone some time ago, Mogyardra. But on to this rifle we need made. You know the ochre plague? We need a gun, or more likely more than one, to fire gobbets of plague stuff.’

‘What for?’

‘To kill aeromorphs.’

Mogyardra nodded. ‘Unorthodox, but it would provide me with an excellent challenge.’

‘You love a challenge, don’t you?’ Liguilifrey said.

‘I do, I do. So, four projectile rifles. How would you load the gobbets of ochre gel?’

Subadwan began, ‘Well...’

‘Isn’t that your problem, you dimwit?’ Liguilifrey said.

Mogyardra grinned. ‘I suppose it is.’ He stood up as if the meeting was already at an end.

Subadwan said, ‘This is vitally important, Mogyardra. I can’t tell you how important. More rests on your inventiveness than you can imagine.’ She wondered how far to trust this particular Crayan. Liguilifrey said he was trustworthy, but... ‘We might need more than four guns, though,’ she added.

‘How many exactly?’

‘If they only last for one shot each, um... a few more at least.’

This made Mogyardra frown. ‘What are you planning to do, if I may ask?’

Subadwan hesitated. She looked at Liguilifrey, but her friend did not see her glance, and offered no help. ‘Cray is in peril. I have to bring down all the aeromorphs.’

‘Impossible.’

‘I’ve got a bat to fly in.’

‘Mine is not to wonder why. I’ll do my best, Archivist, that’s all I can do.’ With that, he departed.

Liguilifrey consoled Subadwan. ‘He won’t sleep tonight. He can’t resist a challenge. We’ll hear from him at dawn tomorrow, and like as not he’ll have built a prototype. Don’t worry.’

‘I can’t help it,’ Subadwan said.

She slept soundly that night, despite her fears. Dozing next morning she dreamed of flying high above Cray on the back of a black aerician, guns spitting fire, killing aeromorphs, watching them cartwheel, drop to the ground, and burst in an explosion of kissleaves that fluttered, scented, to the earth. She had never dreamed of scent before.

Liguilifrey woke her. ‘He’s here.’

‘Wha?’ Subadwan muzzily replied.

‘Mogyardra. I told you we’d hear from him.’

Dressed in robe and slippers Subadwan followed Liguilifrey to the fore hall, where an impatient looking Mogyardra awaited. In his hand was a black tube. He exhibited the excitement of a small boy as he explained to Subadwan the principles of his invention. ‘This is a projectile tube. The difficult part was the expulsion of the plague gel. I’ve made a sort of flipping tongue, which will expel the substance at speed. See, you just bend down, activate the tongue’ – here a black tongue emerged to scrape the floor – ‘and make it suck the substance back down to the base of the tube. Then you press this button to fire it. Try it out today?’

Subadwan nodded. ‘The sooner the better.’

‘I ought to stay here to guard the Baths,’ Liguilifrey said.

‘Mogyardra and I will go,’ Subadwan said. ‘You stay here in case of trouble.’

Apprehension made Subadwan’s stomach churn. If anything went wrong, the end of Cray could follow. And if Tanglanah discovered what was going on, the same. But she had Gaya on her side, even if Aquaitra had assumed the role of Lord Archivist.

Outside, the vitreous street was deserted. They hurried along to a tiny alley called Sand Passage, where Mogyardra spotted a patch of ochre on a wall. There they waited, crouching down in the shadows. With Peppermint Street the thoroughfare from Eastcity directly into the heart of Westcity’s Blistered Quarter, they did not have long to wait. One of the aeromorphs came flying along the street. Subadwan noticed how careful it was to move centrally down the way and not touch anything, and she realised that it too knew of the ochre plague.

‘Shall I do it?’ said Mogyardra.

Subadwan nodded. Placing the nozzle on the ochre patch, he activated the tongue. The aeromorph rumbled by. Mogyardra leaned out and fired.

‘A hit.’

Subadwan, her heart thumping, leaned out of the passage. The aeromorph had stopped only a few yards away. For some seconds it lay quiescent like a confused beast, before an extraordinary transformation began. The soot-blackened outer plates of the aeromorph fell away to reveal a latticework interior of pipes, ducts and cables, all gleaming metal and coloured plastic, with gouts of black oil and clouds of steam spurting from exposed vents. The aeromorph seemed to shiver, and more of its exterior fell away, so that the street became littered with piles of metal and smoking plastic. What remained – half its original volume – was an almost humanoid form twenty feet long, wracked with spasms. Subadwan realised that the thing was trying to rid itself of all traces of the ochre plague. Yet it seemed to be panicking. Bolts, cables and fragments of metal were flying in all directions as the aeromorph shook itself into an ever smaller form, until all that remained was a recumbent figure like a dying pyuton.

Subadwan understood that it
was
a dying pyuton. This was the transformation that Tanglanah and Laspetosyne had undergone to become pyutons; but they had endured it in their own time, and without stress. Now Subadwan understood the potential of her plan. If she could destroy the remaining aeromorphs she would bar the surviving beings of Gwmru from manifesting. Forced to stay in their abstract land, they would continue to sustain Cray while they lived within it – and they would not depart since they would not leave Tanglanah and Laspetosyne behind.

Again Subadwan looked out into the street. She saw an oil-covered pyuton, its glittering innards visible as if it had been unable to create a skin. It tried to climb to its feet, but failed. With a screech of metal its limbs fell off and its torso disintegrated. There were a few sparks, a few oily bubbles, and then nothing.

Subadwan turned to Mogyardra to say, ‘It works! Leave the gun, you might catch the plague. We’ve got to run back to the Baths.’

Despite his frailty he was not entirely decrepit, and in seconds they were out of Sand Passage and navigating the alleys around Print Street and the shattered remains of the Indigo Courtyard.

‘We need more guns,’ Subadwan said, ‘as urgent as anything you’ve ever done.’

‘You return to the Baths,’ he said, ‘and I’ll set to work.’ Subadwan watched him vanish into the maze of passages.

Back at the Baths a fretting Liguilifrey awaited. ‘Did it work?’

‘Yes,’ Subadwan crisply replied. ‘Now, there’s not a moment to lose. I’d barricade the Baths if I was you. Tanglanah might suspect me.’