Predator's Gold (11 page)

The whole town was mad, if they believed Freya and Pennyroyal and their promises of a new green hunting ground beyond the ice, and Tom was mad with them. There was no point in arguing, or in trying to make him see sense. Better just to concentrate on getting him safely away.

Days and then weeks went by, with Anchorage running north across broad plains of sea-ice as it skirted the mountainous shield of Greenland. Hester began to spend most of her time at the air-harbour, watching Mr Aakiuq work on the Jenny Haniver. There was not much she could do to help him, for she was no mechanic, but she could pass him tools and fetch things from his workshop and pour him cups of scalding purple-dark cocoa from his old thermos flask, and she felt that just by being there she might help to hasten the day when the Jenny would be ready to take her away from this haunted city.

Sometimes Tom joined her in the hangar, but mostly he stayed away. “Mr Aakiuq doesn’t want both of us hanging about,” he told Hester. “We’d just get in his way.” But they both knew the real reason: he was enjoying his new life in Anchorage too much. He hadn’t realized until now how much he’d missed living aboard a moving city. It was the engines, he told himself; that faint, comfortable vibration that made the buildings feel alive; that sense that you were going somewhere, and would wake up each morning to a new view from your bedroom window – even if it was just another view of darkness and of ice.

And perhaps, although he didn’t like to admit it to himself, it had something to do with Freya. He often met her in the Wunderkammer or the palace library, and although the meetings were rather formal, with Smew or Miss Pye always waiting in the background, Tom felt that he was coming to know the margravine. She intrigued him. She was so unlike Hester, and so like the girls he used to daydream about as a lonely apprentice back in London; pretty and sophisticated. It was true that she was a bit of a snob, and obsessed with ritual and etiquette, but that seemed understandable when you remembered how she had been brought up, and what she’d lived through. He liked her more and more.

Professor Pennyroyal had made a ful recovery, and had moved into the chief navigator’s official residence, in a tall, blade-shaped tower called the Wheelhouse which stood in the precincts of the Winter Palace, near the temple. Its top floor housed the city’s control bridge, but below was a luxurious apartment, into which Pennyroyal settled with an air of satisfaction. He had always thought himself a rather grand person, and it was pleasant to be aboard a city where everybody else thought so too.

Of course, he had no idea how to actually steer an ice city, so the practical day-today work of guiding Anchorage was still done by Windolene Pye. She and Pennyroyal spent an hour together each morning, poring over the city’s few, vague charts of the western ice. The rest of the time he relaxed in his sauna, or put his feet up in his drawing room, or went scavenging in the abandoned boutiques of Rasmussen Prospekt and the Ultima Arcade, picking out expensive clothes to suit his new position.

“We certainly fel on our feet when we landed on Anchorage, Tom, dear boy!” he said when Tom came visiting one night-dark arctic afternoon. He waved a bejewelled hand around his huge sitting room, with its ornate carpets and framed paintings, its fires aglow in bronze tripods, its big windows with their views across the rooftops to the passing ice. Outside, a fierce wind was rising, driving snow across the city, but in the chief navigator’s quarters all was warmth and peace.

“How is that airship of yours coming along, by the way?” Pennyroyal asked.

“Oh, slowly,” said Tom. In truth, he had not been near the air-harbour for several days and did not know how the work on the Jenny Haniver was progressing. He didn’t like to think about it too much, for when the repairs were complete, Hester would want to leave, dragging him away from this lovely city and from Freya. Still, he thought, it’s kind of the prof to show an interest.

“And what about the journey to America?” he asked. “Is everything going well, Professor?”

“Absolutely!” cried Pennyroyal, settling himself on a sofa and rearranging his quilted silicone-silk robes. He poured himself another beaker of wine and offered one to Tom. “There are some excellent vintages in the chief navigator’s cellar, and it seems a waste not to get through as much as we can before … well…”

“You should keep the best to toast your arrival in America,” Tom said, sitting down on a small chair near the great man’s feet. “Have you decided on a course yet?”

“Well, yes and no,” Pennyroyal said airily, gesturing with his beaker and slopping wine over the fur throws on his sofa. “Yes and no, Tom. Once we get west of Greenland it’ll be plain skating all the way. Windolene and Scabious had planned something very complicated, wiggling between a lot of islands that might not even be there any more, then running down the west coast of America. Luckily, I was able to show them a much easier route.” He indicated a map on the wall. “We’ll nip across Baffin Island into Hudson’s Bay. It’s good, thick, solid sea-ice and it stretches right into the heart of the North American continent. That’s the way I came on my journey home. We’ll whizz across that, hoist up the stern-wheel and simply roll on our caterpillar tracks into the green country. It’ll be a doddle.”

“I wish I was coming with you,” sighed Tom.

“No, no, dear boy!” the explorer said sharply. “Your place is on the Bird Roads. As soon as that ship of yours is better you and your, ah, lovely companion must return to the sky. By the way, I hear Her Heftiness the margravine has lent you a few of my books?”

Tom blushed at the mention of Freya.

“So what do you make of them, eh?” Pennyroyal went on, pouring himself more wine. “Good stuff?”

Tom wasn’t quite sure what to say. Pennyroyal’s books were certainly exciting. The trouble was, some of the Alternative Historian’s history was a little too alternative for Tom’s London-trained mind. In America the Beautiful he reported seeing the girders of ancient skyscrapers jutting from the dust of the Dead Continent – but no other explorer had described such sights, which would surely have been eaten away by wind and rust aeons ago. Had Pennyroyal been hallucinating when he saw them? And then, in Rubbish? Rubbish! Pennyroyal claimed that the tiny toy trains and ground-cars sometimes found at Ancient sites weren’t toys at all.

“Undoubtedly,” he wrote, “these machines were piloted by minute human beings, genetically engineered by the Ancients for unknown reasons of their own.” Tom didn’t doubt that Pennyroyal was a great explorer. It was just that when he sat down at a typewriting machine his imagination seemed to run away with him.

“Well, Tom?” asked Pennyroyal. “Don’t be shy. A good writer never objects to constrictive crusticism. I mean, consumptive cretinism…”

“Oh, Professor Pennyroyal!” cried the voice of Windolene Pye, blaring from a brass speaking tube on the wall. “Come quickly! The lookouts are reporting something on the ice ahead!”

Tom felt himself grow cold, imagining a predator city lurking out there on the ice, but Pennyroyal just shrugged. “What does the silly old moo expect me to do about it?” he asked.

“Well, you are chief navigator now, Professor,” Tom reminded him. “Perhaps you’re supposed to be on the bridge at a time like this.”

“Honorararary Chief Nagivator, Tim,” said Pennyroyal, and Tom realized that he was drunk.

Patiently he helped the tipsy explorer to his feet and led him to a small private elevator, which whisked them up to the top floor of the Wheelhouse. They stepped out into a glass-walled room where Miss Pye stood nervously beside the engine district telegraph while her small staff spread charts out on the navigation table. A burly helmsman waited at the city’s huge steering wheel for instructions.

Pennyroyal collapsed on the first chair they passed, but Tom hurried to the glass wall and waited for the wiper-blade to sweep across so that he could catch a glimpse of the view ahead. Thick flurries of snow were driving across the city, hiding all but the nearest buildings. “I can’t see –” he began to say. And then a momentary break in the storm showed him a glitter of lights away to the north.

In the emptiness ahead of Anchorage, a hunter-killer suburb had appeared.

14

THE SUBURB

Freya was trying to sort out a guest list for dinner. It was a difficult business, for by long tradition only citizens of the highest rank could dine with the margravine, and these days that meant just Mr Scabious, who was nobody’s idea of good company.

The arrival of Professor Pennyroyal had cheered things up no end, of course – it was quite acceptable for the city’s chief navigator to sit at table with her – but even the professor’s fascinating stories were beginning to wear a little thin, and he had a tendency to drink too much.

What she really wanted (although she tried not to admit it to herself as she sat there at her desk in the study) was to invite Tom. Just Tom, alone, so that he could gaze at her in the candlelight and tell her how beautiful she was; she was sure he wanted to. The trouble was, he was only a common aviator. And even if she broke with all tradition and asked him, he would bring his nasty girlfriend, and that wasn’t the sort of evening she wanted at all.

She slumped back in her chair with a sigh. Portraits of earlier margravines gazed down kindly at her from the study walls, and she wondered what they would have done in a situation like this. But of course, there had never been a situation like this before. For them the ancient traditions of the city had always worked, providing a simple, infallible guide to what could and could not be done – their lives had ticked along like clockwork. Just my luck to be left in charge when the spring breaks, thought Freya gloomily. Just my luck to be left with a load of rules and traditions that don’t quite fit any more.

But she knew that if she took off the armour of tradition she would have to face all sorts of new problems. The people who had stayed aboard her city after the plague had done so only because they revered the margravine. If Freya stopped behaving like a margravine, would they still be prepared to go along with her plans?

She went back to her guest list, and had just finished doodling a small dog in the bottom left corner when Smew burst in, then burst out again and gave the traditional triple knock.

“You may enter, Chamberlain.”

He came in again, breathless, his hat back to front. “Sorry, Your Radiance. Bad news from the Wheelhouse, Radiance. Predator, dead ahead.” By the time she reached the bridge the weather had closed in completely and nothing could be seen outside but the swarming snow.

“Well?” she asked, stepping out of the elevator before Smew could announce her.

Windolene Pye bobbed a frightened little curtsey. “Oh, Light of the Ice Fields! I am almost sure it’s Wolverinehampton! I saw those three metal tower blocks behind its jaws quite clearly, just as the storm struck. It must have been lying in wait up here, hoping to snap up whaling-towns on the Greenland run…”

“What is Wolverinehampton?” asked Freya, wishing she had paid more attention to all her expensive tutors.

“Here, Your Radiance…”

She had not noticed Tom until he spoke. Now, seeing him, she felt a little warm glow inside her. He held out a dog-eared book and said, “I looked it up in Cade’s Almanack of Traction Cities.”

She took the book from him, smiling, but her smile faded as she opened it at the page he had marked and saw Ms Cade’s diagram and the legend underneath: WOLVERINEHAMPTON: An Anglish-speaking suburb which migrated north in 768

TE, to become one of the most feared small predators on the High Ice. Its enormous jaws, and its tradition of staffing its engine districts with shamefully ill-treated slaves, make it a town best avoided.

The deck beneath Freya’s feet juddered and shook. She snapped the book shut, imagining Wolverinehampton’s great jaws already closing on her city – but it was only the Scabious Spheres shutting down. Anchorage slowed, and in the eerie quiet she could hear sleet pecking at the glass walls.

“What’s happening?” asked Tom. “Is something wrong with the engines?”

“We’re stopping,” said Windolene Pye. “Because of the storm.”

“But there’s a predator out there!”

“I know, Tom. It’s terrible timing. But we always stop and anchor when a really big storm blows in. It’s too dangerous not to. The wind on the High Ice can gust up to five hundred miles per hour. It’s been known to overturn small cities. Poor old Skraelingshavn was flipped on to its back like a beetle in the winter of ’69.”

“We could lower the cats,” suggested Freya.

“Cats?” cried Pennyroyal. “What cats? I have allergies…”

“Her Radiance is referring to our caterpillar tracks, Professor,” Miss Pye explained.

“They would provide extra traction, but it might not be enough, not in this storm.” The wind howled agreement, and the glass walls bowed inwards, creaking.

“What about this Wolverinetonham place?” asked Pennyroyal, still flopped in his seat. “They’ll be stopping too, will they?”

Everyone looked at Windolene Pye. She shook her head. “I’m sorry to say they won’t, Professor Pennyroyal. They are lower and heavier than we. They should be able to run right through this storm.”

“Yikes!” whimpered Pennyroyal. “Then we’ll be eaten for sure! They must have got a bearing on our position before the weather closed in! They’ll just follow their noses and gollop!”

Tipsy as he was, the explorer seemed to Tom to be the only person on the bridge talking sense. “We can’t just sit here and wait to get eaten!” he agreed.

Miss Pye glanced at the whirling needles of her windspeed indicators. “Anchorage has never moved in a wind this strong…”