Six Days (9 page)

I
scramble out of bed, and bung some stuff into my pack – water bottles, extra rope, biscuits.

“It ain’t gonna be long before them soldiers make their way here. We’ve got to make tracks, find Gramps.”

“He doesn’t live around here?” goes Peyto.

“Nah, he’s got a shack up on the edge of Battersea Woods.”

“What are we going to tell him?” asks Erin. “About us, I mean.”

“Little as possible, I reckon. Let me do the talking, cos I know how he ticks. He can get pretty worked up about finding the artifact. But there ain’t no sense in mixing in things about ships and sleepers and what-have-you.”

I stop for a moment and stare at Wilbur. His eye’s gone all purple and yellow, closed in like a fat mussel. I realize I can’t leave him here, with soldiers coming.

“You good to go?”

He nods too much, the way kids do.

“If Dad could see you now, hopping about fresh as a daisy, he’d be mad. Some casualty you turned out to be.”

He gives me one of his cheesy grins.

“Don’t pull any more stunts like that, Wilbur. I mean it. Things is dangerous enough as it is, without you bashing your own head in.”

“It’s a beaut, though, eh, Cass?”

“Yeah, real prizefighter.”

But I don’t want to chew him out too much – it ain’t often you get spared a scav shift.

Outside, there’s a few old dears about but nobody looking our way. The last thing I need is someone clocking us when we leave.

We slip out the settlement and head southwest toward Battersea. It’s a clear morning, still and bright, touched with a fur of frost. We scout farther south than the crow flies to give Lambeth a wide berth, but we don’t see no soldiers. I want to steer clear of the main tracks, and that means trudging over the slurry ground between settlements. It’s proper hard work, cos when the rain first hits it, slag dust goes into this claggy mess that glues to your boots. The only thing that grows on it is brambles, which makes plowing through it ten times harder. It’s two hours before we start bending up north again toward the river.

On the way, Peyto goes to Wilbur, “So how did anyone know to ever start looking for the artifact? Back at Big Ben, you said Vlads were searching in London even before the germ attacks. How did they know to come looking here?”

Wilbur skips along to keep up, all perky that Peyto’s taking an interest in what he knows. “Gramps told me it was a man called Morgan Bartlett – the very first scav – who started the search, before the Quark Wars.”

This is a new one on me. “How can Gramps know who the first scav was?” I scoff.

Wilbur sticks his chin out. “Not a scav like us, I suppose. Scav’s just short for
scavenger
.”

“All right,” chips in Erin. “But what made him look in the first place?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Morgan Bartlett found a …
disturbance
. That’s what Gramps says.” Wilbur takes a deep breath, and the way he speaks then, it’s like he’s reciting it word for word, from memory. “Before the war, there were computers and memory boxes everywhere, and they were connected up with each other. London was like a great sea of light and words and sound. And people relied on their computers for everything, but not a single one of these machines was what you’d call clever or alive, not in the same way as a human being. Then one man, this Morgan Bartlett, came across signs of something living and hiding in the connections between
computers – something with a voice and a mind of its own, like a ghost running loose in the electricity.”

I exchange glances with Peyto and Erin, and I think about them echoes I felt inside the flinders, like voices. It’s like a kid’s story, the way he tells it. Something Gramps spouted off to shut Wilbur up during one of his Sunday visits. But still, maybe there’s something in it. We’re all waiting for more, but Wilbur clams up.

“So then what happened?” urges Peyto.

“Gramps never said. He had a coughing fit.”

“Bleeding Nora, Wilbur – how come you kept all this quiet? Gramps’s dinghy, your Sunday visits, this Morgan flippin’ Bartlett!”

“You never wanted to listen before,” he complains.

“Well, we’re all ears now,” I go, rolling my eyes at Peyto. “Any more secrets you want to lay on us, just go right ahead.”

Battersea Woods is all raised up on a wide mound. Like all the old parks, it stands out higher than the waste ground, like an island with its proper trees – oaks and sycamore and hawthorn, winter bare now. No one’s really sure how come the Vlads never sent scavs into the parks. I mean, you’d think the artifact could be buried there just as much as anywhere else, but the rumor is they’ve narrowed it
down to a man-made place, a proper London building. But how they know that is anyone’s guess.

Scav settlers tend to steer clear of the old parks. They’re untamed, abandoned to the undergrowth, homes to foxes and wild dogs and birds. And the truth is, I’ve never liked it here, even though I’ve been to see Gramps plenty of times as a kid. I don’t like the branches clawing at my face or the dead leaf smell or the startled birds or the fungus. I don’t like the shapes of the trees or their roots – naked and old and peeling. And I know Wilbur feels the same way. But our space-traveling pioneers are wide-eyed at it all. I watch them stare at the treetops and run their hands over the bracken stumps, the rotting wood of fallen trunks. But maybe if I’d been cooped up in a box for a billion years, I’d be spellbound by this manky old wood, too.

We come at last to the lake. Clogged up with weeds and sludge, it’s more like a swamp now, but Gramps says this was once a place for pleasure boats and picnics. We circle the bank and come to a sunken clearing, the site of the old pump house, and on the far side is Gramps’s falling-down shack of timber and turf. It’s got one cracked window, and a canvas sheet for a door, and poking out the lean-to roof is a rusted pipe chimney. There ain’t no sign of a fire, though, and no one answers as I call out.

Inside there’s just a makeshift bed of busted branches and dry grass with a ratty old blanket and some dirty pots. The ashes of the fire are warm, though.

“He ain’t gone far. Must’ve gone to check his traps, or something.”

“He lives here on his own?” Erin wrinkles her nose at the smell, and I have to admit it looks like the old duffer has let himself go a bit.

She stands there hugging herself, looking warily at all the junk. “Why doesn’t he live with everyone else in the settlement?”

“He fell out big-time with my dad after Mum died. Bit of a long story. He’s lived here about five years now, but even before that, he had the shack up here for trapping game. In the good old days, he used to look after me and Wilbur in the summer, when we was too young for scavving.”

“And he’s searching for the artifact on his own?”

I’m about to answer when we all hear the snick of a gun being cocked.

“And who wants to know?” demands a voice from outside.

We all step out into the light. Gramps is standing just a few feet away, aiming a huge pistol at us. That’s one almighty shock – I’ve never seen him wield anything more dangerous than a skinning knife. And nobody I know has even got a gun.

“Gramps, it’s me. Cass.”

Slowly he lowers the pistol.

“I nearly shot you dead. Thought you were Vlads.”

“I gave you a shout, but there wasn’t no answer.”

“What do you want, Cass?” He stuffs the pistol in his belt and glares at us.

“We heard what you said at the meeting,” I go. “About how scavving wasn’t the way to find the artifact and all that. We thought you could do with some help, you know.”

I go for casual but it comes out false, like I’ve been rehearsing it.

He clocks each of us in turn, lingering most on Wilbur, though he never says a word about the black eye. It dawns on me that it’s been ages since I’ve spoken to him face-to-face. He’s always been a moody old hermit, but he seems more wary now, like he don’t even know us no more.

“So you’re not scavving these days, eh?” he goes.

“Well, we ain’t about to hang up the bins just yet. But we figured your way might be worth a go.”

“Pack off home. It’s too dangerous …”

“Why don’t you listen to us?” goes Peyto. “We gave up a day’s pay to come out here and see you.”

There’s a twitch in Gramps’s beard that might be a smile. “Well, I am honored.” He nods toward Erin. “The two newcomers at the meeting. And just who might you be, then?”

“Just people who are searching for the same thing you are. Sometimes five heads are better than one.”

“You and your mate not from London, eh?”

When Peyto don’t reply, he goes, “And what exactly do you bring to the search, son?”

“Look, we’re offering to help you,” says Erin. “I don’t see too many other volunteers queueing up at your shack!”

“That’s as may be, young lady. But I don’t ask the likes of children for help.”

“Is that how come you ain’t found it yet?” I go, feeling sore about dragging everyone out here now.

“You didn’t just come out here on a whim, eh? Give me one good reason why I should hear you out.”

“Because we know what it looks like,” goes Peyto.

If that’s a bombshell, Gramps don’t let on. He just pulls at his grubby whiskers and sucks his teeth.

“And how would you know that, seeing as no one in living memory has ever set eyes on it?”

“Because I’ve held one just like it in my hands.”

Gramps don’t even blink for a full ten seconds. He just drills his gaze right into Peyto.

Then at last he says, “So you know there’s more than one.”

“There’s forty-nine.”

Gramps goes all goggle-eyed for a moment, but then he settles himself. “Well, seems I was a bit hasty, eh? Why don’t you tell me some more interesting things on the subject of the
forty-nine
artifacts?”

“You tell
us
something,” goes Wilbur. “About that voice Morgan Bartlett found in the computers.”

“So you told them about old Morgan Bartlett, eh?”

Gramps looks suddenly weary then, and he parks himself on a tree stump before going on.

“My father told me about Bartlett, and his father before him. Just a fireside story passed down. But it struck me as true, because after that, I heard the Vlad boffins talking about it once, when some promising bit of poke had been found and our crusher was shut down. They spoke then of a thing living in the circuits of computers, though they never mentioned the name Bartlett.”

“But what did this
living thing
say to Bartlett?” goes Peyto.

“It said it was called the
Aeolus
, the keeper of the winds, and that it held the storms of war in check.”

I snatch a glance at Peyto. I’m thinking,
The ship was able to speak here, on Earth, through computers? How? But maybe it could once, and now it can’t cos of the emergency making it sick, or maybe cos all the computers down here are kaput now …

“It said it was trying to find a special object it had lost,” continues Gramps. “Something trapped here in London. It said this
artifact
was a thing of immense power and knowledge from a far-gone age, and that perhaps it held the key to life itself. It said that without this artifact, it would die, and then the whole world would suffer – wars would rage forever.”

Gramps spots me eyeballing Peyto, but he carries on. “It warned him that indeed a terrible war was coming
that would lay waste to England and all the lands east of here to Russia, and that one day an invading army would come to London, looking to use the artifact for evil purposes. So, to keep it out of the wrong hands, it gave him clues about where the artifact could be found.”

“But at the meeting you said you’d just hand it over to the Vlads if you found it, so they’d leave London alone!” blurts Peyto. “You’d let it be used for evil!”

Gramps flashes him a look of anger. But then his eyes soften. “Well, son, what people
say
at village meetings is one thing. It’s what they
do
that really matters. I was just trying to whip everyone up, to get them away from scavving, to get them using their heads to find it. That lot won’t go out on a limb just because I say the artifact is powerful. But they might if it meant the Vlads packing off back to Russia and leaving us in peace.”

“So you lied to them?” goes Wilbur.

“I wanted to spur them on. If the artifact is as truly powerful as the stories say, then it’d make sense for scavs to find it first, don’t you think?”

“Wait a minute,” Erin pipes up. “You said this
Aeolus
only gave Morgan Bartlett clues about the artifact. Why didn’t it just say where it was?”

“Good question,” goes Gramps. “Because it said the artifact wasn’t ready to be found. A special person needed to find it, to make it even stronger, but that person wasn’t
yet born. Bartlett’s job was to listen to all these clues and find a way to preserve them for the future.”

Wilbur’s voice is just a whisper. “So he left those clues behind without ever knowing where the artifact really was?”

“That’s right. He may have died in the war like most other Londoners, but somewhere buried in London is the trail he left behind – a trail I’ve been following for fifty years.”

“You’ve found Bartlett’s clues, then?” I go.

“Yes, I believe I’ve found some of them.”

“So where are they?”

He points to his smelly old hermit gaff with its one ratty blanket and scuzzy pots.

My heart sinks then, cos his eyes have gone all nutty, and how can this falling-down shack lead to anything? I glance at Peyto and Erin to see what they’re making of it all, but they’re just staring at him, all wide-eyed and breathless. And after everything that’s happened, I’m desperate for just the smallest crumb of hope, anything.

He strides up to the shack and swishes back the canvas sheet like he’s the king of bonkers. We all just stand there, waiting.

“Well, do you want to see Bartlett’s hoard of clues or don’t you?”

That’s when I figure he’s really cracked, as we all huddle together inside his filthy hovel. And I’m about to cry with the sheer disappointment of it, cos how can this be going anywhere?