Terminal World (72 page)

‘Too bad about
Iron Prominent.’

‘I didn’t hear.’

‘You will. Came in bad. Spilled her guts. Now it’s an unholy free-for-all to see what they can save, before the Skulls get their shit-stinking hands on the meds.’

The news hit him like a punch to the abdomen.

‘We need every drop.’

‘Ain’t nobody’d argue with you on that one, Cutter, least of all me. Matter of fact, I’m wondering whether I wouldn’t be better off going down and seeing what I can do to help. But then another part of me says, fuck it, go with Cutter.’

‘I suppose I ought to be flattered.’

‘Don’t be. I just don’t want to see you screw this one up. Not with Nimcha and Kalis depending on you.’

‘Then let’s see what our host’s managed to arrange for us.’

They re-entered the bathhouse and followed the throb of organ music until it brought them to Tulwar. He was standing - leaning - over a broken crate, his life-support umbilical straining behind him as he assumed an unnatural angle, sifting through straw and glassware, picking out the occasional broken flask and discarding it in an empty crate next to the straw-filled one.

‘When all this is over,’ Quillon said, ‘I promise that I’ll do what I can for you. There has to be a better way than this. Even if the best I can do is turn off the music.’

Tulwar dug an intact flask from the straw and held it up for inspection, entranced by the clear, valueless-looking fluid within it. ‘Turn off the music and you’d start undermining my reputation.’

‘No one would have to know.’

‘No, you have a point there. They wouldn’t.’ He fell silent for a moment, sagging forwards on his feet as if his steam pressure had fallen catastrophically. Then he straightened and said, ‘Guess Meroka filled you in on the bad news?’

‘About
Iron Prominent?’

‘Not exactly what you’d call a textbook landing, that’s for sure. Broke her back, ripped her gondola in half and dropped her cargo onto the roof of a building on the ledge below.’ He shook his head, as if vivid images were still playing behind his eyes. ‘Skullboy rocket strike. She lost a lot of hands. When it was obvious that she was going down they managed to get the spotter balloon launched with some medicines aboard, but it’s come down a few blocks up from here and my men haven’t managed to get to it yet. Other than that ...’

Quillon was willing to grieve for the crew, but only when he knew what had happened to her cargo of Serum-15.

‘Aside from whatever’s in the balloon, how much have we saved?’

‘You’re looking at the first crate out of there,’ Tulwar said. ‘Been a mad scramble to reach them before the Skullboys do. Fortunately they didn’t have anyone on the roof of that building, or we’d have lost everything—’

‘And?’

‘We managed to lower men down on lines to secure the roof. Lost good men in the process, too: the Skulls don’t give up without a fight. Judging by this crate, I’m afraid at least a third of the flasks didn’t make it. You’ll excuse me for taking a personal interest, but if these drugs have been contaminated, or sabotaged by the Skulls, I don’t want them leaving this room.’

Quillon’s mood see-sawed between crushing disappointment and blessed relief that they had been able to save anything. After the loss of
Cinnabar
, the drugs had become even more precious.

‘Does Agraffe know what happened to his old ship?’

‘I’ve informed him. Word is Curtana’s a little more responsive this morning. I understand she took it stoically.’

‘She always knew there’d be losses. She nearly didn’t make it herself.’ Tulwar replaced the lid on the broken crate as best as he could. ‘I suppose we should celebrate our successes rather than dwell on failure. The medicines you brought are already doing good, you’ll be pleased to hear. They’re in short supply, of course, but I’ve made sure they reached the men who needed them most.’

‘I’ll be glad to offer such help as I can when I return,’ Quillon said.

‘It will be received gratefully. And I have good news, I think. My men have secured the entrance to the tunnel complex at the Pink Peacock.’

‘Is Malkin still running the joint?’ Meroka asked.

‘Not much of a “joint” to run, I’m afraid. There’s no power, no running water, no clients. Kind of takes the edge off the happy-go-lucky party atmosphere. You knew Malkin well?’

She caught the past tense. ‘He’s dead as well?’

‘He made it out, got all the way down to Second District before he was caught up in a food riot, or instigated it, for all I know. He’d been trampled to death. It wasn’t pretty, the first few days - just dealing with the bodies was a major headache. We couldn’t leave them lying around, and throwing them over the ledge was just passing the problem down to someone else. They take a lot longer to burn than you’d imagine.’

‘You’d be surprised what I can imagine,’ Meroka said.

‘I’m sorry about Malkin. I didn’t know him that well - that was Fray’s turf, not mine - but by all accounts he had his uses. Still ... let’s not dwell on what can’t be put right. The important thing is that we have access to the Pink Peacock.’ He corrected himself with a grimace. ‘Or at least we do right now. The angels are responding with a renewed push of their own, so it’s not clear how long we’ll be able to hold that area, or provide a safe path through Neon Heights. If you want access to the tunnels, I’d say don’t delay.’

‘There’s no reason why we should,’ Quillon said. ‘We don’t need anything, except your help in getting to the entrance.’

‘You sure about the launderette not being accessible?’ Meroka asked. ‘It’s just that it’ll make things a fuck of a lot easier for us once we’re inside.’

‘No, I’m afraid that area’s quite unreachable now.’

‘Then we’ll take what we’re given,’ Meroka said.

At least Tulwar sounded pleased. ‘That much I can arrange. After all you’ve done for us, it’s the least I can offer in return. Do you really think this is going to work, Doctor Quillon? Do you really think she’s going to make things better?’

‘If she can’t, no one else can.’

Meroka was on the truck before Quillon, working the mechanism of a rifle vigorously back and forth to free it up. She had one booted foot planted on a crate, the other on the bed of the truck, a hard, determined look on her face. Only a slight stiffness in her posture betrayed the fact that she had been recently wounded.
Let’s get this done
, her expression seemed to say. No matter what the day might bring.

She used a free hand to help him up onto the back of the vehicle. His medical bag was slung over his shoulder: he had borrowed a belt from the Red Dragon Bathhouse and looped it through the bag’s handle, so that he could keep both hands free. Four militiamen were already aboard the truck, in addition to those stationed around the perimeter of the bathhouse. ‘Help yourself,’ Meroka said, indicating an assortment of gleaming, oiled weapons laid out on top of a crate. ‘They’re all loaded and good to go.’ Quillon picked up the smallest pistol he could see and dropped it into his coat pocket, trusting that with all the firepower around him, he would be very unlikely to have to make use of it. The morning air was cold, and black shadows lingered between the buildings. He still wore the goggles, trusting that if anyone wondered about them they would take them for an affectation, rather than a necessary element of disguise.

‘Fine day to save the city,’ Quillon said. ‘I just wish Fray was here to help us.’

‘Yeah,’ Meroka said. ‘It’s a real pisser about Fray.’ Then she clicked the rifle’s mechanism again, grunted with something like satisfaction and slung it over her shoulder. ‘Here they come.’

Kalis and Nimcha emerged, blinking in the half-light, led by two of Tulwar’s men. They both wore heavy coats and airmen’s hats. They were helped aboard without ceremony. Quillon wanted to say something reassuring to the mother and daughter, but when he searched for the right words all he could come up with was easy platitudes. None of them needed that now. They all knew what they were getting into, including Nimcha.

Signals were given and the truck hissed into motion. It picked up speed quickly, the militia cordon letting it through into the streets beyond the bathhouse. They only passed one vehicle going the other way, and that was also one of Tulwar’s. The two crews slowed and exchanged brief words. Quillon saw two dented, battered crates on the rear platform, and guessed they’d been rescued from
Iron Prominent’s
spilled cargo.

In daylight, even the brittle daylight of early morning, the city was even more of a wreck than Quillon had realised the night before. Night had hidden many things, not all of them welcome. Only a few blocks from the bathhouse, they passed a long line of hanged bodies, strung from makeshift gibbets. A little further on, a head had been spiked onto the top of a railing. Kalis moved to shield her daughter, but Nimcha was much too quick. She stared at the scene, expressionless.

‘It’s worse than we thought,’ Quillon said.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Meroka said. ‘Is this fucked-up place really worth saving? But the answer’s yes. Always and always. Because where else are we going to go?’

The truck bounced over cracks and bumps in the road. At one point the wheels rolled across a bulging tarpaulin, crunching whatever dead, decaying thing lay under it; at another intersection the truck had to ram its way past a steam-coach that had toppled over, forming what was either an innocent obstacle or an attempt at an ambush. The militiamen loosed a few shots into the shadowed doorways of buildings, but Quillon never saw anyone moving inside. In fact the only signs of life were the rats and cats scrabbling to escape the rolling wheels.

A long, laboured climb lay ahead of the truck even after it had crossed the old boundary into Neon Heights. Now the hinterland was just a strip of unusually pronounced desolation between equally squalid margins. The truck navigated backstreets until it passed the railway station where Quillon and Meroka had been forced to flee by taxi. Now the station was a burned-out ruin, its roof supports open to the sky like ribs. The few slot-cabs still outside were either blackened wrecks or had been tipped over on their sides, or both. There was garbage everywhere. Quillon spotted a hunched, dark-hooded figure picking through the detritus, but there were no other indications of inhabitation. The advertising billboards around the frontage had been torn or defaced where they were within easy reach, but their colours and slogans were still vivid, promoting products and services of questionable relevance, such as an improved brand of shaving cream, shoe polish and slot-car insurance. But Meroka was right, Quillon thought. They didn’t have a choice about which city to save, so they might as well make the best of the one they had.

The truck had little option but to make most of its ascent the long way around, climbing the rising ledge. The steeper connecting ramps were either blocked, collapsed or not yet secured for safe passage, and none of the funicular vehicle-lifts was operating. The truck kept under the elevated legs of the railway line for most of its journey. By the time they reached Third District, more people were about, although most of them appeared unwilling to stray too far outside the buildings. A couple of shots clanged against the elevated structure, Meroka and the other riders returning fire, but not in any obvious expectation of hitting anyone. Once, they sloshed through the run-off of a waterfall cascading down from the next ledge. Quillon spotted a dismal huddle of men, women and children trying to collect what they could, with pots and pans and any other receptacles they could manage. No matter that the water had come from somewhere else in the city, somewhere that was probably just as filthy and disease-ridden as Neon Heights. In their shoes, Quillon supposed, he would have been forced to take the same chances. It was then that he realised that getting medicine to these people wasn’t even going to be half the battle. It was going to be a tenth, or a hundredth part of it. But it was the one part that had to be in place before any other reconstruction could begin.

At last the truck arrived in what Quillon knew to be the old Fourth District. On the face of it, the streets didn’t look any different from those they had already passed through. But the militiamen grew noticeably edgier and the driver picked his way with increased care, as if wary of booby traps and snares. Quillon, Kalis and Nimcha were encouraged to crouch as low down as they could. Quillon found his hand returning to the pocket where he had secreted the pistol. They no longer had the cover of the elevated railway line and were now easy prey for anyone taking potshots from the tall buildings on either side of the street.

Then he saw one of his own, flitting effortlessly across the gap between two tenements. He knew immediately that the creature was an angel. Like him, it lacked fully developed wings. Like him, it had been adapted to some degree for life in the lower levels. But the manner in which it moved spoke nothing of normal human physiology. This was a creature shaped not for infiltration but for occupation, probably very similar to the ghouls that had chased them out of Neon Heights.

Then he saw a second, ghosting across the same gap. They were pale and fast and seemed to disdain the usual constraints of gravity and momentum. They moved fluidly, like organised smoke. He caught a flash of metal and heard a shot drum against the front of the truck. The militiamen fired back, blasting away at the roofline of the nearest building. He caught another grey blur and the sputter of automatic fire. At least the angels didn’t have energy weapons, Quillon thought. Now that the prevailing zone was equivalent to Steamville, angel-level technology would be even less workable than it had been in the old Neon Heights. The infiltrators had to use rifles and machine guns, just like the defending forces. It was a level killing field, with the exception that the angels were fast and numerous.