Terra Mechanica: A Steampunk Anthology (11 page)

I’ve taken leave of my senses. What was I thinking?
Self-doubt filled Valerie’s mind. The city got smaller and smaller with distance, and yet she felt it was herself getting smaller, an insignificant speck cutting herself off from her home and everyone she knew.

It wasn’t too late to go back and tell Danforth to find someone else. She got up, intending to turn the flyer around—and the sight of the city, and the thought of its millions of inhabitants, stopped her. If there was someone better for the job, Danforth hadn’t had any luck finding them.

The flyer passed into a cloud bank, and the city was lost to sight. Valerie returned to the control room in the bow, checked the clockwork pilot settings, and prepared herself for a long voyage.

Danforth had assured Valerie that the flyer could stay aloft for eight days without refuelling. City Twenty-two—her first scheduled stop—was six days out from City Twenty-seven, according to Danforth’s information. On the evening of the sixth day, Valerie had still seen no sign and began to worry that the flyer’s clockworks had been set wrong. She didn’t sleep that night.

On the morning of the seventh day, City Twenty-two came into sight on the horizon.

Where City Twenty-seven was the biggest of the Royal Cities, City Twenty-two was the smallest—half a million people on a disk a fifth of the size. It didn’t matter to Valerie. She wouldn’t be staying long.

She guided the flyer into the dock complex at the city’s edge, where Danforth’s people refuelled it and restocked food and water. She checked the bearings to City Thirty-one—her next stop. Three hours after docking at City Twenty-two, she was in the air again.

Four days later, on City Thirty-one, Valerie allowed herself half a day to walk and get some space away from the cabin fever of the flyer, and to buy more book spools to occupy her time on the lonely journey. She bought a bottle of brandy; she would save it, and open it to celebrate her return to City Twenty-seven.

There was no word of City Twenty-seven’s troubles, and she hadn’t expected any. Danforth had told her the city’s predicament was being kept secret to avoid a panic. Other, smaller, cities were moving toward City Twenty-seven, but they wouldn’t be able to take more than a tiny fraction of the populace. By the time any of the bigger cities could get there, it would be too late. The protonium device was the city’s only hope.

Huxley—Danforth’s contact on City Six—waited for Valerie on the dock as she landed. “Danforth told you the plan?” he asked.

Apart from a two-hour stop at City Fifteen, Valerie had been in the air ten days since leaving City Thirty-one. She wanted a hot bath and a real bed, and she’d half a mind to open her celebration brandy early. She didn’t want to get into this conversation yet. “Not exactly. He said you’d have a way to get me onto Belvedere. He didn’t give away any details.”

“I’ll give you the specifics later. You’ll be leaving here the day after tomorrow. When you reach Belvedere, you should be able to lose yourself in the city. They’re not like us. Not organised. People come and go as they please, and no one cares. You’ll be able to do the same.”

“Then what?”

“Find the protonium. Get it onto an outbound supply ship if you can, then signal me—I have a transmitter for you—and we’ll do the rest. If you can find the reaction vessel and the containment shell too, that’s all the better—the protonium is the key.”

“What if I can’t get it onto a ship? Danforth suggested throwing it off the city.”

Huxley shrugged. “That’s an option. Just get it off Belvedere however you can, then contact me.”

The robot supply airship was precisely where Huxley had said it would be. Valerie guided her flyer underneath it, matched speeds, set the clockworks, and went back to the hatch in the ceiling of the flyer’s central corridor. Wind whistled as the hatch opened, and she shuddered at the thought of what she was about to do. She wondered for the hundredth time why Huxley couldn’t have come up with a less dangerous plan.

She checked the shoulder strap on her bag again and tightened it one more notch. It was heavy, weighed down with the book spools and the brandy bottle and her other things. She could have left it behind . . . but the books were all she had to keep her sane.

She looked up through the hatch, at the belly of the airship. She had no alternative. She steeled her nerves and climbed up the ladder, then clambered out on all fours onto the top skin of the flyer. The hatch slid closed behind her automatically—now there was no going back, for there was no way to open it from the outside.

The metal struts and supports of the larger ship were five feet above her head, but she was frozen, unable to stand for fear of being blown off the aircraft by the rushing slipstream. She had only moments before the clockworks engaged and the flyer turned back to City Six, with her stuck up there on the roof. She forced herself to stand, grab the metalwork and lift herself up. A moment later, she was crouched in the angle between two struts. The flyer’s clockworks engaged, and she watched as the little craft dropped and turned.

And now she saw the ground, three miles below, and her fingers ached as she gripped the metalwork, afraid to move. She stayed that way for a full minute, petrified. The chill of the wind began to cut through her clothes. She couldn’t stay there. She’d freeze to death. She had to get moving, and quickly. She forced herself to stand.

The wind whipped her hair around her face as she made her way along the superstructure, stepping carefully on the girders and struts and weaving her way between taut support wires, looking for the service hatch Huxley had told her would be there. The cold had gone through her gloves, and she could barely feel her fingers. With relief, she found the hatch, climbed inside, and slumped to the deck with her back against the wall. Her teeth were chattering and her fingers and toes were numb, but she was safe.

The cargo bay was large and dark, but also dry and warm enough to be reasonably comfortable. The airship was slower than the flyer, and would take six days to reach Belvedere.

The airship docked in the middle of the afternoon. Valerie was ready when the door opened and automatons entered to unload the cargo. They ignored her as she slipped out into the dock. She dashed to a pile of wooden crates and hid behind them. She felt panicky, almost certain she’d be found before she’d gone a hundred yards. Her heart pounded in her chest, and she forced herself to slow her breathing.

She peeked over the top and scanned the dock from side to side. Dark metal walls, covered in a sheen of condensation. Stacks of wooden boxes. The automatons continued unloading the airship, but there were no people about. She dropped behind the boxes and got ready for her next move.

She fumbled in her bag for the particle detector. It registered a background reading. The protonium wasn’t nearby.

A long catwalk led to a metal door, just like the docks on City Twenty-seven, and she knew it was the way to the street.

She stopped at the door and took a breath to prepare herself. The Rogue Cities were squalid places—everyone knew that. Dirty streets, filled with diseased people and criminals living in poverty and filth and violence. Their spies and saboteurs were responsible for mayhem and murder aboard the Royal Cities. She was on enemy ground. She would have to find the protonium and get away from here quickly if she wanted to survive.

She reached out with a trembling hand, pressed the handle, and opened the door.

The sun shone and the cobbled square bustled with people. A young woman in a grass-green skirt danced around a fountain, smiling, to a tune playing on a steam-powered brass pipe organ mounted on a cart. The crowd watched, cheered, and clapped time. Around the edges of the space, men and women with barrows and stalls sold fruit, clothes, jewellery, and a thousand other things. People smiled. They laughed. They were happy.

Valerie’s mind was in turmoil. Where was the squalor? These people didn’t look like criminals, or poor, or sick.

They didn’t look like her, either, she realised—their clothes were bright and clean in the sunlight, unlike the dirty, drab shirt and skirt Huxley had given her. He’d assured her she’d fit in. She didn’t. People were looking at her.

A bearded young man in a suit and top hat looked at her with obvious distaste. Farther off, a child pulled at the sleeve of a man wearing a helmet and a blue uniform and pointed at her. The policeman looked at her, then patted the child on the head and walked her way, his eyes fixed on her.