Predator's gold

11

Tom slept well that night, and dreamed of museums. Hester, lying next to him, barely slept at all. The bed was so big that she might as well have stayed in the other room. The way she liked sleeping was cuddled against Tom on the Jenny Haniver ’s narrow bunk, her face in his hair, her knees against the backs of his knees, their two bodies fitting together like bits of a jigsaw. On this big, soft mattress he rolled sleepily away from her and left her all alone in a sweaty tangle of sheets. And the room was too hot; the dry air hurt her sinuses, and metallic rattlings came from the ducts on the ceiling, a faint, horrid noise, like rats in the walls.

At last she pulled on her coat and boots and went out of the palace into the searing cold of the three-in-the-morning streets. A twining staircase led down through a heat-seal into Anchorage’s engine district, a region of steady, pounding noise where bulbous boilers and fuel-holds clustered in the dark between the tier-supports like fungi. She headed sternwards, thinking, Now we’ll see how the little Snow Queen treats her workers. She looked forward to shocking Tom out of his liking for this place. She would spoil his breakfast with her report of conditions on the lower tier.

She crossed an iron footbridge where huge cog-wheels creaked and whirred on either side of her, like the innards of some colossal clock. She followed an enormous, segmented duct down into a sunken sub-level where pistons rose and fell, powered by a set of kludged-together Old-Tech engines of a type she’d never seen before; armoured spheres which hummed and warbled, shooting out shafts of violet light. Men and women strode purposefully about, carrying tool-boxes or driving big, multi-armed labouring machines, but there were none of the shackled slave-gangs or swaggering overseers Hester had expected. Freya Rasmussen’s insipid face gazed down from posters on the tier supports, and the workers bobbed their heads respectfully as they passed beneath it.

Maybe Tom was right, thought Hester, prowling unseen along the edges of the engine-well. Maybe Anchorage really was as civilized and peaceful as it seemed. Maybe he could be happy here. The city might even survive its journey to America, and he could stay aboard as Freya Rasmussen’s museum-keeper and teach the savage tribes about the world their distant ancestors had made. He could keep the Jenny on as his private sky-yacht, and go prospecting for Old-Tech in the haunted deserts on his days off…

He’s not going to need you, though, is he? asked a bitter little voice inside her. And what are you going to do without him?

She tried to imagine a life for herself without Tom, but she couldn’t. She had always known that it wouldn’t last for ever, but now that the end was in sight she wanted to shout, Not yet! I want more! Just another year of being happy. Or maybe two…

She wiped away the tears that kept fogging her eye and hurried aft, sensing cold and open air somewhere beyond the city’s vast heat-recycling plant. The beat of the strange engines faded behind her, replaced by a steady, skirling hiss which grew louder as she neared the stern. After a few more minutes she emerged on to a covered walkway which ran the whole width of the city. There was a protective screen made out of panels of steel grille, and beyond it the Northern Lights glimmered in the ceaselessly rolling bulk of Anchorage’s great stern-wheel.

Hester crossed the walkway and pushed her face against the cold grille and looked through. The wheel had been burnished mirror-bright, and in the cascade of reflections she could see the metal spurs which studded it falling endlessly past her and past her to dig into the ice and shove Anchorage on its way. A fine, cold rain of meltwater flew from it, and fragments of up-flung ice dinned and rattled at the screen. Some of the chunks were very large. A few feet from where Hester stood, a section of grille had been beaten loose and swung inward each time an ice-block struck it, opening a gap through which sleet and smaller pieces of ice splattered on to the walkway.

How easy it would be to slip through that gap! There would be a moment of falling, and then the wheel would roll over her, leaving only a red smear on the ice, quickly forgotten. Wouldn’t that be better than watching Tom drift away from her? Wouldn’t it be better to be dead than alone again?

She reached out for the flapping edge of the grille, but suddenly a hand grabbed her arm, and a voice was shouting in her ear, “Axel?”

Hester swung round, reaching for her knife. Soren Scabious stood behind her. His eyes, as she turned, seemed to be shining with hope and unshed tears; then he recognized her and his face settled back into its habitual look of deep unhappiness. “Miss Shaw,” he growled. “In the dark, I thought you were — ”

Hester backed away from him, hiding her face. She wondered how long he had been watching her. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “What do you want?”

Scabious, embarrassed, took refuge in anger. “I could ask you the same thing, aviatrix! Come to spy on my engine district, have you? I trust you had a good look.”

“I’m not interested in your engines,” Hester said.

“No?” Scabious reached out again, gripping her by the wrist. “I find that hard to believe. The Scabious Spheres have been perfected by my family over twenty generations. One of the most efficient engine systems in the world. I’m sure you’ll want to go and tell Arkangel or Ragnaroll all about the riches they’ll find if they devour us.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Hester spat. “I wouldn’t take predator’s gold!” A thought struck her suddenly, hard and cold like one of the ice-splinters drumming at the grille behind her. “Anyway, who’s Axel? Wasn’t he your son? The one Smew talked about? The dead one? Did you think I was his ghost or something?”

Scabious let go of her arm. His anger faded quickly, like a fire damped down. His eyes darted towards the drive-wheel, up towards the lights in the sky; looking anywhere but at Hester. “His spirit walks,” he muttered.

Hester let out a short, ugly laugh, then stopped. The old man was perfectly serious. He glanced quickly at her and away. His face, lit by that fluttering, uncertain light was suddenly gentle. “The Snowmads believe that the souls of the dead inhabit the Aurora, Miss Shaw. They say that on nights when it is at its brightest they come down to walk upon the High Ice.”

Hester said nothing, just hunched her shoulders, uneasy in the presence of his madness and sorrow. She said awkwardly, “Nobody returns from the Sunless Country, Mr Scabious.”

“But they do, Miss Shaw.” Scabious nodded earnestly. “Since our journey to America began there have been sightings. Movements. Things go missing from locked rooms. People hear footsteps and voices in parts of the district that have been closed up and abandoned since the plague. That’s why I come down here, whenever my work allows, and the Aurora is bright. I’ve glimpsed him twice now; a fair-haired lad, looking out at me from shadows, vanishing as soon as I see him. There are no fair-haired boys left alive in this city. It is Axel, I know it is.”

He stared a moment longer at the luminous sky, then turned and walked away. Hester watched him until his tall silhouette disappeared around the corner at the far end of the gallery. Watched, and wondered. Did Scabious really believe that this city could reach America? Did he even care? Or had he simply gone along with the margravine’s potty plans because he hoped to find his son’s ghost waiting for him on the High Ice?

She shivered. She had not realized until now how cold it was here on the city’s stern. Although Scabious was gone she still had the feeling of being watched. The hair at the nape of her neck began to prickle. She glanced behind her, and there in the mouth of an access passageway she saw — or thought she saw — the pale smudge of a face fade quickly into the dark, leaving only the after-image of a white-blond head.

No one returns from the Sunless Country; Hester knew that, but it did not stop every ghost story she’d ever heard from waking and stirring in her brain. She turned away and ran, ran as fast as she could through the suddenly threatening shadows back to busier streets.

Behind her, amongst the tangle of pipes and ducts that overhung the stern-gallery, something metallic scuttled and clattered and fell still.