Predator's gold

12

Mr Scabious was both right and wrong about the ghosts. His city was haunted all right, but not by the spirits of the dead.

The haunting had begun almost a month before, and not in Anchorage but in Grimsby, a very strange and secret city indeed. It had begun with a small sound; a hollow click, like a fingernail flicked once against the taut skin of a toy balloon. Then a sigh of static, the crackle of a microphone being picked up, and the ear on Caul’s ceiling started talking to him.

“Up, boy. Wake. This is Uncle calling. Got a job for you, Caul, boy. Yes.”

Caul, surfacing through a flotsam of dreams, realized with a sudden shock that this was real. He rolled off his bunk and stood up groggily. His room was little bigger than a cupboard, and apart from the shelf-wide bunk and some spectacular damp-stains the only thing in it was the tangle of wires in the centre of the ceiling where a camera and a microphone huddled. The Eyes and Ears of Uncle, the boys called these fixtures. Nothing about the Mouth of Uncle. And yet it was talking to him, all the same.

“You awake, boy?”

“Yes, Uncle!” said Caul, trying not to let the words sound slurred. He had been working hard in the Burglarium yesterday, trying to catch out a gaggle of younger boys as they crept through the maze of corridors and stairways which Uncle had designed to train them in the arts of subtle, unseen thieving. He’d gone to bed dead tired, and must have slept for hours, but he felt as if it was only a few minutes since the lights went out. He jerked his head, trying to shake the thickness of sleep out of his thoughts. “I’m awake, Uncle!”

“Good.”

The camera stretched down towards Caul; a long, gleaming snake made up of metal segments, mesmerizing him with its one unblinking eye. He knew that in Uncle’s quarters, high in the old Town Hall, his face was coming into focus on a surveillance screen. On an impulse he grabbed the coverlet off his bed and used it to hide his bare body. “What do you want of me, Uncle?” he asked.

“I’ve got a city for you,” the voice replied. “Anchorage. A sweet little ice city, down on its luck, heading north. You’ll take the limpet Screw Worm and burgle it.”

Caul tried to think of something sensible to say, standing there dressed in a duvet in the unwavering gaze of the camera.

“Well, boy,” Uncle snapped. “Don’t you want the job? Don’t you feel you’re ready to command a limpet?”

“Oh, of course! Yes! Yes!” cried Caul eagerly. “It’s just — I thought the Screw Worm was Wrasse’s ship. Shouldn’t he be going, or one of the older boys?”

“Don’t question my orders, boy. Uncle Knows Best. It happens I’m sending Wrasse away south on another job, and that leaves us short-handed. Ordinarily I wouldn’t put a youngster in charge of a burgling trip, but I think you’re ready, and Anchorage is too pretty a prize to miss.”

“Yes, Uncle.” Caul had heard talk about this mysterious job down south, which more and more of the older boys and better limpets were being transferred to. The rumour was that Uncle was planning the most daring robbery of his long career, but nobody knew what it was. Not that it mattered to Caul. Not if Wrasse’s absence meant that he got to command his own limpet!

At fourteen, Caul had crewed on a dozen limpet missions, but he had been expecting to wait at least two more seasons before he was offered his own command. Limpet commanders were usually older boys, glamorous figures with homes of their own on the upper floors, a far cry from the little hutches Caul had always lived in, here in the damp storeys above the Burglarium where brine seeped in around the rusting rivets, and stressed metal filled the nights with its gloomy song; where whole rooms had been known to implode without warning, killing the boys inside. If he could just make a success of this mission, and bring home stuff that Uncle liked, he would be able to bid goodbye to these dingy quarters for ever!

“You’ll take Skewer with you,” Uncle said. “And a newbie, Gargle.”

“Gargle!” exclaimed Caul, trying too late not to sound incredulous. Gargle was the dunce of his whole year-group; nervous and clumsy, and with a personality that seemed to attract bullying from the older boys. He had never made it past level two of the Burglarium without getting caught. Usually it was Caul who did the catching, dragging him out quickly before he could fall victim to one of the other trainers, like Skewer, who took a delight in beating failed pupils. Caul had lost track of the times he had led the boy, white-faced and snivelling, back to the newbies’ dorm. And now Uncle expected him to take the poor kid on a live job!

“Gargle is clumsy, but he’s bright,” said Uncle. (Uncle always knew what you were thinking, even if you didn’t say anything.) “He’s good with machines. Good at operating cameras. I’ve had him working in the archives, and I’m thinking of moving him up here full-time, but first I want you to take him out and show him what the life of a Lost Boy is all about. I’m asking you because you’re more patient than Wrasse and Turtle and the rest.”

“Yes, Uncle,” said Caul. “You Know Best.”

“Damn right I do. You’ll go aboard the Screw Worm as soon as day-shift begins. Bring me home some pretty things, Caul. And stories. Lots and lots of stories.”

“Yes, Uncle!”

“And Caul — ”

“Yes, Uncle?”

“Don’t get caught.”

And here was Caul, a month later and hundreds of miles from Grimsby, crouching breathless in the shadows while he waited for the beat of Hester’s running feet to fade away. What had come over him since he arrived here, to make him keep taking these risks? A good burglar never let himself be seen, but Caul was almost sure that young aviatrix had spotted him, and as for Scabious… He shivered, imagining what would happen if Uncle heard of this.

When he was sure he was alone he slipped out of his hiding place and went quickly and almost soundlessly down by a secret way into the Screw Worm, which hung hidden in the oily shadows of Anchorage’s underbelly, not far from the drive-wheel. It was a rusty, ramshackle old limpet, but Caul was proud of it, and proud of the way its hold was already filling with the things he and his crew had pilfered from the abandoned workshops and villas of the city above. He dumped his latest bag of plunder with the rest and slid between the stacked bales and bundles into the forward compartment. There, amid the soft buzz of machinery and the steady blue flutter of the screens, the rest of the Screw Worm ’s three-boy crew were waiting for him. They had seen everything, of course. While Caul had been following Hester quietly through the engine district, they had been tracking her with their secret cameras, and they were still chuckling over her conversation with the engine master.

“Wooooh! Ghostie!” said Skewer, grinning.

“Caul, Caul,” chirped Gargle. “Old Scabious thinks you’re a ghost! His dead son come back to say hello!”

“I know,” said Caul, “I heard.” He shoved past Skewer and settled himself into one of the creaky leather seats, suddenly annoyed at how cluttered and stuffy the Screw Worm felt after the clean chill of the city above. He glanced at his companions, who were still watching him with foolish grins, expecting him to join in their mockery of old Scabious. They, too, seemed smaller and less vital, compared with the people he had just been watching.

Skewer was the same age as Caul, but bigger and stronger and more sure of himself. Sometimes it seemed strange to Caul that Uncle had not put Skewer in charge of this trip, and sometimes there was an edge to Skewer’s jokes that made him suspect Skewer thought the same thing. Gargle, ten years old and permanently wide-eyed with the rush of his first burgling mission, seemed unaware of the tension between them. He had turned out as clumsy and useless as Caul had feared; inept at burglary, freezing with terror whenever a Dry came near him, he came back from most of his expeditions into the city with his hands shaking and his trousers sodden. Skewer, who was always quick to make the most of another’s weakness, would have bullied and mocked him mercilessly, but Caul held him back. He still remembered his own first job, stuck with a couple of unfriendly older boys in a limpet under Zeestadt Gdansk. All burglars had to start somewhere.

Skewer was still grinning. “You’re slipping, Caul! Letting people see you. Lucky for you the old man’s mad. A ghost, eh! Wait till we get home and tell the others! Caul the ghoul! Whooooo!”

“It’s not funny, Skew,” said Caul. What Mr Scabious said had made him feel edgy and strange. He was not sure why. He checked his reflection in the cabin window. There wasn’t much resemblance to the portraits of Axel he’d seen when he was casing Scabious’s office. The Scabious boy had been much older, tall and handsome and blue-eyed. Caul had a burglar’s build, skinny as a skeleton key, and his eyes were black. But they both had the same untidy, white-blond hair. An old man whose heart was broken, glimpsing a fair head through darkness or mist, might jump to conclusions, mightn’t he?

He realized with a start that Skewer was talking to him, and had been talking to him for some time. “…and you know what Uncle says. The First Rule of Burgling — Don’t Get Caught.”

“I’m not going to get caught, Skew. I’m careful.”

“Well, how come you’ve been seen, then?”

“Everybody gets unlucky sometimes. Big Spadger off the Burglar Bill had to knife a Dry who spotted him in the underdecks of Arkangel last season.”

“That’s different. You spend too much time watching the Drys. It’s all right if it’s just on screen, but you hang around up there watching them for real.”

“He does,” agreed Gargle, eager to please. “I’ve seen him.”

“Shut up,” said Skewer, absent-mindedly kicking the smaller boy.

“They’re interesting,” said Caul.

“They’re Drys!” said Skewer impatiently. “You know what Uncle says about Drys. They’re like cattle. Their brains don’t move as fast as ours. That’s why it’s right for us to take their stuff.”

“I know!” said Caul. Like Skewer, he’d had all this drummed into him when he was just a newbie, back in the Burglarium. “We’re the Lost Boys. We’re the best burglars in the world. Everything that ain’t nailed down is ours.” But he knew Skewer was right. Sometimes he felt as if he wasn’t meant to be a Lost Boy at all. He liked watching people better than burgling them.

He swung himself out of his seat and snatched his latest report from a shelf above the camera controls; thirteen pages of Freya Rasmussen’s best official notepaper covered in his big, grubby handwriting. He waved them in Skewer’s face as he headed aft. “I’m sending this back to base. Uncle gets angry if he doesn’t get an update once a week.”

“That’s nothing to how angry he’ll be if you go and get us caught,” Skewer muttered.

The Screw Worm ’s fish bay was beneath the boys’ sleeping cabin, and had taken on the same smell of stale sweat and unwashed socks. There were racks for ten message-fish, but three were already empty. Caul felt a pang of regret as he started prepping Number 4 for launch. In just six more weeks the last fish would be gone. Then it would be time for the Screw Worm to decouple from Anchorage and head for home. He would miss Freya and her people. But that was stupid, wasn’t it? They were only stupid Drys. Only pictures on a stupid screen.

The message-fish looked like a sleek silver torpedo, and if it had been standing upright it would have been taller than Caul. As always, a slight sense of awe overcame him as he checked the fish’s fuel tank and placed his rolled-up report in the watertight compartment near its nose. All over the north, limpet captains just like him were sending fish home to Uncle, so that Uncle would know everything that was going on everywhere and be able to plan ever more daring burglaries. It made Caul feel even more guilty about his liking for the Drys. He was so lucky to be a Lost Boy. He was so lucky to be working for Uncle. Uncle Knew Best.

A few minutes later the message-fish slid from the Screw Worm ’s belly and dropped unnoticed out of the complex shadows on Anchorage’s underside, down on to the ice. As the city swept on into the north, the fish began drilling its way down through the snow, down through the ice, patiently down and down and down until it broke through at last into the black waters beneath the ice cap. Its Old-Tech computer-brain ticked and grumbled. It wasn’t bright, but it knew its way home. It extended stubby fins and a small propeller and went purring quickly away towards the south.