Rites of Passage (2 page)

There was no sign of Ratty or Miller, which was all the better for Tommy. He could get an hour’s searching in before his friends, bleary-eyed and the worse for the bad navy rum they’d palmed the day before, turned up for work.

He still had sixpence of the three shillings left, which if he were careful would last him a week, but after that...? He smiled to himself. Something would turn up. It always did.
If you work hard, you’re rewarded
. Which is what his old Dad had always told him, before he was crushed to death in the sandstone quarry where he’d worked as a labourer.

Tommy wondered if it was lady luck that was calling him today, urging him to scour a stretch of river he’d left alone for a good week.

He climbed down the rusting iron ladder stapled into the quayside. The mud greeted his swaddled feet with enthusiasm, sucking him in up to his shins. He tucked his sack into the belt of his trousers and took a step. The mud didn’t want to release him, but the secret was not to pull too quickly: lift your foot slowly and evenly and it’ll come out still shod. Pull too fast and you’ll leave your boot behind, if you were lucky enough to possess boots.

Taking great high, slow steps, Tommy moved away from the wall, past the canted prow of an old coal steamer, and headed towards a section of the river-bed beyond.

The mud gripped his legs and froze him to the bone, and with his next step his foot came down on something hard and flat, perhaps an inch or two below the surface.

He crouched and, with a cupped hand, scraped away the mud from whatever it was beneath his feet, and his heart quickened at the sight. God in a galleon, but there was a great sheet of copper or brass beneath the muddy balls that were his swaddled feet.

The mud oozed back over the metal, stealing its lustre, and for a second Tommy wondered if he’d dreamed the sight of the dully glowing surface.

Instead of using his hands, he slid his feet across the metal, wiping a temporary swathe through the mud. More golden metal was revealed, and Tommy was astounded by its extent. Lord, but it went on for yards!

The trouble was, how would he be able to shift something this size all by himself?

Greed battled with his innate good nature – Ratty and Miller had taken him under their wings, after all. He’d go fetch them, tell them what he’d found, and they’d work out how to shift the brass and then share the booty.

He felt a curious sensation of warmth creep up his legs, and again that sense of being summoned filled his head.

He was in the process of lifting a foot and turning, gripped by sudden panic, when the gold surface of the metal gave way beneath him and he plummeted with a frightened yelp.

He saw a square patch of foggy daylight above him and he realised that he was in some kind of container, looking up. But the strangest thing was that, although he’d come to a sudden halt, he had no sensation of having
landed
. He blinked and looked about him and moaned aloud, for he was by some miraculous process suspended in mid-air, spread-eagled, in what appeared to be a... a what? A railway carriage, the cabin of a sunken ship?

Though it was like no railway carriage or ship’s cabin he had ever beheld. All the surfaces were black, and curved in an odd way, and flashing lights like orderly candles dispelled the darkness.

Above his head the hatch closed silently, and oddly the brightness in the container increased, as if to compensate for the sudden absence of daylight.

Only then did Tommy, bobbing and struggling in mid-air, make out the creature studying him from across the sable container.

He yelled with fear, and increased his struggles – to no avail, as whatever was restraining him would not let him go.

“Who... who are you? What do you want?”

He stared at the little man, who must have been a hundred years old. He was naked, and white, and his tallow-coloured skin seemed to be wrapped too tightly around his protuberant bones. The creature’s head was massive – almost as long as its torso – and possessed two great staring eyes as big as Tommy’s fists.

This abomination could only be a Spaniard, and the vessel a sunken galleon, and surely the Spaniard was dead by the look of him?

But then the Spaniard blinked, and Tommy noticed a great green vein upon the creature’s head pulsing in rhythm with its undoubtedly living heartbeat. And he noticed how the being’s thin body was imprisoned within spars and struts, as if but for this containment he might fall in a heap on the floor.

“Please, let me go!” Tommy cried.

The creature spoke, but did so without moving its lips; then Tommy realised that the words were in his head, more like thoughts than sounds.

Do not fear, Tommy. I mean you no harm
.

“What are you?” For his first assumption, that the manikin was a Spaniard, he now seriously doubted. “How do you know me name?”

That need not concern you
, the creature continued.
I simply require your assistance
.

Tommy’s heart ceased its racing, and he began to calm. He wondered if that earlier sensation, drawing him to this place, had been the doing of this being.

It was indeed, Tommy.

“But how...?”

I need your help. When you leave my vessel, make your way directly to this address: 25 Garnett Place, Kensington, and there ask for one Bartholomew Burns. Recount your experiences, and impress upon him the urgency of his returning here with you. Do you understand?

Tommy nodded.

The address, again?
said the voice in his head.

Tommy repeated it.

And the name of the gentleman?

“Bartholomew Burns.”

Very good. You are a brave and resourceful creature, Tommy Newton. You have a long and interesting life ahead of you.

A square of light appeared above him, and then he was rising through the air. He emerged from the hatch, into the welcome environs of the river-bed, and he wondered if there might be anyone abroad to witness his miraculous ascension from the depths.

The hatch closed beneath his feet and watery mud sealed above the golden square. Tommy wondered if he’d dreamed the encounter with the skeletal manikin.

His first impulse was to flee and never return; his second, after much thought, was to do the creature’s bidding.

He felt, as he squelched from the Thames and made his soggy way through the fog-shrouded streets of London, as if some strange force were compelling him towards Kensington – the very same that had drawn him to the submarine being in the first place.

Onward, in thrall to the strange skeletal creature, Tommy plodded.

~

F
or a high-ranking civil servant, Travers was an unprepossessing physical specimen. His girth exceeded his height and his moon face was cratered with a rash of burst boils. Added to which, his teeth presented evidence of unchecked decay.

However, as if to compound the paradox, Travers’ diction was precise to the point of primness. “It’s an honour to meet you again, Bartholomew,” he fluted. “And maybe this time you will be a little more forthcoming on the question of your provenance?”

They were in the Governor’s office at Newgate Gaol, and though situated as it was in the west wing of the building, Burns made out the distant clanking of chains, and the occasional ignominious howl, as of a banshee.

He ignored the inquiry with a smile. “Her Majesty intimated that time was of the essence in this matter. I would be grateful if you would furnish me with the requisite facts.”

Thus rebuked, Travers stirred himself to lethargic action. With much wheezing he prised himself from the chair and rolled over to the door. “If you would care to follow me, Bartholomew, I will show you a sight to set your blood a-racing.”

Without further explanation he led Burns from the office and along a white-washed passageway. They descended a flight of stairs, then passed through a corridor giving on to cells; low moans issued from these, along with the stench of human excrement. Not a second too soon they came to a barred door, which Travers unlocked. They proceeded down another flight of stairs, each stone step worn like a butcher’s chopping block. The cries of the condemned, and their concomitant stink, diminished as Burns and Travers descended into the bowels of the building.

At the foot of the steps Travers opened a thick door onto a wide, vaulted tunnel, off which opened a series of long, damp chambers; Burns spied chains and manacles affixed to the brick-work, and shuddered at the thought of the crimes committed here in the name of justice.

At the end of the tunnel, Travers paused before a great timber double door, withdrew a key the size of a spanner from his jacket, and proceeded to tackle the lock. He flung open the doors with the flourish of a stage magician, revealing a cavernous chamber, almost empty.

Almost empty, Burns observed, but not quite.

A ship with the appearance of a deep sea fish, all polyps and pendulous barbels, perhaps thirty foot from prow to stern, sat at the far end of the chamber.

Travers cleared his throat. “Have you ever, Bartholomew, seen anything like it?”

Burns had, as a matter of fact, but kept the knowledge to himself. It was, if he were not mistaken, a Vorpal Interspatial Craft. His curiosity quickened.

“And that’s not the end of it,” Travers continued with what almost amounted to lip-smacking gusto. “Wait till you see what we found within.”

He led the way towards the craft. At their approach, an oval section in the vessel’s mottled flank irised open. They stepped inside, into a sourceless opalescent light, and Travers gestured – needlessly – to the creature seated, limbs a-dangle, in a strange cupola atop a short pedestal.

The being was small and brown and wizened, and resembled nothing so much as a hairless gibbon. It was dead, as evidenced by its bloated torso and the putrid stench that emanated from its person.

Utilising his perfumed kerchief, Burns advanced and inspected the creature. There was no obvious indication as to how the being had met its end, no signs of physical injury, and Burns knew that Kyrixians – for a Kyrixian it undoubtedly was – were an oxygen breathing race who should have had no difficulty with the atmosphere of Earth.

“The devil of the matter, Bartholomew, is that the craft was discovered by the janitor in this very chamber, though how it managed to get here is beyond me.”

Burns nodded. “Strange indeed,” he said, though it was no mystery at all: interstitial craft were capable of travelling through the void in order to arrive at any sequestered destination.

“The creature was alive when Hobbs discovered the craft. It asked – in plain English, if you please – to meet a person in command.”

“And Hobbs met its demand?”

“He ran harum-scarum to the Governor. He was in quite a state, and no mistake.”

“And the Governor immediately informed Her Majesty?”

“The Governor called me,” Travers said, “knowing I had the ear of the Queen. I contacted Her Highness, who in turn informed Prince Albert. Then I made my way here to see what the creature had to say for itself.”

Burns glanced at him. “And that was?”

In reply, Travers reached into his waistcoat and produced a leaf of note paper, covered on both sides in his neat copperplate hand. “I took extensive notes, Mr Burns.”

He passed the paper to Burns, who read quickly.

It appeared that the Kyrixian had come to Earth on an errand of mercy, to warn the human race that invasion was afoot. According to the creature, a vessel from Qui was destined to land in London anon: only one being was aboard the Qui vessel, but he nevertheless had the means to bring humanity to its knees.

The Kyrixian exhorted the authorities to destroy the Qui vessel before its occupant could carry out its intentions.

“The creature was in a state of some discomfort,” Travers said. “Its breathing was laboured, its eyes misted. Its words grew quieter as it repeated its warning. In the event, His Highness arrived bare minutes before the being expired.”

“The Prince does take a serious interest in these matters,” Burns murmured to himself; ever since the strange affair of the Lyran land-crab last year, which had almost cost the monarch his life...

He took a turn around the chamber; other than the pedestal chair, and what he suspected was the control panel, the room was empty. He made out what might have been some kind of rack against the far curved wall, but, if it had ever contained anything, it was empty now.

He read Travers’ transcript again, and then handed back the sheet of paper.

“What now, Bartholomew?” Travers enquired.

“Lock the vault. Allow no one entry, is that understood?”

Travers nodded. “Yes, sir. And about what the creature claimed, the invasion?”

Burns stroked his chin. “It cannot be dismissed, Travers. I will contemplate a requisite response; and I will be in contact with your department if necessary.”

“Very good.”

They left the chamber, Burns with a sense of foreboding, and Travers led the way up through the noisome gaol. Burns took his leave of the government man with a firm handshake and rode a Hansom back to Kensington.

Once settled in the reassuring comfort of his garret, he brewed a pot of Earl Grey and seated himself in his armchair before the window. All London was spread before him, a sprawl of streets delineated by the glow of gas-lamps appearing one by one as darkness descended. It was, without doubt, a jewel and at the same time a foul cess-pit of a city, depending of course upon one’s perspective.

He closed his eyes and concentrated on the problem at hand. He knew little of either the Kyrix or the Qui, and he was troubled by his ignorance.

The fact was that the Kyrixian’s story could not be dismissed: but how, he asked himself, how in all this great and crowded city, might he locate the invading Qui ship and nullify its threat?

And why, for the love of all that was sacred in the universe, had a Sentinel not alerted him to the danger?

~

T
ommy Newton peered around the corner of the square and watched the Hansom draw up outside number Twenty-Five. A very tall gentleman alighted, paid the driver and proceeded up the steps of the imposing townhouse and let himself in through the front door.