A Darkling Plain (37 page)

ashore in the surf, comes a familiar message. The ancient computer brain detects it and responds. Many of its systems have been damaged over the long years, but it has others, fail-safes and backups. Power cells hum; glowing ribbons of light begin to weave through the coils of the weapon chamber; ice crystals tumble away in a bright, widening cloud as heavy shields slide open.

ODIN gazes down into the blue pool of the Earth and waits to be told what it must do.

***

22nd June (I think ...)

I'm writing this in a very dismal spot on the western edge of the ruins of London, listening to the guns in the west. How far does the sound of gunfire travel? No one here is sure. But it's pretty clear that the war is on again, and the Green Storm are losing. Already a few refugees have wandered through the edges of the debris fields--they've moved on of their own accord, or with a bit of prompting from Londoners hiding in the debris and making spooky noises, but what if more come?

And what if suburbs and cities come behind them? And what if Wolf Kobold is already on his way here aboard Harrowbarrow ?

I'll say this for the Londoners: They don't give up easily. It's

Wren dropped her pencil and closed the book. Through the steady patter of the rain she had clearly heard the sound of a bird calling, the signal that the patrols used to communicate with one another across the wreckage. She went to tell Cat about it, but the other girl had already heard. "It's Hodge's lot," she said. "They need us...."

The other members of the patrol--Angie Peabody and a small, shy boy named Timex Grout--were waking up, wriggling out from under their blankets and reaching for lanterns and crossbows. Wren's heart beat quickly; it seemed to be wedged somewhere in the region of her tonsils.
This could be it,
she thought. What if Ron Hodge's patrol on the southwestern edge had seen the lights of Harrowbarrow? What if advance parties from Harrowbarrow were already sneaking

through the debris fields, ready to kill anyone they met? She fumbled a bolt out of the quiver on her belt and fitted it into her crossbow.

The birdcall came again. Cat called back, and the patrol set off quickly through the drizzle. The moon shone halfheartedly behind the clouds. Wren was glad of its light, but she was still terrified that she would lose the others and be left wandering in this insane rustscape all alone. Stories that she had scoffed at in Crouch End seemed very real out here in the night shadows. She started remembering all the scary scraps of London folklore she had picked up from her father: the dark supernatural shapes that haunted the nightmares of the old city; the ghosts of Boudicca and Spring-Heeled Jack; the awful salvage-stealing Wombles.

She almost screamed when a silhouette rose up in the path ahead, but it was just Ron Hodge, the rest of his patrol behind him.

"What's going on?" asked Cat.

"Intruder," said Ron shakily. "We got a glimpse of him, then lost him. He's around here somewhere."

"Just the one?"

"Don't know."

Cat took charge, ordering everybody to fan out and search. They called to each other as they crept through the spires and angles of the wreck, and they used words now as well as bird sounds; sometimes just the sound of voices emerging from the dead scrap piles was enough to make intruders turn tail and run.

There was no sign of anyone.

"What's that?" yelped Timex. Wren ran to him, scrambling

through drifts of rust flakes as crunchy as breakfast cereal. "There!" he hissed as she reached him, and she saw it too, just for an instant, a movement between two nearby blocks of wreckage. She tried to call out for Cat and the others, but her mouth was too dry. She fumbled for the safety catch of her crossbow, telling herself that if the stranger was one of Wolf's men from Harrowbarrow, she would have to kill him before he killed her.

"Who's there?" shouted a voice. A familiar accent; Theo's accent. It made Wren feel shivery with relief. This wasn't an attacker; just some lost African airman, another deserter from the retreating Green Storm armies that the lookouts had sighted passing by. Cat had said that half a dozen had stumbled into the fringes of the debris field over the past few days, and it had been easy enough to frighten them away. Wren wondered what would be the best way to convince this one that the wreck was full of restless spirits. Should she leap out waving her arms and going "Woooooo"?

Just then, a lot of things happened at once. The stranger, who was closer than he had sounded, appeared suddenly around the corner of an old engine block. Cat and Angie, coming over the crest of the wreckage behind him, unveiled their lanterns, the dazzling ghost lights that had driven off so many previous interlopers. The stranger, alarmed, ran straight toward Wren and Timex, and Timex barged backward, crashing into Wren, whose crossbow went off accidentally with a startling twang and a kick that nearly broke her arm. The stranger fell in the splay of light from the lanterns, and Wren, catching sight of his face, saw that he did not just sound like Theo, he
was
Theo.

"Ow!" he said weakly.

There was a sound of slithering rust flakes as the other Londoners came running. Wren stood shaking her head, rubbing her wrenched arm, waiting to wake up. This was a dream, and a pretty poor one. Theo could not be here. Theo was in Zagwa. That was not Theo, lying there dying on the metal in front of her.

But when she edged closer, and Cat held up her lantern, there was no mistaking his good, handsome, dark-brown face.

"Theo?" she said. "I didn't mean to-- Oh, Quirke!" She started to claw at his soggy coat, looking for the crossbow bolt.

Ron Hodge arrived, keen to assert himself now that the intruder had turned out harmless. "Leave him, Wren," he ordered.

"Oh, go away!" yelled Wren. "He's a friend! And I think I've shot him...."

But there was no hole in Theo's coat; no blood, no jutting bolt. Her shot had gone wide. "I just slipped," Theo said weakly, looking at Wren as if he did not believe it could really be her. He half sat up and stared warily at the young Londoners crowding around him. Wren couldn't take her eyes off him. How thin and pained and tired he looked, and how glad she was to see him!

Theo tried out a smile. "I got your letter," he said.

They made their way back to their camp, where Angie lit a small fire and heated up some soup for Theo, who was shivering with cold and exhaustion. Wren sat by him as he drank it. It felt strange to be with him again. She had been imagining him safe in sunny Zagwa. How did he come to be caught

up in the Green Storm's defeats? She had asked, but he'd just said, "It's complicated," and she hadn't liked to press him.

She wondered if he still remembered kissing her at Kom Ombo Air Harbor, and supposed that he must; he had come all the way to London to find her, after all.

"We shouldn't be mollycoddling him," said Ron Hodge grumpily, pacing about at the edge of the firelight. "He's Green Storm."

"He's not!" cried Wren.

"He's in a Green Storm uniform."

"Only the coat," said Theo, lifting it open to show his flyer's clothes beneath. "I stole it from a dead man on the way east. I'm not Green Storm. I don't know what I am."

"He's a Zagwan," said one of Ron's group. "Zagwans are Anti-Tractionists. We can't let an Anti-Tractionist into London. Wren and her dad have already brought one spy among us; now she's asking us to take in a Mossie...."

"So what do you think we should do with him?" asked Cat Luperini. "Kill him?"

The boys looked sheepish.

"When daylight comes, me and Wren will take him over to Crouch End," Cat decided.

Wren slept fitfully, curled up beside Theo. The wreckage made an uncomfortable bed, but even without the rivets and rust flakes digging into her, she could not have slept; she had to keep studying his sleeping face to make quite sure she had not dreamed him. And then she suddenly woke to daylight, and it was time to leave.

They walked eastward, Wren and Theo together, Cat following with her crossbow. As they went, Theo told Wren his

story, and she learned how he had met her mother, and how they had traveled together all the way to the Green Storm's lines.

"And after that?" asked Wren.

"I don't know. I think she's safe. Probably in Shan Guo by now."

Wren was not sure what to feel. She'd grown used to thinking that Mum was dead. It was unsettling to find out that she was still alive, and to hear the way Theo spoke of her, as if he
admired
her. And that she should be traveling around with that horrible Stalker, Mr. Grike--Wren didn't like to think about it, and she was almost relieved when Cat suddenly shouted, "Down!" and she was able to concentrate on dragging Theo off the path and into cover.

A Stalker-bird coasted low over the ruins, so close that Wren heard the sound of its wing feathers combing the air. Its too-big head swung mechanically from side to side.

Cat scrambled over to join Wren and Theo. "I saw it circling up high when we left the camp," she said. "I've been keeping my eye on it while you two nattered. I hoped it would go on its way, but it's watching us. Must have seen that fire we lit last night."

Wren peeked out from under the slab of deck plate that hid them. The bird had gone higher, circling. As Wren watched, it flapped its raggedy wings and swooped off across the debris fields in the direction of Crouch End.

"They're definitely getting nosier," said Cat.

"Spy birds," said Wren to Theo, thinking he looked scared. "They come over and take pictures of us for General Naga's album."

Theo shook his head. "That wasn't a spy bird, Wren. That was a Lammergeyer. We had a flock of them aboard my carrier when I was with the Storm. They're used for armed reconnaissance." The girls looked blankly at him, as girls so often did when he slipped into the Storm's military jargon. "They're attack birds, Wren! I think your friends are in danger...."

The Green Storm's birds were certainly taking a great interest in the debris fields that morning. As Tom worked away wrapping and packing the treasures he had found among the ruins ready for their transfer aboard New London, he kept hearing the
clang clang clang
of the danger bell, warning any Londoner who was out in the open to beware. By lunchtime the still-smoldering carcasses of three more spy birds were hanging outside the canteen, displayed as trophies by the keen lookouts who had shot them down with lightning guns when they showed too much interest in the Womb.

Tom felt pleased by the way the rekilling of the birds lifted his fellow Londoners' spirits, but he could not help wondering whether shooting them had been wise. Might it not just make their masters even more suspicious about what was happening inside the wreck?

Chudleigh Pomeroy told him not to fret. "Those birds have seen nothing that would make the Storm think we're anything but a rabble of squatters. Even if they had, the Storm have bigger worries than us. By the time they get around to sending airships over, New London will be gone."

Tom surreptitiously touched wood. He knew the Engineers were working as hard as they could to perfect the Childermass

engines, but he could not help thinking of the failed test yesterday. What if the next test was a failure too?

He wished he could do more to help. He had been moved when Chudleigh Pomeroy had asked him to become Head Historian, and he took his relic collecting seriously, but he knew that it was a made-up job, not really necessary. New London was about the future, not the past.

With lunch over, Pomeroy announced that he was going to the Womb, and Tom volunteered to go with him. He had repaired the
Jenny Haniver
often enough, after all; he was sure the Engineers could find some small welding or wiring task to entrust him with aboard their new city. But they had not gone more than twenty yards from Crouch End when the danger bell began to ring again.

"Merciful Quirke!" exclaimed Pomeroy, turning back toward the entrance. "How are we supposed to get anything done at all with these incessant interruptions? I've a good mind to write a stiff letter to General Naga and tell him it just ain't neighborly...."

Tom had grown quite used to the sight of distant Stalker-birds, but those new carcasses strung up outside the canteen made him uneasy. He glanced at the sky as he hurried Pomeroy toward shelter, and he was glad he had. The birds had returned in force, and they were not circling dots this time, but hurtling black shapes, dropping like missiles out of the sun.

"Get down!" he shouted, shoving Pomeroy to the ground just as a bird swept over, its steel claws whisking past a fraction of an inch above the old man's head. The danger bell was jangling again, and on the road to the Womb people were

scattering and shouting. Saab Peabody, who'd downed a spy bird earlier, came running out of Crouch End with his lightning gun at the ready, keen to add another to his tally. A bird came down on him, flailing its razor claws at his face, and he dropped the gun and fell blinded and screaming. Other birds were crashing through the beanpoles in the vegetable gardens, harrying a small, terrified group of children as their teachers tried to herd them into the safety of Crouch End. Even in there, among the cozy huts, the dead wings flapped.