Cloud Castles (29 page)

‘Down here!’ hissed Alison, and tugged again. I let go, leaned on her and together we went slipping and sliding down into the dark on little shifting slides of metal. I got my feet, she lost hers and almost fell head first under a cascade of clattering things as we struck the bottom. I helped her up, retrieved her sword, and together we peered into the cluttered dimness, listening for any sound of movement. A thousand empty eyes stared back, a macabre charnel-house of vacant sockets and gaping grins. They glimmered faintly in the city glow reflected off the clouds in place of moon or star, darkly mirrored in the iridescent puddle that slapped gently at our feet. This wasn’t a building site, it was a graveyard, a communal plague-pit for the picked bones of planned obsolescence, the mouldering corpses of cars. Their dismantled guts coated the slope we’d slid down.

‘Dante would’ve loved this!’ I muttered, and then suddenly I snapped my fingers. ‘Stuttgart! A big scrap yard, not far from the city centre!
Metallwiederaufbereitungs Amerningen!
This belongs to one of Lutz’s recycling companies. There could be a rendezvous here—’

The abrupt animal tension in Alison’s stance silenced me quicker than any gesture. I looked where she looked, and instinctively clutched my arm round her shoulders. The cloud was back, drifting like wafts of cobweb silk outside the fence; and it was thicker. Suddenly it seemed to gather itself and roll, not through the mesh as you might expect, but over the top, as if it were a complete thing that couldn’t stand separation. I noticed it avoided the razor-wire, too. We shivered, ready to run the moment it came after us. But it didn’t. It plunged down, growing thicker and whiter all the time, like a waterfall out of emptiness, straight into the ground beyond the fence; a few seconds it fell, then vanished.

We weren’t stupid. We
turned to run, plashing exhaustedly through that bloody puddle. But Alison skidded, then me, as if the metal buried beneath was snagging feebly at our ankles; when the noise came we were barely across. Behind us the whole slope was heaving as if there was an earthquake, or something burrowing underneath. Long streaks of scattered small parts were flung up into the air, in loose sprays at first, then geysers, then in long stringy ribbons that wavered and convulsed before disintegrating again – all that, in the space of a second or two, while we gaped, appalled. Then there was a swift decisive clash, and out of the metallic rubble, waving long metallic pincers, lifted something like a head. Not a human head; it had two glinting lenses, but they were many-faceted domes bulging out of each apex of a triangular, featureless snout. Something clacked beneath it, like wide mandibles. Behind it a humped body arched and lifted on six dully gleaming legs, shedding showers of rusty metal and dribbling streams of ancient oil and dirty rainwater. It was made entirely of the stack debris, this thing, metallic, clanking, grinding, squeaking; yet it looked a lot more organic than mechanical. It could have been eight or ten yards across, something between a spider and a flattened mantis; and with a spider’s gait it came scuttling forward through the churning pool.

The thing moved so fast that in our hypnotized horror we almost got caught. A claw swiped at us; Alison’s sword barely parried it, and I hadn’t even drawn mine. As it rattled back I ducked, scooped up a heavy driveshaft from the ground at my feet and swung it hammer-fashion. The clang was deafening, and a shower of debris rained down on our heads. The thing reeled back, forelimbs flailing in the air. I flung the steel rod like a javelin at one bulging eye, and we ran like hell.

The thing pattered after us, quieter now, the squeak
and grind of rusty metal merging into a tooth-grinding hiss and chitter. Round the cars we ran, from one level of blind darkness to another, and always around a corner ahead or just at our heels that sinister chitter would sound. It would pounce suddenly from behind a stack, or clamber out into our path and stand there, waiting with nerve-fraying patience. No question, it was hunting us like a real animal, only with a more than animal cunning behind it. Twice I tried to strike at it, but it was ready now; once it caught the axle I was about to throw and very nearly dragged me in by it. Over and over we tried to dodge down narrow gaps between stacks, but the horrible thing simply squeezed itself up and pushed through with a grate and squeal of metal. We were tired already; now we were reeling, slipping, falling on our knees in the filth of automobile entrails. And far from reaching the fence, we’d been deftly driven deep into the heart of the huge yard, under the feet of the huge crane there.

‘Climb it!’ I yelled, but Alison shook her head slackly.

‘No good – it’d climb too – or just pluck us off—’

It was then the darkness seemed to explode with light. I shook her, hard. ‘I’ll climb!’ I shouted. ‘You – circle! Keep dodging!’

Her eyes glinted as she looked up, wildly; and then of all things a grin flashed at me through the darkness. She’d actually sensed my idea, this amazing woman; and what was more, she’d accepted it without a word, even though it left her in terrible danger. She hefted something heavy, a cylinder-head I think, and hurled it right at the oncoming thing. It was a throw that wouldn’t have disgraced an Olympic shot-put, and her aim was better than mine. One reflecting many-faceted eye went out in a scatter of broken headlamp lenses. You wouldn’t have thought it would matter, but it did; the thing went wild, blundering from side to side for a moment, then it fixed on her and pounced. She was already away, and I was half-way up the ladder or further, praying I could manage this. She dodged around the base as the thing rushed again, never moving far away; and I reached the little metal gallery at the side of the crane’s cab. It was old and battered, the door latch weak; but it might take seconds I didn’t have to get it open. My sword went through the windscreen in a shower of safety glass, I went after it and began ripping out the dashboard leads to hot-wire a connection.

It felt like centuries before the engine spluttered and caught, and I slumped back into the greasy chair, working the levers as I went, kicking out for the pedals. For a moment my fuddled mind started flying a helicopter, but I’d been shown how to use a dockyard crane once, and this wasn’t too different – except that there should be one extra control. I peered over the dashboard at the dirt-obscured German legends, and finally found one, the big red switch. I snapped it over.

Down below Alison shouted – or was
it a scream? I leaned over, saw her scramble up on a car bonnet and crouch there, blade levelled before her. With terrible courage she stayed there as the thing advanced, slowly, as if suspicious of this sudden stand. And rightly so, for she’d given me just the position I needed. I didn’t even have to swing the crane; I released the winch, the heavy cable screamed over its pulleys, the great grab at its tip with its electromagnet activated arrowed down like a harpoon onto that obscene bulk and clanged in deep. The thing convulsed with a screech like abrading steel, rearing back; and I seized the moment to rev the motor to its maximum and slam out the winch clutch. This isn’t a good idea in normal circumstances; inertia being what it is, you might strip the gears or even pull the crane over. But I didn’t give a damn; and to move so lightly that monster had to be hollow. Off the ground it lifted, twisting, kicking, a metal spider snared by a single web strand of steel. Alison leaped down and away, round the base of the crane; and as she got clear I snapped the grab lever home, and twisted the red switch with the double lightnings to
aus.
The closing claw crushed and tore that kicking bulk; the magnet, turned off, let the mangled thing fall.

Only about twenty feet, but it was ample. It hit the ground and disintegrated in a great ringing explosion of bits, like a percussion group on self-destruct. Nuts, bolts, washers, valve-heads, screws, springs, spark-plugs, shocks, half-shafts and millions of less identifiable components flew in all directions, some as high as the crane cab, and came raining and rattling down like hail on the grinning automobile corpses. By the time the last one fell nothing even remotely spider-like remained. I hardly gave the scattered heap a glance; I was swinging down the ladder, and shouting for Alison.

She was there, staggering up the lower rungs, clutching her forehead where some falling debris had caught it. But she let it go and grinned up at me, a wolfish grin, joying in mayhem, that made me want to hug her.
‘Sic semper tyrannis!’
she carolled. I was just wondering whether to risk that hug when she grabbed me by the arms, and a deafening thudding roar shook the yard, as though all the ghostly engines were coming alive. It was another helicopter, a biggish, sleek machine coming in low between the buildings, dangerously low; and the searchlight at its shark-like nose nacelle snapped into searing life. For a minute I thought it must be the police; then the light struck the summit of a wide heap of cars at the far corner of the yard and hung there, circling slightly as the helicopter wavered. Up into the glare, keeping low, scrambled a human shape, and the light winked painfully off the case under one arm.

‘
Come on
!’ screamed Alison over
the row, and together, staggering like drunks, we ran down the dark alleys of scrap. The figure looked around and cried out, gesturing urgently; a rope ladder came tumbling down, a short one, and he hooked his free arm onto it. As we stumbled closer hands reached down to grab him and haul him in, and suddenly the ‘copter began to turn on its axis, the light tracked across the shattered stacks of bodies and pinned us down like rabbits at a burrow mouth. We broke for cover as the hammering burst of an automatic rifle drowned even the ’copter engines; a stream of bullets popped through car bodywork and ricocheted screaming off chassis members and cylinder blocks, while the mud beyond flew up and danced. In that maelstrom we dived for what cover we could, cowering, while the ‘copter made one swift circuit of the yard; then its light snapped off, and it climbed away into the mirk.

There was a long silence, until a rather tremulous voice enquired ‘Steve?’

My own came out as a sort of strangled croak. ‘Alison? You okay?’

‘Suppose so. You?’

‘Yes. Thank God they weren’t trying too hard. That was one of Lutz’s machines.’

‘Yes. And that – that sending, too, I expect.’

‘The cloud? And …’ Neither of us wanted to name it more closely. The very thought still made me shake. It was more than fear; it was the horrible wrongness of it, the gross mockery of life in that image – carefully chosen, no doubt. Spiders are one of the commonest phobias; I hadn’t thought they were one of mine, but if I wasn’t careful they could be. I didn’t believe in Hell, either; but here in this horrible pit, with the taint of that evil still almost tangible in the air, a waft of corruption you could almost taste, it was getting harder. Whatever the source of such evil powers, it had to be wrong, it had to be something to meet, to stand up to, to obliterate before it could do more damage, because damage was all it could do. Hell was as good a name for it as any.

‘It did what it was meant to, anyway,’ she said. ‘It got us off Dragovic’s tail. Time for them to arrange a little air-taxi for him – straight to the Brocken, probably.’

‘By helicopter?’

‘The same way you got to the
Heilenthal.’ She sighed. ‘Come on, we’d better get back. There may still be something the Graal can do, even if we can’t. I hope they haven’t taken a moment to shoot up your machine; Dragovic knows where it is. Damn the man.’

I looked at her as she got up, wincing at some unexpected bruise. I was gradually becoming aware that something had left a horrendous hacked bruise on my shin, but I was almost too numb to care. But she – what was she thinking? Here was a woman facing the ruin of everything she cared for, and in a cruelly ironic way she was partly responsible. I was prepared for storms, for tears; even a woman as self-possessed as my friend Jacquie would have cried. This one went on being calm, thinking logically, and I was almost offended. Idiotically, because I couldn’t think why, unless, perhaps, it was at not being able to console and comfort her. I’d done that for women, often; I hadn’t realized till now just how much I’d been comforting myself.

‘Damn the man,’ she repeated, as we picked our way across the wasteland that spelled prosperity for Lutz. ‘And damn me, too. I would have to bring him along!’

I tried not to take the usual kind of line. It would have been insulting her, somehow. ‘I’m more to blame. This never would’ve happened if—’

‘No,’ she said, quite flatly. ‘No, that was meant to happen, or at least not opposed. I’m to blame.’

‘You couldn’t have known he was a traitor.’

‘I knew there were traitors. Everybody knew. But it’s not that, in itself. It’s that …’ She looked at me. ‘I should have trusted you. Really trusted you, I mean, not just half-way. I was meant to, and I failed. I should have taken my cue from the Graal. But instead there must have been things hanging around, shreds of all that old resentment maybe. Or just the way I saw you; you still annoyed me the way you had—’

‘Me? How?’

‘Just … being what you are. Just
looking
the way you do … I don’t know, I can’t make sense of it. And that worries me. I shouldn’t have given in to it, I should just have gone along with you the way my feelings told me to. And I didn’t, I hesitated, I picked out that son of a bitch and let him pick his pet heavies and I … made all this possible.’

‘I don’t see it that way,’ I said.

She gave something like a laugh. ‘Thanks! I need
all the moral support I can get right now.’

‘Oh – even mine?’

‘Oh, I didn’t mean it like that! You – I value what you think, really. Seeing you in action tonight,’ she managed a laugh, ‘you earned that swagger of yours!’

‘I don’t bloody swagger!’

‘Oh, yes, you do. A bit, even in your ordinary clothes; but put a sword at your side, and, well – your friend Jyp—’

‘Okay,
he
swaggers. Do I do that?’

‘Worse. But don’t take it to heart. You – you’ve come a long way, I think, on the Spiral. And in a very short time. You should try for esquire-probationer, really you should.’