Fever Crumb (5 page)

"Tired from your journey, I expect. Come and sit down ..."

The scent went with them as he led the way through into another room, a large conservatory with glass walls and a glass roof, looking out into a jungly garden behind the house. The room was littered with books, papers, cast-off clothes, and muddy shoes. A cat was sunning itself on a wooden table among plates that still held the remains of breakfast. "Sit down, sit down!" said Kit Solent amiably, dumping the cat on the floor and placing a kettle on a stove which stood in one corner. "I expect you'll want a cup of tea after your journey?"

Fever shook her head, and tried not to feel shocked. "It is deeply irrational that dried leaves should be transported halfway around the world aboard ships and land barges simply to flavor water. Besides, tea is a stimulant, which leads to nervousness and irrationality."

"Oh," said Kit Solent, slightly surprised. "Coffee, then?"

"Just a mug of boiled water, please."

Fern giggled. Kit frowned at her. Fever watched as patiently as she could while her new employer wiped two mugs and set them ready, then filled a silvery infuser with tea leaves for himself. As politely as she could, she said, "Master Solent, a conservatory is not a rational place to keep a stove. The heat will be lost through all this glass, instead of helping to warm the house...."

"Ah, but the view of the garden is so nice," said Kit Solent, grinning at her foolishly. The kettle grumbled, coming to the boil. He filled the mugs and brought them to the table, saying as he sat down, "It must feel strange, coming here after the Head. We're not very rational, I'm afraid. But you'll grow used to it."

"Miss?" said Ruan. "What
happened
to your hair?"

Fever felt herself tense, wondering how to speak to these unreasonable small people. "I shave it off," she said. "Hair is unnecessary. It is a vestige of our animal past, and provides a home for lice and fleas and other parasites."

The boy nodded, and his eyes crossed as he peered up at his own tufty fringe, hoping to see some parasites there. "Fever," he said. "That's a funny name...."

"Ruan!" his father warned.

"Not at all," said Fever. "During the Scriven era there was a fashion for women to name their children after whatever ailments they suffered from while they were pregnant. I have heard of people named 'Backache,' 'Diarrhea' ..."

"I knew a man once called Craving-For-Pickled-Onions McNee," agreed Kit Solent. Ruan giggled, and Fever looked disapprovingly at his father. Was he joking? She didn't see the purpose of jokes.

The little girl, meanwhile, had decided that Fever was now safe to.talk to. She held out the toy dog to her and said, "His name's Noodle Poodle. He's three."

Fever was not sure how to reply to that. She turned to Kit Solent instead. "You have work for me, I believe? Dr. Stayling said that you have uncovered an Ancient site, and that you have asked for an Engineer to help you study the artifacts it contains."

Kit Solent took another slurp of tea and then sat back, lifting Fern onto his lap. He looked slightly embarrassed. "I may have misled old Stayling slightly. The site that I've uncovered has not yielded any artifacts yet, but I believe it soon will. Until it does, I'm keen to keep it secret; I should hate one of the big archaeological combines to nip in and steal it from me."

Fever nodded. Archaeology in London was a cutthroat business, so it was rational that Kit Solent would wish to keep his find a secret. She said, "What is this site? An Ancient building?"

"Not exactly ... Kit looked wary. "I'll take you there, so you can see for yourself. But first we must wait for Mistress Gloomstove to arrive. Mistress Gloomstove is my housekeeper. She will take the children to school, and then we can go exploring."

***

Mistress Gloomstove arrived not long afterward; they heard her open the front door just as Fever was finishing her hot water, and the children went scampering to meet her, Ruan telling her loudly about their new, bald-headed visitor. She emerged into the conservatory a moment later, weighed down by bags and shopping baskets, the children orbiting her like eager moons. A large, red-faced, breathless-looking woman in starched white aprons and an irrational hat, she looked suspiciously at Fever, and muttered, "Charmed, Miss, I'm sure," when Kit Solent introduced them.

"Fever will be staying," Kit told her, taking one of the baskets from her and nodding for Fern to take the other. "Will you make up a bed for her in the room on the top floor? The one that still has its ceiling all intact?"

"Of course, sir," said the woman meekly, with another look at Fever. She carried her bags through into a kitchen which opened off at the conservatory's farther end, and the children went after her with the baskets, Fern saying loudly, "... and I want all my hair cut off, because it gives you
pastarites ...
"

After that came five minutes of din and confusion while the children found their school things. "They attend Miss Wernicke's School for a few hours every day," explained Kit Solent through the noise. "It's a jolly place, just a single room above a tech shop on Endemol Street. Miss Wernicke teaches them reading and writing, drawing, singing, and so forth...."

Fever tried to look interested. She had not heard of Miss Wernicke's establishment. She did not think that Dr. Crumb would approve of it.

And then, at last, the children were gone; the house was quiet; she was alone with Kit Solent.

"There!" he said. "Now, Miss Crumb, I shall lead you to my excavation."

Fever followed him. To her surprise he did not take her back outside into the streets, but deeper into his house.

When she thought about it, it was not altogether strange. Ludgate Hill was not a natural hill, but the collapsed and compacted wreckage of a district of immense towers that had stood in this part of London in the twenty-first century. It was known to be honeycombed with diggers' tunnels, so it seemed quite possible that Kit Solent might have stumbled across some cache of wonders beneath his own floor.

They came to a dead end, a corridor that stopped at a large mahogany bookcase, the shelves crammed with worthless novels. Kit Solent walked straight to it, and reached up to press a stud concealed in a swag of ornamental carving. Behind the rows of books, machinery grumbled like a tetchy librarian, and the whole case slid sideways into a deep recess in the wall.

"A secret passage," he said, looking expectantly at Fever, certain she must be excited by such a romantic thing. "Rather a cliché, I'm afraid ..."

"Ingenious," said Fever, allowing herself to raise one eyebrow just a quarter of an inch. "Operated by a system of pulleys and counterweights, I presume."

They stepped through the gap where the bookcase had stood and it rumbled back into place behind them while they went down ten steps into a windowless, whitewashed chamber. It had the feel of underground, that damp brown smell. There was one door, a very small one, opposite the foot of the steps. Lanterns were ranged along a stone shelf.

Fever wondered suddenly if she were entirely safe in this strange place, with this strange man. But she could see no way now of turning back. Solent handed her a lantern, and used his tinderbox to light it before lighting another for himself. Then he opened the narrow door.

It revealed a dark opening, a man-high passage shored with timber balks. Stale air came out at them, and along with the sound of water trickling somewhere far below, and a wet, raw-dough smell of secret places deep beneath the city.

***

There was a tunnel beneath the house. She squeezed after Kit Solent along the narrow, wood-walled passage which looked as if he had dug it himself, and after a few yards they emerged into a much broader, older working. The prints of his boots were stamped in the damp earth underfoot, as if he had come and gone along it many times.

"Not scared of the dark, I hope?" he asked cheerfully. "Of course not!" said Fever. What did he take her for? Another of his children? But she walked a little faster, all the same. It was very cold in the tunnel. The light from their two lanterns lit up the low brick roof and the timber buttressing which lined the walls. Before long the timber gave way to rusty metal, ribbed like the throat of a whale and slick with moisture. Not so much a tunnel as an enormous pipe.

"This passageway was dug by Auric Godshawk, I believe," said Kit Solent. "It linked the Barbican with a house he owned outside the city. The Barbican end of it is all filled in now. Katie and I heard rumors about it years ago. Then, two summers back, there was a cave-in in one of the streets higher up the hill. A section of pavement collapsed into what people thought was just an old digger's working. The hole was filled in, but I guessed at once that it was Godshawk's tunnel, and I worked out the likely course it took beneath the city. I took the house in Ludgate Hill Gardens because its cellar was as close as I could get to the line of the old tunnel. Then it was just a question of digging until I hit it. The tunnel itself was in pretty good repair; just a few roof-falls to deal with, a few leaks to plug."

"How far does it go?" asked Fever, peering into the darkness ahead.

"About two miles. I hope you're feeling fit...."

Two miles, thought Fever. That would put their destination well outside the southern edge of London, deep in the Brick Marsh.

"Does anyone else know about it?" she asked.

"No," Kit replied. "Godshawk had the laborers who built it put to death, and any of his Scriven friends who knew about it were murdered in the Skinners' Riots. You're honored, Fever. Apart from me, you're the only person in London who knows this is here."

For some unreasonable reason, that made Fever uneasy. As they walked on she began to feel more and more aware of the darkness that was pressing in behind her. She looked back once or twice and saw it flooding after her along the tunnel, repossessing the places that her passing lamp had briefly lit. She remembered accounts that she had read about the "London under London"; a midnight maze of tunnels dug by generations of scavenger archaeologists, linking up in places with far older networks, the winding processional Deepways of the Raffia Hat Culture, and even sections of the Ancient underground system. There were tales of blind, white savages living in the deepest shafts, the descendants of people who had sought shelter there from the Downsizing and never found their way out.

Fever did not believe such yarns, of course. But each time a stone fell in the dark behind her she started, and walked a little faster, anxious not to be left behind.

After a long while the tunnel started to rise, and they stepped through a doorway into a big underground space. It was brick-built, this place, and flagstone-floored, like the deep cellar of some important old building. There was a toolbox standing in the middle of the floor, along with some spare lanterns and an oil-stained rag or two. In the far wall a big steel door was set. Around the edges, where it met the heavy door frame, bright scars and gouges showed where someone had tried, with a variety of tools, to prise it open.

"Impressive, eh?" said Kit Solent, holding his lantern up to light Fever's face and watching her reactions as she studied the strange door. "I've been trying for months to get that open. I finally got a drill through it, but it looks as if there's another door behind it and likely a third behind that, and they're all reinforced and made of something that grinds my drill bits flat in no time."

Fever glanced quickly around the underground chamber. It was empty except for Kit's tools and lamps and that great steel portal, like the door to a colossal safe. "What's in there?" she asked.

"I'm not entirely sure," said Solent, with a shrug that made the lantern light shrug, too. "But the old villain must have been keeping s
omething
in there to make it worth erecting such a door."

Fever looked at him. He was still watching her. "This was Godshawk's?"

Kit Solent nodded. "Look closer. Please."

Fever was surprised to be asked. She put down her lantern and went over to the door. She saw the places where drills had gnawed at the metal. Otherwise, it was in good condition, unrusted and undented, shining coldly in the lamplight. It was not new, but nor was it very old. There were no handles or hinges, so she guessed that it was meant to slide open. On the heavy frame to the right of the door, on the same level as her eyes, she saw a row of ivory studs or buttons, each printed with a single number.

"'Lectronics?" she said to herself. She had heard of 'lectronic locks, but never seen one. They were deep old-tech. No one nowadays knew how to create the minute chips and circuits which controlled such a device, so to make one you needed a piece of

Ancient technology which still worked, and such treasures were rare and wildly valuable....

She turned, and found Kit Solent watching her with an expression she did not know how to read. It looked almost as if he were afraid of her. "This is a 'lectronic keypad, Master Solent," she said awkwardly. "You would have to know the code. Without it, I don't see any way of opening this door, if you keep drilling at it you might damage it. You might make it impossible to open even with the code."

"And what is the code, Fever?" Solent asked.

It was an absurd question. But strangely, it did not
feel
absurd. For a second, Fever actually thought about it, as if she might know, while Kit Solent watched her steadily with his eyes shining in the light from the lanterns. Then the moment passed; he laughed and said, "Come, let's get some fresh air, and I'll explain."

***

There was another door in that underground room, so small and ordinary that Fever had not noticed it. It was made from planks of wood, and its handle was a worn ivory egg that seemed to her peculiarly familiar.