Infernal Devices (15 page)

Freya knelt down so that her face was level with the children's. "No," she said. "No, I'm sorry, we're not."

"But our mummies and daddies are coming, aren't they?" whispered another child.

"There was a message...."

"They said they were near," said a little boy, tugging at Caul's hand and looking up earnestly into his face. "They said we should go to them, and a lot of the big boys wanted to, even though Uncle said not to...."

"And when the other boys tried stopping them, they fought them and killed them dead!"

"And then they went anyway. They took all the limpets."

"We wanted to go with them, but they said there wasn't room and we were only newbies...."

"And there were explosions!" said a girl.

"No, that was later, silly," said another. "That was the depth charges."

"Bang!" shouted the smallest boy, waving his arms about to demonstrate. "Bang!"

"And all the lights went out, and I think some water got in...."

All the children were talking at once, crowding into the light from Tom's lantern. Hester held her hand out to one of them, but he backed away and went to snuggle against Freya instead.

"Is Wren here?" Hester asked. "We're looking for our daughter, Wren."

"She's lost," Tom explained. "She was aboard the
Autolycus."

Small faces turned toward him, blank as unwritten pages. The older girl said,
"Autolycus
ain't come back. None of the limpets that went out these last three weeks has come back."

"Then where's Wren?" shouted Tom. He had been terrified that he would find Wren dead. The prospect of not finding her at all was almost as bad. He stared from one bewildered little face to another. "What in Quirke's name has been happening?"

The children backed away from him, frightened.

"Where's Uncle?" asked Caul. Freya smiled at him to let

the children see that he was a friend and they should answer his question.

"Maybe he left too," said Hester.

Caul shook his head. "Don't be stupid. Uncle wouldn't leave Grimsby."

"I think he's upstairs," said one of the boys.

"He's very old," said another doubtfully.

"He doesn't ever leave his chamber now," agreed a third.

Caul nodded. "Good. We'll talk to him. He'll be able to tell us what's happened, and he'll tell us where to find Wren." He could feel the others staring at him. He turned to them and smiled. "It'll be all right. You'll see. Uncle Knows Best."

***

THEY MADE A STRANGE procession, climbing the cluttered stairways of Grimsby, where salt water dripped from hairline fractures in the high roof and ran in rivulets from step to step. More bodies lay on the landings, forming dams that the dirty water pooled behind. Overhead, crab-cameras clung to ducts and banisters. Now and then, one turned to follow the newcomers with its Cyclops eye.

Hester went ahead. Behind her, Tom, Caul, and Freya were surrounded by children, small hands clutching theirs and reaching out to touch their clothes as if to reassure themselves that these visitors from the world above were real. They were especially drawn to Freya. In shocked, whispery voices, they told her all sorts of secrets. "Whitebait picks his nose."

I do not!

"My name's Esbjorn, but the big boys at the Burglarium said I had to be called Tuna, only I think Tuna's a stupid name, so can I change back now that all the big boys have got killed dead and run away?"

"He sticks his finger right up there. And he eats the boogers."

"I
don't!"

"Children," asked Freya, "who was it who blew up the Burglarium? How long ago did it happen?"

But the children couldn't answer that: A few days, said some, a week, reckoned others. Their chatter faded as they neared the upper floors. They looked into an enormous chamber, new since Tom and Caul were last in Grimsby, made by knocking a dozen of the old rooms together. It was stuffed with fine furnishings: plunder from burgled town halls and looted statics. Huge mirrors hung on the walls, and swags of silk and velvet curtained the colossal bed. Clothes and cushions were strewn across the floor, and mobiles made from beach stones and antique seedies hung from the ducts on the ceiling.

"This was Gargle's quarters," explained the children. "Gargle ran things from here."

"Remora made the mobiles," said a little girl. "She's pretty and clever, and she's Gargle's favorite."

"I wish Gargle would come back," a boy said. "Gargle would know what to do."

"Gargle's dead," said Hester.

After that, the only sounds were the pad of their feet on the wet carpets and a faint voice somewhere ahead, tinny and fizzing, as if it were coming through loudspeakers. It said, "We

only want a chance to see our dear lost boys again...."

Up a final stairway to the chamber of screens, where Grimsby's founder kept watch over his underwater kingdom. The last time Tom had been here, it had been guarded; this time the guards were gone and the door was not even locked. Hester kicked it open and went through it with her gun out.

The others crowded in behind. The chamber was large and high-ceilinged, lit blue by the ghostly glow of the screens that covered the walls. They were of every shape and size, from giant public Goggle Screens to tiny displays ripped from Old Tech hospital equipment, all linked together by a jungle of wires and ducts. Up above, in the dark dome of the roof, hung a portable surveillance station: a midget cargo balloon dangling a globe of screens and speakers. And every screen was showing the same picture: a crowd of people on the windswept observation platform of a raft city. "Children of the deep," the voice from the speakers pleaded, "if you can hear this message, we beg you, come to us!"

"Why did they fall for it? Why did they go? Did they prefer a bunch of old Drys to me?"

In the middle of the chamber an old man stood with his back to the door, shouting at the recording on the screens. In his hand was a remote-control device; he raised it and pressed a switch that made all the screens go blank and silent, then turned to face Hester and the others.

"Who are you?" he demanded petulantly. "Where's Gargle?"

"Gargle's not coming back," said Tom as gently as he could. He had bad memories of Uncle, but that did not stop him feeling sorry for the stooped old man who was shuffling

I48 toward him in a pair of threadbare bunny slippers. The tortoiselike head, poking out from layer upon layer of moldy clothes, blinked shortsightedly at him. Uncle's eyes were clouded with age, and Tom noticed that many of the screens that surrounded him had big magnifying lenses bolted in front of them to make their pictures clearer. He suspected that Uncle was almost blind. No wonder he had come to depend on Gargle.

"Gargle has passed on," he said.

"What, you mean ... ?" Uncle came closer, peering at him. "Dead? Gargle? Little Gargle what gave himself such airs and graces?" His face showed grief, then relief, then anger. "I
told
him! I warned him not to go looking for that rotten book. He wasn't cut out for burgling, Gargle wasn't. More of a planner. He had brains, Gargle did."

"We know," said Hester. "We saw them."

Uncle recoiled from the sound of her voice. "A woman? There's no females allowed in Grimsby. I've always been very strict about that. Gargle always backed me up on that. No girls allowed. Bad luck, that's all they bring. Can't trust them."

"But Uncle ..." said Freya gently.

"Eugh, there's another one! The whole place is crawling with females!"

"Uncle?" asked Caul.

The old man twitched around, frowning, as if the sound of Caul's voice had tripped a rusty switch inside his head. "Caul, my boy!" he said, and then, with a snarl, "This your doing, is it? You got something to do with this? Tell the Drys how to find us, did you? You alone, or are there more?"

He limped away, stabbing at his remote control until the

jumbled screens were filled with views of Grimsby, thrusting his parchment face close to the glass to stare at the empty corridors and chambers, the empty limpet pen, the flooded, ruined halls of the Burglarium.

"It's just the four of us, Uncle," said Caul. "We barely know what's happened here. It has nothing to do with us."

"No?" Uncle stared at him, then let out a high-pitched cackle. "Gods, then you've picked a fine time to drop in for a visit!"

"We've come for Tom and Hester's daughter," Caul said patiently. "Her name's Wren. She was taken from Vineland by the newbie who was with Gargle aboard the
Autolycus."

"Fishcake? Fishcake, that was his name...." Uncle hung his head. When he spoke, he sounded close to tears. "The
Autolycus
is missing. They're all missing, Caul, my boy. The fools got that message about their mums and dads and they went haring straight off to Brighton."

"To Brighton?" Tom had heard of Brighton. A resort town, a bit bohemian, but not a bad sort of place. If Wren was there, she might be all right.

"Why would Brighton want them?" asked Hester suspiciously.

Uncle shrugged and spread his hands and made various other twitchy gestures to show that he had no idea. "I
told
my boys it was a trap. I
told
them. But they wouldn't hear it. Maybe if Gargle had been here. They listen to Gargle. Don't listen to their poor old Uncle anymore, what's slaved and worried for them all these years...." Tears of self-pity went creeping down his crumpled old face, and he blew his nose on his sleeve. His gaze slid listlessly over Tom and Hester,

then settled on Freya again. "Gods, Caul, is that great fat whale the girl you ran off to Anchorage for? She's let herself go! Come to think of it, you don't look too good yourself. I like my boys to be well turned out, and you ... Well, you're shabby, that's the truth of it. Gargle told me you'd gone to make something of yourself among the Drys."

Caul felt as if he were a newbie again, being told off for forgetting part of his burgling kit. "Sorry, Uncle," he said.

Freya moved to his side and took his hand in hers. "Caul
has
made something of himself," she said. "We couldn't have built Anchorage-in-Vineland without his help. I'd like to tell you all about it, but first I think we all have to leave this place."

"Leave?" Uncle stared at her as if he'd never heard the word before. "I can't leave! What makes you think I'd want to leave?"

"Sir, this place is finished. You can't keep the children here...."

Uncle laughed. "Those lads aren't going anywhere," he said. "They're the future of Grimsby."

The children edged in closer to Freya. She let go of Caul's hand to stroke their heads. Everyone could hear the faint groan of stressed metal from the lower floors, the distant splatter of water spilling in.

"But Mr. Kael," said Freya. She had remembered something Caul had told her once. Before Uncle became Uncle, he had been Stilton Kael, a rich young man from Arkangel. Freya hoped that by using his real name, she might be able to get through to him, but it only made him hiss and glare. She pressed on anyway. "Mr. Kael, this place is leaking. It's half

flooded, and the air smells stale. I don't know much about secret underwater lairs, but I'd say Grimsby's future is going to be pretty short."

Hester snapped off the safety on her Schadenfreude and aimed it in Uncle's general direction. "If you don't want to come," she said, "you don't have to."

Uncle peered at her, then up at his hovering globe of screens, where there was an image of her face far clearer than the one his poor old eyes could provide him with. "You don't understand," he said. "I'm not leaving, and nor are you. We're going to rebuild. Make the place watertight again. Stronger than ever. Make more limpets, better ones. We are none of us leaving. Tell them, Caul."

Caul flinched and wondered what to do. He didn't want to betray his friends, but he didn't want to let Uncle down either. The sound of the old man's voice made him shiver with love and pity.

He looked at Freya. "Sorry," he mumbled. Then, with a sudden, quick movement, he jerked Hester's gun out of her hand and pointed it at her, then at Tom.

"Caul!" Tom shouted.

Uncle cackled some more. "Good work, boy! I knew you'd come right in the end! I'm quite glad I didn't finish hanging you now. What a shame those others scarpered off before they had a chance to meet you, Caul. You'd be an object lesson. Return of the Prodigal. All these years gone and you're still loyal to your poor old Uncle." He pulled a key from one of his pockets and held it out toward Caul. "Now get rid of this lot. Lock 'em in Gargle's quarters while we have a proper talk."

Caul kept pointing the gun at Tom, because he knew that Hester was the only one reckless enough to try and overpower him and that Hester cared more about Tom's safety than her own. He fished the knife out of Hester's boot, then took the key from Uncle and started shooing everyone else backward, toward the open door.

"But Caul--" Freya said.

"Forget it," Hester told her. "I knew we were wrong to trust him. I expect this is the only reason he agreed to bring us here--so he could see his precious Uncle again."

"You won't be hurt," Caul promised. "We'll sort this out. It'll be all right." He didn't know what he was going to do, only that he was glad to be a Lost Boy again. "Uncle Knows Best," he said as he forced his prisoners down the stairs and into Gargle's quarters, locking the doors behind them. "It'll be all right. Uncle always Knows Best."

***

NIGHT FALL IN TIENJING. ABOVE the city, the mountains hung huge and pale, a pennant of powder snow flying from each cold summit. Above the mountains, colder yet, the stars were coming out, and the things that were not stars, the dead satellites and orbital platforms of the Ancients, danced their old, slow dance in heaven.