Infernal Devices (21 page)

The sky grew cold, and the ground rose. The gull flew through zones of high white silence and over regions where

the Storm's troop movements gave the mountains the busy, scuttling look of anthills. At last, on a night of snow and starlight a week after it left Brighton, it landed on a windowsill of the Jade Pagoda and tapped its bill against the frosty pane.

The window opened. The Stalker Fang took the gull gently in her steel hands and opened its chest. The message she took out had been written by someone called Agent 28. Her green eyes flared slightly brighter. She tore the message into small pieces and sent for General Naga, commander of her elite air legion.

"Make ready an assault unit," she told him. "And prepare my ship for battle. We leave for Brighton with the dawn."

***

LATE OCTOBER. IN VINELAND, Wren thought, the grass would be white and stiff with frost until midmorning; fog would blanket the lake, and perhaps the first snow was already falling. But here on the Middle Sea it was still as warm as midsummer, and the only clouds in the sky were small white fluffy ones that looked as if they'd been put there for decoration.

Brighton had cruised slowly along the southern shores of the Hunting Ground for several weeks. Then, with Moon Festival drawing near, it headed south to its appointed rendezvous. Boo-Boo went with her handmaidens to watch from an observation balcony at the edge of Cloud 9 as the land came into view. "Look, girls, look!" she cried happily, indicating the coastline with a theatrical sweep of her hand. "Africa!"

24

Wren, standing at the mayoress's side with an enormous parasol, tried to be impressed, but it was quite difficult. All she could see was a line of low reddish bluffs rising out of a landscape the color of biscuits, with a couple of big, ragged mountains lost in the haze beyond. Wren knew from things her father and Miss Freya had told her that Africa had been both the birthplace of mankind and its haven in the centuries of darkness that followed the Sixty Minute War, but the civilizations that once thrived upon those shores had left no traces--or, if they had, they had long since been snaffled up by hungry scavenger towns.

One of the towns that might have done the snaffling came into view soon afterward. A small three-tiered place, it was rumbling along on broad, barrel-shaped sand wheels, trailing a swirl of red dust like a wind-blown cape. Wren glanced at it without very much interest. It felt strange to remember how, two weeks before, she had deserted her post in the middle of Mrs. Pennyroyal's hairstyling routine to run and stare in wonderment at a little townlet trundling down onto the shore. She'd seen so many towns and even small cities since then that they seemed quite ordinary now, and certainly not the fabulous things that she had imagined when she'd lived in Vineland.

And then she looked again, and felt as silly as she had on that long-ago day when she'd first seen Brighton through the
Autolycus
's periscope and mistaken it for an island. The things she'd thought were distant mountains were not distant at all. Nor were they mountains. They were Traction Cities so large that, when she'd first looked at them, her brain had simply not understood what her eyes were showing her.

They were lumbering seaward, and through the dust and the drifting exhaust smoke Wren could see that each had nine tiers bristling with chimneys and spires.

"The one on the left is Kom Ombo," the mayoress told her girls. "The other is Benghazi. Mayor Pennyroyal has contracted to meet them here so that their people may taste the delights of Brighton this Moon Festival. They have been hunting sand towns in the deep desert, poor things, so you can imagine how they will relish good food, fine entertainment, and a refreshing dip in the Sea Pool."

To Wren, the approaching cities looked at first just like the pictures she remembered from her dog-eared copy of
A Child's Guide to Municipal Darwinism
back in Anchorage. Then, as they drew closer, she began to make out differences. These cities were armored, the exposed buildings on the edge of each tier screened with steel plates and antirocket netting. And although the land around their massive tracks was dotted with small, scurrying towns and suburbs and Traction Villages, these cities were making no attempt to swallow them.

"Moon Festival is a sacred time," said the mayoress when Wren pointed this out. "A time when, according to tradition, no city hunts or eats another."

"Oh," said Wren, feeling disappointed, for it would have been thrilling to watch a good old-fashioned city chase.

"Of course," Boo-Boo went on, "with the war on and prey so scarce, not every mayor abides by tradition nowadays, but if any of those cities tries to eat another, Ms. Twombley and her friends will sort them out. It's high time that aerofloozy made herself useful."

Right on cue, the Flying Ferrets went tearing through the sky toward the cities, rolling and tumbling and firing off colored rockets to demonstrate how they would deal with any predator that threatened to break the Moon Festival fast. One peeled off, trailing lilac smoke, to write WELCOME TO BRIGHTON across the sky. As the thunder of their engines rolled away across the desert, Wren heard the rattle of heavy chains drifting up from Brighton. The city was dropping anchor.

"I have a feeling that this will be a wonderful MoonFest!" said Mrs. Pennyroyal brightly as the girls around her oohed and aahed and applauded the aviators' daring. "Now, come on, all of you; I wish you all to be photographed in your costumes for the mayor's ball."

She turned back toward the Pavilion, and Wren, with a last glance at the towering cities, hurried after her. All the other girls were busy talking about tomorrow night's ball, and about the charming costumes the house slaves were to wear. Listening to their excited chatter, Wren found herself feeling almost sorry that she was going to miss the fun. But miss it she must. Tonight, while the household was asleep, Wren meant to creep down to the boathouse and steal the
Peewit.
By the time the sacred moon rose, she would be a long, long way from Brighton.

The Pavilion echoed and rang to the sound of preparations for the MoonFest ball. In the ballroom under the central dome, painters and curtain fitters were hard at work, and musicians were practicing, and electricians were covering the ceiling with hundreds of tiny lights. Crates of wine and

hampers of food came creaking up from Brighton in the cable car, and the militia drilled in the Pavilion gardens.

It was all costing Pennyroyal a fortune, which he thought rather unfair. The people of Brighton surely wanted their mayor to put on a good show for Moon Festival; it seemed a bit rich that they expected him to pay for it all out of his own pocket. So he felt not the tiniest pang of guilt about inviting Walter Plovery to an informal dinner party he was holding that night. Between dessert and coffee, while the other guests were discussing their plans for MoonFest and the latest scandals in the Artists' Quarter, Pennyroyal led the antiques dealer off to take a look at some of the precious antiques in the Pavilion's collection. Together the two men wandered from room to room, studying Stalkers' brains and ground car grilles, fragments of circuit boards that looked like careful embroidery, flattened drink cans, and suits of ancient armor. They made notes of pieces that Plovery thought might fetch a tidy sum from some collectors he knew in Benghazi, and that Pennyroyal reckoned nobody would miss.

Over coffee, Mr. Plovery mentally totted up the commission he stood to make on all these sales and found that he was going to do very nicely. Full of Pennyroyal's food and charmed by the wit and sophistication of his fellow guests, the antiques dealer regretted that he had ever made that deal with Shkin about the Tin Book. But Mr. Shkin had promised him a very great deal of money, and Plovery, whose aged mother lived in an expensive nursing home at Black Rock, needed all the money he could get. When the evening ended and the other guests made their way noisily back to the cable car, he doubled back and hid himself in one of the Pavilion's galleries.

The night air made Wren shiver inside her silver lame nightgown as she stepped out through the servants' entrance into the cold of the garden. She could hear the sea far below, the wind soughing through the rigging, and someone burbling a drunken song down in the streets of Brighton. Clutching the bag of food she had stolen from the kitchens, she hurried across the damp lawn toward the boathouse and the lights of the Flying Ferrets' aerodrome.

The boathouse doors were never locked, and big as they were, they were easy to move, rolling aside on well-oiled casters when Wren leaned her weight against them. The
Peewit's
sleek envelope gleamed inside the hangar as Wren crept to the gondola. She found that she had been holding her breath, which was silly because there was nobody about. Over at the aerodrome, a gramophone was playing a popular tune. Wren reached for the gondola door, and that was not locked either. She crept inside and used the small flashlight she had pinched from the Pavilion's caretaker to study the dials on the chromium instrument panels, remembering the diagrams in a book she'd looked at in the Pavilion's library,
Practical Aviation for Fun and Profit.

The gas cells were full, just as Cynthia had told her. The fuel gauge was still on empty, but Wren had thought of a way to deal with that. She took her nightgown off and stashed it behind the instrument panel. Underneath, she was still wearing her day clothes. She said a quick prayer to the gods of Vineland, then left the airship and walked briskly across the apron in front of the boathouse and through the woods toward the Ferrets' base.

In an old summerhouse that had been commandeered by the mercenary air force, Orla Twombley and a few of her aviators were playing cards. They looked up suspiciously when Wren came tapping at the door.

"Who's that?"

"Looks like one of Boo-Boo's girls."

The aviatrix stood up lazily and opened the door. "Well?"

"I've come with a message from Mrs. Pennyroyal," said Wren. Her voice caught a little as she said it, but the aviatrix didn't seem to notice. She looked worried. Maybe she thought Boo-Boo had sent Wren here to tell her off for flirting with the mayor. Wren started to feel more confident. "Mrs. Pennyroyal wants the
Peewit
to be fueled at once," she explained. "She is going across to Benghazi tomorrow morning. Very early tomorrow morning, so she can find lots of bargains at the bazaar. She wonders if your ground crew would oblige?"

Orla Twombley frowned. "Why ours? Is it not the mayor's men who should be refueling the old gasbag?"

"Yes," said Wren. "His Worship was supposed to ask them this afternoon, but he forgot, and they've gone off duty now. So if you wouldn't mind getting your people to do it, Mrs. Pennyroyal would be ever so grateful."

The aviatrix thought for a moment. She did not want to upset the mayoress. Boo-Boo had powerful relatives who might force Pennyroyal to dispense with the Flying Ferrets' services and hire some other freelance air force instead. Orla Twombley knew for a fact that the Junkyard Angels and Richard D'Astardley's Flying Circus were both angling to take over the Brighton contract.

She nodded, and turned to her men. "Algy? Ginger? You

heard what the young lady said...."

Grumpy but obedient, the two aviators set down their cards and their mugs of cocoa and went out with Wren into the night, muttering about what a waste of good fuel it was and wondering why anyone still bothered with airships when heavier-than-air was the way of the future. Wren trailed after them at a distance and watched as they ran fuel lines from the big tanks behind their airstrip and linked them to nozzles on the
Peewit's
underside.

"She'll take a good ten minutes," one of the men said, turning to Wren with a friendly wink. "No need for you to hang about in the cold, kiddo."

Wren thanked him and ran back to the Pavilion. Ten minutes would give her just enough time to fetch Cynthia.

She had decided right from the start that she would not tell Cynthia about her scheme. Cynthia was much too giggly and forgetful to keep a secret, and would probably have blurted out the whole thing to Mrs. Pennyroyal. But Wren had no intention of leaving her friend behind. While the
Peewit
was being fueled, she would slip into the dormitory where the girls slept, wake Cynthia as quietly as she could, and bring her down to the boathouse. By the time they got there, the yacht would be ready for takeoff.

Mr. Plovery used a novel lockpick that Shkin's people had taken from the Lost Boys to open the door of the mayor's private office. The office was in a tower room, with long windows reaching up toward a shadowy ceiling high above. The blinds were open and the moon shone brightly in, showing the antiques dealer Pennyroyal's cluttered desk and the

drawing by Walmart Strange behind which Pennyroyal's private safe was hidden.

As he crossed the room, Plovery sensed a movement way up above him in the domed ceiling, and had the oddest feeling that he was being watched. He went cold with panic. What if Pennyroyal had got hold of one of those crab-camera things and was using it to guard his safe?

He almost gave up and ran, but the thought of his mother stopped him. With the money Shkin had promised him for the Tin Book, he would be able to move Mum into one of the luxury suites on the top floor of her nursing home, with a view of the parks at the city's stern. He forced himself to stay calm. Pennyroyal wasn't clever enough to set up a surveillance crab. And if he had, he would certainly have bragged about it to his dinner guests.

Plovery took the picture off the wall and set it down carefully against Pennyroyal's chair. The circular door of the safe confronted him. He reached for the dial and turned it right, then left, then right again. On previous visits to the Pavilion he had often seen Pennyroyal open the safe, and had worked out the combination by listening to the number of clicks the dial made.
Two-two, oh-nine, nine-five-seven ...
Calmly, carefully, he went through the sequence, and the heavy door swung open.