Infernal Devices (23 page)

The
Screw Worm
had caught up with Brighton that morning. Tom had approached slowly, frightened of triggering whatever Old Tech Brighton had used to catch the Lost Boys, but it seemed that the city had turned its sensors off now that its fishing trip was over. Even so, he and Hester had barely dared to breathe as the magnetic clamps engaged and the hull drill chewed noisily through the resort's deck plates.

Tom had wanted to use the crab-cams to search for signs of Wren, but Hester disagreed. "We're not Lost Boys," she pointed out. "It'd take all sorts of skills we haven't got to steer one of those things through Brighton's plumbing. It could be weeks before we sighted Wren. We'll go up ourselves. We ought to be able to find some sign of all those limpets they fished aboard."

Hester was right. When they emerged from the
Worm
into a deserted alleyway behind Brighton's engine district, almost the first thing they saw was a poster pasted to an exhaust duct. It showed a limpet surrounded by savage boys, beneath the words

PARASITE-PIRATES OF THE ATLANTIC!

ARTIFACTS AND CAPTIVES

TAKEN FROM THE SUB-AQUATIC THIEVES' DEN OF GRIMSBY

DURING BRIGHTON'S RECENT EXPEDITION

ARE ON PUBLIC DISPLAY AT THE

BRIGHTON AQUARIUM, 11-17 BURCHILL SQUARE.

"Captives!" said Tom. "Wren might be there! That's where we've got to go...."

Hester, a slower reader than her husband, was still

halfway through the text. "What's an aquarium?"

"A place for fish. A sort of zoo, or museum."

Hester nodded. "Museums are your department. You go and have a look. I want to go and nose round the air harbor. I might hear something about Wren there, and I want to see if I can find us a ship; I don't fancy going all the way home in that stinking old limpet."

"We shouldn't split up," said Tom.

"It's only for a while," said Hester. "It'll be quicker." It was just an excuse, of course. The truth was that all the time she'd spent cooped up with Tom beneath the waves had made her irritable. She wanted to be alone for a while, to breathe and look around this city, without having to listen to him always worrying about Wren. She kissed him quickly and said, "I'll meet you in an hour."

"Back at the Worm?"

Hester shook her head. The engine district was getting busy as a new shift clocked on; passersby might notice them sneaking down their secret manhole. She pointed to another ad, half obscured by the aquarium poster, for a coffee shop in the Old Steine called the Pink Café.

"There ..."

Luckily, the aquarium's attendants were only interested in selling tickets and chatting to each other about their plans for the evening. They were not on the lookout for intruders, and even if they had been, there was nothing to distinguish Tom from the other visitors. He was just a youngish, tousled, slightly balding man, perhaps a scholar from the middle tiers of Kom Ombo, and if his clothes were rather rumpled and old-fashioned and

he smelled faintly of mildew and brine, well, there was no rule against that. The girl at the turnstile barely glanced at him as she took his money and waved him through.

Inside the aquarium, bored-looking fish drifted in big, dim tanks, and there was such a smell of rust and salt water that Tom could almost have imagined he was back in Grimsby. But nobody was looking at the fish, or the sea horses, or the mangy sea lions. Everyone was heading to the central hall, following the brightly colored signs to the parasite-pirate exhibit.

Tom went with them, trying not to look too eager, reminding himself that Wren would probably not be here. He shuffled along among the other visitors, peering at a display of crab-cams and then at a limpet called
Spider Baby
that stood on a dais in the center of the hall. Whoever had put it there had given it a dramatic pose; it was rearing back on its four hind legs and waving its front feet in the air as if it were about to lash out at the visitors. Families posed in front of it to have their photographs taken, the children making scared faces, or sticking out their tongues at the looming machine.

Beyond the limpet, in a straw-lined cage, captive Lost Boys squatted and stared at the passing crowds. Sometimes one would fling himself at the bars, shouting abuse, and the visitors would scuttle away, frightened and delighted, while one of the burly attendants poked the savage with an electric prod. Tom felt sorry for the Lost Boys, and almost relieved that Wren was not among them.

Nearby, a pretty young woman in aquarium livery was pointing out details to a group of children. Tom waited until she had finished, then approached her. "Excuse me," he asked, "could you tell me how many limpets were taken?"

The pretty young woman was really very pretty. Her smile almost dazzled Tom. "Nineteen in total, sir," she said, "and three destroyed at sea."

"And was one of them called the
Autolycus?"

The smile faded. Flustered, the woman riffled through her exhibition notes. Nobody had ever asked her about a particular limpet before. "Let me see ..." she muttered. "I believe ... Oh, yes! The
Autolycus
was one of the first limpets we caught, way over in the western seas, far from the parasite lair." Her smile returned. "She must have been swimming off on a burgling mission when we snapped her up...."

"And the crew?"

The young woman was still smiling, but her eyes were troubled; she was starting to wonder if Tom was some kind of weirdo. "You'd have to ask Mr. Shkin, sir. Mr. Nabisco Shkin. All the captives are property of the Shkin Corporation."

"And what's the Shkin Corporation?" asked Hester, who had just been told the same thing by a secondhand balloon salesman at the air harbor.

"Slaves," said the man, spitting a black jet of tobacco juice onto the deck plate at his feet and winking at her. "All them boys and girls they fished up are all slaves now, and serves them right, I say."

A slave,
thought Hester as she strode away through the increasingly busy streets. The shadows of airships and balloon taxis slid over her as they poured into the air harbor to offload more cackling crowds of tourists.
A slave.
Hester shouldered a group of language students off the pavement. How was she going to break this to Tom? That his beloved little

girl was cooped up in a slave hold somewhere, or enduring who knew what at the hands of cruel owners ...

To make matters worse, she had learned that her plan of buying an airship would not work. Prices had rocketed since she'd last been aboard a city, and the gold that she had taken from Grimsby wouldn't buy so much as a spare engine pod at the secondhand airship yards.

She spent some of it at a stall behind the harbor instead, buying a pair of jet-black sunglasses to hide her missing eye and a headdress of silver discs that more or less concealed the scar on her forehead. She bought a new veil too, and an ankle-length black coat with many buttons to replace the shabby thing she'd worn all the way from Anchorage. Walking on, she found her mood improving. She liked this city. She liked the sunshine and the crowds, the jangle of slot machines, the tatty facades of the hotels. She liked being among people who did not know her and could not guess what lay beneath her veil. She liked the handsome young aviators who smiled at her as she strode past, their eyes drawn to this mysterious woman with her hidden face and long, lean body. And--although she didn't quite admit it to herself--she liked life without Wren. She was almost glad that the girl had got herself kidnapped.

She stopped to study a street plan and then crossed a footbridge over the Sea Pool and headed aft to the Old Steine. There was no sign of Tom at the tables outside the Pink Café. Hester considered having a coffee while she waited for him, then decided that she couldn't afford one at Brighton prices. She wandered around the long curve of the Steine instead, looking at the shop fronts, until she came to one that stopped her short.

It was a shabby building that had once been a theater. A cheery pink sign above its door proclaimed THE NIMROD PENNYROYAL EXPERIENCE, and posters announced: RELIVE MAYOR PENNYROYAL'S ADVENTURES ON FIVE CONTINENTS AND A THOUSAND CITIES] EDUCATIONAL AND ENTERTAINING! In the window a waxwork of Pennyroyal, chained to the floor of a cardboard dungeon, raised and lowered its head, peering quizzically at a crescent-shaped blade that swung to and fro above it on a pendulum.

Mayor
Pennyroyal? Hester had often wondered what had become of the fake explorer after he shot Tom and stole the
Jenny Haniver.
She had assumed that the gods would have punished him by now for all his lies and tricks; they'd had sixteen years to think of a suitable comeuppance, after all. Instead, they seemed to have rewarded him. Pennyroyal was alive. And Pennyroyal knew what she had done. She had told him herself, in the Aakiuqs' smashed-up kitchen, while she was getting ready to murder Masgard and his Huntsmen.

She handed a bronze coin to the man at the ticket booth and went inside.

It seemed as though Brighton's other visitors had found better ways of educating and entertaining themselves, for the Nimrod Pennyroyal Experience was almost deserted. There was a dusty museum smell, and another smell, tantalizing and out of place, that was even more familiar. Hester wandered past unimpressive artifacts in glass cases, past a reconstruction of an Ancient landfill site that Pennyroyal had once excavated. Paintings and waxwork dioramas showed Pennyroyal battling a bear, escaping from air pirates, and

almost being sacrificed by a cult of Old Tech-worshipping female warriors--all scenes from Pennyroyal's bestselling books, and all total fibs. Only one of the paintings meant anything to Hester. It showed Pennyroyal, sword in hand, fighting off a horde of savage Huntsmen, while at his side a beautiful young woman expired prettily. It was only after she had stared at the picture for a minute or more that Hester noticed the martyred girl wore an eye patch and had a fetching little scar on her cheek.

"Gods!" she said aloud. "Is that bimbo supposed to be
me?"

Her voice sounded loud in the empty, echoey rooms. As it faded, Hester heard footsteps, and the man from the kiosk put his head round the door and asked, "Everything all right, madam?"

Hester nodded, too angry to speak.

"Magnificent painting, eh?" the curator said. He was a friendly man, middle-aged, with a few strands of sandy hair combed carefully across his bald head. He came and stood next to Hester and beamed proudly at the picture. "It's inspired by the closing chapters of
Predator's Gold,
in which His Worship does battle with the Huntsmen of Arkangel."

"Who's the girl?" asked Hester.

"You haven't read
Predator's Gold?"
asked the man, surprised. "That is Hester Shaw, the aviatrix who sells Anchorage to the Huntsmen. She redeems herself, the poor creature, by dying at Pennyroyal's side, cut down by the chief of the Huntsmen, Piotr Masgard."

Hester turned away quickly, climbing a dusty metal staircase toward the upper floor of the museum, barely seeing the

displays she passed, her head filled with panicky, racing thoughts. Everything was ruined! Pennyroyal didn't just know what she'd done, he'd written a book about it! There were paintings! Even if Pennyroyal had twisted the facts, the truth was still there, in black and white on the pages of his book. Hester Shaw had sold Anchorage to the Huntsmen. And when Tom found out ...

Would he still love her if he knew what she was really like?

She reached the top of the stairs. The familiar smell was stronger up here, and Hester remembered suddenly what it was: a mixture of aviation fuel and lifting gas. She looked up.

The whole upper story was a single glass-roofed room, and in its center, on metal stanchions, sat an airship. It was old and tattered, and the name painted along its flank was
The Arctic Roll,
but Hester would have known that clinker-built gondola and those much-repaired Jeunet-Carot engine pods anywhere. She had lived in those narrow cabins for two years, and flown halfway around the world beneath that old red gasbag. It was the
Jenny Haniver.

"Ugly old tub, ain't she?"

Hester had not realized that the curator had followed her up the stairs, but here he was, standing just behind her and smiling amiably. "Hester Shaw bequeathed her to Professor Pennyroyal with her dying breath, and he flew her home to Brighton through polar storms and swarms of air pirates."

A wooden walkway had been built beside the gondola. Half listening to the curator, Hester climbed the steps and peered in through the dusty windows, remembering the ship's real history. There was the stern cabin, with the narrow bunk where she used to sleep with Tom. There was the

pilot's seat where she had spent so many long watches. There, on the scuffed planking of the flight-deck floor, Wren had been conceived....

She sniffed the air. "She smells ready to fly...."

"Yes indeed, madam. Aviatrix, are you?"

Hester looked round at him with a start, wondering if he had guessed who she was, but he was just being friendly. "Yes," she said, and then, because he looked as if he wanted to know more, "I'm Captain Valentine of the
Freya."

"Ah!" said the curator, satisfied, and nodded to the
Jenny
again. "She'll be leading the Flyby of Historic Ships tomorrow, Ms. Valentine."

Hester touched the cool underside of an engine pod and imagined it roaring into life. She was starting to recover from her shock. After all, Tom knew that Pennyroyal was a liar. Why would he believe anything the old fraud said about her? Beneath her veil, she smiled her crooked smile.

"It should be a very fine display," the curator was saying, smiling up at her. "There's going to be a reenactment of one of Professor Pennyroyal's most desperate adventures: a battle between
The Arctic Roll
and a bunch of old air tugs dressed up as pirate ships. Real rockets and everything ..."