Jani and the Greater Game (The Multiplicity Series Book 1) (40 page)

“It can speak my language?”

“Not as such, but it will seem to you that it can.”

“Again, I don’t understand,” she said. “But go on.”

“Do whatever the apparition says.”

“And then, when I leave the ship?”

“We will rendezvous, and attempt to get away from here.”

She glanced at him, and voiced her puzzlement. “There is something that I don’t understand about all this, Jelch. Why don’t you simply go to the British and warn them of the Zhell? They didn’t believe your compatriot because they thought him deranged, but surely you could convince them?”

He sighed. “Two reasons, Jani. One is that I cannot afford to be captured by the British and incarcerated while they interrogate me. That might take weeks, or even months – and as I’ve said before, time is of the essence. The other reasons is that I learned something while I was in Russian custody. I found out that they had spies in Delhi, high up in the British echelons. The Russians suspect that I know, and of course fear that I would inform the British. The problem is that I do not know the identities of Moscow’s spies in Delhi, and I fear that if I show my hand to the British there... then there is a danger I would be signing my own death warrant.”

She stare at him, shocked. “Russian spies in Delhi?” she said. “Do you think my father knew of this?”

He shrugged. “I cannot say. Certainly British security must have suspected something, given that certain sources of intelligence have been compromised of late. Certain Vantissar technologies have fallen into the hands of Moscow, and the Russians have been able to second-guess British troop movements on the border...”

“So if you cannot go to Delhi to inform the authorities there...” She stared at him. “Ah, so I think this is where I come into your plans, yes?”

He regarded her with his cold, flat eyes. “I plan to go to London with the device I hope you will be able to obtain from the ship, and I will petition the government there. Recently British scientists have perfected the CWAD device – I will consent to its use upon me – and they will see for themselves that I speak the truth, about both the Russian spies in Delhi, and the threat of the Zhell...”

She nodded, her heart thudding. A great weight of responsibility rested upon her shoulders. Not only had she to enter the ship and obtain the device, but then she would have to leave undetected and find her way back to Jelch... And then, of course, there was the small matter of how he might make the journey around the world to London.

They walked on in silence for a while. Jani glanced at him and said, “You are far from home, Jelch. Don’t you miss it?”

“More than anything.”

“And one day will you return?”

He stared ahead. Something hard and cold entered his expression. “That is impossible, Jani. My world was destroyed by the Zhell.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but realised that no response would be adequate. She just shook her head and murmured, “I’m sorry.”

“I saw the Zhell raze our principal cities, kill millions of my people and enslave the rest. That is why I had to get away, to warn the Vantissar, to warn yourselves.”

She shrugged. “But even if my people, the governments of my world, were to believe you...” She shook her head. “The technology that the Vantissar possessed... it will undoubtedly be matched by that of the Zhell, will it not? So how then might a world as puny as Earth defend itself?”

Jelch was a while before replying. “There are always means, Jani, though at first they might seem impossible.”

“Within the ship, perhaps, there are weapons which the British have not yet discovered, or understood? Am I right? With these, might we defend ourselves from the Zhell, beat them back from our planet?”

He gave a small grunt more like a despairing laugh. “Sadly, no weapons I know of would be a match for those of the Zhell. They have perfected technological warfare, and combine this expertise with a ruthlessness frightening to witness. No, we cannot fight the Zhell.”

“But...?” she asked, sensing that Jelch was about to suggest what they
could
do.

“But perhaps we can make our... worlds proof against their invasion.”

She stared at him. “But how?”

He shook his head. “Only time will tell,” he said enigmatically.

She wanted to question him further, but knew that she would be wasting her breath.

She looked up the incline, to where Anand was sweeping the light beam back and forth, a fan of acrid smoke rising all around him. Ahead she made out the crest of the rise, a line of trees against the sky, and a distant line of saw-toothed mountain peaks. She guessed they had been travelling for an hour. She was tired and thirsty, and hoped that Jelch would call for a rest when they gained the summit.

Anand came to a halt, looked back at them and waved. Jani made out his awed expression before he turned again to stare down into the valley.

They hurried to catch up, then stood beside the boy and stared into the natural bowl formed by the encircling girdle of mountains.

“I didn’t expect...” Jani began.

“What?” Jelch asked.

She gestured. “I never expected it to be so... so busy, so populated, so
ugly
...”

It was as if, she thought, a dark, satanic version of London had been transplanted from the heart of England and laid down in this sprawling Himalayan valley. The image that came to mind was of beauty despoiled. They had climbed through an unspoilt wilderness of natural beauty, and now they were on the threshold of an industrial hell.

She looked down on a chaos of busy streets, with grey concrete buildings like the ugliest schemes now being thrown up on the outskirts of Delhi. Surrounding the city on its outer edges was a shantytown of dwellings lashed together from whatever materials the poorest members of society could find: flattened tin and packing cases, tattered tarpaulin and woven banana leaves. The tiny figures of drafted Indian workers scurried along the streets, the cheap labour that sustained this city as it did every other one in the subcontinent. At the centre of this makeshift metropolis, by contrast, were grander, honey-coloured buildings set in emerald lawns where fountains played and officers and memsahibs, tiny figures at this distance, strolled in the light of the late morning sun.

At the far side of the city, opposite where Jani stood, was an airyard busy with a hundred ’ships. She stared as a gargantuan cargo vessel laboured into the air, its ascent so gradual she thought it might surrender to gravity and slump back to earth. The air above the distant mountain range was dotted with a pointillism of craft, thousands of them, and Jani was struck dumb by the scale of the operation going on far below.

Only then did she realise that something was missing. She turned to Jelch. “But I don’t see...” she began.

He pointed.

“But...” she began, “how can that be...?”

She had expected the alien vessel to resemble something along the lines of a great gondola, sleek and streamlined and, like the latest models coming from the de Havilland factories, as silver as a bullet.

What she saw surprised her on two counts. The first was that the vessel – or the little she could make out of its superstructure that was not covered by bamboo scaffolding and walkways – was brown, like the tegument of a cockroach. In fact, the vast length and breadth of the craft, a mile long and a third as wide, looked less like something manufactured from metal than a biological entity, the pupa of some great insect. Long, curved sections of the craft’s superstructure had been removed to reveal recesses full of curled, etiolated piping that put her in mind of living intestines. Towards the front of the craft – or at any rate the end which abutted the city – was a vast open maw from which emerged a procession of wheeled vehicles and lines of workers weighed down with heavy loads.

“The British call the city Annapurnabad,” Jelch said. “It is where once the beautiful town of Lokhara stood. Now it’s the home of ten thousand workers, and a thousand British troops and administrators.”

He reached into the pocket of his jacket and passed Jani a rolled bundle of notes. “I will accompany you to the edge of the trees, and then no further.”

She looked into his flattened eyes. “And when we return?”

Jelch indicated a slanting casuarina tree, laden with scarlet blooms. “I will await you there, or nearby,” he said.

They continued on down the hillside.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-THREE

Alfie summons his courage –

Death on the hillside – Final instructions from Jelch –

“What happened to the Russians...?”

A
LFIE CROUCHED BEHIND
a stand of ferns and peered out, Smethers squatting beside him. Through the treetops he glimpsed the red and blue balloon of Janisha Chatterjee’s airship, perhaps a mile away.

Alfie and Smethers had landed two hours ago and made their way across the city, scanning the skies for the first sign of the fugitive ’ship. It had appeared just after midday, coming in slowly over the mountains, and, unlike all the other airships coming and going from the airyard, had flown around the city and headed for the next valley. Alfie was still exhausted from the taxi ride through the city and the subsequent dash up the hillside.

Beside him, Smethers was almost manic with excitement at the approaching culmination of their mission. His eyes were wide, staring, and his upper lip twitched nervously.

That morning, as daylight washed the gondola of their airship, Alfie had let himself out of the lavatory to find Smethers none the worse for his binge of the previous night. He had lounged in his armchair, filling his revolver with bullets and smiling across at a sheepish Alfie.

“And how are you on this fine morning, Lieutenant?”

Alfie had swallowed and said, “Very well, sir.”

“Recovered from our little entertainment last night, hm?”

Alfie stared at the colonel. By Christ, he thought, the bastard will pay for that...

Now, squatting in the undergrowth, Smethers drew his revolver, nudged Alfie and said. “The VCA, Lieutenant.”

“What?”

“I said, give me the VCA.”

Alfie dug into his pocket for the skullcap and passed it to the colonel. His fingers brushed the cylinder of the light-beam in the same pocket, and he smiled to himself.

Smethers pulled the skullcap over his head and fastened the chin-strap. He peered through the trees at the airship, then glanced at Alfie. “As soon as they show themselves,” he said, “I’ll activate this and go after them. I’ll bag the Russian pair first, then arrest the gel. I want you to tackle the boy. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly.”

They waited, staring through the foliage. Alfie’s heart was thumping fit to burst. He thought of the girl, and prayed she wouldn’t do anything foolish in the ensuing encounter.

“The Russians,” he whispered. “What do they want here?”

“Think about it, Littlebody. Sabotage. Annapurnabad is a strategically important city.”

“And the girl? She was heading here of her own accord before being taken by the Russians,” Alfie pointed out.