Roil (15 page)

October Fifteen

While, I continue to doubt the veracity of Deighton, Elder or Younger, their history too epic to ever be history, I have been coming around to A
’
s way of thinking. There must indeed be Engines of the World, though they would be unlike any engines that we understand.

I keep coming across references to Lodes. Points along which the Engine
’
s powers are expressed. Tate it would appear is built upon one, which explains at least the ease with which our machinery produces ice. It was for a very good reason that Tate was built just where it is, or why many of our devices were so easily constructed.

How limited are our resources, when it comes to the past. The books we have are all we have. We lack the opportunity to engage in the deeper tasks, of fieldwork, of cross-referencing ideas with other Masters of the Past. As the years progress, our grip on history grows ever more hypothetical, so does our grip on current events.

Truly, and admitting it has been entirely forced upon us, Tate is the most parochial of metropolises.

I would predict anarchy to the north. Mirrlees and Chapman swollen with refugees, the Far North getting its share as well. Interesting times no doubt.

But who can tell? We have received no communication from the North in over twenty years.

October Seventeen

No time for musing, today. The I-Bombs are to be loaded into truck five. I had hoped to take the
Melody Amiss
out into the field. Even I am amazed at that little vehicle. However, she has little storage capacity.

Must make sure I forbid Margaret to drive her. It is the sort of thing she would do. Roil take her, but she
’
s a determined one. It was all we could do to talk her out of joining the Sweepers. She would have made a fine one, of that I am certain, but I could not bear to lose her to that peril.

These bombs must work.

October Eighteen – Day One

We have discarded the prescribed safety of Tate for the awfulness of night. There is a lot of activity to the east of Mechanism Highway. Quarg Hounds and Endyms are massing, though they were disinterested in us I
’
m sure the city is a draw to them. For all that it is ice it is heat also. Indeed we passed more Roilings than I have seen for some time, which suggests another population explosion
–
a further urgency is added.

Though looking back at our well-built city, walled and clockwork guarded, one of the Four just finished firing, Sweepers
’
gliders circling the Vents, I am in no doubt that Margaret is safe. It is beyond me to imagine anything less than one of the Vastkind could batter down those stone walls.

October Nineteen – Day Two

There is a stark beauty to this landscape and, in places, an intimidating tranquillity that even our engines are unable to destroy. Though we have lived in the Roil for twenty years there is far too much that we do not understand. How can we when our field of inquiry is so narrow?

One question that has left me in a quandary all these years is how does the Roil retain its heat? By all rights things should be cooler. The Roil blocks out the sun. Yet all of its functions are exothermic in nature. The answer lies in the Roil spores I suspect.

In the South the temperature rises dramatically, and in the North there is a similar though less extreme rise.

Though it is hard to credit it, we are actually in a cooler pocket of the Roil.

(This was followed by a series of calculations that Margaret skipped over)

October Twenty – Day Three

We tested the I-Bomb today and it worked as planned, an astonishing thing in itself. A single weapon, low yield, freed a zone of Roil over eighteen miles in diameter. This is truly our most potent weapon, scary in its effectiveness.

The greatest test of all, though, is just how to use it most effectively. Airships would lend themselves to the task, or better yet, the Iron Wings that A has designed. A dozen of them, perhaps, or even more, dropping them in tandem. It would be swift.

Today we are triumphant, I can confidently predict an end to the Roil threat, by the close of the decade.

Margaret, you will see the sun again.

October 21 Day Four

Trucks One and Three are missing. This morning my wife led a perimeter patrol and they did not return. We have heard no word, nor have any drones arrived. Ah, my darling Arabella, where have you gone?

What is more disturbing is that they took our I-Bombs with them. This makes no sense.

After yesterday
’
s success, today sees absolute failure. Something has taken my wife and the weaponry.

Day Five

This has been the worst day of my life. From dizzying heights to such a bitter nadir, as though I were an addict of Carnival, if their transitions could ever be as cruel as this.

Yesterday, I thought my wife lost. Today she has come back, but she has not returned as I remember her. She is different, some feverish infection has its hold over her. And, were it not for our judicious use of coolants we too would have been infected.

The infection has as its vector a substance that she referred to, in one of her more lucid moments, as Witmoths. It is a sublimate of the Roil spores almost, though potent and, unlike the spores, directly acting upon the human consciousness. Had I not been as swift, pulling away from a burst of the creatures sprung from my wife
’
s lips I would have known its effects far too intimately.

I have her in quarantine, I dare not return with her to Tate, though she has begged it of me...
because
she has begged it of me. She calls in the dark for Margaret. The familial ties are strong in this contagion, the desire to extend it to the immediate family. She pants our names, demanding that I honour my love. Really, to honour it would be to fire a bullet into her skull.

Oh, my wife. Oh, my daughter. The temperature of the cabin is an agony to her, but one I would not reduce. It is, I believe, our only insurance against the contagion that she contains. At times she is lucid, but then desperate rages grip her. She is possessed with a violence I have never seen before, and it terrifies me.

Calvin tried to launch a drone today, but its message pod was filled with Witmoths it infected him, through his mouth and nose and he was lost to us. He tried to free her, tried to contaminate the rest of us.

His cold body lies in carriage number eight.

We had no choice but to kill him – that
’
s what I keep telling myself. I can kill Calvin, while my own wife sits bound in the refrigerated research cabin, cursing all of us.

I cannot think clearly. They look to my lead, and I cannot think.

Where is truck number three?

Day Seven

They came today, and all I can remember is the terror of it.

The raid was methodical and swift. They knew our routines, but that should have come as no surprise, I discovered at last where truck three disappeared. Better if it had been destroyed. Everyone is lost to me, luck if you could call it that led to my escape.

I will not forget the howls of my colleagues: their sudden transformation from ally to enemy. I was near enough to car number four. No Witmoths found me out, but it does not matter. There is only one of me.

They freed her, and the city will fall. The things I have seen. Things that were once men and women, and some of them are old, made, years ago. Here lies the answer to the Walkers. Here is why they walked.

Will drive back to Tate, but I do not expect to make it.

Day
Nine
Ten

My darling, Margaret. I saw you today, but you did not see me. I have learnt of your passage north, and hope that these notes reach you. The city, as you no doubt suspect, is lost utterly.

We were betrayed, my child. But it is my hope to end that betrayal here. The I-Bombs I have gathered should clear away this section of the Roil and, hopefully, the contagion. But in truth I cannot say how far it has spread. Be careful, my dear. Keep your cold suit charged.

There is no time left. The drone is set to follow the road, may it find you.

I love you, my dear. Your mother loved you, too. If I could do but one thing, it would be to ensure that you were not alone. If only I could aid you on your way. But that is just a dream. My only comfort is that we never completed our Iron Wings. Imagine those things at the Roil
’
s command.

Be careful, and swift. They
’
ll be coming for you. She
’
ll be wanting you. Trust no one. There is no one left to trust.

Margaret closed the book and wept. What had her mother become? And her father, was he likewise bonded to the Roil?

She thought of her father, of him being all by himself, deserted by his daughter; the Roil alone knowing what had become of his wife.

Poor father. She hated herself for it, but she wished him dead. And her mother, too.

The engine had cooled. She cautiously engaged the ignition and the
Melody Amiss
rumbled back into life, its engine once again running smoothly. Margaret released her breath.

She had many miles to go and she did not expect to stop before she saw daylight. Slowly, slowly she followed the highway, up and over the mountain range,

Death, welcome as it may have been, was no longer in her heart. Unless it were the death that she might bring. The Roil had taken her city and destroyed her family. She would have vengeance, she must.

Exile can be good. Exile can focus the mind. We were in exile, but we were also free. Sometimes I wish Buchan had understood that better than he did.

To David, their stay in Uhlton had taken on the reality of a dream. Since they had arrived he had bathed, been given fresh clothes and now dinner in a hall crowded with what Mr Buchan had described as his executive staff. To David’s way of thinking they didn’t look at all like executive staff. Many wore guns, several bore lumpy old scars and eye patches. Even Mr Buchan was missing an ear.

Mr Buchan was one of the largest men, David had ever seen, David had been expecting that, but it was one thing to hear about something another to see it. But for all his size he did not seem ill or slovenly, in fact, he moved and spoke with an energy that David found exhausting. He roared and bellowed and punctuated exclamations with a huge roast leg of lamb that he shook in the air as though it were a mere chicken bone.

The hall in which they ate was cavernous and lit by hundreds of candles – so that the high ceiling was dim with dull smoke – and the table along which they all sat ran almost the entire length of it. The table had been piled high with food, most of which had gone into either Cadell’s or Mr Buchan’s stomach, both men truly had prodigious appetites, and David was reminded of his dream at the Lode: Cadell filling his mouth with the frozen corpses of birds.

Mr Whig sat to David’s right, and Cadell was across the table from him as quiet as he had ever seen him. Mr Buchan had been incredibly polite to David, and everyone kept saying how pleased they were to meet him at last and how sorry they were to have heard about his father.

But now, bathed and fed, it was all taking on the qualities of a dream. David struggled to keep his eyes open: a battle he was fast losing.

Unfortunately he suspected that sleep was still a long way off.

‘What is all this?’ he had asked at one stage, never expecting anyone to listen, but Mr Buchan waved for silence.

“David, dear Mr Milde,” he said throatily. “Think of us as the last bastion of the Confluence Party, outside of Hardacre. And certainly the last with any hope of affecting the destruction of the Roil.” He raised his glass. “To the Engine.”

The whole table took up the toast. “To the Engine.”

David glanced over at Cadell. He didn’t look very happy, in fact quite the opposite. Cadell glowered at Buchan, and the big man winked and blew him a kiss.

At last Mr Buchan reached into his elegant vest, patterned like a peacock’s tail, and pulled out a big pocket watch dwarfed by his massive hands so that it looked like some miniaturists’ fancy.

“Gentlemen, it is late and there is still much to do. Not to mention our exodus in two days. I bid you all good night.” His eyes flicked to Cadell. “Dare you brave my parlour, Mr Fly.”

Cadell’s expression was unreadable. “If we must,” he said quietly.

Mr Buchan nodded it was so and rose from the table like some huge beast breaking the surface of a primordial lake. In one movement, he pulled the napkin from around his throat – a napkin that for all his eating and food punctuating was spotless – folded it neatly and slipped it back into a silver napkin ring.

At that signal the hall quickly emptied. Half a dozen people nodding at David and wishing him the best and how pleased they were to finally meet such an upstanding young gentleman.

Then all but David, Cadell, Mr Buchan and Mr Whig remained.

“Gentlemen,” Buchan said, rubbing his hands together enthusiastically. “If you would follow me.”

On the rare occasions David needed to use the words “richly appointed”, he was merely trying to describe something like this. Mr Buchan’s parlour was the most “richly appointed” room David had ever seen.

Big comfortable chairs covered in plump cushions, lush wall hangings with scenes from history – famous battles and orators speaking – and, above it all, painted in glittering gold and stretching across the ceiling was a Vermatisaur, its many, many eyes rubies, its scales highlighted by diamonds.

Mr Buchan decanted a bottle of sherry and poured everyone a drink.

Mr Whig shut the door behind them and leant on a chair that faced a fireplace so clean that David suspected it had not been used in years.

There was a wooden writing desk and a broad backed wooden chair at the other end of the parlour. A tall ream of paper sat neatly on the edge of the desk, a blue glass paperweight a globe depicting Shale, the single continent prominent, rested upon it. David stared at the manuscript with interest and Mr Buchan caught his gaze.

“My Magnum Opus,” he said. “A history of the Confluents, partly apocryphal, particularly the material regarding Oscar the Fishmonger, which is appropriate for such a party such as ours don’t you think?I intend writing the last chapter once all this is done. Once I know how this turns out.”

Mr Buchan waved his glass of sherry in the direction of the desk, whilst his gaze settled upon Cadell.

“Many was the time I sat at that desk in Chapman’s Tower facing an even harder task than history. Writing letter after letter, each more hopeless than the last, and you never came. I begged you, implored and cajoled, and I do not do those things, and still you did not come and now. And now. Here you are. A little late by my reckoning, wouldn’t you agree, John?”

Cadell’s face wrinkled. “Well, I am here now.”

Buchan clenched his free hand into a fist and shook it in Cadell’s face. “How dare you? How dare you? I lost good men and women to this fight of ours. I have watched my party fail. But for mere chance leavened with paranoia, both Whig and I would have died in Stade’s attack. But we survived and with us hope, though even that has soured this last year. Our heroism, Medicine’s heroism, Warwick’s life, all of it has come to naught. I have seen my world come undone and I have not ignored it. But there is nothing that I can do.”

“And what do you think I can?”

“Do you know we even sent an expedition North, flew directly there.”

“You did what!” Cadell said. “An expedition to Tearwin Meet. That is folly. Absolute folly.”

“Desperation is a potent engine,” Mr Buchan said significantly. “It was an expedition equipped with the latest technologies, and some of the brightest people my city has ever produced, intellectuals of the calibre of the Penns. Not one of them returned, they crossed the wall and then we lost contact. Things are bad, Cadell.”

Cadell snorted. “And you think I don’t know that. Me who numbers in years more than all your cabinet’s ages combined. It is bad, and it will get much worse. It
will
get much worse and night will fall. How dare you? You, who has not seen what I have seen. You, who does not know the cost of what you ask.

“Why do you think that Stade does what he does? He fears that path, almost as much as I. You released me, but I did not ask to be released. How dare
you
rage at me?”

Mr Buchan stabbed a finger in the air, his big face reddened and his jowls shook. “I dare because I see what is happening now. I see the Roil growing. And we know enough of the restraints upon you, and the reasons for them.”

Cadell snarled. “Greater cities than you will ever know have fallen, greater civilisations have been destroyed in the cure. My world was wiped clean, and this life, this cage, and these hungers are my curse. The Engine is a cruel saviour, Mr Buchan. Cruel and cold. When you deal with it, you deal with a servant of death. There are no degrees in this, only a different scouring, and the slimmest most terrible of hopes.”

“But they are all we have! We let you out, we let the monster out because it is all we have.”

Cadell hung his head as though he could not face his accuser, defeated at last. “That they are.”

Mr Buchan was not satisfied, his face darkened. “And how could it be otherwise? Nine metropolises have fallen and three remain, though one has but weeks left to it. We are an obstinate people, Cadell. Why, the festival is still being held in Chapman. Tate fell because it was too proud to seek assistance. Mcmahon, pinnacle of everything that this world has achieved since yours tumbled, armed itself to the teeth and it fell faster than the lot of them.” He sat down, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “And where were you? Where were you when all those people died? Where were you when the darkness smothered the refugees, when Endyms and Vermatisaurs tore Aerokin screaming from the sky?”

“You know where I was, where all the Old Men were. And then it took a long time to sate my hungers, to end my madness and face my fears.”

“Bah, you’ve made your fears a certainty.”

“Enough!” Mr Whig raised his hands pleadingly. “There are no certainties, Buchan,” he said. “Perhaps if the cities had banded together, instead of breaking apart we could have dealt with this threat. But they did not. The Engine is a last hope, but it was not the only one.”

“It is now,” Buchan said. “It is now.”