The navigator (16 page)

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The car slowed down. A bullet struck the roof and ricocheted off. His father looked into the back, and Owen saw a small figure in a baby seat and knew that he was seeing himself. His father turned back to the wheel and the car sped out of the yard, leaving the Mortmain behind. A moment later Johnston and several other men sped after him in a truck, passing by the spot where the Mortmain had fallen without slowing.

The Mortmain. Somehow it had been in his father's possession, but he had lost it and now it was somewhere in Johnston's yard. Owen shut his eyes and tried to fix the spot in his mind. There was a pile of broken batteries and the hulk of a steel boat in a trailer to the left of the spot. He opened his eyes and recoiled in fear. It seemed that he was staring right into Johnston's eyes, which burned as they glared at him, the man's face filling the screen.

Terrified, Owen spun the handle until Johnston disappeared. He was about to stop searching, but something made him look at one more image, one that he wished he hadn't seen. Cati was standing on what seemed like an island. The wind tore at her hair. He couldn't see what she was looking at, but tears ran down her cheeks and her face was a mask of grief. Before he could focus in on her, the image started to slip away. Fearing that Johnston's face might come up again, Owen tore his gaze away from the eyepiece and pushed the handles back into place. Working quickly, but trying to remember the right sequence, he pulled the levers back into place. The periscope

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slid back into the ceiling and gradually the Skyward slowed and came to a halt.

Owen tried to leave things as he had found them. Dr. Diamond would know he had been there, of course, but perhaps not immediately. Moving quickly, he slipped outside and down the steps. He did not want to miss anything of what was happening at the Convoke.

At the bottom of the stairs he ran toward the door of the Starry. He couldn't be seen at the Convoke. He would climb to the little gallery that Cati had shown him, and for that he needed to go through the Starry.

He opened the door and slipped inside. The place was as he remembered it, quiet, as if the quiet had accumulated over centuries, the starlit glow of the ceiling throwing a gentle light on to those who slept on below. Owen had a strange feeling that he was not alone in the place, or at least that he was not the only person awake in the Starry.

He crept quietly forward until he reached the middle of the floor. At the other end he saw a woman bending over one of the beds. Creeping closer, Owen saw that it was Pieta. She was standing over a boy and a girl. The boy was about ten years old and the girl was perhaps fourteen. Pieta was gently brushing the girl's hair. Both children were rosy-cheeked and peaceful but they showed no sign of waking. It was a private moment and Owen tried to slip away, but as he did so, the magno gun hanging forgotten over his shoulder clanked against an empty bed. Pieta's head snapped round.

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"Who is it?" she said in a low, dangerous voice. "Who is there?"

"It's me, Owen," he said, feeling unaccountably guilty.

"What are you doing here?"

"I was on my way to ..." He hesitated, but something told him that it would not be a good idea to lie to Pieta. "I was on my way up to the little balcony so that I could watch the Convoke without being seen."

"Without being seen," she said softly, and he thought he sensed a bleak smile in the darkness. "Come here." Owen walked over until he was standing beside Pieta. "Look at me."

Owen's eyes met hers. They were green and fathomless. She held his gaze for a moment, then her eyes dropped away to the two children. They had the same white skin and fine bone structure as their mother.

"You are going to spy on the Convoke?"

"I'm not a spy!" he said hotly.

"No?" she said. "I suppose you're not. You just don't want them to stare at you, not knowing whether you are bringing good or evil to them." Owen nodded dumbly.

"And sometimes it's hard to know your own heart," she continued, "and whether you are a good person or a bad person." Her voice had dropped and it seemed as if she was talking to herself. For a moment the fierce warrior dropped away and she just seemed like a mother gazing on her sleeping children with love in her eyes.

Without thinking, and not really understanding what he was doing, Owen reached out and placed the palm of

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each hand on the forehead of each child. Pieta watched him. There was a question in her eyes, but she didn't try to stop him. He took his hands away and stood up. He waited for her to say something, but those strange green eyes merely studied him.

Owen turned away from her. He felt very tired. He started to walk away but stumbled slightly. Pieta's hand caught his elbow. He recovered his balance and continued to walk toward the stairwell leading to the little balcony. He could feel her eyes on his back all the way.

Owen took the stairs two at a time and his legs were aching by the time he ducked through the little door and rolled out onto the balcony. He could tell straightaway that the Convoke was tense. Samual faced the others. Chancellor looked troubled, as did Contessa. The Sub-Commandant's face was harder to read.

"Look what damage they did in one attack," Samual was saying. "They nearly overran us. We can't hold out. Now is the time, when we hold a little of the upper hand, to seek terms."

"So that Johnston can put us back to Sleep, and then kill us where we lie? Is that what you're saying, Samual?" said Contessa softly.

"The offer of Sleep was a negotiating ploy! " Samual said. "We can force Johnston to improve his offer, give guarantees of our safety."

There was a murmur of approval from the crowd. Owen looked at them for the first time. Many of them were injured, some of them still wearing bloodstained

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clothing. They looked tired and frightened. He could see that the prospect of another attack filled them with dread.

"I'm not letting no Harsh put me to sleep, I do tell you that for nothing!" Wesley had been standing quietly in the crowd but now he strode forward.

"Me neither," Cati said bravely, her cheeks reddening as people turned to stare.

Samual snorted. "This is what I mean. We can't turn back an attack with a half-dressed boy and a skinny girl."

The Sub-Commandant's cool stare fell on him. "No matter how courageous," Samual added.

"I'm with the youngsters." Rutgar was gruff. "My men and women will stand as long as there is breath in them!" The words were brave, Owen thought, but Rut-gar's eyes were red-rimmed and there was a bloodstained bandage on his head.

"These are issues that need to be discussed," Chancellor said. "We cannot decide them overnight. Perhaps the Mortmain can be found."

"The Mortmain should never have been lost ... or stolen," said Samual slyly.

"It was never stolen!" Cati cried. "And the only reason it was lost was because he was trying to save--" She was interrupted by a loud bang followed by an alarming fizzing noise coming from the direction of Dr. Diamond's leather baseball cap. Dr. Diamond took the cap off. Wisps of smoke rose from it.

"Direction finder," he mumbled. "Prototype ... needs work."

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"I think we should end the Convoke," the Sub-Commandant said. "We all need food and rest. It will take Johnston a few days to regroup, at any rate."

Chancellor nodded in agreement. Samual didn't say anything but he tilted his head at Cati and seemed to study her. The malfunctioning baseball cap had stopped Cati saying too much about what Owen had seen ... if indeed it had been a malfunction. But Samual knew now that she had information about the Mortmain. Owen rolled off the balcony and ran down the stairs. He wanted to be well clear of the Workhouse before the Convoke emerged. He was worried about what he had seen. Samual wanted them to come to terms with Johnston and at least some of the people backed him. The Mortmain had to be found if the Workhouse and its Re-sisters were not to be surrendered. There was no sign of Pieta in the Starry and he ran lightly through it, not wishing to feel sleepy, particularly now.

Outside it was dark and Owen was surprised that he had spent so much time watching the Convoke. The night air made him shiver. It was much colder suddenly. He made his way back to the Den without meeting anyone. There he packed some food he had set aside, slightly stale bread and a little pie. On the bed lay a coat. Someone had been here. He picked it up. It was made out of leather, lined with some kind of silky fleece. It had a hood like a parka, lined as well. It was heavy and didn't smell as good as it might have done, but he remembered the cold outside

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and slipped it on. Owen stood in the middle of the Den and looked around. He wondered if he would ever see it again. He put the bag containing the food over his shoulder and lifted the magno gun. He walked through the door and out onto the path, where he turned toward the river. As he did so a single snowflake touched his face. He shivered and pulled the coat closer around him.

There was a different quality to the cold, Owen thought, that told you that it was more than just a dip in temperature, that it was here to stay.

He stayed clear of the log bridge. He knew it would be guarded. But he thought there was another way across the river, a little way downstream toward the harbor. Using the debris of the attack for cover, he skirted the Resister defenses, coming so close he could hear them talking quietly.

After ten minutes' walk, most of it bent double or on his hands and knees so that his back ached, he arrived at the place he had seen from the Nab. A tall pine tree had been struck by the magno cannon at ground level. The tree hadn't fallen, but it leaned over the river at an improbable angle and the very tip of it hung over the opposite bank. He didn't know how he was going to get down from it, but at least he would be on the other side. Pulling the parka tightly around him, he started to climb.

The tree didn't feel at all secure. If he moved too fast, it swayed from side to side and up and down, so he

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felt seasick. And once, when he got to the middle, he felt the roots shift and the whole tree drop by several meters. Fear welled in his stomach as he saw the black water below. Owen clung to the tree trunk for several minutes before he was able to force himself onward. As the tree narrowed toward the top, it became harder to climb until in the end he reached a point where he could go no farther without his weight snapping the slender trunk. Yet he was still about seven meters in the air, unsure as to whether there was water beneath him or the dry land of the opposite bank.

Owen hung there quietly, trying not to look at the water and scanning the bank for signs of Johnston's men. He could see no one, nor had he seen anything from the Nab. They'd retreated right back as far as the area around the scrapyard. Owen looked down. If he let go, he might just land on the bank. But then again he might land in the water. And if he landed on the bank from the height he was at, he might break a leg or an arm and then he'd be helpless. The tree had been a bad idea all along. There was no way he could get to the opposite bank unseen. With a sigh he started to inch back until, with a terrifying creak, the roots let go.

Owen seemed to be in the air for ages, the ground rushing up toward him. Long enough for him to see that he was going to hit the ground and not the water. Long enough for him to realize, with a blinding flash, that he was scared of the water not because he was Harsh

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but because he had come close to drowning as a baby. "Idiot," he muttered to himself, just as the the frozen, rock-hard soil of the bank rushed up and met him. And then he was aware of nothing more.

At the moment Owen lost consciousness, something else happened. In the warm dark of the Starry there was a stirring. Slow at first, an eyelid flickering, a change in the slow breathing of one who had Slept for perhaps hundreds of years. And then something more definite. A leg moving, a hand opening--a girl's hand. Then eyes opening--the same strange green eyes as those of Pieta, first one pair and then another. And then the slender girl who had been sleeping under her mother's watchful gaze that morning sat up, stretched, yawned, and turned to smile at her brother as he too stirred and yawned.

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Owen opened his eyes. He was lying on his back staring up at the night sky and his first thought was that he had never seen so many stars nor seen them so clearly, each of them sharply defined and seeming to rain light down on him. His head was pounding and his limbs were aching and he felt as if he was lying on a very springy bed. But he knew that he couldn't be because it was freezing cold. He turned over onto his side, moving carefully, and realized that the springy bed was in fact the branches of a pine tree--and then it came back to him, how the tree had fallen and he had fallen with it. The pine branches had cushioned his fall.

Very carefully Owen got to his feet. His head felt like

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somebody had hit it with a hammer, his right arm was so bruised he could barely move it, and it took a few minutes to get his legs working properly again, but he was across the river and that was the important thing. He stepped out of the tangle of branches and tried to get his bearings. Most of the fields that had been here had turned to dense forest, but he had a good idea of how to get to Johnston's yard, providing he didn't run into any of Johnston's men on the way. Owen made his way toward the edge of the trees. As he did so, he heard a soft whirring sound in the air high above his head. He threw himself facedown and lay as still as he could until it had faded into the distance. He didn't know if the Planemen could see in the dark, but he didn't want to take any chances. Cautiously, he got to his feet and slipped soundlessly into the forest.

Cati didn't know what to do with herself. She had gone up to the Nab and got under Dr. Diamond's feet. He had sent her to the kitchen to get some flour for him, but she knew that he was really trying to get rid of her. She hung about the kitchen until Contessa told her that the kitchen was a place for working, not mooching, and there were injured fighters who needed to be tended to if she really wanted something to do. Cati was miserable without Owen and she knew that she should go to the Den and make things better. But that would mean saying she was wrong, and Cati did not like saying she was wrong. Particularly when she knew she was right.