She met Cynthia and asked her softly, "Is there any news?"
"News?" echoed Cynthia, as bright and brainless as sunshine.
"About poor Mr. Plovery? Have they found out who did it yet?"
"Oh!" Cynthia's golden ringlets jiggled as she shook her
249
head. "No. And Mrs. Pennyroyal says we ain't to talk about it. But what's all this I hear about you and Theo?"
"It's nothing. Just Boo-Boo's imagination."
"You're blushing, Wren! I knew you fancied him! I saw you talking to him that day at the pool, remember?"
Wren left Cynthia giggling and pressed on through the crowd, asking, "Would you care for a drink, sir? A canapé, madame?" and gathering up empty glasses and fragments of still emptier conversations.
"Just look what La Twisty is wearing!"
"You simply must meet Gloom, he's 50 amusing!"
"Have you read Bellman's latest? Quite brilliant! Some of the finest literature of our age is being written for the under-fives...."
Dusk deepened. Davina Twisty was persuading some friends and admirers to venture with her into Cloud 9's insanely complicated box-hedge maze. The band played "Golden Echoes" and "The Lunar Lullaby." Soon the moon would rise, and everyone would watch the fireworks before retiring to the Pavilion for dancing and more food. Wren, already exhausted, paused in a quiet part of the gardens near the deck plate's edge. It felt nice to be alone at last. She looked across the sea at the armored cities and thought how melancholy they looked, crouching there upon the dunes like the temples of a vanished race.
A hand crept onto her shoulder like a gray silk spider. Turning, she looked into the expressionless face of Nabisco Shkin.
"Enjoying the view, my dear?" he asked. "I hope none of His Worship's other guests has noticed you loafing here. The
250
Shkin Corporation has a reputation as a purveyor of only the most hardworking slaves."
Wren pulled away from him and tried to return to the light and laughter of the party but Shkin barred her way. What did he want with her? He must have been stalking her through the busy gardens, waiting for a moment when he could catch her alone. She felt cold and frightened. Raising her empty tray, she held it in front of her like a shield, but Shkin only laughed. She didn't like his laugh. She'd preferred it when he was silent and icy.
"Why would I harm you, child?" he asked. "I just want you to do a job for me, the simplest and smallest of jobs. Do you know where your new master keeps his private safe?"
Wren nodded.
"Good girl." Shkin held up a neat square of paper with a number written on it. "This is the combination. I'd like you to fetch me the Tin Book. I sent a friend for it yesterday, but I hear he met with an accident."
Wren lowered her tray, thinking of poor Mr. Plovery.
"Don't look so glum!" Shkin told her. "You've stolen it before. Young Fishcake told me all about it."
"I won't do it!" Wren said. "You can't make me!"
"Your poor father," said Shkin. He twirled the square of paper back into an inner pocket of his graphite-colored evening robe and shrugged faintly. "What a pity, after he came all this way to rescue you!"
Wren couldn't imagine what he meant--not until he reached into another pocket and brought out a bracelet, which he laid on the tray between them. By the light of lanterns in the nearby trees Wren recognized Dad's wedding
251
bracelet. She had known it all her life, that loop of red gold with the letters HS and TN entwined. But what was it doing on Cloud 9?
"It's a trick!" she said. "Fishcake must have described this to you, and you had a replica made...."
"Don't you think it's more likely that your dear daddy has come to Brighton to fetch you home?" asked Shkin. "He is a guest of the Shkin Corporation. If you fail in the task I have set you, he'll die. Rather slowly. So be a good girl and run up to Pennyroyal's office."
The gardens were falling quiet. Some of the guests were organizing a search party to look for Davina Twisty, who was lost in the maze. The others shushed them. Moonrise was only a few moments away. The thought of Dad so near made Wren start to cry. How had he come here? How had Shkin found him? And where was Mum? She reached for the bracelet, but Shkin's conjuror's hands whisked it away and set the square of paper in its place.
"Do this little thing for me," he soothed, "and you will be reunited. I'll send you both home to Vineland in one of my own ships."
Wren didn't believe that, but she believed the rest. Dad was in Shkin's power. If she didn't do as Shkin asked, he'd be killed. And the worst of it was, it was all her fault: If she hadn't taken that book in the first place, he would still be safe in Anchorage. So if stealing the book again was the only way to keep him safe a little longer, that was what she would have to do.
"But why me?" she asked. "You must know all sorts of people better at breaking into safes than me...."
252
"You should have more faith in yourself' said Shkin. "You are an accomplished burglar, from what I've heard. Besides, if you are caught, the crime cannot be connected to me. You were the one who brought the Tin Book here; Pennyroyal will believe that you were simply trying to retrieve it for yourself."
Wren picked up the paper. The darkness was growing deeper as her fellow slaves moved between the trees, snuffing out the lanterns, but the white square seemed to shine in her hand with a light of its own.
"All right," she said, her voice shrunk down to a whisper; then, as she put down the tray, "What is it? I ought to know. What is this Tin Book, and why does everybody want it?"
"Not your business," said Shkin, looking past her toward the horizon. "I can make a profit from it. What more reason do I need? Now go; you have work to do."
Wren went, running away between the trees as the sacred moon peeked over the horizon. For a few seconds, perfect silence settled over Brighton, for according to the old tradition, wishes made at moonrise on this sacred night were often granted by the Moon Goddess. Pennyroyal's guests were far too sophisticated to believe such fairy tales, of course, but they bowed their heads regardless, some with shrugs and smiles to show that they were just being ironic but were moved in spite of themselves, remembering the magical MoonFests of their childhood. They wished for love and happiness and yet more wealth, while down in the city Brighton's artists wished for fame, and her actors for long runs in successful plays, and on the underdecks their slaves and indentured laborers wished for their freedom. And then
253
the silence was ended by a single firework, then another, then a great broadside of rockets and bangers and a clamoring of gongs and bells and kitchen pans loud enough that the goddess herself might hear it as she strolled among her porcelain gardens.
Even if the Green Storm fleet had not already picked up the signal of Brighton's wireless beacon, they would have been able to home in on the fireworks leaping into the sky above the raft resort. Feathering their steering vanes, the warships swung toward their target, spreading out across the sky while their crews prepared rocket projectors and machine cannon, Tumbler bombs and flocks of raptors, and their fighter escorts, went prowling ahead.
In the belly of the Requiem Vortex, Grike checked on Oenone Zero and found her in her cabin, trying on a steel helmet that made her look even younger and less soldierly than before. Her cowardice perplexed him. He had been sure that she would try to attack the Stalker Fang before the fleet reached its target. Had she given up her plan? Perhaps; he had searched her cabin several times and found no sign of any weapon.
Sirens were hooting. The ship's companionways and passages were full of frightened Once-Borns and impassive battle-Stalkers hurrying to their posts. Grike made his way to the forward gondola and found his mistress there, ignoring the crew, staring out instead at the enormous moon.
"why are we here?" Grike asked.
The Stalker Fang's bronze death mask turned to stare at him. She had still told no one the reason for this expedition,
254
and Grike suspected that if any of the Once-Borns, even Naga, had asked her so bluntly, she would have torn his throat out with her claws for their impertinence. But she only stared at Grike, and then whispered, "Tell me, Mr. Grike, do you ever remember your former life? Your life as a Once-Born?"
"i do not even remember my life as a stalker," said Grike. (Although a memory flared up as he spoke: a young girl with a bloody face lying on a heap of old cork fishing floats. He squashed it quickly, like a man stamping on a flame.) "I remember nothing before dr. zero awakened me on the black island."
Fang turned away, looking out through the glass again, but he could see the reflection of her face, the odd marsh-gas flaring of her green eyes. "I remembered something once," she said. "Or I almost did. There was a young man I encountered at Rogues' Roost. Tom. When I saw him, I felt that I knew him. He was very handsome. Very kind. Anna Fang must have been fond of him. I am not Anna Fang, but when I looked at him I sensed ... oh, all sorts of intriguing feelings."
"we are the dead," said Grike, who was starting to grow uncomfortable. "we do not feel. we do not remember. we were built to kill. what use are memories?"
"Who knows what the first of our kind were built for, back in the Black Centuries?" asked the other Stalker. "My memories are what have brought us here, Mr. Grike. I made inquiries about this Tom. I wished to learn more about him, and perhaps to recapture those strange sensations. I found out that he and his companions had a connection with an ice city called Anchorage, so I sent to the Great Library of
255
Tienjing for books on Anchorage. They had only one: Wormwold's Historia Anchoragia. It told me nothing about Tom, but it was there that I first learned of the Tin Book and guessed what it contains.
"what IS the tin book?" asked Grike.
"The Tin Book?" The Stalker looked playfully at him, her head on one side, a finger to her lips. "The Tin Book is what we are here for, Mr. Grike."
Hester too had been waiting for the moon. Perched on a seat on the lower-tier promenade, she had whiled away the time by glancing through her copy of Predator's Gold, and what she had found there cheered her. It seemed to her that Pennyroyal had buried the truth beneath so many lies that nobody would ever be able to unearth it.
At moonrise, as the rowdy crowds flooded out of Brighton's underdecks to watch the fireworks, she shoved her way past them, pushing against the tide into the district of dank slave barracks and tenements called Mole's Combe. By the time she reached the foot of Shkin's tower, the streets around her were deserted except for the seagulls, which, startled from their roosts by the racket on the promenades, soared like white phantoms beneath the web of peeling girders overhead.
She had studied the Pepperpot earlier, and decided on a way in. Round on the sternward side, surrounded by bins and fat, snaky ducts, was a small back door made of rusty metal and studded with rivets like the hatch of a submarine. Above the door a spiffy brass security camera kept watch on visitors, but there were no other defenses; the Pepperpot had been
256
designed to keep people in, not out.
Hester approached cautiously, keeping to the shadows. Her heart beat fast. She imagined the blood rushing through her veins and arteries, filling her with her father's cold strength. She felt that both Wren and Tom were very close, and that soon they would all be together again, and happy. Smiling to herself behind her veil, she pulled the Schadenfreude out from inside her coat and waited until the next fusillade of fireworks, then shot the camera off its mountings.
She had just enough time to stuff the gun away before the door opened and a man came out and stood with his hands on his hips, peering up indignantly at the smoldering wreckage of the camera.
"Happy MoonFest!" called Hester.
The man turned. He looked surprised to see the veiled woman walking toward him, and even more surprised when she shoved a knife between his ribs. He died very quickly, and she heaved his body into the shadows behind the bins and went through the door, closing it softly behind her. She found herself in a corridor. Light and voices came from a small guardroom. She peeked in. There were three more men inside. One was stabbing irritably at the buttons beneath a circular screen that fizzed with static; the others were slumped, bored and uncomfortable, on office chairs, drinks in their hands, wishing they could be with their wives and their children at the celebrations.
Hester shot the one at the screen first, and killed the others as they sprang up, groping for their guns. She stood quiet for a time in the shadows, waiting for someone to
257
come. No one did. There were so many rockets and firecrackers being let off in the streets outside the Pepperpot tonight that a few extra bangs made no difference. She reloaded the Schadenfreude, noticing with pride that her hands hardly shook at all.
The Shkin Corporation was well organized, and she was glad of it. A framed plan on the guardroom wall showed her the layout of the place. She took a moment to memorize it; then, silent and sure of herself, she moved toward the slave pens. Two men stood watch outside a pair of heavy double doors. One lunged at Hester with some sort of electric cattle-prod thing, but she sidestepped him and stuck her knife in his back, then cut the throat of the other as he reached for the alarm bell. There was a ring of keys on the second one's belt, and it did not take her long to find the one she needed.
The slave pens were filled with soft breathing and the faint stirrings of caged things. As she grew used to the dark, she started to make out the cages ranged around the walls, and the faces staring out at her through the bars.
"Tom?" she called.
All around her, people were shifting and whispering. Some of the prisoners in the cages closest to the door could see the dead guards sprawled outside, and were reporting it to their neighbors.
"Who are you?" called a voice from one of the cages.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"Name's Krill."
"A Lost Boy?" Hester walked toward the voice. Soon she was close enough to see his eyes shining in the thin spill of light from the door she'd opened. He was watching the keys
258
she held, like a hungry dog watching a forkful of food. She jangled the keys softly, by way of encouragement, as she asked, "Is Wren here? Wren Natsworthy?"
"That Dry girl who was on the Autolycus?" asked Krill. "Who's asking?"
"The lady with the keys," said Hester.
She saw Krill's fair head bob in the darkness, nodding. "She was in a cage near me for a while, but they took her away."
"Why?"
"Don't know. Fishcake went too, soon after." (He paused to spit, as if he wanted to clean Fishcake's name out of his mouth. There were murmurs of anger and disgust from the other cages. Fishcake wasn't popular.) "Shkin's men told us he turned nark; betrayed Grimsby. Walks about in a uniform now like he's playing at soldiers. What happened to the girl I don't know. Sold, I expect."
"What about her father, Tom? He was taken today."
"Never heard of him. There's no Drys in here, lady. Just Lost Boys."
"Could he be in the holding cells on the middle tier?"
"Could be." Krill shifted thoughtfully. Around him, in the other pens, all the other captives were shifting too, listening, wary as animals. The ones who were close enough to see Hester never took their eyes off the keys. "There'll be more guards up there, though. You'll need something to distract them."
"Did you have anything particular in mind?" asked Hester. Krill grinned, and behind her veil Hester grinned too, because this was exactly what she had planned. She dropped
259
the keys into Krill's cage. "Play nicely" she said. As she ran toward the stairs, she could hear him scrabbling through the bunch of keys, trying each one in the lock on the door of his pen, and the voices of the Lost Boys, like rising surf, urging him on.
260
27 The Unsafe Safe
***
MAYOR PENNYROYAL HAD HAD the pav
ilion ballroom specially redecorated for the festival. The front wall had been replaced with a long row of French windows that opened onto the sundeck outside and let in the light of the sacred moon. Around the dance floor, swags and cascades of silvery fabric hung from every pillar and cornice, reflecting the Milky Way of tiny bulbs that swirled across the ink-blue ceiling. Spotlights illuminated a podium, where a small orchestra played. The walls were covered with priceless works of art: antique masterpieces by Strange and Nias hanging next to the latest snot paintings by Hoover Daley, master of the Expressionist Sneeze.
In a hive of hexagonal chambers opening off behind the main room were all manner of amusing diversions for the guests. In one was a replica of a "bouncy castle," a strange
261
inflatable fortification that Pennyroyal claimed had been a key feature of Ancient warfare, but that could also be used as a trampoline. In another a projector rattled, showing copies of copies of some of the fragments of film that had survived from before the Sixty Minute War. Armored knights rode through a burning wood, their shadows stretching up through the smoke; flying machines lifted into a tropical dawn; a little tramp walked down a dusty road; groundcars chased each other like tiny cities; a man dangled from a broken clock high above some enormous static settlement; and in soft, beautiful close-ups rose the dreaming faces of the screen goddesses.