A Darkling Plain (9 page)

The clerk thought that Ms. Morchard had bought her ship in the Traction City of Helsinki, and when Tom slipped a golden sovereign under the cover of the ledger, he suddenly recalled that she had purchased her at Unthank's airship yard there. But where she had come from before that, where she had found the money for an airship, and what precisely her business was, he did not know; and, alas, old Mr. Unthank and all his records had been destroyed ten years ago when one of his apprentices lit a cigar inside the envelope of an

unexpectedly leaky Cosgrove Cloudberry. ("You can still see the scorch marks along the edges of Helsinki air harbor," the clerk said helpfully, as if he hoped it might earn him another sovereign, but it didn't.)

Outside his little office, the High Street was starting to come to life, and stallholders were rolling up their shutters and laying out trays of vegetables and fruit, flowers, cheeses, and bolts of cloth. Watching them, Tom recalled following Anna Fang past these same stalls on a honey-colored evening twenty years before. It had been his first visit to Airhaven. He remembered how Hester had slunk along beside him, hiding herself from the gaze of passersby behind her upraised hand....

"Oh, Gods!" said Wren, stepping out of the harbor office behind him and pointing to someone on a nearby quay. "Look who it is!"

For an instant, confused by his memories, Tom thought that it might be Hester come to find them. He felt strangely disappointed when he saw a shapely aviatrix in a pink leather flying suit.

Wren was jumping excitedly up and down and calling, "Ms. Twombley! Ms. Twombley!"

The aviatrix, who had been deep in conversation with some of her comrades, looked around in surprise, then strode gracefully across the quay to find out who was hailing her with such enthusiasm. "It's Orla Twombley," Wren told her father. "She used to work for Brighton." And as the aviatrix drew nearer, her puzzled frown changed into a smile of recognition. She and Wren had not known each other well, but each was glad to find that the other had come safely

out of the battle on Cloud 9.

"It's Wren, isn't it?" Ms. Twombley asked, and took Wren's hands in hers. "The little slave girl from the Pavilion? I had imagined you dead, or captured by the Storm. How good to see you safe and well! And this fine gentleman is your husband, I suppose?"

"Father," said Tom, going bright red. "I'm Wren's father."

"And wasn't I always thinking Wren was one of those Lost Girls!" cried Ms. Twombley, astonished. "A poor motherless orphan from away out in the western sea somewhere ..."

"Motherless, but not fatherless," said Wren. "It's a long story. But I am glad to see you so well, Ms. Twombley. I thought you'd been shot down...."

"That was a bad night, to be sure," the aviatrix admitted, and shook her head at the memory of the dogfights that had raged around Cloud 9. "But it'd take a lot more than a few Stalker birds and poxy old Fox Spirits to bring down my
Combat Wombat.
I re-formed the Flying Ferrets. We work for Adlai Browne, lord mayor of Manchester. He's bringing his city up to the line, and he sent us ahead as his advance guard."

Wren nodded. They had passed Manchester a week before, a huge, grimy city lumbering southeastward, bristling with cranes that had been busy fitting shiny new plates of antirocket armor over its upper tiers.

"But what has brought you here?" asked Orla Twombley. She looked expectantly at Tom, but Tom said nothing. He had been wondering if those had been some of Ms. Twombley's flying machines that had cut up the
Jenny Haniver
on her approach, and whether he should complain

to her about them, but Ms. Twombley was so beautiful that he couldn't quite bring himself to.

Wren jumped in quickly. "We've come looking for an old friend of Dad's. She calls herself Cruwys Morchard. You don't know of her, I suppose?"

"The archaeologist?" Orla Twombley nodded. "I saw her once at the Pavilion, in Brighton. She used to buy Old Tech from Pennyroyal. In fact, I think they were supposed to have been an item at one time--but then, Pennyroyal's name has been linked with so many ladies. Even with me!"

"But I thought that you and Professor Pennyroyal were--" said Wren.

"Oh, only in his wife's imagination, and in the gossip pages of the
Brighton Palimpsest."
Orla Twombley laughed. "I just flirted with the old rogue a little, to make sure he'd renew the Ferrets' contract. Mind you, when I heard how brave he'd been that night, I almost wished I
had
been his lover. Who could have thought that an old relic like Pennyroyal could outwit the Stalker Fang."

Wren laughed. "Is that what people say he did?"

"Haven't you heard of it?" cried Orla Twombley, as if Wren had confessed to not knowing that the world was round, or that high-collared flying suits were out of fashion. "It has been the talk of the season out here on the line! Isn't Professor Pennyroyal the great hero of the world? And has he not been dining out on the stories of his exploits aboard all the Traktionstadts?"

"He's here?" cried Tom.

"Aboard Murnau at this very instant," the aviatrix confirmed. "I know--you must ask him about your friend Cruwys

Morchard! He is sure to know all about her! If I know him, he'll be having breakfast now at Moon's, down on Murnau's second tier."

"Oh, yes, Dad!" said Wren cheerfully. "Come on, let's find him, and ask!"

Tom put a hand to his chest, to the wound that Pennyroyal's bullet had made. He didn't want to go and have breakfast with the man who had shot him. And yet Pennyroyal had behaved decently enough aboard Kom Ombo, and now that he thought about it, he half recalled Pennyroyal telling him a story once about an aviatrix he knew who had ventured inside the wreck of London. Could her name have been Cruwys Morchard?

"I'll take you to see him myself," said Orla Twombley, and it was settled. She led them both away toward the center of Airhaven, where balloon taxis were waiting to ferry people to the towns and cities below.

As their taxi sank toward Murnau, Wren prattled excitedly about the exploits of the Flying Ferrets and how their midgelike flying machines had hurled themselves at giant air destroyers over Brighton. But Tom heard none of it. He was too busy thinking about the mystery of Clytie Potts. Where was her airship's home port? Why was she buying Old Tech and medical supplies? Why livestock?

An answer occurred to him as he pondered what the clerk had just told him. It was a wild, unlikely sort of answer, and he didn't quite dare to believe it, for he was afraid it might have more to do with his own nostalgic longing for London than with a cool assessment of the facts. He must wait and see what Pennyroyal knew, he

decided. Perhaps Pennyroyal would remember something about the
Archaeopteryx
and her mistress that would prove Tom's theory, one way or the other.

He found that he was quite looking forward to meeting his murderer again.

***

THE TAXI SET DOWN on a platform outside an entry port in Murnau's armor, where there were a lot of guards and questions. The guards were polite enough, but reluctant to let dubious-looking characters like Tom and Wren up to Tier Two even when Orla Twombley promised that she would vouch for them, and showed the guards the ornamental sword she'd been presented with for shooting down three of the Green Storm's destroyers at the Battle of the Bay of Bengal. At last, exasperated, she said, "They are old, old friends of Professor Nimrod Pennyroyal!" and that was enough; the guards stopped being merely polite and became quite friendly; one of them put through a telephone call to his commander, and a minute later Tom, Wren, and Ms. Twombley were aboard an upbound elevator.

In these days of peace Murnau had taken to opening the

shutters in its armor during the daylight hours, to let the sunlight in. Even so, Tier Two felt gloomy. Many and many a time on their way from the elevator station, Tom and Wren passed empty places where whole streets had been collapsed by rockets and flying bombs. The buildings that still stood had Xs of tape across their windowpanes, giving them the look of drunks in comic strips. On every square inch of wall there were posters and stenciled slogans, and you did not have to speak New German to understand that they were urging the young men of Murnau to volunteer for the Abwehrtruppe, Murnau's military. Most of the young men Wren could see had taken their advice and were dressed in smart midnight-blue uniforms. The few who weren't, those who were missing an arm or a leg, or half their face, or who were being pushed along in wheelchairs, all wore medals to show that they had done their bit against the Storm. A lot of the young women were uniformed too, but not so magnificently as the men. Orla Twombley said, "Murnau women are not allowed to fight, poor dears. They play their part by working in the factories and the engine district while their menfolk crew the guns."

They crossed a square called Walter Moers Platz, heading for the tall, narrow cafe named Moon's. A shutter had been opened in the city's armored cowling a few streets away, letting in the bright spring sunshine, but it came too late for the trees and grasses in the little park at the center of the square, which were all dead and brown and withered after years in the shade. Through the bare branches Wren caught glimpses of silent fountains and a rusting bandstand. She thought this the saddest city she had ever been to.

But when she followed Orla Twombley through the front door of Moon's, it was as if she had stepped out of Murnau and into another city altogether. The café's scuffed and mismatched furniture looked faintly arty, and the walls were covered with paintings and drawings and photographs of people having fun. It reminded Wren of Brighton, and the resemblance was deliberate. There was a generation of young people aboard Murnau who had lived all their lives with war and duty. They had heard about the sort of freedom people enjoyed on other cities and were determined to taste it for themselves. And so they came to Moon's: the artists and the authors and the poets and the young men on leave from the Abwehrtruppe who dreamed of being artists and authors and poets, and they did their very best to be Romantic and Bohemian.

They weren't very good at it, of course. There was something too stiff about the careless poses they struck in Moon's tatty old leather armchairs. Their casual, baggy clothes were too well pressed, and their too-long hair was always neatly combed. The few real artists among them, like the painter Skoda Geist, they found rather scary. So when Nimrod Pennyroyal had arrived on Murnau, they had welcomed him eagerly. Here was a man who had made his fortune by having highly Romantic adventures and writing books about them, and who had once been mayor of Brighton, that most artistic of cities. Yet unlike Geist he never laughed at them, or mocked their poems and paintings; quite the contrary, he was always ready to praise their little efforts, and happy to let them buy him drinks and meals.

He was in the middle of an enormous breakfast when

Tom and Wren walked in on him. Quite literally in the middle of it, for the couch he sat on, in an upstairs room, was surrounded on all sides by small tables laden with rolls and cooked meats, fruit, croissants, algae waffles, fried eggs and mushrooms, toast, kedgeree, omelettes, jam, and cheese. A silver coffeepot sent curlicues of steam up into the play of sunbeams from the taped-over windows, and all around, packed onto other couches or sitting rather daringly on the floor, artistic young Murnauers listened as he described the book he was at work on.

"... I have just reached the bit where I faced that dreadful Stalker Fang," he explained, through a mouthful of moss loaf. "Rather a painful episode to put on paper, for I don't mind admitting that I was scared. I quaked! I quivered! I never
planned
to fight her, you understand--I do not mean to set myself up as some sort of hero. No, I came on her by accident while I hurried through the gardens in search of a way to escape from the Storm...."

His audience nodded eagerly. Some of them had served in Murnau's skirt forts and faced Stalkers themselves, and most recalled the dreadful battles of the year '14, when Green Storm airships had landed squads of the Resurrected on Murnau's upper tiers. They all wanted to hear how this valiant old gentleman had managed to overcome the most terrible Stalker of them all.

But Pennyroyal, for once, seemed lost for words. His mouth hung open, he set down his fork, and one by one his listeners turned to see the newcomers standing in the doorway.

"Two old friends to see you, Professor!" said Orla

Twombley, finding herself a place to sit among the Murnauers.

"Tom!" said Pennyroyal, standing. "And Wren! My dear child!"

He came to greet them with his arms outstretched. Their sudden appearance had surprised him, but he was genuinely happy to see them both. He had always felt guilty about shooting Tom, but by saving Wren from the Lost Boys, helping her fly
The Arctic Roll
to Kom Ombo, and then magnanimously allowing them to keep the little airship, he hoped that he had made up for that unfortunate incident at Anchorage. Now that Tom's horrible wife had vanished, Pennyroyal felt glad to count the Natsworthys among his friends.

"My dears!" He beamed, hugging them each in turn. "How happy I am to see you! I was just telling my friends here about our adventures on Cloud 9, which are to be the subject of my forthcoming book. A respectable Murnau publishing house, Werederobe and Spoor, has paid a whopping advance for a modest account of my part in the downfall of the Stalker Fang and the rise of General Naga, that peace-loving gentleman. You will both feature in the tale, of course! After all, Wren, was it not you, my loyal former slave girl, who flew
The Arctic Roll
up to Cloud 9 to rescue me when all hope seemed gone?"

"Was it?" asked Wren. "That's not how I remember it...."

"She is modesty itself!" cried Pennyroyal, glancing over his shoulder at his young friends, and to Wren herself, rather more urgently, he muttered, "I had to alter the facts a little, just here and there, to add some color, you know."