Chronicles of Isambard Smith 05 - End of Empires (11 page)

Suruk retrieved his knife. Carveth leaned against the wall and gave a long, shivering sigh.

‘Hey guys,’ Rhianna said. ‘Check out my bears.’

Smith walked over to the door. Behind it, the printing press still thumped and rumbled. He walked in, the smell of ink around him, and pulled one of the sheets from the pile. ‘Look.’

The poster showed a ruined building like the shell of a bombed cathedral, over which a huge, troll-like creature was glowering. In the foreground, a weeping woman carried away a baby, while a broad-shouldered man looked back in fury. THEY TOOK OUR HALL, said the slogan – NOW LET’S TAKE BACK OUR CITY!

‘So this is their plan,’ Suruk said, pointing to the troll. ‘They mean to loose a gigantic baboon upon the city! Could we end up fighting that? Because it would have a very impressive skull.’

Smith looked at Rhianna. She frowned. ‘Er, Suruk, this is kind of awkward… but I think it’s supposed to be you.’

‘I?’ The M’Lak peered at the picture. ‘No, that is some sort of mindless monster, hell-bent on carnage. Although, from a certain angle… But why would I want that tiny building? Is it a beehive?’

‘It’s a caricature, old chap,’ Smith replied, ‘and not a flattering one. That’s supposed to represent the M’Lak, I’m guessing.’

‘It’s meant to turn mankind against your people,’ Rhianna said. ‘Being an oppressed minority, the M’Lak are vulnerable to this sort of slander.’

Carveth snorted. ‘Him? Oppressed minority? There’s twice as many of Suruk’s lot in this city than us. And seriously, can you imagine trying to oppress six million Suruks? They’re like sharks that have learned how to open doors. No offence, Suruk.’

‘None taken,’ the alien replied. ‘Although these days we prefer the term “piranha”.’

Smith glimpsed different colours on a pile of paper behind the printer. He lifted off a sheet: it depicted a M’Lak warrior, drawn in far more favourable terms than before, shaking hands with an unusually sane-looking Yullian officer. They were both laughing, as if one had just cracked a joke. The slogan was in M’Lak characters.

‘
The Yull shall return the relics of Grimdall to Ravnavar
,’ Suruk said.

‘Hang on a moment, Boss.’

Smith looked round: Carveth was leafing through the posters. ‘That building in the first picture, the one with the roof pulled off. I recognise it.’

‘Really?’ Smith looked back at the picture. It did seem vaguely familiar: he had a feeling that it was one of the landmarks of the city. ‘
They took our hall
,’ he said. ‘It looks like the big guildhall in the north, but that’s still standing.’

‘For now it is,’ Carveth replied.

Slowly, Smith turned to her. ‘What did you say?’

Rhianna raised her hands. ‘Whoa. That’s just... no way.’

‘It’s what I’d do,’ Carveth said. ‘Think about it. You want to set the city against itself, right? So you wreck something people care about. And then you put the blame on someone else.’ She pointed. ‘On the Morlocks. And then, when the trouble starts, you start another poster campaign, telling the Morlocks that we’ve turned on them.’

Smith suddenly felt very old. He turned to the piles of paper stashed behind the printer. He knew for certain that there would be other posters, blaming the scrapbots, or the Popular Fist, or whoever was needed to be the latest scapegoat.

‘But people would never swallow that,’ he said. ‘We’re British, for God’s sake.’

Carveth shook her head. ‘We think Black Pudding is food. We’d swallow anything.’

‘Speak for your –’

‘Mazuran.’ Suruk touched Smith’s sleeve. That meant it was urgent: the M’Lak disliked physical contact. ‘The Yull have stooped low here, and not just because of the ceiling. This very basement is proof of their debasement. We must act quickly. Wherever this guildhall is, we need to secure it.’

Smith said, ‘You’re right. Let’s go. Rhianna, can you get us safely past the bears?’

‘Sure.’

‘Then follow me, men. We have a city to save!’

They hurried back down the tunnel, clambered up into the enclosure and picked their way through the dark towards the railing. Far away, at the very edge of the horizon, the glow of morning had begun to appear, as if the sky was about to catch alight. Smith climbed the rope first, thrashing and cursing, and helped the others up. Suruk was last, hardly needing the rope as he scrambled up the wall.

Below them, the bears settled back down to sleep.

‘Thanks, old girl,’ Smith said, leaning towards Rhianna. ‘You did a jolly good job there.’ He kissed her on the cheek. ‘Good work, chaps.’

Carveth leaned against the railing and slowly recovered her breath. She was not a natural climber. ‘Next time, Boss, could we just go to the children’s farm?’

‘Certainly not. I know what you’re like around baby animals. The last thing I want is a reputation as the man who let his pilot push over a six-year-old so she could have a go on the lambs.’

‘I never did that! It was a rogue duckling.’

‘Never mind. To the car!’

* * *

They drove back as dawn rose over Ravnavar. A few rockets and transport craft blazed up into the sky. The roads were filling with the usual vehicles, pedestrians and alien monsters. The sunlight turned the trees by the roadside into pulsing light as they drove past. Smith felt tired. He took a wrong turning on the Queen Kylie Viaduct and ended up stuck behind an extraordinary M’Lak vehicle, two thirds tank to one third mobile disco, decked out with trophies and fluorescent lights. Across the back was a painting of Grimdall the Rebel, the closest thing the planet had to a patron saint, riding a mechanical tiger and waving two swords.

As they pulled into the scrapyard, Nalgath the Scrapper was slicing a heap of fridge doors into armour plate. He worked with a laser cutter, a device somewhere between a pitchfork and a chainsaw. A group of small scrapbots stood a little way off, hoping to buy new limbs and sell a variety of items that had either fallen off or been unscrewed from a lorry.

The
John Pym
seemed mercifully untouched, although Smith wondered whether their host had been snipping bits off the wings.

There was no time to waste, so they only stopped for one pot of tea. Carveth broke open the weapons locker while Smith fired up the radio and dialled the local police station.

‘Inspector Kallarn the Enforcer, please.’

‘Huh,’ a voice muttered.

‘Isambard Smith here. I wondered if we could talk.’

‘Yeah. I’ve been kind of thinking that myself, ever since you knocked down half my police station.’

‘That wasn’t me. It was a mad ravnaphant. Listen, something big’s happening. The Yull have infiltrated the city. They’ve dug tunnels under the zoo. Their leader is called General Wikwot –’

‘Huh? He’s in jail. A place on the edge of town.’

‘Not anymore he’s not.’

‘
Huh?’

Suruk tapped Smith on the shoulder, and passed him a mug of tea. As Smith drank, the alien took the microphone. ‘Friend, the lemming scum have dug a burrow beneath the bear enclosure, from which they plot to hurl foul slanders upon us. Their aim is to turn M’Lak against Metchi’cheun and hinder our war against the Yull. They even claim to have found the relics of Grimdall, to use as a bargaining tool. Meet us in two hours at the Guildhall. Bring warriors.’ He hung up.

Carveth looked into the cockpit. ‘Boss? The car’s loaded, and Rhianna’s threatening to drive. We’d better go.’

‘Righto,’ said Smith. ‘Suruk, tell Nalgath not to chop up the ship while we’re gone. I’ve got a call to make.’

‘Going to ring the Service? You’d best make it quick.’

‘Not exactly.’ Smith reached for the radio. ‘I’m going to get a photocopier repaired.’

* * *

General Wikwot had been forced underground, but for someone who lived in a burrow, that was no great hardship.

He disliked the cellar of the disused funfair where the Ringleader kept court. It smelled of grease, and the presence of humans had dirtied it in a way that no set of overalls could have kept out. Still, the carousel horses had poles through them. That reminded him of his childhood, which he had spent impaling people.

A city has its own soul, Wikwot thought as he struck a match on the bared teeth of a horse. It will be a pleasure to kill the soul of this place.

He took a long drag on his cigarette.

Ravnavar was a dump: the sooner he was back with his soldiers and off this mess of a planet, the better. Ugly buildings full of mangy unrodents. And the lavatories! The barbarians concentrated their droppings in one place, instead of distributing them as evenly as possible throughout the vicinity. Degenerates, all of them.

Thin light came in from high, narrow windows. On the far side of the room, the Ringleader sat in front of a dressing-room mirror, powering the bulbs from a wire slotted into the side of his dented torso. After his encounter with the bears, the gangster had spent the morning tidying his face with an eyebrow pencil and a soldering iron.

Wikwot had a small degree of sympathy. A real leader took pride in his appearance, and while the Ringleader’s moustache wasn’t made out of proper whiskers, like a lemming’s, it made up for that by being self-twirling.

Hydraulics whined and a great wedge of light stretched across the room. A silhouette like a huge steel toddler waddled forward, its broad feet stomping the concrete. Wikwot’s paw moved to the axe on his belt, but the Ringleader didn’t even look round.

‘Got something to tell me, Rom?’

‘It’s Ram, boss.’

‘I hope you have something more than that. Where is your brother?’

The huge robot leaned forward when at rest, its forearms hanging down like an ape’s. ‘Gone to collect a debt. There’s some people owes us money. Like… anyone.’

‘Slave!’ Wikwot barked. ‘Where is my space rocket?’

‘You watch it, lemming,’ Ram said. ‘I know a lot of dolly birds what’d like a new fur coat.’

‘Silence! You may not speak so to one honoured by the war god Popacapinyo. Ringleader – where is my transport?’

Ram growled. ‘Watch it. You show us some respect.’

Wikwot snorted. ‘Respect?
Popiqoc
. A true warrior does not let himself be mauled by bears. Ringleader, you have spent all morning locked away with tools, banging away at yourself. If you had not had your arse kicked, why else would you panel-beat your own buttocks?’

The Ringleader looked round, and for a moment Wikwot thought that the robot would be enraged. Instead, the Ringleader said: ‘Show the general, Ram.’

Ram clanked across the room and stopped under a portable generator bolted against the wall. His massive hand pulled a lever. The generator buzzed – and then the carousel burst into parping life, a blaze of light and brass, whirling and trumpeting.

‘Observe,’ the Ringleader said, standing up. He pointed to the window.

Wikwot peered. ‘I need a cloth. The glass is dirty.’

‘You’re made of fur,’ the Ringleader.

Wikwot growled and used the back of his paw. Outside, lights flickered on a battered helter-skelter. For a moment, the general wondered what these stupid machines meant, and then he saw the conical top of the helter-skelter, the fins welded to its sides.

‘That?’ Wikwot shouted over the tootling racket of the carousel.

The Ringleader gestured at it. ‘Only the finest for a Yullian general.’

‘That is not a spaceship. That is a giant firework.’

‘Exactly,’ said the Ringleader. ‘We shall launch it with a patriotic fanfare. Nobody will notice your departure. You will leave Ravnavar as a true Briton, and land on Andor like a true lemming.’

‘By crashing into it.’

‘I thought you people liked doing that. It never stopped your air force.’

‘Those are minions,’ Wikwot replied. ‘They do not count.’

Wikwot reached out and flipped the lever, cutting the power. The carousel wound to a halt with a groan. ‘It will suffice. I will put myself in hibernation for the journey. Just make sure that there is plenty of sawdust and some nuts for when I wake up.’

A second huge robot lumbered in. ‘Boss, boss!’

‘Rom, my esteemed companion,’ the Ringleader said. ‘I take it there is a reason that you have abandoned your watch on the Guildhall?’

Rom scratched his processor. ‘Yeah. There’s people there.’

‘People. Would you care to elucidate, before I render you limb from limb?’

‘Um... the ones you wanted me and Ram to do over.’

‘Excellent!’ The Ringleader sprang to his feet. His single lens glinted in his newly-painted face. ‘I took the liberty of placing a little incendiary surprise in the Guildhall. Today, my friends, we will light the spark that will make this city burn. General, I offer you a ringside seat.’

Wikwot smiled. ‘Yes. I will watch the offworlders die. Then I will leave this city to you.’ His hand slipped onto his axe. ‘Do your civic duty, robot. Clean up and take out all the trash. Every last one of them.’

The Great Guildhall of the Imperial General Union was vast, ornate, covered in statues and surprisingly hard to find, mainly because it looked like most other public buildings in the Space Empire. Only at close range was it clear that the statues carried hammers and toolkits instead of swords and trumpets, and that in place of haloes, they wore pencils behind their ears.

Smith trotted up the steps to the guildhall. Scrolls were sculpted over the doorway, bearing the names of great reformers.

He stepped in, and at once the heat of the morning was gone. Inside, the guildhall resembled a cathedral, and he stood at the entrance to the nave. In alcoves, stone angels held up spanners and cogs. Goggled cherubs swung mallets and hauled stone chains. In the centre of the hall, a huge marble figure raised its hand like Hamlet with Yorick’s skull. The skull had been replaced by Ravnavar itself, and Hamlet wore a cloth cap instead of a ruff.

Smith felt somewhat awed. Technically, he was entitled to be there, as a low-ranking member of the Space Pilots and Captains’ Egalitarian Department, but as he looked around the mighty hall he felt the familiar worry that someone would spot him and throw him out. He advanced down the nave, through shafts of light and the motes that spun in them, past statues of the Empire’s great guildsmen, to the wooden booth by the entrance to the gift shop.