Mortal Engines (30 page)

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Hester was darting towards the Guildhall when the explosion lifted her off her feet and flung her out of the shadows and into the harsh spill of light from the blazing Engineerium. She rolled over and over on the quaking deckplate, stunned, her pistol skittering away, her veil torn off. There was a moment of silence, then noises came crowding in; screams, sirens. She shuffled through her memories of the moments before the blast, trying to put them in some sort of order. That light above the rooftops, that burning thing sliding down the sky, had been an airship. The Jenny Haniver. "Tom," she said, whispering his name to the hot pavement, and felt smaller and more alone than ever before.

She pushed herself up on all fours. Nearby, one of the new Stalkers had been caught by the blast and cut in half, and its legs were stamping aimlessly about and bumping into things. The shawl that Tom had given her blew past. She caught it, knotted it around her neck and turned to look for the fallen gun, only to find another squad of Stalkers, quite unharmed, closing in upon her from behind. Their claws were fire-coloured slashes in the darkness, and firelight lit their long, dead faces, and she realized with a hollow stab of disappointment that this was the end of her.

And above the black, silhouetted rooftops of the Guildhall, beyond the smoke and the dancing sparks, the dome of St Paul's was starting to open.

The Jenny Haniver's shattered gondola moaned like a flute as the west wind blew through it, carrying it swiftly away from London. Tom slumped exhausted at the controls, crumbs of broken glass clinging like grit to his face and hands. He tried to ignore the wild spinning of the pressure gauges as hydrogen leaked from the damaged envelope. He tried not to think about Pewsey and Gench, burning inside their burning gondola, but every time he closed his eyes he saw their screaming faces, as if the black zeroes of their open mouths were etched for ever on to his eyeballs.

When he raised his head he saw London, far to the east. Something was happening to the cathedral, and torrents of pink and green fire were gushing from the Engineerium. Slowly he started to understand what had happened. It was his fault! People must be dead down there, not just Pewsey and Gench but lots of people, and if he had not shot down the 13th Floor Elevator they would still be alive. He wished he had never fired those rockets. It would be better to be dead himself than to sit here watching Top Tier burn and know that it was all his fault.

Then he thought, Hester!

He had promised her he would go back. She would be waiting, down there among the fires. He couldn't let her down. He took a deep breath and leaned on the controls. The engines choked back into life. The
Jenny Haniver
turned sluggishly into the wind and started inching back towards the city.

Katherine moved like a sleepwalker through Paternoster Square, drawn towards the transformed cathedral. Around her the fires were spreading, but she barely noticed. Her eyes were fixed on the terrible beauty above her; that white cowl unfolding against the night sky, turning towards the east. She no longer felt afraid. She knew Clio was watching over her, keeping her safe so that she could atone for the dreadful things Father had done.

The guards on the cathedral door were too distracted by the fires to pay much attention to a schoolgirl with a satchel. At first they told her to clear off, but when she insisted that her father was inside and flashed her crumpled gold pass at them they simply shrugged and let her through.

She had never been inside St Paul's before, but she had seen pictures. They hadn't looked anything like
this.

The pillared aisles and the high, vaulted ceilings were still where they had always been, but the Guild of Engineers had sheathed the walls in white metal and hung argon globes in wire cages from the ceilings. Fat electric cables snaked up the nave, feeding power towards something at the heart of the cathedral.

Katherine walked slowly forward, keeping to the shadows under the pillars, out of the way of the scores of Engineers who were scurrying about checking power-linkages and making notes on clipboards. Ahead of her, the dais under the great dome was filled with strange machinery. A mass of girders and hydraulics supported the weight of the huge cobra-hood that towered up into the night, and around its base stood a forest of tall metal coils, all humming and crackling in a slowly rising surge of power. Engineers were hurrying between them, and going up and down the central tower on metal stairways, and many more were clustered around a nearby console like priests at the altar of a machine god, talking in hushed, excited voices. Among them she saw the Lord Mayor, and beside him, looking grim, was Father.

She froze, safe in the shadows. She could see his face quite clearly. He was watching Crome, and frowning, and she knew he would rather be outside helping with the rescue-work and only the Lord Mayor's orders kept him here. She forgot for a moment that he was a murderer; she wanted to rush over and hug him. But she was in Clio's hands now, the agent of History, and she had work to do.

She edged closer, until she was standing in the shelter of an old font at the bottom of the dais steps. From there she had a good view of what Crome and the others were doing. Their console was a cat's cradle of wires and flexes and rubberized ducts, and in the middle of it sat a little sphere no bigger than a football. Katherine could guess what that was. Pandora Shaw had found it in a deep laboratory of lost America and brought it back with her to Oak Island, and Father had stolen it the night he murdered her. The Engineers had cleaned and repaired it as best they could, replacing damaged circuits with primitive machines that they had cobbled together from Stalkers' brains. Now Dr Splay sat in front of it, his fingers spidering over an ivory keyboard, typing up green, glowing sequences of numbers on a portable Goggle-screen. A second screen showed a murky image of the view ahead of London, cross-hairs centred on the distant Shield-Wall.

"The accumulators are charged," somebody said.

"There, Valentine!" said Crome, resting a bony hand on her father's arm. "We are ready to make history."

"But the fires, Crome..."

"You can play at firemen later," snapped the Lord Mayor. "We must destroy the Shield-Wall
now,
in case MEDUSA is damaged by the blaze."

Splay's fingers kept clattering on the keyboard, but the other sounds of the cathedral faded away. The Engineers were staring in awe at the coil-forest, where weird, rippling wraiths of light were forming, drifting upwards towards the sky above the open dome with a faint, insectile buzz. Katherine began to suspect that they didn't really understand this technology that her father had dug up for them; they were almost as awed by it as she.

If she had run forward then, primed her bomb and flung it at the ancient computer, she might have changed everything. But how could she? Father was standing right beside the thing, and even when she told herself that he was
not
her father any more and tried to weigh his life against the thousands about to die in Batmunkh Gompa, she still could not bring herself to harm him. She had failed. She turned her face to the vaulted roof and asked,
What do you want me to do? Why have you brought me here?

But Clio didn't answer.

Crome stepped towards the keyboard. "Give MEDUSA its target coordinates," he ordered.

Splay's fingers rattled over the keys, typing in the latitude and longitude of Batmunkh Gompa.

"Target acquired,"
announced a mechanical voice, booming from fluted speakers above Splay's station.

Dr Chubb produced a sheaf of thick plastic sheets, the laminated fragments of ancient documents. Faint lists of numerals showed through the plastic, like insects trapped in amber, as he flipped through the sheets until he found the one he wanted and held it up for Splay to read.

But before Splay could begin typing in the code-numbers there was a confused babble of voices down by the main entrance. Dr Twix was there, with some of her Stalkers close behind her. "Hello, everybody!" she chirped, hurrying up the aisle and beckoning for her creations to follow. "Just look what my clever babies have found for you. Lord Mayor! A real live Anti-Tractionist, just as you asked. Though I'm afraid she's rather ugly..."

"Input clearance code Omega,"
repeated MEDUSA. The mechanical voice had not really changed, but to Katherine it sounded slightly impatient.

"Shut up, Twix!" barked Magnus Crome, staring at his instruments, but the others all turned to look as one of the Stalkers lurched up on to the dais and dumped its burden at the Lord Mayor's feet.

It was Hester Shaw, her hands tied in front of her, helpless and sullen and still wondering why the Stalkers had not killed her straight away. At the sight of her ruined face the men on the dais froze, as if her gaze had turned them all to stone.

Oh, great Clio! whispered Katherine, seeing for the first time what Father's sword had done. And then she looked from Hester's face to his, and what she saw there shocked her even more. The expression had drained from his features, leaving a grey mask, less human and more horrible than the girl's. This was how he must have looked when he killed Pandora Shaw and turned round to find Hester watching him. She knew what would happen next, even before his sword came singing from its sheath.

"No!"
she screamed, seeing what he meant to do, but her mouth was dry, her voice a whisper. Suddenly she understood why the goddess had brought her here, and knew what she must do to make amends for Father's crime. She dropped the useless satchel and ran up the steps. Hester was stumbling backwards, lifting her bound hands to ward off Father's blow, and Katherine flung herself between them so that suddenly it was
she
who was in his path, and his sword slid easily through her and she felt the hilt jar hard against her ribs.

The Engineers gasped. Dr Twix gave a frightened little squeak. Even Crome looked alarmed.

"Input clearance code Omega,"
snapped MEDUSA, as if nothing at all had happened.

Valentine was saying "No!", shaking his head as if he couldn't understand how she came to be here with his sword through her. "Kate, no!" He stepped back, pulling the blade free.

Katherine watched it slither out of her. It looked ridiculous, like a practical joke. There was no pain at all, but bright blood was throbbing out of a hole in her tunic and splashing on the floor. She felt giddy. Hester Shaw clutched at her but Katherine shook her off. "Father, don't hurt her," she said, and took two faltering steps forward and fell against Dr Splay's keyboard. Meaningless green letters spattered the little Goggle-screen as her head hit the keys, and as Father lifted her and laid her gently down she heard the voice of MEDUSA boom,
"Incorrect code entered."

New sequences of numbers spilled across the screens. Something exploded with a sharp crack among the looping webs of cable.

"What's happening?" whimpered Dr Chubb. "What's it doing?"

"It has rejected our target coordinates," gasped Dr Chandra. "But the power is still building..."

Engineers rushed back to their posts, stumbling over Katherine where she lay on the floor, her head on Father's lap. She ignored them, staring at Hester's face. It was like looking at her own reflection in a shattered mirror, and she smiled, pleased that she had met her half-sister at last, and wondering if they were going to be friends. She started to hiccup, and with each hiccup blood came up her throat into her mouth. A numb chill was spreading through her body, and she could feel herself beginning to drift away, the sounds of the cathedral growing fainter and fainter.
Am I going to die?
she thought. I
can't, not yet, I'm not ready!

"Help me!" Valentine bellowed at the Engineers - but they were only interested in MEDUSA. It was the girl who came to his side and lifted Katherine while he ripped a strip from his robe and tried to staunch the bleeding. He looked up into her one grey eye and whispered, "Hester ... thank you!"

Hester stared back at him. She had come all this way to kill him, through all these years, and now that he was at her mercy she felt nothing at all. His sword lay on the ground where he had dropped it. No one was watching her. Even with her wrists bound she could have snatched it up and stuck it through his heart. But it didn't seem to matter now. Dazed, she watched his tears fall, plopping into the astounding lake of blood that was spreading out from his daughter's body. Confused thoughts chased each other through her head. He loves her! She saved my life! I can't let her die'.

She reached out and touched him, and said, "She needs a doctor, Valentine."

He looked at the Engineers, clustering around their machine in a frantic scrum. There would be no help from them. Outside the cathedral doors curtains of golden fire swung across Paternoster Square. He looked up, and saw something red catch the firelight beyond the high windows of the starboard transept.

"It's the
Jenny Haniver!"
shouted Hester, scrambling to her feet. "Oh, it's Tom! And there's a medical bay aboard..." But she knew the
Jenny
couldn't land amidst the flames of Top Tier. "Valentine, can we get on to the roof somehow?"

Valentine picked up his sword and cut the cords on her wrists. Then, flinging it aside, he lifted Katherine and started to carry her between the spitting coils to where the metal stairway zig-zagged up into the dome. Stalkers reached out for Hester as she scurried after him, but Valentine ordered them back. To a startled Beefeater he shouted, "Captain! That airship is not to be fired upon!"

Magnus Crome came running to clutch at his sleeve. "The machine has gone mad!" he wailed. "Quirke alone knows what commands your daughter fed it! We can't fire it and we can't stop the energy build-up! Do something, Valentine! You discovered the damned thing! Make it stop!"