Planesrunner (Everness Book One) (17 page)

“Skin-ripper,” Mchynlyth said. He held the blade up before his eyes and gazed at it with delight. “Only thing'll cut nano is nano. Cut her open and sew her up again sweet as a wee nut.” Then he folded the blade into its handle and slid it into one of his many pockets.

“So are we still air-shape and Hackney-fashion?” Sen asked.

“Sure, she's the sweetest ship running out of this town, and that's including that great nancy Swedish bird over there,” Mchynlyth said, disconnecting the line from his harness. His accent was so thick and his voice so soft Everett had to concentrate fiercely to make out what he was saying. “So, you're for the weigh-in then?”

“I wish everyone would stop going on about it. It's making me nervous.”

“Ach, away with your nervousness, you jinny. Sure it's just a formality.” A flick on the line activated a winch high up on the ship's back that reeled it in. He stepped out of the webbing harness and threw it over his shoulder. “Right then, son.”

They were scales, proper scales, down on the loading dock. Two metres high, two metres across, brass and wood and rivets: scales like the ones the figure of Justice held high above the courts of the Old Bailey. On one side was an antique buttoned leather chair, so old that stuffing sprung through the cracked upholstery. On the other, counterbalancing it, a large glass cylinder. Above the cylinder was a brass tap connected to a run of hose that snaked out of sight among the containers and crates. The whole of
Everness's
crew had turned out: exactly four. Sharkey stood by the scale.

“Take a seat, sir.”

Everett gingerly hauled himself into the leather armchair. The tilt mechanism had been wedged so it only gave a few millimetres beneath him. His feet swung.

“One moment, Mr. Sharkey.” Captain Anastasia held out her hand. “Mr. Singh, your shush-bag, please.” Everett reluctantly handed Dr. Quantum over to Captain Anastasia. “It is mandatory that all prospective crew members be mass-rated. Mr. Sharkey.”

Sharkey kicked a lever, the scales clanked and Everett's feet hit the ground.

“'Thou hast been weighed in the balance,'” Sharkey said ominously, and turned the wheel on the metal faucet. Water gushed into the glass cylinder. The sound of gurgling pipes and surging water was the only noise in the huge cargo deck. Faces were grave. Then Everett felt his knees stretch and his feet leave the deck. He rose into the air, bobbed up and down a few times while Sharkey fine-tuned the inflow, then came to rest.

“What is the displacement, weighmaster?” Captain Anastasia asked. Sharkey ran a finger along the brass scale.

“One hundred and two pounds, twelve ounces of ballast,” Sharkey announced. There was a small round of applause. Everett understood now. Airships were not balloons. They couldn't heat air to ascend and vent it to descend. Every gramme of lift was sealed in those gas cells above him.
Everness
flew by neutral buoyancy. Her mass equalled the mass of air she displaced. Basic physics. She naturally neither floated nor sank. The impellers and the steering vanes would lift her to cruising height; she would float there as readily as at ground level. Every gramme of mass that came aboard Everness affected its buoyancy. A fourteen-year-old boy would not send
Everness's
two-hundred metre envelope crashing out of the sky, but his mass would still need to be accounted for, to the gramme.

“Release the ballast, Mr. Sharkey.”

“Aye, ma'am.”

Sharkey released a catch, and the brass bottom of the ballast cylinder fell open. The rush of water vanished through the floor mesh and splashed away down drains and channels. Everett banged down hard on the deck. He imagined the water jetting from a waste vent in the hull, like a big dog having a tiny pee.

“Welcome to
Everness
, Mr. Singh,” Captain Anastasia said. She offered a hand. Everett took it. Her grip was very firm and her eyes were true and unwavering. “Now, what's for supper?”

T
hey had been watching the tower for two days. There was a sweet spot behind a pillar in Rumbold and Sachs's department store cafe, a little table for two among the potted palms with a clear view of the entrance to the Tyrone Tower. A place where you could see but not be seen. A place where you could sit all day, watch and take notes, and not be disturbed.

“Have you not got enough by now?” Sen complained. She was not a good staker-out. She got bored and fidgety sitting, watching, and taking notes, from opening hour to closing time. She looked around her or went off on extended expeditions around the store—“bona togs in here”—or tried to engage Everett in conversation when he was concentrating on syncing the photographs he had taken on his phone with Dr. Quantum.

“What?”

“I said, do you want some tea?”

“I've just had tea.”

“I know. Do you want some more?”

“No thanks.” Everett had drunk so much tea on the stake-out that his bladder felt like it was turning to leather. What, who might he have missed on his too-frequent trips to the bathroom?

“Are you sure?”

“I'm sure.”

“I'm having some.”

“You have some.”

“Would you like a bijou bun?”

“No!” Everett snapped. “I would not like a bijou bun.”

Sen sat up and bristled in offence.

“Well, I'm having a Viennese whirl,” she declared, and got up noisily.

“Sen, sorry…”

She was as quick to forgive as to anger.

“Are you really really really sure you don't want one?”

She went to the self-service counter without waiting for his answer. For all its discreet view, the table in the third-floor coffee nook was second-best. When Everett had scoped out places to spy on the Plenitude headquarters, he had quickly sussed the sweetest spot of all: a bay window table in the Sweet Afton Tea Room on the second floor. It was closer to the street, closer to the faces, better positioned, and better concealed among the London ladies with their ribbon-bound boxes and striped bags of Christmas shopping. Everett had no sooner hidden Dr. Quantum behind the menu than a waiter, apron gleaming white, matching napkin folded over his arm, came up to the table.

“I'd like some coffee,” Everett said. “A cafetiere of the Sumatra please.”

“Tea,” Sen said. “And buns. Could you bring that there trolley over?”

“I don't think so,” the waiter said.

“Pardon?” Everett said.

“I don't think so. You two, out.”

“I want to order some coffee.”

“Out,” the water repeated, leaning close so as not to be overheard by the other tables. “We don't serve your types in here.”

“What?” Everett said, loud enough to make the morning coffee ladies look round.

“Don't serve Airish, you mean,” Sen said.

“You'll have to leave,” the waiter said.

“No, this is not right,” Everett insisted. “This is racism. You're a racist. I want to speak to your manager.”

“It would be better if you didn't make a scene,” the waiter said. The rest of the waiting staff had drifted away from their positions into a vague semicircle, only a click of the fingers away. Some of them were big men. To be physically thrown out would be humiliating. Worse, it would draw attention.

“Don't matter what you call it,” Sen said. “I won't stay where I'm not welcome. Come on, Everett Singh.” Everett tucked Dr. Quantum under his arm. He thought about pulling off the tablecloth, sending the silver creamer and sugar bowl and rose vase and cutlery embossed with Rumbold and Sachs's crest ringing to the floor, toppling the so-neat Christmas trees with their twinkling blue lights. That would be petty. That would certainly draw attention to him. But every step out of the tearoom blazed with humiliation and rage. He could feel every eye on him.
Airish
.

“It's all right, it happens all the time,” Sen said, with a fine, final toss of her head to the two penguin-suited waiters on the door.

“It's not all right,” Everett said tightly.

“So, it's not, but we're not the ones to change it.”

“Why not? We've changed things in my world.”

“Have you? I's impressed.”

“Did you see his face?”

“He had a naff ‘tache.”

“His face was the same colour as mine.”

“So it was.” Sen's surprise was genuine. She recognised the similarity, then let it fall from her attention. You couldn't do that in my world, Everett thought. “Come on, Everett Singh. There's a self-service caff up on the third. I'm sure the view's as good. They won't care who drinks their tea there.” She fluffed up her hair, stood tall, and put on a swagger. “I may be dirt, but I's class dirt.”

So for two days Everett and Sen had occupied the table behind the pillar in the third-floor cafeteria and not a soul had disturbed them apart from the waitress who came around every hour to clear away the cups and cutlery, and the robot sweeper, like a cross between a trilobite and a rat, that scurried around the tables feeding on fallen cake crumbs. It was a machine, so it didn't count as a soul.

Sen set a mug of tea and plate with two Viennese whirls on the table. “I got you one anyway.” She took a slurp of tea, then ate the pale, crumbly pastry with both hands and wiped her mouth. She had the sweetest tooth of anyone Everett had ever known. He had hardly been able to keep Sen supplied with Indian sweetmeats over the last three days. She looked at the remaining Viennese whirl. “Do you want that other one?” Everett waved it away.

“I think I've got almost enough photos now.” Everett tapped up the images he had loaded into Dr. Quantum. First up: Charlotte Villiers, ten shots over two days and a morning, all time-tagged. She was dressed for winter: fur stoles, fur hats, gloves, brocade coats. He ran the pictures as a slideshow. “This is Charlotte Villiers. Do you recognise her?”

“Bona hats,” Sen said.

“She's plenipotentiary from E3 to my world. I believe she had my dad kidnapped. She wants to get her hands on the Infundibulum. She's clever—very clever. She took one look at Dr. Quantum and almost worked it all out there and then. But I don't think she's operating on her own. Colette said my dad thought there was a group inside the Plenitude, working to their own plan. I don't know who they are yet, or what they want, but when I met her, I also met this man.” Everett flicked up a photograph of Ibrim Hoj Kerrim getting out of a sleek black electric car. He had a leather briefcase in his hand and wore an elegant jewel on his headgear. He looked hurried and worried. An aide in E3-style clothing held the door open for him. “This is Ibrim Hoj Kerrim. He's the plenipotentiary from E2 to my world. I don't think he's with Charlotte Villiers. I don't know why I think that. I just get the feeling he can be trusted.”

Everett pulled up another picture, of a fair-haired man in the type of business suit familiar to him from his own world.

“I don't know who this is.”

Sen scowled. “Could be your world, or E4, or E8. Any number of Es. Not everyone dresses as good as us.”

“Look at this.” Everett opened up one of the images of Charlotte Villiers and slid it alongside the picture of the unknown man. “Take away the hair and the hat. Do you think they look kind of alike?”

Sen peered closer at the screen.

“I suppose.”

“Suppose? They're like twins. But much closer than twins. I think he is her, from another universe. Or she's him. Or they're different versions of the same person.”

Sen looked again at the picture. Her mouth twisted in distaste.

“Nah…”

“Why not?”

“That's wrong. Wouldn't they, like, explode if they met each other?”

“No, no reason at all why that should happen. I might be out there, for all I know.”

“In Hackney? In Stokie? I'd know, Everett Singh.”

Everett added four more photographs and slid them into a circle. Two women, two men.

“These are the ones who have been in and out most; the same number of times as Charlotte Villiers and Charles Villiers.”

“Is that his name?”

“It is for me. I think these six are all working together. I think they're the group behind my dad's kidnapping.”

“That's very good,” Sen said. She sounded unconvinced. “And so?”

“And so, phase two. This is a bit more tricky. I need to see inside.”

“Oh now, Everett Singh, you can't be doing that. They knows you're here, that posh palone has sharpies out looking for you, and you'd go strolling in through the front door? They'd have you in there with your dad quicker'n you could say ‘knife.'”

“I've got the maps and the general layout of the place from the library this morning.”

“Oh, so that's what you were doing.”

In the aftermath of their expulsion from the Sweet Afton tearoom, Everett understood the librarian's cold stare at him, chillier by far than her glare at his first visit. Everett had grown up in multiracial, multicultural Hackney, the child of mixed-race parentage, and he had never known the prejudice he attracted as an Airish. Everett went to the architecture section and called up the database of plans. Sen sat flicking through fashion magazines, rocking back on her chair and humming to herself loudly enough to attract attention, not so loud as to get them thrown out. He had photographed the floor plans and elevations of the Tyrone Tower exhaustively. The huge Gothic spike, thrust into the heart of Bloomsbury, was only twenty years old. They liked their gods and gargoyles in E3.

Everett swept away the circle of conspirators and called up the plans. He stacked them one on top of the other, called up an image-manipulation application and took away the paper, leaving wire-frame floor plans: the Tyrone Tower in cross-section.

“Bona,” Sen said.

A few transformations and Everett had a three-dimensional model of the Tyrone Tower. He dragged a finger across the screen and flew through the wire-frame corridors.

“The problem is…”

“They're just pretty patterns,” Sen said. “You don't know what they mean. That there room could be where they got the Ein…Heisenberg Gate, or it could be the gents' carsey.”

“That why I need to see—”

Everett started in surprise as Sen touched a finger to his lips.

“Ssh Everett Singh. All you need to do is see…. I'll go.”

“But you're—”

“What, Everett Singh?” She had a tilt of the head and a sideways smile and a way of looking out from under her mop of white hair that turned her words into armour-piercing missiles. She was simply irresistible. “You mean I's Airish?” She slapped her leather satchel—her shush-bag as she called it. “Parcel for Mr. Hoojamaflip. We runs special deliveries—courier services, documents, body parts for hospitals—all the time. I'll not be the first of us in that there tower. Some people values us, you know. Special delivery! Oh, and I needs a signature.”

“But what if you get caught?”

“Everett Singh, they don't know me from Aunt Nell.”

“I need pictures.”

“I needs some of your tech.”

Everett opened up the phone and set up the camera and the bluetooth. He handed it to Sen. She took it as if it were a living creature that might die if she dropped it.

“This'll stream pictures back to me through a radio link. The best thing to do is start it when you get in and leave it running.”

Sen mounted the camera on the strap of her shush-bag.

“It's a bit obvious,” Everett said.

“Not half as obvious as me flashing it round all over the place. You forget, Everett Singh, people here ain't ever seen anything like this, so they don't know what they's looking for. So, what is I looking for?”

“Someone who looks like this.” Everett turned Dr. Quantum to Sen. The photograph was of him and Tejendra in their Spurs shirts, in the North Stand, pies in their hands, mouths open to take a bite. Everett remembered Vinny taking it after the 3 to 1 defeat of Inter Milan in the Champions League. The prickle in the corners of his eyes, the catch in the back of his throat took him by surprise. “Anything, really. Get as far in as you can.”

“I can be very persuasive,” Sen said. “Okay.” She shivered. “Oooh. Exciting. Well, I's offski.” But she hesitated a moment. You're scared, Everett thought. You jumped up and said I'll do it because you're the kind of person who wants to be first to do anything and now you realise that this isn't a game, this isn't a chase across the rooftops with Sharkey and his shotguns to save you if it goes a bit wrong. You are on your own and you are scared. But anyone would be scared. Anyone should be scared. “Everett Singh, pick a card.” She fanned out the Everness Tarot, facedown. Everett half pulled out a card. Sen turned it up. The old man on crutches stepping through a stone gate in a stone wall into darkness. “Death's Door. Lovely.”

“Maybe it's not death,” Everett said. “Maybe it's a door into another universe.”

“Kiss for luck, Everett Singh.” Sen leaned forward, expecting. Everett brushed her lightly, shyly on the cheek. Her silly, wonderful hair got in his eye. Her skin was very warm. What was that perfume that reminded him of so many things?

“That'll do, Everett Singh.” And she was gone. Everett took his seat by the window. He poured some coffee. It had lost its heat and freshness. No one did good coffee in this universe. He checked Dr. Quantum's batteries. They were good. He opened the bluetooth. Nothing. Too early. He looked down at the traffic on foot and on wheel hurrying past the intimidatingly grand entrance of the Tyrone Tower. A deep, clear cold had set in over London after the rain and the wind. The shoppers pouring out from Rumbold and Sachs's revolving doors with their hands full of liveried paper bags seemed to relish it. Proper Christmas weather. Breath steaming, faces bright, collars up, scarves pulled tight.