could it make if he stole a few more minutes?
He set off at a run, and soon reached Bloomsbury Park, out in the open air on the tier’s brim. It had been a proper park once, with trees and duck-ponds, but because of the recent shortage of prey it had been given over to food production and its lawns grubbed up to make way for cabbage-plots and algae-pans. The observation platforms were still there though, raised balconies jutting out from the edge of the tier where Londoners could go to watch the passing view. Tom hurried towards the nearest. An even bigger crowd had gathered there, including quite a few people in the black of the Historian’s Guild, and Tom tried to look inconspicuous as he pushed his way through to the front and peered over the railings. Salthook was only five miles ahead, travelling flat out with black smoke spewing from its exhaust-stacks.
“Natsworthy!” called a braying voice, and his heart sank. He looked round and found that he was standing next to Melliphant, a burly First Class Apprentice, who grinned at him and said, “Isn’t it wonderful? A fat little salt- mining platform, with C20 land-engines! Just what London needs!”
Herbert Melliphant was the worst sort of bully; the sort who didn’t just hit you and stick your head down the lavatory, but made it his business to find out all your secrets and the things that upset you most and taunt you with them. He enjoyed picking on Tom, who was small and shy and had no friends to stick up for him—and Tom could not get back at him, because Melliphant’s family had paid to make him a First Class Apprentice, while Tom, who had no family, was a mere Third. He knew Melliphant was only bothering to talk to him because he was hoping to impress a pretty young Historian named Clyde Potts, who was standing just behind. Tom nodded and turned his back, concentrating on the chase.
“Look!” shouted Clyde Potts.
The gap between London and its prey was narrowing fast, and a dark shape had lifted clear of Salthook. Soon there was another and another. Airships! The crowds on London’s observation platforms cheered, and Melliphant said, “Ah, air-merchants. They know the town is doomed, you see, so they are making sure they get away before we eat it. If they don’t, we can claim their cargoes along with everything else aboard!”
Tom was glad to see that Clytie Potts looked thoroughly bored by Melliphant: she was a year above him and must already know this stuff, because she had passed her Guild exams and had the Historian’s mark tattooed on her forehead. “Look!” she said again, catching Tom’s glance and grinning. “Oh, look at them go! Aren’t they beautiful!”
Tom pushed his untidy hair out of his eyes and watched as the airships rose up and up and vanished into the slate-grey clouds. For a moment he found himself longing to go with them, up into the sunlight. If only his poor parents had not left him to the care of the Guild, to be trained as a Historian! He wished he could be cabin-boy aboard a sky-clipper and see all the cities of the world: Puerto Angeles adrift on the blue Pacific and Arkangel skating on iron runners across the frozen northern seas, the great ziggurat-towns of the Nuevo-Mayans and the unmoving strongholds of the Anti-Traction League. …
But that was just a daydream, better saved for some dull Museum afternoon. A fresh outbreak of cheering warned him that the chase was nearing its end, and he forgot the airships and turned his attention back to Salthook.
The little town was so close that he could see the ant-like shapes of people running about on its upper tiers. How frightened they must be, with London bearing down on them and nowhere to hide! But he knew he mustn’t feel sorry for them: it was natural that cities ate towns, just as the towns ate smaller towns, and smaller towns snapped up the miserable static settlements. That was Municipal Darwinism, and it was the way the world had worked for a thousand years, ever since the great engineer Nikolas Quirke had turned London into the first Traction City. “London! London!” he shouted, adding his voice to the cheers and shouts of everybody else on the platform, and a moment later they were rewarded by the sight of one of Salthook’s wheels breaking loose. The town slewed to a halt, smokestacks snapping off and crashing down into the panicked streets, and then London’s lower tiers blocked it from view and Tom felt the deck-plates shiver as the city’s huge hydraulic Jaws came slamming shut.
There was frantic cheering from observation platforms all over the city. Loudspeakers on the tier-support pillars started to play “London Pride”, and somebody Tom had never even seen before hugged him tight and shouted in his ear, “A catch! A catch!” He didn’t mind; at that moment he loved everybody on the platform, even Melliphant. “A catch!” he yelled back, struggling free, and felt the deck-plates trembling again. Somewhere below him the city’s great steel teeth were gripping Salthook, lifting it and dragging it backwards into the Gut.
“…and perhaps Apprentice Natsworthy would like to come as well,” Clytie Potts was saying. Tom had no idea what she was talking about, but as he turned she touched his arm and smiled. “There’ll be celebrations in Kensington Gardens tonight,” she explained. “Dancing and fireworks! Do you want to come?”
People didn’t usually invite Third Class Apprentices to parties—especially not people as pretty and popular as Clytie—and Tom wondered at first if she were making fun of him. But Melliphant obviously didn’t think so, for he tugged her away and said, “We don’t want Natsworthy’s sort there.” “Why not?” asked the girl.
“Well, you know,” huffed Melliphant, his square face turning almost as red as Mr Pomeroy’s. “He’s just a Third. A skivvy. He’ll never get his Guild-mark. He’ll just end up as a curator’s assistant. Won’t you, Natsworthy?” he asked, leering at Tom. “It’s a pity your dad didn’t leave you enough money for a proper apprenticeship…” “That’s none of your business!” shouted Tom angrily. His elation at the catch had evaporated and he was on edge again, wondering what punishments would be in store when Pomeroy found out that he had sneaked away. He was in no mood for Melliphant’s taunts.
“Still, that’s what comes of living in a slum on the lower tiers, I suppose,” smirked Melliphant, turning back to Clytie Potts. “Natsworthy’s mum and dad lived down on Four, see, and when the Big Tilt happened they both got squashed flat as a couple of raspberry pancakes:
Tom didn’t mean to hit him; it just happened. Before he knew what he was doing his hand had curled into a tight fist and he lashed out. “Ow!” wailed Melliphant, so startled that he fell over backwards. Someone cheered, and Clytie stifled a giggle. Tom just stood staring at his trembling fist and wondering how he had done it.
But Melliphant was much bigger and tougher than Tom, and he was already back on his feet. Clytie tried to restrain him, but some other Historians were cheering him on and a group of boys in the green tunics of Apprentice Navigators clustered close behind and chanted, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
Tom knew he stood no more chance against Melliphant than Salthook had stood against London. He took a step backwards, but the crowd was hemming him in. Then Melliphant’s fist hit him on the side of the face and Melliphant’s knee crashed up hard between his legs and he was bent double and stumbling away with his eyes full of tears. Something as big and softly yielding as a sofa stood in his way, and as he rammed his head against it, it said, “Ooof!”
He looked up into a round, red, bushy-eyebrowed face under an unconvincing wig; a face that grew even redder when it recognized him.
“Natsworthy!” boomed Chudleigh Pomeroy. “What in Quirke’s name do you think you’re playing at?”
2. VALENTINE
And so Tom found himself being sent off to do Gut-duty while all the other apprentices were busy celebrating the capture of Salthook. After a long, embarrassing lecture in Pomeroy’s office (“Disobedience, Natsworthy. . . Striking a senior Apprentice. . . What would your poor parents have thought?”) he trudged over to Tottenham Court Road station and waited for a down elevator.
When it came, it was crowded. The seats in the upper compartment were packed with arrogant-looking men and women from the Guild of Engineers, the most powerful of the four Great Guilds which ran London. They gave Tom the creeps, with their bald heads and those long white rubber coats they wore, so he stayed standing in the lower section, where the stern face of the Lord Mayor stared down at him from posters saying, Movement is Life— Help the Guild of Engineers keep London moving! Down and down went the elevator, stopping at all the familiar stations—Bakerloo, High Holborn, Low Holborn, Bethnal Green—and at every stop another crowd of people surged into the car, squashing him against the back wall until it was almost a relief to reach the bottom and step out into the noise and bustle of the Gut.
The Gut was where London dismantled the towns it caught: a stinking sprawl of yards and factories between
