Mortal Engines

all right,” she told him. And after a moment, in one of those sudden flashes of softness that he had noticed before, she said, “I miss them, Tom. My mum and dad.”

“I know,” he said. “I miss mine too.”

“You’ve got no family at all in London?”

“No.”

“No friends?”

He thought about it. “Not really.”

“Who was that girl?’ she asked, after a little while.

“What? Where?”

“In the Gut that night, with you and Valentine.”

“That was Katherine,” he said. “She’s… Well, she’s Valentine’s daughter.”

Hester nodded. “She’s pretty,” she said.

After that he slept easier, dreaming that Katherine was coming down to rescue them in an airship, carrying them back into the crystal light above the clouds. When he next opened his eyes it was dawn and Hester was shaking him.

“Listen!”

He listened, and heard a sound that was not the sound of woods or water.

“Is it a town?” he asked hopefully.

“No…” Hester tilted her head to one side, tasting the sound. “It’s a Rotwang aero-engine…”

It grew louder, throbbing down out of the sky. Above the swirling mist a London scoutship flickered by.

They froze, hoping that the wet black cage of branches overhead would hide them. The growl of the airship faded and then rose again, circling. “Shrike can see us,” whispered Hester, staring up at the blind, white fog. “I can feel him watching us…”

“No, no,” Tom insisted. “If we can’t see the airship, how can he see us? It stands to reason…”

* * *

But high overhead the Resurrected Man tunes his eyes to ultra-red and switches on his heat- sensors and sees two glowing human shapes amid the soft grey static of the trees. “TAKE ME CLOSER, ” he orders.

“If you can see them so clearly now,” the airship’s pilot grumbles, “it’s a pity you couldn’t tell that bloomin’ balloon was empty before we went chasing it across half the Hunting Ground.”

Shrike says nothing. Why should he explain himself to this whining Once-born? He had seen that the balloon was empty as soon as it popped back up above the clouds, but he had decided to keep it to himself. He was pleased at Hester Shaw’s quick thinking, and he decided to let her live a few more hours as a reward, while this slow-witted Engineer-aviator pursued her empty balloon.

He flicks his eyes back to their normal setting. He will hunt Hester the hard way, with scent and sound and ordinary vision. He calls up a memory of her face and sets it turning in his mind as the airship sweeps down through the fog.

* * *

“Run!” said Hester. The airship loomed out of the whiteness a few yards away, settling towards the ground with its rotors beating the fog like egg-whisks. She hauled Tom out of their useless hiding place and away across sodden ground, knuckled with tree-roots. White scuts of water spurted at every step, and black slime gurgled into their boots. They ran blindly, until Hester came to such an abrupt stop that Tom crashed into her from behind and they both went sprawling.

They had come in a circle. The airship hung just ahead of them, and a giant shape barred their path. Two beams of pale green light stabbed towards them, filled with dancing water droplets. “HESTER,” grated a metal voice.

Hester groped for something she could use as a weapon and came up with a gnarled old length of wood. “Don’t come any closer, Shrike!” she warned. “I’ll smash those pretty green eyes of yours! I’ll bash your brains out!”

“Come on!” squeaked Tom, plucking at her coat and trying to drag her away.

“Where to?” asked Hester, risking a quick glance back at him. She shifted her grip on the makeshift club and stood her ground as Shrike stalked closer.

“YOU HAVE DONE WELL, HESTER, BUT THE HUNT IS ENDED.” The Stalker was moving carefully over the wet ground. Each time he set down his metal foot a wreath of steam hissed up. He raised his hands and claw-like blades slid out.

“What made you change your mind about London, Shrike?” shouted Hester angrily. “How do you come to be Crome’s odd-job man?”

“YOU LED ME TO LONDON, HESTER.” Shrike paused, and his dead face widened in a steely smile, “I KNEW YOU WOULD GO THERE. I SOLD MY COLLECTION AND CHARTERED AN AIRSHIP SO THAT I COULD GET THERE BEFORE YOU.”

“You sold your clockwork people?” Hester sounded astonished. “Shrike, if you wanted me back that badly, why didn’t you just track me down?”

“L DECIDED TO LET YOU CROSS THE HUNTING GROUND ALONE,” said Shrike. “IT WAS A TEST.”

“Did I pass?”

Shrike ignored her. “WHEN I REACHED LONDON I WAS TAKEN STRAIGHT TO THE ENGINEERIUM, AS I EXPECTED. 1 SPENT EIGHTEEN MONTHS THERE WAITING FOR YOU TO ARRIVE. THE ENGINEERS TOOK ME APART AND PUT ME TOGETHER AGAIN A DOZEN TIMES. BUT IT WAS WORTH IT. I MADE A DEAL WITH MAGNUS CROME. HE HAS PROMISED ME MY HEART’S DESIRE.”

“Oh, good,” said Hester weakly, wondering what on earth he was talking about.

“BUT FIRST YOU MUST DIE.”

“But Shrike, why?”

The reply was drowned out by a thick, warbling hum that made Tom wonder if the Stalker’s airship was about to lift off without him. He glanced up at it. It was still holding the same position as before, but the steady chirrup of the propellers had been masked by the new noise, a rumbling, slithering roar that grew louder every second. Even Shrike seemed disturbed: his eyes flickered and he tilted his head to one side, listening. Underfoot, the ground began to tremble.

Out of the fog behind the Stalker burst a wall of mud and water, curling over at the top, capped with white foam. Behind it came a town, a very small, old-fashioned town, racing along on eight fat wheels. Hester scrambled backwards, and Shrike saw the look on her face and turned to see what caused it. Tom dived sideways, grabbing the girl by the scruff of her neck and hurling her to safety. The airship tried to veer away but the wheels of the speeding town caught it and blew it apart and ploughed the blazing debris down into the mud. An instant later they heard the Stalker bellow “HESTER!” as the huge front wheel came crashing down on him.

They clung together, rolling over and over as the town howled past, a flicker of spokes and pistons, firelight on metal, tiny figures staring down from observation decks, the long-drawn-out moan of a klaxon echoing through the fog. Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone. The air stank of smoke and hot metal.

They sat up. Bits of airship were drifting down, blazing merrily. Where the Stalker had been standing a deep wheel-mark was quickly filling with black, glistening mud. Something which might have been an iron hand jutted from the ooze and a pale cloud of steam rose into the air above it and slowly faded.

“Is it… dead?” asked Tom, his voice all quivery with fright.

“A town just ran over him,” said Hester. “I shouldn’t think he’s very well…”

Tom wondered dimly what Shrike had meant about his “heart’s desire”. Why would he have sold his precious collection to come after Hester if all he wanted to do was kill her? There was no way of knowing now. “And the poor men on that airship…” he whispered.

“They were sent to help him kill us, Natsworthy,” said the girl. “Don’t waste your pity on them.”

They were quiet for a moment, staring at the mist. Then Tom said, “I wonder what it was running