was an Out-Country scavenger who had supplied a few minor fossils and pieces of Old-Tech to the Historian’s Guild, and gave the date of her death, seven years ago. After that she tried looking up MEDUSA, only to learn that it was some sort of monster in an old story. She didn’t think Magnus Crome and his Engineers believed in monsters.
Nobody gave a second glance as she and Bevis strode across Top Tier towards the main entrance of the Engineerium. Scores of Engineers were already hurrying up the steps. Katherine joined them, clutching her gold pass and keeping close to the apprentice, terrified that she might lose him in this crowd of identical white coats.
It was bigger than she expected, and brighter, lit by hundreds of argon globes that hung in the great open shaft at the centre of the building like planets hanging in space. She looked around for the staircase, but Bevis tugged at her arm and said, “We go up by monorail. Look…”
The Engineers were clambering into little monorail cars. Katherine and Bevis joined the queue, listening to their muttered conversations and the squeaky rustle of their coats rubbing together. Bevis’s eyes were wide and frightened behind his goggles. Katherine had hoped that they would be able to get a monorail car to themselves so that they could talk, but more Engineers were arriving all the time and she ended up sitting on the far side of a packed car from him, wedged tightly in with a group from the Mag-Lev Research Division.
“Where are you from, Guildsperson?” asked the man sitting beside her.
“Um…” Katherine looked frantically at Bevis, but he was too far away to whisper an answer. She blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “K Division.”
“Old Twixie, eh?” said the man. “I hear she’s having amazing results with her new models!”
“Oh, yes, very,” she replied. Then the car moved off with a lurch and her neighbour turned to the window, fascinated by the passing view.
Katherine had expected the monorail to feel like an elevator, but the speed and the spiralling movement made it quite different and for a moment she had to concentrate hard on not being sick. The other Engineers seemed not to notice. “What do you think the Lord Mayor’s speech will be about?” one of them asked.
“It must be MEDUSA,” said another. “I heard they are preparing for a test.”
“Let’s hope it works,” said a woman sitting just in front of Katherine. “It was Valentine who found the machine, after all, and he’s only a Historian, you know. You can’t trust them.”
“Oh, Valentine is the Lord Mayor’s man,” said another. “Don’t let that Historian’s guild-mark fool you. He’s as loyal as a dog, so long as we give him plenty of money and he gets to pretend that foreign daughter of his is a High London lady.”
Round and round they went, and up past offices and workshops full of busy Engineers, like an enormous hive of insects. The car stopped on level five and Katherine climbed out, still flushed with anger at what the others had said. She linked up with Bevis again and they all trotted together along chilly, white corridors and through hanging curtains of transparent plastic. She could hear the babble of voices ahead, and after a few twists and turns they emerged into an immense auditorium. Bevis led the way to a seat near one of the exits. She looked about her to see if she could spot Supervisor Nimmo, but it was impossible to make him out. The auditorium was a sea of white coats and bald or hooded heads, and more were pouring through the entrances all the time.
“Look!” hissed Bevis, nudging her. “That’s Dr Twix, the one I told you about!” He pointed to a squat little barrel-shaped woman who was taking a seat in the front row, chattering animatedly with her neighbours. “All the top Guildspersons are here! Twix, Chubb, Garstang … and there’s Dr Vambrace, the head of security!”
Katherine began to feel frightened. If she had been unmasked at the door she might have been able to pass it off as a silly prank, but now she was deep in the Engineers’ inner sanctum, and she could tell that something important was about to happen. She reminded herself that even if they discovered her, the Engineers would never dare harm Thaddeus Valentine’s daughter. She tried not to think about what they might do to Bevis.
At last the doors were closed and the lights dimmed. An expectant hush filled the auditorium, broken only by the slithery whisper of five hundred Engineers rising to their feet.
Katherine and Bevis jumped up with them, peering at the stage over the shoulders of the people in front. Magnus Crome was standing at a metal lectern, his cold eyes sweeping the audience. For a moment he seemed to stare straight at Katherine, and she had to remind herself that he couldn’t possibly recognize her, not with her hood and her goggles and the tall collar of her coat turned up.
“You may be seated,” said Crome, and waited until they had settled themselves before going on. “This is a glorious day for our Guild, my friends.”
A ripple of excitement ran through the auditorium, and through Katherine too. Crome motioned for quiet.
Up in the ceiling of the auditorium a slide-projector whirred into life, and a picture appeared on a screen behind his head. It was a diagram of an enormous, complicated machine.
“MEDUSA,” announced Crome, and there was a sort of echo as all the Engineers sighed, “
“As some of you already know,” he went on, “MEDUSA is an experimental energy weapon from the Sixty Minutes War. We have known about it for some time—in fact, ever since Valentine found these documents on his trip to America, twenty years ago.”
The projector-screen was flickering with faded diagrams and spidery writing.
“Of course, these fragmentary plans were not enough to let us reconstruct MEDUSA.” Crome was saying. “But seven years ago, thanks again to Valentine, we acquired a remarkable piece of Old-Tech, taken from a long- lost military site in the American desert. It is perhaps the best preserved Ancient computer-core ever discovered, and it is more than that; it is the brain of MEDUSA, the artificial intelligence that once powered this remarkable machine. Thanks to the hard work of Dr Splay and his comrades in B Division, we have at last been able to restore it to working order. Guildspersons, the days when London had to run and hide from other hungry cities are at an end! With MEDUSA at our command we will be able to reduce any one of them to ashes in the blink of an eye!”
The Engineers applauded wildly, and Bevis Pod nudged at Katherine to join in, but her hands seemed to have become frozen to the metal arm-rests of her seat. She felt giddy with shock. She remembered everything she had heard about the Sixty Minute War and how the Ancients’ terrible thunder-weapons had blasted their static cities and poisoned the earth and sky. Father would never have helped the Engineers to recreate such a terrible thing!
“Nor will we have to go chasing after scraps like Salthook,” Crome continued. “In another week London will be within range of Batmunkh Gompa, the Shield-Wall. For a thousand years the Anti-Traction League has cowered behind it, holding out against the tide of history. MEDUSA will destroy it at a single stroke. The lands beyond it, with all their huge static cities, their crops and forests, their untapped mineral wealth, will become London’s new hunting ground!”
You could hardly hear him now; the cheers of the Engineers rolled like breakers against the wall behind him, and it slid slowly open, revealing a long window that looked out towards St Paul’s Cathedral and the turrets of the Guildhall.
“But first,” he shouted, “we have more pressing business to attend to. Although I had hoped we might keep MEDUSA hidden until we reached the Shield-Wall, it has become necessary to give a demonstration of its power. Even as I speak, Dr Splay’s team is preparing a test-firing of the new weapon.”
Even if Katherine had wanted to hear more it would soon have become impossible, for Crome’s audience were all talking excitedly among themselves. A few Engineers, presumably those connected with the MEDUSA project, were hurrying to the exits. Standing up, Katherine started pushing her way to the door. A moment later she was out in the antiseptic corridor, wondering what to do next.
“Kate?” Bevis Pod appeared behind her. “Where are you going? People noticed you leave! I saw some Guild security people watching us…”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” whispered Katherine. “Where’s the way out?”
“I don’t know,” admitted the boy. “I’ve never been to this level before. I suppose we’ll have to find our way back to the monorail…” He shook Katherine away as she tried to take his hand. “No! Somebody will see. Engineers aren’t supposed to touch each other…”
They hurried along the tubular corridors, and Katherine said, “Crome was lying! My father didn’t go to
