“Come along then,” he said. “The sooner we start, the sooner you can be off to join the fun in Kensington Gardens…”
Down they went and down, with Dog and Katherine following, down past the warehouse and on down twisting spirals of metal stairs to the Digestion Yards, where Salthook was growing smaller by the minute. All that remained of it now was a steel skeleton, and the machines were ripping even that apart, dragging deckplates and girders away to the furnaces to be melted down. Meanwhile, mountains of brick and slate and timber and salt and coal were trundling off on conveyor belts towards the heart of the Gut, and skips of furniture and provisions were being wheeled clear by the salvage gangs.
The salvagemen were the true rulers of this part of London, and they knew it. They swaggered along the narrow walkways with the agility of tomcats, their bare chests shiny with sweat and their eyes hidden by tinted goggles. Tom had always been frightened of them, but Valentine hailed them with an easy charm and asked them if they had seen anything amongst the spoils that might be of interest to the Museum. Sometimes he stopped to joke with them, or ask them how their families were doing—and he was always careful to introduce them to, “My colleague, Mr Natsworthy.” Tom felt himself swell with pride. Valentine was treating him like a grown-up, and so the salvagemen treated him the same way, touching the peaks of their greasy caps and grinning as they introduced themselves. They all seemed to be called Len, or Smudger.
“Take no notice of what they say about these chaps up at the Museum,” warned Valentine, as one of the Lens led them to a skip where some antiques had been stowed. “Just because they live down in the nether boroughs and don’t pronounce their ‘H’s doesn’t mean they’re fools. That’s why I like to come down in person when the Yards are working. I’ve often seen salvagemen and scavengers turn up artefacts that Historians might have missed…”
“Yes sir…” agreed Tom, glancing at Katherine. He longed to do something that would impress the Head Historian and his beautiful daughter. If only he could find some wonderful fragment of Old-Tech amongst all this junk, something that would make them remember him after they had gone back to the luxury of High London. Otherwise, after this wander around the yards, he might never see them again!
Hoping to amaze them, he hurried to the skip and looked inside. After all, Old-Tech
Valentine reached into the box and lifted out the disc, tilting it so that rainbow light darted across its surface. “Quite right,” he said. “The Ancients used these in their computers, as a way of storing information.”
“Could it be important?” asked Tom.
Valentine shook his head. “I’m sorry, Thomas. The people of the old days may only have lived in static settlements, but their electronic machines were far beyond anything London’s Engineers have been able to build. Even if there is still something stored on this disc we have no way of reading it. But it’s a good find. Keep hold of it, just in case.”
He turned away as Tom put the seedy back in its box and slid it into his pocket. But Katherine must have sensed Tom’s disappointment, because she touched his hand and said, “It’s lovely, Tom. Anything that has survived all those thousands of years is lovely, whether it’s any use to the horrible old Guild of Engineers or not. I’ve got a necklace made of old computer discs…” She smiled at him. She was as lovely as one of the girls in his daydreams, but kinder and funnier, and he knew that from now on the heroines he rescued in his imagination would all be Katherine Valentine.
There was nothing else of interest in the skip; Salthook had been a practical sort of town, too busy gnawing at the old sea-bed to bother about digging up the past. But instead of going straight back to the warehouse Valentine led his companions up another staircase and along a narrow catwalk to the Incomers’ Station, where the former inhabitants were queuing to give their names to the Clerk of Admissions and be taken up to new homes in the hostels and workhouses of London. “Even when I’m not on duty,” he explained, “I always make a point of going down to see the scavengers when we make a catch, before they have a chance to sell their finds at the Tier Five antique markets and melt back into the Out-Country.”
There were always some scavengers aboard a catch -townless wanderers who roamed the Hunting Ground on foot, scratching up pieces of Old-Tech. Salthook was no exception; at the end of a long queue of dejected townsfolk stood a group more ragged than the rest, with long, tattered coats that hung down to their ankles and goggles and dust-masks slung about their grubby necks.
Like most Londoners, Tom was horrified by the idea that people still actually lived on the bare earth. He hung back with Katherine and Dog, but Valentine went over to speak with the scavengers. They came clustering round him, all except one, a tall, thin one in a black coat—a girl, Tom thought, although he could not be sure because she wore a black scarf wrapped across her face like the turban of a desert nomad. He stood near her and watched while Valentine introduced himself to the other scavengers and asked, “So—have any of you found anything the Historians’ Guild might wish to purchase?”
Some of the men nodded, some shook their heads, some rummaged in their bulging packs. The girl in the black head-scarf slid one hand inside her coat and said, “I have something for you, Valentine.”
She spoke so softly that only Tom and Katherine heard her, and as they turned to look she suddenly sprang forward, whipping out a long, thin-bladed knife.
3. THE WASTE CHUTE
There was no time to think: Katherine screamed, Dog growled, the girl hesitated for a moment and Tom saw his chance and threw himself forward, grabbing her arm as she drove the knife at Valentine’s heart. She hissed, writhing, and the knife dropped to the deck as she twisted free and darted away along the catwalk. “Stop her!” bellowed Valentine, starting forward, but the other refugees had seen the knife and were milling about in fright, barring his way. Several of the scavengers had pulled out firearms and an armoured policeman came lumbering through the crowd like a huge blue beetle, shouting, “No guns allowed in London!”
Glancing over the scavengers’ heads, Tom glimpsed a dark silhouette against the distant glare of furnaces. The girl was at the far end of the catwalk, climbing nimbly up a ladder to a higher level. He ran after her and snatched at her ankle as she reached the top. He missed by a few inches, and at the same moment a dart hissed past him, striking sparks from the rungs. He looked back. Two more policemen were thrusting through the crowd with crossbows raised. Beyond them he could see Katherine and her father watching him. “Don’t shoot!” he shouted. “I can catch her!”
He flung himself at the ladder and scrambled eagerly upwards, determined to be the one to capture the would-be assassin. He could feel his heart pounding with excitement. After all those dull years spent dreaming of adventures, suddenly he was having one! He had saved Mr Valentine’s life! He was a hero!
The girl was already heading along the maze of high-level catwalks which led towards the furnace district. Hoping that Katherine could still see him, Tom set off in pursuit. The catwalk forked and narrowed, the handrails only a yard apart. Below him the work of the Digestion Yards went on regardless; no one down there had noticed the drama being played out above their heads. He plunged through deep shadows and warm, blinding clouds of steam with the girl always a few feet ahead. A low duct caught her head-scarf and ripped it off. Her long hair was coppery in the dim glow of the furnaces, but Tom still couldn’t see her face. He wondered if she was pretty; a beautiful assassin from the Anti-Traction League.
He ducked past the dangling head-scarf and ran on, gasping for breath, fumbling his collar open. Down a giddy spiral of iron stairs and out on to the floor of the Digestion Yards, flashing through the shadows of conveyor
