Chapter Sixteen
What is it?’ asked Molly, tapping the thick glass of the containment vessel. ‘It looks like a ball of rock.’
‘Here it
‘Ah, Coppertracks, do not make light of that cursed stuff and the problems it caused us — the deaths on the island,’ pleaded the commodore.
‘Dear mammal, master your fears. It has been inert for all the years since we left the Isla Needless.’
‘The rock was anything but inert then,’ said Nickleby, his face appearing distorted on the other side of the glass. ‘There were creatures made out of this material, Molly, things that attacked out of the stone and rocks. Half the boat’s crew had disappeared from our camp by the time we worked out what was stalking us.’
‘My poor plucky jacks,’ said Commodore Black. ‘Billy Topknot, Sally Gold, old Haggside Peter — there was never a finer group of tars to draw tanked air beneath the waves. I dug their graves with my own thin hungry fingers, lass. I threw the dirt of that terrible place over their cold dead faces.’
Molly stared closer. The black rock glistened under the gas light of the clock house chamber, little shards of silver and veins of metal visible through the containment glass. ‘A curious souvenir to keep.’
‘The miracle of life, Molly softbody,’ said Coppertracks, passing a tray of crystals to one of his drones. ‘Have you never wondered at how some objects in our universe possess a vital spark that makes them able to walk, think, feel. Comprehend and ponder their own place in the scheme of things — while others — even complex systems such as the weather or this rock here as it stands at the moment — do not.’
‘Nothing to do with your little contraption outside, then, Aliquot Coppertracks?’ said Nickleby.
Molly glanced to where the pensman was pointing, somewhere in the grounds of Tock House, beyond the orchard and the topiary garden, but she could see nothing there.
‘My scheme continues,’ said Coppertracks. Then to Molly, ‘Vibrations across the earthflow, my young softbody friend. We are not the only celestial body to orbit the sun. I believe there might be existences similar to our own on one or more of those bodies waiting to communicate with kindred intellects.’
Molly remembered the aeronaut’s tales from the penny dreadfuls — how cold it got when floatquakes sent chunks of land spinning towards the heavens. How warm the jack cloudies had to wrap up when they bravely raised their aerostats in pursuit. How thin the air became as their airships climbed in search of any survivors clinging onto the floating earth. Surely nothing could live beyond the sky? They would have to be ice-people, able to survive freezing temperatures — with the humps possessed by desert tribesmen; storing not water but instead holding the very air they needed to breathe. What a story that would make for the penny dreadfuls. Tales featuring strange life beyond the clouds. Perhaps one day there would be a market for celestial fiction in the stationers of Jackals.
‘So you squander our few remaining pennies on that blessed thing you’re raising in the grounds,’ said the commodore. ‘An artificial mother crystal, as if there’s going to be a crystalgrid operator happily biding their time on one of the moons, waiting to receive an order for cheese from the great Aliquot Coppertracks. Ah well, perhaps there’s a couple of moonlight-touched fools walking the streets of Middlesteel who’ll pay a few coins to see the thing when you’re done … to keep the butcher and his debt collectors at bay.’
‘My apparatus is not intended as a side-show amusement,’ said Coppertracks, angrily. ‘Any more than the apparatus which my colleague in the Royal Society has sent over — which I might remind you, commodore softbody, you are meant to be helping me assemble.’
Grumbling, the commodore left to fetch one of the last crates from the corridor’s dumb waiter. The slipthinker’s tireless mu-bodies were already busying themselves with a pyramid of machinery — sliding copper pistons being greased and fixed in place, glass lenses stacked in frames.
Nickleby lit his mumbleweed pipe and the clock chamber began to fill with sweet-scented smoke, not unpleasant, but too much of it made the bridge of Molly’s nose ache — Circle knew what it was doing to the inside of the pensman’s body.
‘The answer is in front of my face,’ said Nickleby from his chair. ‘There hasn’t been a Pitt Hill slaying in days now. That matches perfectly with what you discovered in Greenhall’s records. The price on your head, Molly, reflects the fact that whatever the reason for the death list being drawn up, you are one of the last to be found and targeted for murder.’
‘When someone is left on the poorhouse steps they are not meant to be found,’ said Molly.
‘The unfortunate circumstances of your birth worked in your favour this time, Molly,’ said Nickleby. ‘I have no doubt that if your mother had kept you, I would already have written up your murder for the crime and law section of
‘Nothing at all,’ wheezed Black, returning with a box of equipment. ‘She’s a blessed child. A terrible young age to be thrown into the deadly games you involve us in, Silas.’
‘You have a point, commodore. Molly is the youngest of all the people on the Pitt Hill Slayer’s list of victims. But hardly a child anymore — she is nearly of an age to exercise the franchise.’
‘Marking a cross next to the name of some thieving Guardians on a ballot paper is small blessed compensation for being hunted down by a murdering gang of lunatics.’
‘There is method here-’ said Nickleby ‘- were we but able to see it.’
For the hundredth time he looked over the list of names which Binchy had copied down following the discovery in Greenhall’s engine rooms. The names that were confirmed as Pitt Hill Slayings were marked with a cross. Some of the victims had not been linked to the slayer by the police, too poor to warrant any investigation of substance. There were not that many of those. The majority of the names were from well-to-do families — educated, moneyed. The average age was mid to late thirties, a couple of victims had been in their twenties. Most but not all lived in Middlesteel. Molly was the youngest by far. Both sexes were represented about equally — but the victims were all human — no craynarbians, no steammen or graspers murdered by the Pitt Hill Slayer.
Molly sat down opposite the pensman. ‘So what connects these people to me?’
‘Nothing that I can see, Molly. You might as well ask what doesn’t connect you. In a game of odd one out, you would win every time against the names on this list. I do need to check on some of the people not originally linked to the Pitt Hill killings. I don’t have any details on them — one of them might be the link to you. There’s a butcher down on Ventry Lane. Ham Yard marked his death as suspicious, but finally chalked it up as an open verdict. How they thought he could have accidentally lost all his blood in his abattoir is beyond me. The crushers must have been waiting for the murderer to paint a sign on the wall saying “The Pitt Hill Slayer struck here”.’
‘Deduction is a science,’ said Coppertracks. ‘And it is science which will come to our aid in this matter.’
‘Your science is mortal heavy,’ puffed Commodore Black, lifting down the last of the boxes. ‘If it’s not a tonne weight of old journals I’m dragging in here for you to gobble down, it’s these strange machines of yours, full of mammoth pipes and fizzing with dark energies.’
Coppertracks moved through the throng of drones, his mu-bodies clambering over the half-assembled machine in the centre of the clock room. ‘The scientific method will prove its worth in this case, dear mammal. Lord Hartisburgh has been gracious enough to lend us his latest organic analyser — I would not like to return it to him broken.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t want to put you in poor standing with your wild friends at the Royal Society now. But could you not tinker with light little gases instead. Or we could convert the whole floor to a telescope for you to study the celestial movements — if you would promise to do it at night and not disturb the well deserved rest of an old submariner.’
‘Members of the institute are allowed to use the optics up at Prighty Hill,’ said Coppertracks. ‘And an installation here would hardly take up less space than this device. Blood, Molly softbody. That is what this dark affair turns on — someone sought out yours and that of all the others on that list. From the million Jackelian names on Greenhall’s transaction engine, only yours satisfied the criteria set by your tormentors. This machine will shine the bright light of science on those that seek to stay hidden in the shadows.’
‘I don’t doubt you, Coppertracks,’ said Molly. ‘I know all about the scientific method of detection. We managed to collect the entire series of penny sheets with Barclay and the Game Chicken at the poorhouse.’
Nickleby harrumphed. ‘Your penny dreadfuls can only begin to hint at the insufferable vanity of the man.’
‘You’ve met Barclay?’ Molly was in awe.
‘Our paths have crossed,’ said the pensman. ‘Barclay and his oaf of an associate. I am sure you will find,
