fault!”
“Nonsense, wives!” boomed Blinkoe, standing up to show them that he was the head of the household and that a breakneck chase through a blizzard aboard a savage suburb couldn’t upset him. “Nobody is going to be murdered! As soon as this storm ends we shall fetch the Temporary Blip out of her hangar and fly home to Arkangel. I shall sell details of a few of the towns we’ve touched at to the Huntsmen, so our trip won’t leave us out of pocket, and as for the Green Storm… Well, all manner of aviators pass through the Arkangel airexchange. I shall question them all. One of them must know something about the Jenny Haniver. ”
15
Still the storm blew, the shrill voice of the wind rising higher and higher. In the upper city several empty buildings were blown down, and many more lost roofs and windows. Two of Mr Scabious’s workers, venturing out on to the bows to lash down a loose deckplate, were lifted clear off the city with it and vanished into the darkness off the leeward side, clinging to their trailing cables like the owners of an unwieldy kite.
Hester had been at work with Mr Aakiuq in the Jenny ’s hangar when his nephew came bursting in with news of the chase. Her first instinct had been to run to the Winter Palace to be with Tom, but when she stepped outside the wind hit her like a well-aimed mattress, flattening her against the side of the hangar. A glance at the snow driving across the empty docking pans told her that she could go no further than the harbour master’s house. She sat out the storm in his kitchen, while the Aakiuqs fed her algae stew and told her about other storms, far worse than this, which dear old Anchorage had come through quite unscathed.
Hester felt grateful to them for trying to reassure her, but she was not a child, and she could tell that behind their smiles they were just as scared as her. It wasn’t just this unnatural, unexpected pressing on into the teeth of the storm; it was the thought of that predator, waiting to swallow them all. Not now! thought Hester, gnawing the sides of her thumbs till the blood came. We can’t be eaten now. Just another week, another few days…
For the Jenny Haniver was almost air-worthy again: her rudders and engine-pods repaired, her envelope patched, her gas-cells filled; she awaited only a new coat of paint and a few small repairs to the gondola electrics. It would be a horrible irony if she were to be eaten before she could take off.
At last the telephone clattered. Mrs Aakiuq ran to answer it and came back beaming. “That was Mrs Umiak! She’s heard from the Wheelhouse, and they say we’ve escaped Wolverinehampton. We shall run on just a little longer and then anchor and let the tempest blow over. Apparently it was dear Professor Pennyroyal who advised Her Radiance to keep going despite the storm. That good gentleman! We must all give thanks to the Ice Gods, who sent him here. And Hester, dear, I am to tell you that your young man is safe. He has returned to the Winter Palace.”
A little later Tom himself called to say much the same things. His voice sounded tinny and unnatural as it came filtering through the tangled yards of wiring all the way from the palace. He might as well have been speaking from some other dimension. He and Hester exchanged little flat bits of news. “I wish I was with you,” she said, putting her face very near the mouthpiece and speaking low, for fear Mrs Aakiuq might overhear.
“What? Pardon? No, we’d best stay put. Freya told me people sometimes freeze to death in the streets in storms like this. When Smew drove us back here from the Wheelhouse the bug almost blew away!”
“Freya now, is it?”
“What?”
“The Jenny ’s nearly ready. We can leave by the end of the week.”
“Oh! Good!” She could hear the hesitation in his voice, and behind him other voices talking happily, as if there were a lot of people at the palace, all celebrating. “But maybe we can stay a bit longer,” he said hopefully. “I’d like to stay aboard until we get to America, and then, well, we’ll see…”
Hester smiled and sniffed and tried to speak but couldn’t for a moment. He sounded so sweet, and so full of love for this place, that it seemed unfair to be angry with him, or to point out that she’d rather go anywhere but the Dead Continent.
“Hester?” he said.
“I love you, Tom.”
“I can’t hear you very well.”
“It’s all right. I’ll see you soon. I’ll see you as soon as the storm ends.”
But the storm showed no sign of ending. Anchorage slid slowly westward for a few more hours, keen to put as much ice as possible between itself and Wolverinehampton, but more and more cautious. There were not only polynyas and thin ice to be wary of now. The city was nearing the north-eastern fringes of Greenland, where mountains jutted through the ice-sheet to rip the bottoms out of unsuspecting towns. Mr Scabious cut power by half, then half again. Searchlights probed ahead, like long white fingers trying to part the curtains of snow, and survey teams were sent out on motorized sleds to sound the ice. Miss Pye checked and rechecked her charts and prayed for a glimpse of the stars to confirm her position. At last, with the navigator’s prayers unanswered, Anchorage was forced to halt.
A lightless day limped by. Hester sat by the Aakiuqs’ stove and looked at the photos of their dead children propped on the household shrine and the collection of souvenir plates on the wall, commemorating the births, marriages and jubilees of the House of Rasmussen. All the faces looked like Freya, who must even now be sitting snugly with Tom in the Winter Palace. They were probably drinking mulled wine and talking about history and their favourite books.
Tears filled Hester’s eye. She excused herself before the Aakiuqs started asking what was wrong, and ran upstairs to the box-room where they had made up a bed for her. Why keep on with something that makes me feel this bad? she asked herself. It would be easy to put an end to it. She could go and find Tom when the storm quietened down and say, It’s over, stop here with your Snow Queen if you want, see if I care…
She wouldn’t, though. He was the only good thing she had ever had. It was different for Freya and Tom; they were nice and sweet-natured and good-looking and would have many, many chances to find love. For Hester there would never be anyone else. “I wish Wolverinehampton had eaten us,” she said to herself, drifting into headachey sleep. At least in the slave-holds Tom would have needed her again.
When she woke it was midnight, and the storm had stopped.
Hester pulled on her mittens, cold-mask and outdoor clothes and went quickly downstairs. Faint snoring came from the Aakiuqs’ bedroom as she crept past the open door. She slid the kitchen heat-lock open and stepped out into the cold. The moon was up, lying on the southern horizon like a lost coin, and by its light Hester could see that all the buildings of the upper tier were covered in a glaze of ice, teased out by the wind into wild, trailing spines and filaments. Icicles dangled from overhead cables and the gantries and cranes of the air-harbour, tapping together in the faint breeze to fill the city with an eerie music; the only sound to break the perfect silence of the snow.
She wanted Tom. She wanted to share this cold beauty with him. Alone with him in these deserted streets, she would be able to tell him how she felt. She ran and ran, scrambling in her borrowed snowshoes over drifts that were sometimes more than shoulder deep even in the lee of the buildings, while the cold burned through her mask and sawed at the back of her throat. Up the stairways from the lower city came sudden gusts of laughter and snatches of music as the engine district celebrated Anchorage’s deliverance. Dizzy with cold, Hester climbed the long ramp to the Winter Palace.
When she had tugged at the bell-pull for about five minutes Smew opened the door. “I’m sorry,” Hester said, pushing straight through the heat-lock and letting a blast of cold air into the hallway. “I know it’s late. I’ve got to see Tom. I know my way, so you needn’t bother…”
“He’s not in his room,” said Smew grumpily, wrapping his nightgown tighter and fussing with the wheels of the heat-lock. “He’s in the Wunderkammer, with Her Radiance.”
“At this hour?”
Smew nodded sullenly. “Her Radiance does not wish to be disturbed.”
“Well she’s going to get disturbed, whether she wishes it or not,” muttered Hester, shoving him aside and setting off through the corridors of the palace at a run. As she went, she tried to tell herself that it was all perfectly
