Anna is better, she will be able to tell me herself whether you were to blame for her death. You must stay here until Anna is better.”
26
If you could look down on the world from somewhere high above — if you were a god, or a ghost haunting one of the old American weapon platforms which still hang in orbit high above the pole — the Ice Wastes would look at first as blank as the walls of Hester’s cell; a whiteness spread over the crown of the poor old Earth like a cataract on a blue eye. But look a little closer, and there are things moving in the blankness. See that tiny speck to the west of Greenland? That is Anchorage, a screen of survey-sleds spreading ahead of it as it wriggles its way between glacier-slathered mountains and across uncharted stretches of sea-ice. Wriggles carefully, but not too slow, because everyone aboard carries with them the memory of the parasite which stole poor Tom away, and the fear that more might erupt at any moment through the ice. Watches are set in the engine district now, and patrols inspect the hull each morning, searching for unwelcome visitors.
What no one aboard suspects, of course, is that the real danger comes not from below but from another speck (larger, darker) which is creeping towards them from the east, skids up, tracks down, hauling its great bulk across the hummocked spine of Greenland. It is Arkangel. In its gut Wolverinehampton and three small whaling towns are being torn apart, while deep in its Core, in the ivory-panelled office of the Direktor, Piotr Masgard is urging his father to increase the city’s speed.
“But speed is expensive, my boy,” the Direktor says, rubbing his beard. “We caught Wolverinehampton; I’m not sure it’s worth crashing on westward after Anchorage. We may never find it. It may all be a trick. They tell me the girl who sold their course to you has vanished.”
Piotr Masgard shrugs. “My songbirds often fly away before the catch. But in this case I have a feeling we’ll see her again. She’ll be back to claim her predator’s gold.” He brings his fists down hard on his father’s desk. “We have to get them, Father! This isn’t some scruggy whale-town we’re talking about! This is Anchorage! The riches of the Rasmussens’ Winter Palace! And those engines of theirs. I checked the records. They’re supposed to be twenty times more efficient than anything else on the ice.”
“True,” admits his father. “The Scabious family has always guarded the secret of their construction. Scared a predator might get hold of it, I suppose.”
“Well, now one will, ” says Masgard triumphantly. “ Us! Imagine, Soren Scabious could soon be working for us! He could redesign our engines so that we need half as much fuel and catch twice as much prey!”
“Very well,” his father sighs.
“You won’t regret it, Papa. Another week on this course. Then I’ll take my Huntsmen out and find the place.”
And if you were a ghost, up there among the endlessly tumbling papers and pens and plastic cups and frozen astronauts, you might use the instruments of that old space-station to peer down through the waters into the secret halls of Grimsby, where Uncle sits watching on the largest of his screens as the Screw Worm pulls out of the limpet pens, Caul at the controls, Skewer for crew, carrying Tom Natsworthy away to Rogues’ Roost.
“Zoom in, boy! Zoom!” snaps Uncle, savouring the glow of the limpet’s running lights as it fades into the underwater dark. Gargle, seated beside him at the camera controls, obediently zooms. Uncle pats the boy’s tousled head. He’s a good boy, and will be useful up here, helping him with his archives and his screens. Sometimes he thinks he likes them best, the little helpless, gormless ones like Gargle. At least they’re no trouble. That’s more than can be said for soft, strange boys like Caul, who has been showing the nasty symptoms of a conscience lately, or for rough, ambitious ones like Skewer, who have to be watched and watched in case one day they turn the skills and cunning Uncle has given them against him.
“It’s gone, Uncle,” Gargle says. “Do you think it’ll work? Do you think the Dry will make it?”
“Who cares?” Uncle replies, and chuckles. “We win either way, boy. It’s true I don’t know as much as I’d like to about what’s going on in the Roost, but there have been some clues in Wrasse’s reports. Little things, but to a man of my genius they all add up. A London Engineer… That coffin arriving from Shan Guo, packed in ice… The girl Sathya mithering on about her poor dead friend. Elementary, my dear Gargle.”
Gargle stares at him with wide, round eyes, not understanding. “So… Tom?”
“Don’t worry, boy,” says Uncle, ruffling his hair again. “Putting that Dry inside is just a way of distracting the Green Storm’s attention.”
“Distracting it from what, Uncle?”
“Oh, you’ll see, boy, you’ll see.”
27
The Lost Boys had established their listening post just off the eastern side of Rogues’ Roost, where black cliffs dropped sheer into forty-fathom water. One of Red Loki’s burned-out airships had foundered there during his battle with the Green Storm, and in the creel of its barnacled ribs three limpets had docked together to form a makeshift base, locking their long legs across each other’s bodies like crabs in a lobster pot. The Screw Worm eased itself into the tangle, and an airlock on its belly linked to the hatch on the roof of the central limpet, Ghost of a Flea.
“So this is Uncle’s new recruit?” asked a tall youth, waiting inside the hatchway as Caul, Skewer and Tom climbed through into the stale, cheesy air. He was the oldest member of Uncle’s gang Tom had yet seen, and he was looking Tom up and down with a strange, condescending smile, as if he knew a joke that Tom wouldn’t understand.
“Tom’s girlfriend is Hester Shaw, the prisoner in Rogues’ Roost,” Caul started to explain.
“Yeah, yeah. Uncle’s message-fish got here way ahead of you. I’ve heard all about these lovebirds. Mission of mercy, eh?”
He turned away along a narrow passage. “His name’s Wrasse,” whispered Caul, following with Tom and Skewer. “He’s one of the first ones.”
“First at what?” Tom asked.
“One of the first that Uncle brought down to Grimsby. One of the leaders. Uncle lets him keep half of everything he brings home. He’s Uncle’s right hand.”
Uncle’s right hand led them into a hold that had been cleared of cargo and fitted out as a surveillance station. Other boys, each younger than Wrasse but older than Skewer or Caul, lounged about looking bored or sat hunched over control panels in the blue half-light, watching a bank of circular screens which filled an entire wall. This place was crowded. Caul had never heard of so many boys being assigned to a single job. Why would Uncle send so many, just to spy? And why were so many of the screens dead?
“You’ve only got three crabs working!” he said. “We were running thirty aboard Anchorage!”
“Well, this isn’t like burgling city-folk, limpet boy,” snapped Wrasse. “The Green Storm are hard-core. Guards and guns everywhere, all the time. The only way in for a crab-cam is up a sewage pipe that leads to an abandoned toilet-block on the western side. We managed to get three cameras up that and into the heat-ducts, but the Drys heard noises and started getting inquisitive, so we can’t move ’em about much, and we haven’t tried putting any more in. We wouldn’t even have those three if Uncle hadn’t sent us his latest models; remote-control jobs with no cables to trail around. Couple of other special features, too.”
That smile again. Caul glanced at the long control desks. Piles of notes lay among the abandoned coffee- cups, listing timetables, shift-patterns, the habits of the Green Storm sentries. A cluster of fat red buttons caught his eye, each protected by its own glastic hood. “What do those do?” he asked.
