Stairways rose from it to the second storys of the buildings, poky tenements squashed in under the armored roof. Others led down through the deck plate to engine rooms, whose heat came up through the pavement and the soles of the travelers’ boots. An alcove between the snaking air ducts held an eight-armed image of Thatcher, all- devouring goddess of unfettered Municipal Darwinism.
“Is this your first visit to a harvester?” Wolf asked, watching his guests’ faces as they walked along beside him. “We make no pretense at gentility here, as the larger cities do. It’s a good, sound place, though. It was a scavenger once, till it got captured by a hunting city up in the Frost Barrens. They thought it might be useful for the war effort, so they delivered it to Murnau whole, and my father gave it to me to knock into shape. I’ve recruited people from other harvester suburbs to help me. Rough types, but loyal.”
The whole place smelled like a stove: smoke and hot metal. Wren thought that if she had to live underground, she would take every chance to go outside and breathe fresh air, but the Harrowbarrovians did not seem inclined even to venture out onto the landing apron; they stayed in the shadowed parts of their suburb, and those whose business took them into the daylight hid their eyes behind sunglasses and goggles and wrapped themselves up against the cold in pea jackets and gray felt mufflers.
“Not many women aboard,” said Wolf, with a sideways look at Wren. (She couldn’t tell if he was apologizing to her for the lack of female company or hinting at how pleasant it was to have a visit from a pretty aviatrix. Both, maybe.) “No families live here. It’s a hard life aboard Harrowbarrow. You mustn’t mind my lads if they stare.”
And stare they did, their mouths hanging open in their stubbly faces, as their young mayor led his visitors up a rackety moving staircase into the town hall, a crescent-shaped building that stood on stilts, overlooking the dismantling yards inside the suburb’s jaws. It was ugly, and rather small, but Wolf had furnished it well. There were hangings and tapestries to hide the metal walls, and well-chosen works of art, and when his servants closed the shutters to hide the views of machinery outside, it had a homey feel.
Wolf took them to a long, narrow dining room, the ceiling painted blue with little white clouds as a reminder of the sky outside. “You have not breakfasted, I trust?” he asked, not waiting for an answer as he ushered them to seats around the dining table, making sure that Tom took the place of honor at the head. Another man entered: elderly, short, and sallow, with pocked skin and complicated spectacles. Wolf greeted him warmly and held out a chair for him, too. “This is Udo Hausdorfer, my chief navigator,” he explained. “When I am away, it is he who keeps things running smoothly. One of the best men I know.”
Hausdorfer nodded, blinking at each of the guests in turn. If he was one of the best men Wolf knew, Wren would not have liked to meet the rest, for Hausdorfer looked like a villain to her. But she could see that Wolf liked him; more than liked him—if she had not known better, she would have taken them for father and son. She could not help thinking how much more at ease Wolf was with this shifty-looking old scavenger than he had seemed with his real father.
Serving women with eyes like bruises moved silently about carrying plates and dishes and pots of coffee. Kobold smiled at his guests and raised his cup.
“My friends! How pleasant to have new faces at my table! I am happy to say that we have real, fresh coffee, taken from a scavenger town we ate last Tuesday. The fruits of the hunt!”
“You are still hunting?” asked Tom. “I thought the Traktionstadtsgesellschaft had sworn not to eat other towns until the war was won.”
Wolf laughed. “A silly, sentimental notion.”
“I thought it rather noble,” said Tom.
Wolf looked thoughtfully at him as he slurped his coffee. Then, setting down his cup with a clatter, he said, “It may be noble, Herr Natsworthy, but it is not Municipal Darwinism.”
“What do you mean?” asked Tom.
“I mean that I have lived aboard Murnau, and I have seen at first hand the way our great Traction Cities have tied themselves up in petty rules and taboos.” He speared a kipper with his fork and used it to point at Tom. “The big cities are finished! Even if they win this war, do you think the Traktionstadts will ever hunt again as real cities should? Of course not! They will cry, ‘Oh, we must not hunt Bremen; Bremen gave us covering fire when we bogged down on the Pripet salient,’ or ‘It would be wrong to chase little Wagenhafn, after all that Wagenhafn did for us in the war.’ That is why they cannot defeat the Mossies, you see. They insist on helping each other, and as soon as you start helping others, or relying on others to help you, you give away your own freedom. They have forgotten the simple, beautiful act that should lie at the heart of our civilization: a great city chasing and eating a lesser one.
“And yet you’re part of their alliance,” argued Tom. “You fight in their war.”
“For the moment, because it suits us. The Storm must be smashed. But I never let my people forget that we are free. We hunt alone, and we eat whatever we can cram into our jaws.”
Tom looked unhappy. Wren hoped he was not about to say something that would offend Wolf. “You make Harrowbarrow sound no better than a pirate suburb,” he mumbled at last.
Wolf was not offended. He laughed. “Thank you, Herr Natsworthy! I have always suspected that piracy is the purest form of Municipal Darwinism!”
“But you’re only temporary mayor of this place, aren’t you?” asked Wren. “I mean, you’re heir to Murnau…”
Wolf shrugged and ate his kipper. “I shall never take over my father’s job. Not if he begged me. Why rule a lumbering mountain full of merchants and old women when I could be out here, hunting, free? Places like this are the future now. When the Mossies and the big cities finish tearing one another to pieces in this endless war, Harrowbarrow and others like it will inherit the earth.”
“Gosh, well, I hadn’t thought of it like that,” Wren stammered. She was sure he was wrong, but he was so certain of himself that she could not think of a counterargument.
Wolf laughed again. “I’m so sorry. I should not talk politics at breakfast time! And I have not even filled you in on the details of our journey. We shall set off soon, heading due east across no-man’s-land. If all goes well, we should reach the Storm’s outer defensive line sometime after midnight. I have found just the place for the
He bowed, and his eyes were fixed on Wren. Tom wondered if there was still time to pull out of this expedition; or at least to find some excuse to take Wren back to Murnau, away from this attractive, dangerous young man. But he so wanted her to see London…
And anyway, it was too late. Through the thin walls came the scrape and boom of the suburb’s armor sliding shut, and the dull bellow of its engines starting up again. Harrowbarrow crawled on its way along the bottom of its chosen track mark, gathering speed, shoving its bank of drills into the earth, working itself deeper until it was just an unlikely, moving mound, like a rat under a rug, grinding eastward toward the rising sun.
Chapter 16
Fishcake on the Roof of the world
Remember little Fishcake and his Stalker? Not many people do. The death of Brittlestar and the theft of the
A few days later a raft town cruising in the crater maze east of the Middle Sea reported losing fuel from its storage tanks, and the captain of a submersible diving for blast glass on the crater floors claimed to have seen a strange craft swim by above him, silhouetted against the sunlit surface. But the captain was a drunkard, and the few people who believed his story just shook their heads and muttered that the Lost Boys must be up to their old tricks again.
From crater to flooded crater the
