A Darkling Plain

when I was little. So this afternoon I wandered off on my own up that track that I saw the Engineers taking last night. From the top of the ridge you can see it winding on across the debris fields for about half a mile, toward a really big, wedge-shaped chunk of wreckage that looks as if it must have been a section of London’s Gut.

Nobody about, but something flashed in one of the holes or window openings in the side of that big old chunk. Then, all of a sudden, I heard footsteps behind me, and there was Mr. Garamond with a couple of his favorite young warriors, Angie’s brother Saab and a girl called Cat Luperini. “What are you doing here?” he shouted, all purple with rage, nearly as cross and ugly as Mum. I tried to explain that I’d just felt like stretching my legs, but he wouldn’t have any of it. “You’re on the edge of a hot zone!” he shouted, and Cat got hold of me and started steering me back toward Crouch End. Saab leaned over and said, “You mustn’t go wandering off like this, Wren. That’s a dangerous part of the fields. We don’t want you to get crisped by a sprite.”

He was quite kind about it, actually. I like Saab. But if that part of the wreckage is so dangerous, why is there such a well-trodden track leading through the middle of it?

* * *

Later, I talked about some of this with Wolf. He doesn’t believe in the sprites at all. When I reminded him about the one that almost fried us on our first day here, he just laughed and said it had been “remarkably well timed.” He thinks the sprites are a sort of trick the Engineers have dreamed up to keep people out of the wreck. He’s got a point, hasn’t he? I mean, if they can make those electric anti-Stalker guns, why not sprites, too?

Well, I’m not going to let stupid old Garamond put me off. He leaves a couple of his people on guard outside our hut at night, for fear we’ll try and run off to sell this little static to a predator, but the guards don’t really believe we will, and they usually just chat and then fall asleep. Tonight, as soon as all is quiet, I am going to creep out and see what’s really going on in that big old wedge of rust they have out there.

(If this is the lust entry in this journal, you’ll know that Wolf is wrong about the sprites, and I’ve been roasted crispier than Milly Crisp herself…)

Wren put away her pencil, slipped her notebook into the inside pocket of her flying jacket, and lay waiting. She listened to Tom’s soft, steady breathing coming through the gaps in the tin wall from the room next door, and wondered what he was dreaming about. Did he have any suspicions about the Londoners? He had not said anything. He just seemed happy to be home.

She could hear Wolf moving about in the room to her right. Little metal noises; clicks and scrapings. What was he up to? Outside, Mr. Garamond’s guards spoke softly to one another.

Wren did not remember going to sleep, but she must have, because she woke suddenly to find that the luminous hands of her wristwatch stood at half past three.

“Oh, Clio!” she groaned, rolling off her bedding and scrambling to her feet.

She went to the door and looked out into the narrow passage. For some reason she felt uneasy. Wolf’s door was half open, moonlight spilling through. She crept to it and peered into his tiny room. His bedroll was empty. Wren ran to the window and stifled a cry as the steel-mesh shutter came free in her hands. Wolf had unfastened it somehow, and hung it back in position after he’d climbed out so that the guards would not notice anything wrong.

“Oh, Gods!” Wren whispered, thinking of the Jenny Haniver. She had not forgotten the ruthless streak in Wolf’s nature. What if he were already creeping away through the debris fields to steal the Jenny? How long had he been gone? Was it the sound of his going that had woken her?

She scrambled out under the loosened grille and peeked around the corner of the hut. The guards were sitting on the doorstep, bored and sleepy; one was already snoring, and the other’s head was nodding. Wren tiptoed away, then ran between the silent shacks and huts and out of Crouch End. The ruins of London were a maze of stark moonlight and inky shadows. Eastward, a figure showed for a moment on the spiky skyline.

Wolf! Wren started after him, relieved that at least he was not heading for the Jenny. So what was he doing? Snooping about, she guessed, just as she had been planning to snoop. It annoyed her to think that he had beaten her to it. She had wanted to learn London’s secrets herself, and impress him with her discoveries over breakfast…

She started to go after him, up the track that she had taken earlier. She told herself there was no reason to be afraid; the Londoners were softies, and even if they caught her, they would do nothing worse than return her to her prison and screw the window grilles down tighter. But she could not help feeling tense, and when a shape suddenly stepped out of the shadows beside the path to grab her, she cried out loudly and shrilly.

An arm went round her middle, and a strong hand covered her mouth. She twisted her head around and saw Wolf Kobold’s face above her in the moonlight. “Shhhh,” he said softly. His hand left her mouth, but lingered for a moment on her face. “Wren … what are you doing out here?”

“Looking for you, of course,” she said, her voice wobbling slightly. “Where are you going?”

Wolf grinned and released her. He pointed along the moonlit road to the enormous segment of wreckage that lay ahead. In some of the openings lights were moving about, bobbing like marsh lanterns.

“Listen!” he said.

Across the wastes of moonlit metal came a low rumbling noise, rising and falling, then cutting out altogether. White light flashed and flickered out of the openings in the hulk.

“Sprite?” asked Wren.

Wolf shook his head. “Machinery of some sort. The same sound I heard two years ago.”

“Engineers come up here at night,” she whispered. Wolf just nodded. “I’ve seen them too. And I’ve seen people bringing crates up here; crates filled with salvage from the debris fields. And Engineers poring over plans. Why? What are they building in there, Wren?”

Wren felt a little annoyed that he had found out more than her. Milly Crisp never had this sort of competition. She tried to look as if his findings came as no surprise to her.

“Let’s find out, shall we?”

Side by side they hurried on, and soon reached the Gut segment. It really was immense; a sea cliff pitted with countless caves where ducts and corridors had once linked it to the rest of London. Wolf clambered in through one of them, and reached back to haul Wren up behind him. “It looks like some kind of factory from London’s Deep Gut,” he whispered. “It seems to have survived almost intact.”

They moved deeper. The floors were tilted at a slight angle, making walking tricky. Metallic noises echoed along the drippy corridors. They reached a bolted door, retraced their steps, climbed a flight of sloping metal stairs. They passed a wall stenciled with the symbol of a red wheel and the words LONDON GUILD OF ENGINEERS: EXPERIMENTAL HANGAR 14. The higher corridors were lit by shafts of stuttering white and orange light that grew brighter as Wren and Wolf crept on into the heart of the building. The steady, reassuring glow of argon lamps shone through hanging curtains of transparent plastic.

Wren felt more excited than afraid now. She let her hand brush against Wolf’s, and he gripped it and squeezed it reassuringly as he pushed the curtains aside.

Together, hand in hand, they looked down into an immense open space at the center of the hangar.

“Great Gods!” Wren whispered. “So that’s it!” said Wolf.

“Put your hands up, Mr. Kobold,” said another voice, quite close behind them. “You too, Miss Natsworthy. Both of you, put your hands up and turn around very slowly.”

Chapter 23 The Childermass Experiment

Hester?” mumbled Tom, waking slowly. He had been dreaming of the old London Museum again, but this time it had been Hester who was leading him through the dusty galleries. In his dream, he had been happy to see her.