about it in one of his books. He reads a lot of books, does Napster. He’s trying to improve himself. Anyway, it’s lucky we got here today, because there’s a big meeting of mayors and bigwigs there and Napster’s gone down there to … to see if one of them will buy you off him, Miss.”
Oenone thought she was used to being helpless and afraid by now, but when she heard that, she was almost sick with fright. She had spent most of her life hearing about the cruelty of the men who ruled the Traction Cities. She forced her hands out through the mesh and snatched at Mrs. Varley’s skirts as the girl turned away. “Please,” she said desperately. “Please, can’t you let me out of here? Just let me ashore. I don’t want to die on a city…”
“Sorry,” said the girl (and she really was). “I can’t. Napster’d kill me if I let you go. You know the temper he’s got on him. He’d throw my baby overboard. He’s often said he would.”
The baby, as if he had overheard, woke up in his crib down in the gondola and began to bawl. Mrs. Varley tugged her skirts out of Oenone’s grasp and hurried away. “Sorry, Miss,” she said, as she started down the ladder. “I have to go now…”
Manchester, which had been rumbling eastward all spring, detouring now and then to eat some smaller town, had finally reached the Murnau cluster the previous afternoon. Bigger and brasher than the fighting city, it squatted like a smug mountain a few miles behind the front line. Its jaws hung half open—officially so that its maintenance crews could clean its banks of rotating teeth, but it gave the impression that it had half a mind to gobble up a few of the small trading towns that thronged around Murnau’s skirts.
One by one the towns gathered in their citizens and started to crawl away, for they all knew that Manchester’s arrival meant trouble, even if it didn’t eat them. Adlai Browne was a well-known opponent of the truce, and most of the cities of the Traktionstadtsgesellschaft were in debt to him. He had poured a lot of money into their war with the Storm, and now he wanted to see something in return. His couriers, flying ahead of the city, had summoned their leaders to a council of war in Manchester Town Hall.
By nine o’clock that morning airships and cloud yachts were converging on Manchester’s top tier from every city and suburb on the line. Watched from a safe distance by polite crowds of onlookers, the mayors and kriegsmarschalls made their way into the town hall, where they took their places on the padded seats of the council chamber and waited for the lord mayor of Manchester to mount the steps to the speaker’s pulpit. High above them, in the dome of the ceiling, painted clouds parted to let beams of painted sunlight through, and a burly young woman who was supposed to be the Spirit of Municipal Darwinism flourished a sword, putting to flight the dragons of Poverty and Anti-Tractionism. Even
Browne leaned with both hands on the carved pulpit rail and surveyed his audience. He was a squat, florid man, whose immense wealth had made him permanently dissatisfied with everything around him. He looked like an angry toad.
“Gentlemen,” he said loudly. (“And ladies,” he added, remembering that there were several mayoresses among his audience, as well as Orla Twombley, leader of his own mercenary air force.) “Before we begin this historic conference of ours, I just want to say how very proud I am to be able to bring my city here, and to tell you how much your long years of sacrifice and struggle are appreciated back west, by the ordinary folk of more peaceful cities.”
There was polite applause. Kriegsmarschall von Kobold leaned over to his neighbor and muttered, “It is our money they appreciate. We’ve paid a fortune down the years for all the guns and munitions they have sent us. No wonder Browne is scared at the thought of peace.”
“Now I’m a plain-speaking fellow,” Browne went on, “so I won’t mince my words. I haven’t just come here to pat you on the back. I’m here to stiffen you up a bit; to give you a bit of a boot up the proverbial. To remind you, in fact …” He paused, letting the young man who was translating his words into New German catch up with him. “To remind you,” he went on, “that Victory is at hand! I know how much you have all welcomed this truce, this chance to open your cities to the sky again and enjoy a few months’ peace. But we who dwell a little farther from the battle lines, and fight the Green Storm in our own ways, are maybe able to see a few things that you can’t. And what we see right now is an opportunity to scour the Earth clean forever of the menace of Anti-Tractionism. And it is an opportunity that we must seize!”
There was another spattering of applause. Mayor Browne looked as if he had expected more but acknowledged it anyway, turning to check who his supporters were—von Neumann of Winterthur, Dekker-Stahl from the Dortmund Conurbation, and a few dozen battle-hardened mayors from harvester suburbs. He signaled for quiet before the applause had a chance to peter out of its own accord. “Some of you think I speak too boldly,” he admitted. “But Manchester has agents in the lands of the Green Storm, and for weeks now all of them have been telling us the same thing: General Naga is a spent force. That little Aleutian dolly bird he fell for is dead, and the old fool has lost the will to live, or fight, or do anything but sit alone in his palace and rail at the gods for taking her off him. And without Naga the Storm is leaderless. Gentlemen, this—oh, and ladies—this is the moment to attack!”
More applause, stronger this time. Several voices called out, “Well said, Browne!” and “We’ll all be in Tienjing by Moon Festival!”
Kriegsmarschall von Kobold had heard enough. He stood up and shouted in his best parade-ground roar, “It would not be honorable, Herr Browne! It would not be honorable to take advantage of Naga’s grief like that! We know the real cost of war, out here on the line. Not just money, but
A few people cheered him, but many more shouted for him to be quiet, to sit down and stop spouting defeatist Mossie claptrap. Von Kobold had not realized that so many of his comrades would be ready to listen to Browne’s warmongering. Had these few months of peace been enough to make them forget what war was like? Did they really think there would be any winners if they let the fighting start again? They were as bad as Wolf! He glared about him, feeling indignant and hot and foolish. Even his own staff officers looked embarrassed by his outburst. He started to shove his way along the row of seats toward the nearest exit.
“Gentlemen,” Adlai Browne was saying, “what I’m hoping we can thrash out today is not so much a battle plan as a menu. The lands of the Green Storm lie before us, defended by a weary, ill-equipped army. Whole static cities like Batmunkh Gompa and Tienjing, countless forests and mineral deposits that the barbarian scum have refused to exploit, all lie waiting to be eaten. The only real question for us is: How shall we divide the spoils? Which city shall eat what?”
Feeling sick, the old kriegsmarschall pushed his way out of the council chamber. The sounds of cheering and booing and furious arguments followed him all the way down the corridors of the town hall and into the park outside, but at least out there the air was fresh and the breeze was cool. He hurried down the steps and ducked under the security barriers that Browne’s people had erected to keep sightseers at bay. The crowds had gone now, except for a few picnickers on the lawns. Paper hats and placards lay strewn among the fallen blossoms on the metal paths. A discarded newspaper blew past, Nimrod Pennyroyal’s photograph on the front page.
He strode across the grass to an observation balcony. Standing against the railings, he breathed in deeply, gazing eastward toward the armored ramparts of his own city, and then east again, to no-man’s-land. It was three weeks since Wolf had left Murnau. What was he doing now? Where was that nasty suburb of his? What would become of it if the war began again?
“Von Kobold?” asked someone close behind him. “Kriegsmarschall von Kobold?”
He turned and saw an impertinent, overdressed stranger with ginger whiskers. The young man looked slightly demented. Kobold almost regretted that he had left his staff officers behind in the council hall. But he was not going to let himself be scared by a ferrety little scrub like this, so he drew himself to attention and said, “I am von Kobold.”
“Varley.” The stranger held out a hand, and he could think of no good excuse not to shake it. “Napster Varley,” said the man, beaming at him. A gold tooth blinked like a heliograph. “I popped down here, hoping to speak to your little conference, but they wouldn’t let me in. So I was hanging about, waiting for it all to finish so I could buttonhole one of you on your way back to your airships, and I noticed you wandering about. Stroke of luck, isn’t it?”
