Infernal Devices

So Tom and Caul concentrated on testing the old sub’s engines while Hester filled her tanks with fuel and Freya made some of the older children show her Grimsby’s food stores, where they collected armfuls of provisions to keep them going on the journey back to Vineland.

Everything had to be done quickly. Metallic moans and grumbles kept rolling down the passageways of the building, as hull plates that had been damaged by Brighton’s depth charges slowly shifted and gave way under the pressure of the sea and the bulkhead doors slammed shut to seal off the flooded sections. No one had forgotten that Uncle was still up there in his chambers with his mad dreams. But Uncle seemed to be sleeping soundly for the moment; at least when Tom opened the Naglfar’s hatches and looked up at the shadowy roof, he could not see any crab-cams on the move.

He leaned against the open hatch cover for a moment, glad of the cold, for it was growing hot and stuffy in the Naglfar’s engine room. He had been overdoing it down there and worrying too much about Wren, and his old wound was hurting him again, sharp, jabbing shards of pain, as if his heart were full of broken glass. He wondered again if he was going to die. He didn’t think he was afraid of dying, but he was afraid of dying before he found Wren.

He decided to worry about Caul instead of himself. He climbed out of the submarine and found Hester coming across the dock.

“What are we going to do about Caul?” Tom asked softly, drawing her aside. “He’s still set on staying here. Has he forgotten that Uncle tried to have him killed?”

Hester shook her head. “He’s not forgotten,” she said. “I don’t think he wants to stay, exactly. It’s just that he loves Uncle.”

“But Uncle nearly killed him]”

“That doesn’t make a difference,” said Hester. “Uncle is the nearest thing Caul’s got to a mother or a father. Everybody loves their parents. They may not always realize that they love them, they may hate them at the same time, but there’s always a little bit of love mixed in with the hate, which makes it really… complicated.”

She stopped, unable to explain herself, thinking of her own complicated feelings for her dead father and her missing child. She wished Wren loved her as much as Caul loved Uncle.

“Freya told me Caul has dreams about this place every night,” said Tom. “He dreams about Uncle’s voice, whispering to him the way it used to when he was a child. Why would Uncle keep talking to them all, over the speakers, even while they were asleep?”

“Maybe he was sort of brainwashing them,” said Hester.

“That’s what I think,” Tom agreed. “Putting a kind of hook in their minds that would always pull them back to Grimsby, no matter how far they tried to run or how much they wanted to get away.”

“We’ll overpower Caul,” said Hester. “Knock him on the head and drag him away. He’ll come to his senses once we’re at sea.”

“Maybe,” said Tom. “Maybe, once this place is gone and Uncle’s dead, he’ll be able to forget it.”

From the conning tower of the Naglfar came a piercing, childish scream. “The cams]” shouted a boy called Eel, whom Freya had told to keep watch because he was too small to do anything else. “The cams are moving]”

Tom and Hester looked up. Above them, crab-cams were scuttling along the rusty jibs of the docking cranes, clambering over each other as they trained their lenses on the pool where the Naglfar wallowed.

“The old man’s awake,” said Caul, scrambling out of the submarine’s forward hatch and climbing down onto the dock with Freya close behind.

“So what?” asked Hester. “He can’t stop us leaving now.”

“Who said anyone is leaving?” asked Uncle’s scratchy voice. “Nobody’s leaving.”

He came limping toward them between the empty moon-pools, Hester’s gun looking huge in his papery, quivering hand. Above his head the old balloon hung like a moldy thought-bubble, and the globe of screens beneath it flickered with pictures from the crab-cams. He heaved the gun up and pulled the trigger, sending a bullet clanging into the metal of the Naglfar’s conning tower. The sound echoed away between the shadowy docking cranes, and as if in answer a stressed bulkhead somewhere on the upper levels let out a long groan, like some huge creature dying slowly and painfully of indigestion.

Uncle ignored it. “Uncle Knows Best!” he shouted shrilly. “Stay here and help me rebuild Grimsby, and you will be well rewarded. Try to leave, and you’ll be flushed out the water-door to feed the little fishies.”

The children twittered. Hester stepped protectively in front of Tom. Caul ran toward the old man. “Uncle,” he said, “I think Grimsby is damaged worse than we reckoned.”

“Well?” asked Uncle, looking up at a close-up of Caul on one of his screens. “So? It was worse off than this when I first came down here.”

“Mr. Kael’ Freya called softly. “Stilton?”

She walked across the dock while crab-cameras on the cranes above her frantically zoomed in on her face and hands. Caul tried to stop her, but she shrugged him aside and held out her hand to Uncle. “Caul’s right,” she said. “Grimsby is coming to an end. It was a bold idea, and I’m glad that I have seen it for myself, but it is time to leave. You can come with us, back to Anchorage. Wouldn’t you like to breathe fresh air again, and see the sun?”

“The sun?” asked Uncle, and his eyes suddenly swam with tears. It was a long time since anyone had been kind to him. It was a long time since anyone had called him Stilton. Freya reached out to him, and he stared up at his hovering ball of screens, at her gentle white hands hanging huge above him, like wings.

“Leave Grimsby?” he said, but in a wondering way, softly. The crab-cams zoomed until every screen showed Freya, or a part of Freya: her face, her eyes, her mouth, the soft curve of her cheek, her hands, all larger than life, like parts of a self-assembly kit from which a goddess might be constructed. Uncle wanted to hold those kind hands and go away with her, and see the sun again before he died. He took a half step toward her and then remembered Anna Fang, and how she had betrayed him.

“No!” he shouted. “No! I won’t! It’s all a trick!”

He pointed the gun at her and pulled the trigger, and the huge noise slammed through the pens and made all the children squeal and cover their ears. The bullet went through Freya’s smiling face, and her face broke, and there was blackness behind it, and sparks, and as the glass rained down on him, Uncle dimly realized that he had shot not Freya but only her image on the largest of his screens. He looked for the real Freya, but Caul pulled her aside and shielded her, and Uncle didn’t want to shoot Caul.

From somewhere above him came a long, distracting sigh. The heavy gun drooped in his hands. He looked up. Everyone looked up, even the scared children. The sigh grew louder, and Uncle saw that his shot had opened a hole in the balloon that held his moon of screens aloft. As he watched, it widened swiftly into a long gash like a yawning mouth.

“Uncle!” shouted Caul.

“Caul!” screamed Freya, pulling him back, holding him tight.

“Anna…” whispered Uncle.

And the ball of screens came down on him like a boot on a spider. The screens burst, sparks swarming blue and white, shattered glass sleeting across the deck. The collapsing balloon settled over the wreckage like a shroud, and as the smoke from the smashed machines reached the roof, a sprinkler system kicked in, filling the limpet pens with cold salt rain.

Tom ran up, and Hester took Freya by her shaking shoulders. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“I think so,” Freya said, nodding, soaked to the skin and sneezing at the smoke. “Is Uncle—?”

Caul skirted the heap of sparking, smoldering screens. Only Uncle’s feet, in their grimy bunny slippers, poked out from beneath the debris. They twitched a few times and were still.

“Caul?” asked Freya.

“I’m all right,” said Caul. And he was, even though for some reason he could not stop crying. He pulled a swag of balloon fabric over the bunny slippers and turned to face the others. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get the Naglfar swimming before this place finally falls apart. The Worm too. Tom and Hester will need the Worm if they’re going after Wren.”

The work went faster after that. Grimsby was creaking and keening constantly, and sometimes an ominous