Fever Crumb (2 page)

But like most mutant strains, the Scriven hadn't thrived for long. The genetic peculiarities of which they were so proud turned out to be their downfall. All of London's previous conquerors had intermarried with native Londoners and had children who were Londoners themselves, but although some Scriven took human wives and lovers, no children ever came of those unions. Even Scriven marriages were often barren. By the time Godshawk began work on his giant statue there were only a few hundred Scriven left, lording it over a city of sixty thousand. The taxes needed to pay for it, and the slave labor used in its building, helped spark the Skinners' Riots, in which Godshawk and all the other Scriven had been slaughtered.

The rioters had swirled all through London, burning and smashing anything connected with the Scriven, but they'd not been able to do much damage to that titanic head. When the smoke cleared it was still standing, its stern face dented and daubed with angry slogans.

There had been a housing shortage after the riots -- the burning down of buildings, it turned out, had been a bad idea in a city made mostly of timber and thatch -- and the unpopular Order of Engineers (who had taken no part in the uprising, and many of whose members had worked for Scriven masters) were thrown out of their big Guildhouse on Ludgate Hill to make room for displaced families. It seemed logical that, rather than waiting for a new Guildhouse to be built while their valuable collections sat moldering in makeshift huts, they should just move into Godshawk's Head. It was hollow, mostly weather-tight, and very big. The builders had left scaffolding inside that formed the basis of floors and walls and stairways. The Engineers glazed Godshawk's eyes, and poked dozens of smaller windows in his cheeks and forehead. They gave him a tar-paper roof like a bad hat. The Head was only intended to be a temporary accommodation, but it became permanent. After all, as the Engineers liked to joke in their dry, unfunny way, it was most appropriate that they should live in a head. Hadn't they always said that they were the brains of the city?

***

That night, when the paper boys had been taken down and packed in boxes, and sent up to the Barbican, and Fever was washing up after the evening meal in the tiny kitchen which adjoined Dr. Crumb's work space, there came a tapping on the door. She put down the dish she had been wiping and reached for a towel to dry her hands, but Dr. Crumb had already left his workbench and gone to see who their visitor was. Fever could not see the door from where she stood in the kitchen, but she heard it open, and heard the voice of Dr. Stayling.

Fever wondered what could have brought the Chief Engineer to their quarters at such a late hour. She was almost tempted to eavesdrop on what he and Dr. Crumb were talking about, but she reminded herself to be reasonable.
There is no profit in wondering why Dr.
Stayling has come here,
she thought.
It
may he nothing to do with you, "Fever Crumb, and if it is, you shall find out about it in good time.
So she made herself go on with her chores, carefully wiping and drying each plate, dish, and utensil, and putting them back in their places on the kitchen shelves. A
place for everything, and everything in that place
was one of the rules that Dr. Crumb had taught her when she was very little.

She was just emptying the dirty water out of the kitchen window when Dr. Crumb called to her. "Fever. Dr. Stayling would like to speak with you."

So it did have something to do with her! She put the bowl upside down on the sill to drain, then shut the window. She ran a hand over her head, glad that she had shaved that morning. Then she went through into the workroom.

Dr. Stayling was a tall, broad-shouldered old man. He shaved his head, like all the Order, but he didn't bother to clip the hairs in his nostrils, which were long and steely gray and quivered when he breathed. Fever, facing him, reminded herself that it would be childish to find that distracting.

"Fever," said Dr. Crumb, looking worried, "Dr. Stayling has a proposal for you."

"It is not my proposal, you understand," said Dr. Stayling, with that North Country accent of his which grew stronger when he was excited. "Kit Solent, a minor archaeologist, has asked me to supply an Engineer to live at his house on Ludgate Hill and help him to study artifacts from a new site he has discovered. He has requested you, Fever."

Fever, like a good Engineer, showed no emotion, but beneath her white coat her heart began to beat very quickly.

"Fever is very young to be sent out on such a placement," said Dr. Crumb.

"Nevertheless, Crumb, you're always telling us how rational and capable she is. And it is perfectly usual for young Engineers to be sent out into the world. Only then do we find out if they are truly men of reason, or if they will fall prey to the world's temptations. You did it yourself, Crumb."

"Yes," said Dr. Crumb, looking suddenly flustered. "Yes, I did, and it was a ... a troubling period. Difficult ..."

Dr. Stayling went and stood at the window, gazing out across the great, smoky, unreasonable city. He said, "I always had high hopes for young Solent. As a young man he struck me as having a very rational mind. Made some interesting discoveries. Remember that old underground railway station down by the Marsh Gate? That was one of his finds. Remarkable state of preservation. Then he went and married some digger's daughter, and that was the end of his usefulness. They busied themselves mooning about and having babies for a few years, and then the girl died, and ever since he's just looked after the children while living off his savings, which I should imagine are getting pretty low by now. I'm pleased to hear that he's digging again. It is rational for the Order to encourage him in any way we can."

Fever thought that she liked the sound of Master Solent, although she knew it was irrational to form an opinion based on such little knowledge of him. Still, she looked hopefully at Dr. Crumb, wondering if he would let her go.

Dr. Crumb still looked troubled. He said, "Fever is a great help to me here, Dr. Stayling. What shall I do without her?"

"Oh, I'll ask young Quilman to come up and assist you, Crumb. He's highly rational. And it is only for a short time, three weeks or a month. So pack your bag, Fever Crumb. You will be leaving for Ludgate Hill tomorrow."

***

The main entrance to Godshawk's Head was not through its mouth, as you might expect, for annoyingly Godshawk's sculptor had chosen to represent him with his lips firmly closed. Instead, the Order and their visitors came and went through a door at the top of a flight of steps that led up the Head's left nostril.

Out of that door and down those steps next morning came Fever Crumb in the pearl-gray London daylight, pushing open the gate in the high fence, which ran all round the Head, and walking out onto the tram stop, which was a timber platform built on piles against Godshawk's upper lip.

Dr. Crumb came with her. He had carried her cardboard suitcase from their quarters, and he would have liked to carry it farther. He would have liked to go with her all the way to Solent's house and see what sort of place she was to live in and among what kinds of people. Fever would have liked that, too. But neither of them dared suggest it, for fear the other would think them irrational.

So they stood on the Head's wooden mustache in the gusty, biting wind and wondered what to say. The tram was due, but as yet there was no sign of it. The wire-link fence sang thinly in the breeze.

"The wind is still from the west," observed Dr. Crumb at last. "You will have a good, brisk run to the Terminus, and from there I believe it is but a short walk to Solent's place."

Fever agreed. They stood facing each other, the collars of their white coats turned up against the wind. On Fever's head was a wide-brimmed straw hat that Dr. Crumb had unearthed from somewhere, saying she would need it to protect her scalp from the sun. She held it on tightly and watched the thick, gunmetal clouds sweep above the city and thought about sums, angles, anything that would take her mind off what she was feeling.

She didn't want to go. She wanted to stay in the Head forever. She wanted Dr. Crumb to hold her hand and lead her back inside. She felt afraid of living without him, and angry at him for not standing up to Dr. Stayling and insisting that she stay. But she knew, too, that those feelings, like all feelings, were irrational. They were the frightened instincts of a small animal leaving the nest for the first time. Everyone had instincts, just as everyone had hair; they were another vestige of humanity's primitive past. A good Engineer learned to suppress them.

The tramlines began to chirrup and then to hum. She glanced to windward, and there was the tram coming down the long sweep of the viaduct that carried it above the roofs of Wary Edge. In another half minute it would be at Godshawk's Head. She turned back to Dr. Crumb, and almost lost control and hugged him, but by then a whole crowd of Engineers were coming out of Godshawk's nostril like a highly educated sneeze, and what would they think of her if they saw her acting on her feelings? They would think that they had been right all those years ago, and that girls were not suited to the ways of reason. So she held tight to the handle of her suitcase with one hand, and kept that farm-girl hat in place with the other, and just nodded to Dr. Crumb, and Dr. Crumb nodded back, and wiped his eyes with his coat cuff and said, "Bother this wind...."

"Farewell, Fever Crumb!" called the other Engineers. "Good luck! Be reasonable!" And she bowed to them, too, and then the tram was almost alongside the platform and there was nothing to do but turn and run for it while Dr. Crumb, in a voice too small for her or anyone else to hear, said, "Take care, little Fever! Take care...."

***

Fever had often watched wind trams pass the Head, but she had never boarded one before. There was a worrying gap between the platform's edge and the tram's deck, but her legs were long and strong, and she leaped it easily and dumped herself on one of the slatted wooden seats behind the main mast. The tram did not slow, but kept trundling past the tram stop at a steady twelve miles per hour so that the Head fell quickly astern and was soon hidden behind a terrace of thirtieth-century villas.

Fever set her suitcase down on the deck between her feet and groped in her pocket for the coins that Dr. Crumb had given her. The tram conductor, a squat man with a wooden leg, came stumping aft, and she said, "The Central Terminus," and put the coins in his hand. In return he gave her an oyster shell and an expectant stare, as if he were waiting for a thank-you, but Fever did not see any reason to say "thank you" -- he had not done her a favor, merely his job. After a moment he stopped waiting and went on his way, muttering something to another of the tram crew, who laughed nastily.

The oyster shell hung on a cord threaded through a hole bored in its edge. Everyone who traveled by London Transport wore one. Fever took off her hat, and looped the cord over her head, and put her hat back on, and sat on her uncomfortable seat and watched the city slide by. The cloud cover was breaking and a stook of sunbeams stood on Ludgate Hill, gilding the wet roofs of the Barbican and the copper-topped towers of the Astrologers' Guild.

For the first time the bad, breathless feeling which had seized her when she was saying good-bye to Dr. Crumb began to fade, and in its place came something which she thought of as
positive
anticipation, but which someone who had not been brought up by Engineers would have called
excitement.

More houses went by, their top-floor windows level with the tramline. Then the weed-grown summit of a digger's spoil heap, with goats grazing among the buddleia. They passed other stations where people jumped nimbly aboard carrying children and shopping and cumbersome packages, squeezing into the seats on either side of Fever's. The wind died a little as the tram nosed its way deeper into the built-up heart of the city, passing into the lee of tall buildings. Ahead, flocks of dust-gray pigeons wheeled around the thatched roofs of the Central Terminus, in the shadow of Ludgate Hill. The tram crew furled their flapping sails, took up long poles and quanted the rest of the way, only stopping when they reached the incline outside the Terminus, down which the tram coasted until it fetched up with a jarring thump against the straw buffers.

"
Central
Terminus'. Alight 'ere fer Ludgate Hill, Liver Pill Street, an' the Stragglemarket! Change 'ere for stops to
'Bankmentside, St Kylie
,
'Ampster's 'Eath, and Effing Forest!
"

And oh, the noise of it! Fever was pummelled by the din and stink and bustle that greeted her as she climbed down from the tram and made her way along the platform, which was spattered with pigeon droppings and clumps of filthy straw fallen from the high, thatched canopy overhead. Stevedores shunted trolleys piled with crates and barrels at Fever, and left it to her to decide whether she would leap aside or be crushed under their wheels. Men shouted to one another as they ran up the masts of lately arrived trams to furl their sails. Doors slammed and handbells rang as other trams pulled out, laden with freight and passengers. She clutched her little cardboard suitcase to her chest and hurried on until she reached the wooden turnstile at the platform's end. There she held up her oyster shell while the eyes of the turnstile keeper flicked over her in a bored, faintly aggressive way before letting her through.

At once she found herself caught up in a river of Londoners, which was swirling across the concourse and down a broad flight of wooden stairs and out into the street to join a still larger river outside. Drovers were herding sheep toward the meat market, barrow boys and news-sheet vendors were shouting their wares, and dozens of sedan chairs were being carried past, bobbing on that tide of hats and heads like overdecorated cupboards washed away in a flood.