Fever Crumb (20 page)

Once he was a good distance from the Head, Dr. Crumb turned to watch it, too. He was feeling rather irrational that afternoon, and it seemed to him that Godshawk's Head looked wonderful, lit from within by the glow of the fire, with firelight shafting out of every vent and window and the balloon rising palely from its crown like a thought bubble, one last idea wafting free in the updraft from that mighty brain.

Someone seized him by the arm. He turned with a start to see Dr. Stayling thrusting a filthy, flattened hat at him, cramming it onto his head. Behind him the others of the Order were almost unrecognizable under the hats and scarves and shawls of sacking which they had picked up from the littered ground and used to hide their bald, distinctive heads.

"Come on, Crumb. This is no place for men of reason...."

Just then, with an enormous noise, the timber props under Godshawk's chin gave way. There was a long groan, and the ground lurched. The remaining crowds scattered backward, barging and trampling one another.

Wormtimber's chair, its bearers having fled, was left alone on the stretch of ground in front of the tilting head. Ted Swiney stood beside it, his angry little eyes still fixed on the balloon. Charley pulled at his sleeve. "Ted! The Head! It's coming down!"

Ted looked up at Godshawk's enormous face, which glared back at him with flame-filled eyes. The timbers of the tram platform groaned as they took the whole of the Head's huge weight. "
Cheesers Crice!
" Ted shouted (it was the name of some obscure cockney god) and knocked Charley sprawling in his hurry to get away. Charley got up, yelled a warning to Master Wormtimber, and ran after him.

The Master of Devices opened his chair door and jumped out, just as the tram platform gave way and the Head started to topple. He squealed, started to run, then realized that there was not time, and darted back inside the chair, slamming the door behind him.

The Head fell forward, slowly at first and then very fast. It smashed the chair and all its contents flat with one colossal headbutt, and hammered the splinters deep into London clay. Charley dropped to the ground, overshadowed but not quite crushed by the curve of the statue's brow. The air was crammed with dizzy sparks and streaked by embers, thick with flung divots of earth and gobs of molten tar.

Above it all, like panicked birds, the singed pages of a thousand books danced on a tower of heat. And northward, all but forgotten, Dr. Collihole's experiment faded into the pigeon-colored clouds.

***

***

For a long time, Fever was terrified. Terrified of that gulf of air below her, and of the sparks and glowing scraps which gusted all around her, sometimes settling for a moment on the wicker of the basket or on the surface of the envelope itself. Terrified that lightning would leap from the ink-blot clouds above her and strike the wet balloon. Terrified that, even if she survived the fall, she would come down among Londoners ready to tear her to pieces.

But slowly, as the balloon passed over the low, scruffy streets of Finnsbry and out above Hampster's Heath, she was able to bring her feelings back under control. Hot
air rises,
she told herself. The paper bag above her was filled with hot air and it would bear her up until the fuel in the brazier was exhausted and the last of its heat had given up to the cooler air outside, then set her gently down. Those were not thunderclouds above her. With luck, the fortunate wind would carry her and Kit Solent to the Movement. She was safe. The balloon worked. One day, perhaps, people would sail the skies of the world in machines like this....

Kit had slumped down against the basket side, and she busied herself with him for a while. His struggle with the ballast sack had tugged his wound open again, and she ripped a strip from the skirts of her coat and did her best to staunch the bleeding. Kit, barely conscious, groaned with pain when she moved him. She laid him on the floor of the basket and bundled the remains of her coat beneath his head for a pillow.

"We must go back," he kept saying. "The children ..."

"Dr. Crumb will take care of them," Fever promised. "They will be waiting to greet you when you return." She didn't think that was necessarily true, because she was not sure how Dr. Crumb was supposed to get halfway across London to find Fern and Ruan in the middle of a riot, but she could think of no other way to comfort Kit. "The Movement will have doctors," she said, "and when you are better we shall go back to London. Think how happy Fern and Ruan will be to see you...."

"Katie," said Kit, finding her hand and holding tight to it.

"Katie is not here," said Fever. "I am Fever Crumb."

She wasn't sure that he had heard her. He kept holding her hand. "You'll look after Fern and Ruan, won't you?"

"Of course," she told him, embarrassed.

She was glad when he fell asleep. She hoped he would be more rational when he woke. She sat beside him and rested her head against the scratchy, creaking side of the basket. It was cold up there in the sky without her coat. She closed her eyes, wondering what had befallen Dr. Crumb and the other Engineers. She wondered if he had made it safely to Ludgate Hill, and if Fern and Ruan were all right. Images of her terrible, unreasonable day kept flaring behind her shut eyelids. She felt exhausted. All her muscles ached. She thought,
I
must not fall asleep. Dr.
Collihole will
want to hear my observations of
this
flight.

But she slept, and memories came to her like the shards of something broken falling through her dreams.

She was wearing a thick fur coat and standing on the heaving, creaking deck of a sea hoy as it plunged through gray waves under a snow-scoured sky.

She was on an island in that same cold sea, standing before a savage, stately, fur-robed woman, surrounded by guards with spears and knobkerries. She was fetching out of her pack a metal tube, and out of the tube a precious sheet of Ancient tinfoil, which she laid on the ground before the queen's sealskin shod feet as a gift and token of friendship.

She was at home, in her own workroom, and Wavey Godshawk was fastening thick leather straps across her wrists, binding her to the arms of a heavy wooden chair. She could hear a steady thumping noise. Something was clamped tightly around her head, metal screws digging into the flesh of her brow and tugging at her hair.
Hair
? she thought. I don't have hair. She looked down at her trapped hands, and they were not her hands but the hands of an old man, weathered and speckled.

And she woke. It was the balloon, not a ship, that creaked and heaved. It was only a headache that pressed against her temples. She had been asleep, huddled on the basket's floor with her head on Kit Solent's shoulder. The fire in the brazier had gone out and the balloon seemed to have shrunk a little, its sides dimpled and crumply. The thumping noise was still going on, interspersed with a lot of shriller crackles and bangs.

Stiff, wet, and chilled, she stirred herself, reached out and took hold of the basket's brim, and levered herself up until she was peering over it.

The rain had stopped, and the clouds were breaking up, allowing the evening sun to shine redly through. It lit up the ground, not far below her now; not much farther than it would have been if she had still been on top of Godshawk's Head. Flat, gorse-scabbed commons where the sheep scattered as the shadow of the balloon went sliding over them. Drainage ditches glistened in complicated patterns, like the mazes of silvery wire on Ancient printed circuits. The city was far behind her. Ahead, a thick blanket of white smoke was curling over the Orbital Moatway like a slow-breaking wave. Darts of orange flame showed in the heart of it, and all around its edges there was movement -- men running and men on horses galloping, hurrying toward the smoke and away from it so that the Moatway seemed to seethe with secret motion like an ants' nest.

Fever stared, her head still stuffed with dreams, trying to understand what she was seeing. And then, over the crest of the Moatway, punching out of the smoke, a square shape came lumbering, scattering splintered stockade logs ahead of it, spraying up fans of mud as it slithered down the southern face of the embankment. Flame stabbed out of ports along its flanks. It was an armed and armored land barge, and seeing it, Fever knew what was happening.

The Movement had made their move at last. They had attacked the Orbital Moatway, and they were breaking through.

"Master Solent!" she said urgently. "Kit!"

He did not answer her. She twisted round to look at him, and saw that he was dead.

"Master Solent!" she said again, not wanting to believe it. She stared down at him, and she had no idea what to do. She knew that she must not give in to grief. Death was a natural occurrence. People who were sick or injured often died. It was a simple process of cause and effect, like the slow loss of heat that was making the balloon sink. But in this case it was a process that had begun with Kit Solent trying to protect her, and now he lay here white and still and uncomplaining, and Fever felt as though some veil had been torn aside and she was seeing the world as it really was, without illusion or comfort. or consolation. He was dead.

With a sound like a sharp sigh, a bullet hole appeared in the side of the basket close to Fever's face. She looked at it, and wondered what to do. She did not even know who was shooting at her. Was it the Moatway's defenders, taking her balloon for another of the Movement's devices? Or was it the Movement, assuming her to be a London spy? She crouched down, though she knew that would not save her; the bullets were just as likely to come through the floor of the basket as through its sides.

She felt more strike, chunking against the wicker like flung pebbles,
If this
many are hitting the basket,
she thought,
how many have hit the balloon?
And she looked up and saw the paper envelope starting to sag and lose its shape.

The bullets stopped. Whoever had been firing them had given up or fled. Fever crouched low and put her nose to the floor of the basket and peered through its weave. The ground was just a few yards below: lumpy, desolate ground, covered with long, pale grass, which soon began to brush against the underside of the basket. A few moments more and the basket touched down, striking against the top of a low ridge and dragging through the grass for several yards before lifting again.

Fever clung on hard, shaken like dice in a cup. Kit Solent's body rolled against her knees, and she felt how cold and stiff he was.

The basket touched down again. It landed harder this time, juddering violently as the balloon dragged it through stands of thistles and low clumps of furze. At last it tipped over and spilled Fever out. She landed hard in the coarse grass, rolling over and over. When she looked up she saw the balloon billowing away from her, Kit's arm trailing from the basket.

"Master Solent!" she shouted, as if he were still alive. She stumbled after the balloon. The crumpled envelope was itself touching the ground now, hissing over the furze tops with the basket trailing after it like a drag anchor. Fever caught up with it, grabbed the cuff of Kit's coat, and pulled him out. Freed of his weight the balloon lifted a little, drifted away from her like a lazy ghost, and came to rest entangled in a line of trees a half mile away.

Fever stood up and looked around. A riderless horse came galloping past, stirrups trailing. Far off to her right a group of men in russet coats were struggling along a raised bank between the meadows, but they showed no interest in Fever or the crashed balloon. The long line of the Moatway stretched across the land to the north. Smoke still hung thickly over the place where the battle had been, but she could no longer hear gunfire. She squinted at the smoke, making out the smashed outlines of the Moatway defenses and the shapes of men moving about among them. Movement men, presumably. The balloon had set her down among London's enemies.

There was no time to ponder it, for the fall of the balloon had been noted. She had not stood staring long before she saw a small vehicle coming toward her out of the smoke. It was a mono: a single fat wheel with a cabin mounted on gimbals in its center. She had heard of such things but never seen one, since the powerful Guild of Sedan Chair Bearers forbade motorized passenger vehicles in London. It bowled quickly across the heath, smoke squirting from its exhaust flutes, the evening light blinking from the windows of its hub-cabin. It circled the wrecked balloon and then rolled toward Fever, stopping quite close to her. Two men jumped down from it and came toward her.

They wore armor and marched with a heavy, merciless stride. When they drew closer she saw that they weren't men at all, not anymore. She swallowed, and fought off an urge to run. She had forgotten that some of the nomad empires still had Stalkers in their armies; dead warriors resurrected as armored battle engines.

The Stalkers' mechanized armor grated as it bore them toward her. From the eye slits of their faceless metal heads there seeped a thin green light. A wheeled tower, the symbol of the Movement, was painted on their breastplates, and their names were stencilled in neat white lettering across their armored brows: Lammergeier and Corvus. Their hands sprouted blades. The one called Lammergeier pointed at Fever and said in a grinding iron voice, "don't move! put your hands up!"

Fever hesitated, knowing that she could not obey both instructions. Put her hands up without moving? Dr. Crumb would have expected her to point out to the Stalker his faulty logic. But Dr. Crumb was not facing those ugly-looking steel claws. She cautiously raised both hands and stood there, feeling foolish, watching the machines approach. They went past her and stopped, looking down at the body that lay in the grass.

"He's dead," said Fever helpfully. Then, remembering what Dr. Stayling had told her as she left London, she added, "I am from Godshawk's Head. I am an envoy from the Order of Engineers."