Fever Crumb (8 page)

"So what do we do, Master Creech?"

"We follows her, boy, and we gets a closer look."

***

It was startling to come out of the quiet streets into the bustle of Cripplegate. Fever had expected Kit Solent to turn uphill toward the wind tram Terminus, but instead he simply stepped out into the mud of the roadway and raised one hand, and at once a sedan chair swerved toward him out of the passing scrum of drays, chairs, and pedestrians. He pulled the door open before it had even stopped, the children bundled inside, and as Fever scrambled after them, she heard him call out to the bearers, "Summertown!"

The men did not reply, simply started trotting, turning off Cripplegate as soon as they could and cutting westward through the complicated little streets of Pimlicker and Chel's See. Several times, through gaps between the buildings, Fever caught a glimpse of Godshawk's Head, picked out from the clutter of rooftops and chimneys farther north by stray beams of sunlight.

"Would you like to stop in at home on the way?" asked Kit Solent, noticing how she craned her head to keep it in sight.

"Godshawk's Head is not on the way to Clerkenwell."

"We could make a detour. I thought you might want to look in on Dr. Crumb, and let him know that you are all right."

Fever wanted nothing more, but from across the city

Godshawk's steel face seemed to be staring sternly at her, reminding her that she must be rational and not let down her Order. She said, "There would be no purpose in such a visit. I'm sure Dr. Crumb knows that you would contact the Order if there were any problem."

Kit Solent started to say something, then changed his mind and sat in silence, smiling to himself, watching Fever strain for another glimpse of home. He liked her, her primness and her bravery. It was a
shame,
he thought, that those
dry old-tech botherers at the Head had never let her have a proper
childhood.

He did not think to look behind him, through the small window in the rear wall of the chair, if he had, he might have seen another taxi-chair following not far behind.

***

Ruan couldn't believe that Fever had never been to Summertown. "What, never?" he kept asking her, as if there were a chance that she had been but had forgotten -- as if anyone could forget Summertown. To Ruan there was simply nothing in the world that mattered more than the land barges. Each May time, as the snows of winter melted, he would start to listen for the grumble of their engines on the Great South Road. He would lie in his bed in the quiet of early morning and strain his ears to catch that first distant whisper. Sometimes, when a convoy had been sighted, Daddy would take him down to 'Bankmentside and they would stand together and watch the great pachydermous vehicles passing, big as houses, big as castles, their tracks ingrained with the mud of Europe and their upperworks dusted by the sands of far-off Asia. There were big lumbering cargo hoys like herds of sauropods, but Ruan's favorites were the gaudy, speedy tinker barges and traveling fairs. Half the size of the sluggish hoys and twice as fast, they were painted in a million lurid shades, decked out with flags and chrome and mirrors, and hung each night with strings of saffron lanterns. Dizzy op-art spirals whirled on their wheel hubs, and their exhaust stacks were striped like gypsies' stockings. And along their sides, in cutout letters as high as house fronts, they wore their names:
Ma Gumbo's
Travelin
'
Raree Show
;
The Dark
Lantern; The
Paradise Circus;
A Dream of Fair Women.

He did his best to explain all this to Fever while the chair joggled them through the rookeries of Lemon Heel. He wasn't sure that she understood. She was a strange person, and he couldn't help wondering if she was a bit stupid, even though Daddy had told him she was clever. But she was very pretty -- he thought she was the prettiest person he had ever seen -- so he didn't want to think that she was stupid. Perhaps she was just shy, and that was why she didn't seem interested when he told her about the barge with the big dragon's head at the front, or the magician who made rabbits and ribbons appear out of his hat.

They crossed the Westerway and the chair slowed as it joined the flocks of chairs and people on foot all making for Summer-town. Even Fever began to look interested as the breeze blew fairground noises in through the open windows – chingling music and bellowing, foghorn voices. She remembered Dr. Crumb telling her how some of the land barges traveled all the way to Vishnoostan and Kerala. Even Zagwa, the crazy Christian empire which had conquered most of Africa and southern Europe and banned all technology there, still permitted land barges to visit the free trade zones along its borders....

By the time they stepped out of the chair onto litter-strewn grass between the big barrel-shaped wheels and clay-clagged tracks of the barges, Fever was as wide-eyed as the children. Kit Solent paid the bearers and took Fern's hand, while Ruan ran ahead, shouting back to draw Fever's attention to his favorite barges.

There was a boy who strode about on stilts, and a man who was juggling with shining knives. ("You must not try that at home, Fern," Fever warned the little girl, remembering her role as the rational member of their party.) There was a man who was busy sawing a woman in half. ("Or
that
," she added. "I expect it is all done with mirrors.") A barker on the deck of a barge shouted at them through a big tin trumpet, inviting them to climb the boarding plank and see for themselves the lizard girl and the three-headed goat. "Mutations, no doubt," said Fever, looking at the scary pictures painted on the barge's stern. "It would be unkind to go and stare at them." Ruan and Fern sighted a stall selling candyfloss, and their father bought three sticks. "It has no nutritional value whatsoever," said Fever, looking doubtfully at the pink cloud he handed her. She stretched her head forward, wary of getting the stuff on her coat. It tasted as it looked, scratchy and sticky and very pink. Not nice, not exactly, but fun.

Fern thrust Noodle Poodle into her father's hand and ran off after Ruan, both children gripping their candyfloss sticks like pink banners as they hurried to watch a fire-eater performing. Fever half wanted to go with them, but she told herself it was not dignified for an Engineer to gawp at vulgar entertainments. While Kit Solent strolled after the children, she hung behind, eating her candyfloss with awkward, birdlike movements of her head and an expression which was meant to signal to anyone watching her that she was not
enjoying
it, just tasting it in a spirit of scientific inquiry. And as she ate, she stopped to stare at the strange events on the open stage at the rear of a barge called
"Persimmon's Ambulatory Lyceum,
where actors dressed in cardboard armor were talking too loudly to one another in front of a painted landscape
. It is all
make-believe,
Fever thought. The words, the clothes, the things --
that's not a real sword, and I'm sure that man's beard is made of wool
.
Even the
people are pretending to be other people. Why would anyone waste their time watching such stuff
? Yet people were; quite a crowd had gathered before the stage, and a pretty girl who seemed not to be needed in the play just then was strolling amongst them with a basket, into which they threw their offerings.

It was like a symbol for all the foolishness of the world outside the Head, and Fever was still staring at it when a hand came down on her shoulder from behind. It gripped her firmly, though not painfully, and turned her. She dropped the candyfloss and wiped pink stickiness from her mouth on the back of her hand. A gaunt white face stared down at her. Hard old eyes, pale as glass in the shadow of a tattered hat brim. A rough voice that said, " 'Scuse me, Miss, I needs a word...." But it didn't seem to be a word the stranger wanted so much as a long, hard look. His pale eyes roved over Fever's face as if he were reading her.

He frowned. "What
are
you?" he muttered.

Fever gave a violent shrug, and the old man's hand fell from her shoulder. She turned away from him, almost knocking over the shabby boy who seemed to have sprung up behind her like a mushroom out of the littered grass. She scanned the crowds between the barges, and saw the fire-eater's burning breath flare up like a beacon, guiding her to where Kit Solent was. Hurrying toward him, she looked back and saw the old man and the boy standing, watching her. They were the same pair who had been watching the house that morning, she was sure.

"All right, Fever?" asked Kit, when she writhed through between the other spectators and arrived beside him.

She nodded, wiping at her mouth again. She did not want him to think that she could not be left alone for thirty seconds without trouble finding her. The old man had mistaken her for someone else, that was all. That was the rational explanation. She calmed herself, and looked skeptically at the fire-eater in his roped-off ring.

"I do not believe that he is really
eating
that at all...."

***

That afternoon, at the hour when the low sun shone flickering through the wheels of wind trams as they rumbled above the streets, Bagman Creech and Charley went down Cripplegate and turned right along 'Bankmentside. A wind huffed at them off the Brick Marsh, but it could not quite blow away the acrid smell of the big vats where scraps of plastic dug up from the fields around the city were being melted down and remolded. They crossed one and then another of the slimy timber bridges which spanned the streams flowing into the marsh. People coming the other way stood aside for the Skinner, bobbing bows and curtsies, and he nodded back and rested one hand on Charley's shoulder, letting the town know the boy was with him.

Charley was getting used to his new life by then. He liked the way people called out to wish Bagman luck, and parents pointed him out to their children, and the children stared round-eyed at the old man stalking by, and stared at Charley, too, because, although he was no bigger or better dressed than most of them, he was lit up by some of the Skinner's glory.

At last Bagman stopped at a tall, shabby warehouse with a painted sign above the door. "Wormtimber's historick curios," he read out, for Charley's benefit. "We'll have to teach you to read, son, if you're to be a Skinner's boy."

Inside the place was more like a cave than a shop. Stacked with old car parts and barrels of machine scraps, Ancient technology heaped up against the walls and dangling from the rafters. The owner popped out of a secret lair among the clutter and blinked at them. "Bagman ...

Charley knew the man, of course. Knew him by sight, at least, for Thaniel Worm timber was one of Ted Swiney's cronies, and could be found most evenings propping up the Mott and Hoople's bar. He was small and walnut brown and dirty and he had large, watchful, yellow eyes.

"Charley," the Skinner said, "this here is Master Wormtimber. He's the New Council's Master of Devices, but I believe he won't be above lending us a helping hand."

"Always
happy to help the Skinners' Guilds, Master Creech," replied Wormtimber, rubbing his little mittened hands over and over each other, like a cat washing its paws. His head twitched forward and those weaselish eyes looked hungrily at Charley. "Oh, always happy, Master Creech. Ted Swiney at the Mott and Hoople told me you were hunting again, but I didn't dare imagine that I might be of any use."

"You keep an eye on the digs around town, I believe? You keep the Council abreast of who's digging where and what they're finding?"

"Oh, yes, indeed, Master Creech, that is one of my duties."

"What do you know about an archaeologist called Solent?"

Wormtimber blinked cautiously. "Kit Solent? He's nothing much. He married old Chigley Unthank's daughter. The daughter's dead, too, now, I believe. Solent's never found anything of much note. What makes him Skinner's business, Master Creech?"

Creech said nothing for a moment. Charley sensed that the old man was uneasy about sharing what he'd found with the Master of Devices. But he coughed, and then said, "Solent's hired a new Engineer. A girl."

Wormtimber nodded. "Crumb's foundling. I've heard of her."

"What do you mean, foundling?"

"Why, I mean what I say, Master Creech; that she was found. In a basket, on the Brick Marsh somewhere. Fever Crumb ... He stopped, and his eyes seemed to light with a pale fire. "I say, Master Creech -- you don't suspect she's one of
them?
"

"It ain't proven neither way," said Creech. "I've had a look at her, but I can't be certain. I need to get in and check her over without
actually
getting in and checking her over, if you take my meaning. I heard you're the man to come to for the old machines."

"Oh, yes, Master Creech, sir," said Wormtimber, nodding, rubbing his hands, smiling so much that his eyes folded themselves away into deep creases. "I do have some most interesting devices at my disposal. Say what you will about the Patchskins, they left behind some lovely toys. Old-tech weapons, sir, and spyware. As Master of Devices it's my task to maintain such things for the New Council, but between ourselves, the post pays poorly, and so to make ends meet I do sometimes rent out or even sell the more useful pieces. Though, of course, I'd not dream to expect a rental fee from you, Master Creech. I'm always pleased to help the Skinners. So this girl, you say, this girl who may be, or may
not
be...? We need a close look at her, do we? A sneaky peek, while she's asleep?" He gave a little slithery giggle. "Oh, yes, I think that can be done. Come back tonight, when it grows dark, and we shall see what we shall see...."

***

Some miles outside the inhabited city, where the sparse brown grasses blew on hummocks of brick and tarmac that had once been streets, the Orbital Moatway marked the borders of Greater London. An Ancient feature, built up and fortified in Scriven times, it curved through the heaths and fields like a thick green snake, a deep dike and an embankment topped with a wall of salvage stone and a timber palisade. A stone guard tower stood sentry every mile, looking south toward the Channel Ports, east to the Minarchies of Upnor and Doggerland on the salt plains where the North Sea used to roll, west to the marches of Redding, and north toward -- well, nothing much. North of the Moatway there were only more hummocks, more dun grass, the huts and fields of an occasional small settlement and sometimes, in clear weather, on the edge of sight, the blunt dirty snouts of far-off glaciers squatting in the haze that hung forever above the ice sheet.