Gears of the City (44 page)

R
uth went walking alone through the city at midnight—down silent and subdued Carnyx Street, across the waste-grounds, the new farms, where the beanpoles stood in rows like ghostly soldiers, and then along 221 Street. The cold sobered her. The
xaw
she’d smoked sharpened her senses, silvered the lights, deepened the shadows.

In the first weeks after the War the city’s night had been dark: unthinkably, utterly dark. The gas was disrupted. There was no one to light the lamps—and no one dared, for lamplight might draw the attention of the bombers. The factories stood empty, the pubs were deserted, and people huddled in their cellars. Light, Ruth had realized, was what distinguished the city from wilderness. Now the light was creeping back—despite rationing, despite broken gas lines, despite the best bloody-minded efforts of the fucking Night Watch! A few lamps lit the farms—guards stood beneath them. Some of 221 Street’s windows had light. There was a pub on the corner, Peake’s Place, in what used to be a house— strictly rationed, but still noisy and warm. It was very important, Marta said, to make sure there were a few luxuries for the re-builders …

Ruth didn’t go in. If she’d gone in, she would have been drawn into conversation, and it would only have depressed her, reminded her that she, too, was stuck here, same as everyone else. Outside, in the cold, in the faint light, her mood was getting better. How could it not? The rebuilding. The return of the light. The noise of laughter and singing from the pub—a couple fucking in the alley behind it, and why shouldn’t they?—the sound of distant factories, running again, against all the odds. It was an extraordinary achievement. A
shared
achievement. The old Know-Nothings used to put up posters saying, we’re all in this together, by which they meant,
snitch on your neighbors
and
do as you’re told.
Now the old slogan was true. She felt a huge vague affection for Fosdyke and everyone in it. She felt the age and the vastness of the city, and its resilience. The city
endured.

Between the rare working lamps and the windows lit with flickering candles the shadows encroached as if jealous. Behind the rooftops the dark Mountain loomed over everything—bitter, cold, resentful. She stared at it; for a moment she had a sense that it might come rushing forward out of the night, made of the night,
and flood everything, destroy everything that had been rebuilt; but it just sat there, sulking.
Fuck you
, she thought, jubilantly,
we don’t need you, we never needed you, we’re better off without you.

Two men were watching her from the street corner. As soon as she saw them she felt ashamed.

W
hat were they?

She knew at once that they weren’t exactly human. They came forward toward her, and as they passed under the streetlamp they remained in shadow. Their shoes clicked on the cobbles—a hollow, anxious sound, like the ticking of a clock, like being late for an appointment. Their features were vague—pale shifting faces under black hats. Their heads flicked birdlike up and down the street, taking in the lights in the windows, radiating sour disapproval.

For a moment she thought perhaps she was dreaming them— her sleep had been disturbed by dreams for as long as she could remember—or that the
xaw
and the night had confused her waking mind.

Then she recognized them. She remembered them: they’d come hunting for Arjun, long ago now, infinitely long ago, because it was before the War …
The men from the mountain
, Arjun had said.
My pursuers. The Hollow Men. The unhappy men.
They’d come hunting through her shop, and terrified her, and somehow she’d forgotten them. Even now she struggled to remember how they’d questioned her, their silent monotonous voices …

What were they? They moved at odd angles to the world, and limply. Their shadows weren’t quite right. They wore the shadows like an ill-fitting suit. They were poorly made, mass-produced.

Spies?

An invasion—foot soldiers, following the bombers?

They glanced at the open door of the pub. It seemed to annoy them.
We weren’t meant to rebuild
, Ruth thought.
We’re only making more work for them.

They turned toward the pub door and toward Ruth at the same time. There was a faint rustling and sense of strain, and then there were four of them. Two went into the pub, and first the conversation fell silent, then there was screaming. Two came slowly closer to Ruth.
Too much
, she thought. 2/
isn’t fair. What did we do to deserve
this?
And she couldn’t quite make herself run. Her legs were weak with fear and shame. They reached for her with pale hands— scarred hands, the fingers not quite right, as if broken and reset, as if subject to dreadful surgeries,
who made you, you awful pitiful things?
She stumbled back, and for a moment the light of a street-lamp fell on her.

The black eyes of the Hollow Men fell on her face—and they drew back. They looked at each other in apparent confusion; their eyes flickered back again and again to her face. Was it possible that they recognized her?

They fluttered their broken fingers at each other, and a silence passed between them that was like conversation. They shifted from foot to foot as if they weren’t sure what to do—as if Ruth’s face were an impossibility not accounted for in their orders.

Ruth’s terror began to turn into contempt.

One of them nervously scratched his pale scarred scalp, and clumsily knocked his black hat from his head. It rolled into the shadows and he went stooping bandy-legged after it. The other one scowled at her, then offered a small bow, then scowled again, backing away, fading into the shadows.

Ruth shook with rage and loathing. From the half-open door of the pub there was the pathetic sound of grown men shouting and screaming. She stamped down the steps and threw the door wide. The drinkers were backed up against the far wall, two men lay stiff and dead on the floor, and the Hollow Men stood over them. Their heads flicked back owl-like to look at Ruth. Her finger quivered as she pointed at them, saying, “Fuck
off
, fuck
off and
leave us
alone.”

To everyone’s surprise, they did.

A
week later, two of the Hollows were seen poking around the ruins of the old Chapterhouse, the steps of the Museum. They interrupted an evening service of the Bird cult and made everyone there feel ridiculous.

A few days later another pair were seen standing on the roof of Warehouse Seventeen on Leather Street, patiently watching people go by below, like foremen supervising the production line.

Two of them walked insolently into the headquarters of the Committee for the Emergency in the middle of the afternoon, as if
they were there to file a complaint. A guard tried to get them to leave and they shredded him to dust and dry leaves. They inspected the paperwork and left.

Refugees and deserters came from Fleet Wark and said that Fleet Wark was at war. There the Hollow Men were cleaning up the last of the mess left behind by the airships. Fleet Wark had rebuilt itself, strong and free, better than before—and the Hollows wouldn’t permit it. Regiments of shadows gathered in the jags and pits of the Ruined Zones. They massed against Fleet Wark’s borders, appeared in the corners of bedrooms at night with murderous intent. They couldn’t be hurt, exactly, but they disliked noise, and fire, and light, and crowds, and music. In Fleet Wark the border patrols carried torches and bells.

T
he Committee for the Emergency doubled the patrols along Fosdyke’s streets. There weren’t enough bells in Fosdyke but there was a massive overabundance of pots and pans, and sticks to beat them with.

The Hollows were seen on Capra Street, and in the bomb shelters at night, and in the fields. Two of the patrols vanished. A child was taken from her bed, leaving only dust behind. Fosdyke waited for the invasion.

The Committee for the Emergency questioned Ruth in a room in the basement beneath their headquarters in the Terminal. Bare table, an oil lamp smoking and glaring just beneath Ruth’s face, half a dozen men and women ringed around her in the shadows. That was how the Know-Nothings used to question you, when they’d decided it would pay to be brutal. Now, it didn’t mean anything much. Nearly everyone on the Committee had sat there once or twice—in their panic they reached for the old way of doing things.

She didn’t know, she told them, she didn’t know why the Hollow Men had run from her. She didn’t understand anything. They didn’t seem to believe her. “Fucking beat me, then,” she said. “Get it over with.”

“We’re done here,” Marta said. “She doesn’t know anything. Go home, Ruth.”

Marta and Ruth walked out together through the corridors under the Terminal building.

“Ivy,” Ruth said, when they were alone.

“Ivy?”

“My face—they stopped when they saw my face.” Ruth looked into her sister’s face, careworn, solid, but so much like her own. “It was like they knew me.
Ivy.
Marta, what do you think happened up on the Mountain? What do you think she did up there?”

Marta touched Ruth’s face, gently, as if reminding herself what it looked like. Her fingers were rough and ink-stained. “Why didn’t you say anything in there?”

“Everything that’s happened is all about
us
, Marta. Ivy. Arjun, too. I don’t know, our father, everything. Everything that’s wrong with us. How can I say that and not sound mad? You tell them if you like. It won’t help. They can’t fight the Mountain. If they beat back the Hollows it’ll just be some other bloody thing. This whole city is made all wrong. We have to find Ivy, Marta. We can’t stop this from down here.”

E
asier said than done—where else was there to go?
Wanting
to ascend the Mountain wasn’t enough. You couldn’t just walk there, any more than you could walk to the moon. It required a cunning, a vicious disregard of the world and its logic, that Ruth simply couldn’t achieve. She was no Ivy. She wasn’t her father’s daughter. And besides, she was never alone—with the Hollow Men abroad in the streets, no one was ever supposed to be alone. She was accompanied everywhere by colleagues, refugees, armed men and women. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t see. When she tried to explore the borders of the Ruined Zone, the dark alleys, friends held her back—they asked her if she was mad.

At night the bombers went over, and though these days they usually passed over harmlessly, bound for southern districts, everyone still went below, into the cellars and tunnels. The new life of Fosdyke was half in the light, half subterranean. In the cellar beneath the old Low house there were now cots and oil lamps and homemade shrines to the new Gods of the city. It was home during the day to two refugees, and it was night shelter for half the street.
Ruth was Ward Coordinator for Carnyx Street; it was her job to count her neighbors in, to bang on doors and help out the elderly. Tonight there was one man too many clamoring for shelter.

He was a dark-skinned man in a red shirt and spectacles. He was thin, dirty, and bruised. Ruth stopped him with a hand on his shoulder, and asked who he was. These days you couldn’t be sure— it was tempting to think that everyone in Fosdyke was on the same side, but there were maniacs from the Night Watch out there, there were raiders from the Ruined Zone, there might be spies from other districts.

He flinched from her touch and she wondered what had happened to him to make him frighten so easily. He said his name was Hatch; he was from Walbrook; he didn’t have a home anymore. His eyes were pleading—the searchlights were coming slowly closer, over the hills, covering the peaked rooftops and the tall chimneys in white ice. “Come on,” Ruth said. “Come on, get down, don’t make any trouble.” She closed the door firmly behind them both—it upset the children to hear the drone of the bombers going overhead.

Mrs. Watts lit two oil lamps and a warm convivial glow suffused the darkness. Joanie Crick shared out the playing cards. The children began to play a game among the crates in the corner; one of them would stand on a crate and announce himself the ruler of the Mountain, and the others would try to knock him off and claim it for themselves. Mr. Titus Schott, who’d joined the cult of the Bird, decided it was a good time to make converts, and got shouted down and laughed into a huffy red-faced silence. Hatch smiled and tears sparkled on his dirty cheeks. “They said there was still real life, real people, here in Fosdyke, but I couldn’t believe it.”

Ruth blushed—her hospitality seemed poor enough to her. “Where have you been, Mr. Hatch?”

He shook his head. “You don’t want to know.” He got up and paced. Joanie Crick pulled the children away from him, by ears and dirty collars.

He saw the nervous expression on Ruth’s face and smiled as if to apologize for his oddness.

He began to sit down—and then something in the corner of the cellar caught his attention, and he darted across to it, scattering the playing cards.

In the far corner they’d heaped the last of the Dad’s stuff they’d
never gotten round to clearing out of the cellar. There were a couple of peculiar clocks, a few things with dials and wires and black tuberous growths that the Dad had called
telephones
, some boxes, some books, half a dozen stuffed birds and vermin. These last seemed to horrify and fascinate Hatch. He picked them up by their stiff limbs and lacquered wings, and turned them over and over.

Ruth put a hand on his shoulder. “My father’s,” she said. “It was a hobby of his. Are you all right? Did you lose someone who …”

He held up a kind of—well, Ruth supposed it was a kind of lizard. It was oddly brightly colored—shiny in an oily way. She was never sure where her father got those creatures—she was very small during his fascination with taxidermy. She remembered visits to the house in the middle of the night by shifty-looking people. She remembered Marta explaining sourly that they were going hungry that week because the Dad had bought a rare parakeet or something. He’d been a terrible taxidermist, anyway; the creature was scarred and hacked about and ruined. The scars reminded her of…