Storm Thief (5 page)

Rail was twiddling the end of one his dreadlocks as he walked. He was agitated. Moa could tell, even with the smooth metal muzzle that covered his face. It showed in his wide brown eyes. He was truly a beautiful boy, Moa thought, his features fine and delicate and his skin smooth and flawless. Small wonder that he hated the city that had changed him, forced him to wear that disfiguring mask, that pack on his back, the tubes that ran between them.

“You've done something, haven't you?” she asked. “Rail, what did you do?”

Rail shrugged, as if he could make it less important by acting like he didn't care. “I took something.”

“You frecking
what
?” Moa cried. Rail glared at her, and she lowered her voice to a hiss. “You took something? From the chest?”

He nodded. “I didn't think she'd miss it. Didn't even think she knew it was there.”

“Oh, Rail. . .” she said, but she didn't have the words to express what she felt right then. An abyss had opened up beneath her, and they were both teetering on the brink. And though it was his fault, she couldn't find it in her to blame him. She knew exactly why he had done it.

They walked on for a way, out of the plaza and into the narrow alleys and paths that ran alongside the canal. He told her about the artefact as they went. The ghetto, like the rest of Orokos, was built around the bones of older buildings from the Functional Age. Towering, alien constructions made of strange material loomed over streets of brick and rusty iron. Indestructible walkways of shining obsidian bridged dirty yards full of junk. What order there had once been in the ghetto had been gradually destroyed by the probability storms, jumbling everything up until it was difficult to tell where the past ended and the present began. It was a maze of many levels, and it moved from time to time.

“We run,” Rail said eventually. “It's the only way. We run.”

“Oh, no,” Moa pleaded. “Maybe Anya-Jacana
was
just scaring us. Can't we pretend the artefact just wasn't there? Maybe she'll just think the information she had was wrong. The Mozgas could have moved it before we got there. She didn't tell us what to look for, so how can she blame us for not finding it?”

“She knew,” Rail said. “I could see it.”

Moa laid a gloved hand on his arm, bringing him to a halt. “I don't want to leave. Can't we get rid of it? Can't we just throw it away?”

Rail gave her a look that was half pity, half condescension. She was frightened of the unknown. But she knew as well as he did that it didn't matter whether they had the artefact or not. If Anya-Jacana thought that they had stolen from her, their throats would be cut before tomorrow night.

Once the decision was made in his mind, Rail felt strangely exhilarated. “This is an opportunity. It's a chance to change things for us. Maybe.” He lowered his head, looked deeply into her eyes as if searching for something there. “You want to throw that away?”

“Things will change on their own, Rail. Things always change, if you wait long enough.”

He tapped the side of his respirator muzzle. “I'll make my own luck,” he said bitterly. And with that, he stalked away, and Moa followed after him.

At a distance, Finch followed him also, with a small gang sent by the thief-mistress to get back what was hers.

Rail shut the hatch of their den behind him, and didn't let go until he heard the heavy clank of the locks slamming into place. Moa had already slid down the ladder and was burrowing around in her room, picking up the scattered keepsakes that she had left among the blankets and furs. Once satisfied that they were safe, Rail went to his room and retrieved the artefact from beneath his bedroll, then put it in his satchel. When he returned to the main room, Moa was sitting cross-legged on a rug, stuffing assorted knick-knacks into a tattered backpack.

“Where are we going to go?” she said.

“I don't know,” he replied. “Yet.”

“We can't leave if we have nowhere to go!” Moa cried.

“Yes we frecking can,” Rail shot back. “Unless you want to argue the toss with Anya-Jacana?”

Moa was silent for a moment. Then: “I know where we can go,” she said quietly.

Rail knew too. He just didn't want to admit it.

“I know where we can go,” she said again, “where we'll be safe, where there will be people who can help us.”

She waited for him to say it. Rail liked to be the one to make these decisions, and she liked him to make them. It gave them both a feeling of stability. He needed to be in control, she needed someone else to be in control. That was the way it worked with them.

“All right,” he said at last. “We go to Kilatas.”

Moa sprang up, threw her arms round him and kissed him on the cheek, behind the cold edge of the respirator that fitted over his mouth and nose.

“I'm going home!” she cried.

He pulled away from her suddenly. She had forgotten: he didn't like people touching his face. Embarrassed, she mumbled an apology.

“S'OK,” he said, looking away.

It made her sad to see him like that. He was ashamed of himself, ashamed of his condition. He wouldn't accept what had been done to him by the probability storm. Why couldn't he understand that change just
happened
, that there was nothing anyone could do to prevent it? Why did he struggle so hard? You could spend your whole life fighting to make something of yourself, to get out of this awful ghetto, and then one day you find yourself struck down with some disease, or turned into a cat, or dumped on the other side of the city with no way back. That was the way the world worked. So why make your life miserable by swimming against the current? It made far more sense to lie back and wait for things to turn your way.

But Rail wouldn't do that. He was angry at being burdened with a respirator. He didn't even think how
lucky
he was that Anya-Jacana had one to give to him. She had saved his life in return for his service, but that wasn't enough for him. He wanted to go to some rich doctor, to have them fix him and make it right. Even though it would cost more than they would ever have, even though no doctor would ever work on anyone with the stripes of the ghetto-folk tattooed on their arm. He wanted to make his fortune so he could change back what the city had done to him.

It was his dream. Moa knew that. And she knew that was what he had been thinking of when he had decided to steal from the thief-mistress.

“Here it is,” he said, digging in his satchel and retrieving the artefact. He put it carefully in her hand.

She stared at it in wonder. Suddenly, she could see why he had been so reckless. It was mesmerizing. The working of the brass was incredible. The amber disc was made of something like polished stone, or glass, or a gem. But it was none of these. It turned the light in a curious way, so that from some angles it looked like it was
deep
. Instead of a flat disc it seemed like the mouth of a great, amber-lined hole, even though the disc itself wasn't much thicker than a biscuit. It was a tiny miracle, an echo of a past long forgotten that Moa believed in desperately. A time when things were different.

“Oh. . .” she breathed. “It's wonderful.”

“You keep hold of it,” he told her.

“But it's yours,” she said, though her protest was half-hearted. She was already entranced. “You found it. It could be worth a fortune.”

“You keep that safe, I'll keep
you
safe. How's that?”

She looked up at him and gave him a heartbreaking smile of pure and innocent happiness. She never understood why Rail did these little things for her, these little gestures of companionship, but she loved him for it. Not in the way a girl was
supposed
to love a boy – at least, she didn't think so – but because it made her feel wanted. Neither Rail nor Moa had anybody to care about them but each other.

“That's fine,” she said, laying her hand on his arm. He put his hand on hers for a moment. Then he turned away and went into his room, and it was as if she had never touched him.

For a time, she studied the Fade-Science artefact in the strange light of the den. Rail and Moa had never worked out the source of the illumination in their bunker hideaway. Night or day, it was always light, yet there seemed to be no lanterns or glowsticks or anything of that sort. It just seemed to come from the walls and floor and ceiling.

They hadn't wasted much time thinking about it. There was nobody in Orokos that hadn't come across some wonder from the Functional Age and been baffled. People took the unknown in their stride, because they were surrounded by it. For many generations, scientists and inventors had been struggling to understand the legacy of the time before the Fade. What headway they made was frustratingly slow. For people like Rail and Moa, there was no hope of making sense of the ancient technologies. They were uneducated, without prospects, and denied both because they were raised in the ghettoes. They simply took it as good fortune that they didn't need to light their home and left it at that.

But the artefact . . . that was different. Moa turned it over and over while Rail packed up his meagre possessions in the other room. There were two loops at one end of the amber disc, set at right angles to it, almost like two rings joined together. Experimentally, she slid her middle two fingers through the loops, so that the amber disc lay in the middle of her palm. It was a very tight fit, but it felt right. She turned her hand this way and that.

“Rail! I think I've worked out how you're supposed to wear this thing.”

“
Wear
it?” he called back through the doorway. Moa yelped suddenly. He popped back into sight, alarmed. “Moa, what are you –”

He never finished. Moa was standing transfixed, her hand held out before her and the artefact upon it. Her forearm was sheathed in soft light, swirling veils of purple and green and blue that clung to her like fog. She moved it left and right, and the veils drifted with her.

“Take it off!” Rail cried. He moved towards her and then stopped, not sure what to do.

“No, it's all right,” she said. “It doesn't hurt.” A faint smile appeared on her face, now that it didn't appear to be harmful. “Look at it.”

Rail
was
looking at it. He couldn't take his eyes from it. “You know what that looks like, Moa?” he said. “That looks like what happens when there's a probability storm.”

Moa was about to make a reply when they heard a thumping at the hatch to their den, and her blood went cold.

“Come out, come out,” cooed a muffled voice from above. “We want to have a word with you.”

Rail made a motion to be silent, but he hardly needed to. Moa had no intention of answering. She knew that voice. That was Finch, Anya-Jacana's favourite. He was a superb thief, but he was an even better murderer.

“I know you're down there,” Finch called. “Followed you back. You going to let us in?”

Rail looked about desperately, as if there was some kind of escape to be had. But he knew every inch of this den. There was no way out except through the hatch. They were trapped.

“What now?” Moa said quietly.

Rail tried to think, but the answers weren't coming. There had always been one downside to this place: no back door. There wasn't even any way he could get rid of the artefact. They were going to be caught red-handed, and there would be no mercy shown them. He felt panic rising within him, and if he had been on his own he might well have given in to it. But there was Moa to think of. Always Moa. She needed him to be strong for her.

“Take that thing off,” he told her again, meaning the artefact. It was still producing beautiful colours.

She tried to do so. It didn't move. “I can't!” she said, tugging at it. “It won't come off!”

“It has to!” he hissed, but still he didn't dare to touch it. He was afraid of those colours. Those were the colours made by a probability storm, and it was a probability storm that had put him in a respirator.

There was an ascending whine coming from above now, getting higher and higher in pitch.

“If you won't come out, little rats,” Finch called, “then we'll come in.”

The whine reached the peak of hearing, and then there was a massive impact on the hatch, like a giant's fist pounding it from outside. Dust shook loose from the ceiling.

“What is that?” Moa cried. “What is that?”

“They've got a frecking magnetic ram out there,” Rail hissed. The whine began again.

“I can hear you!” Finch yelled over the din. “Mother wants to see you, lovebirds!”

Moa shrieked as the magnetic ram thumped once more and the hatch in the ceiling bent inwards. Though rusty on the outside, that hatch was several inches thick. The ram had been placed over it, pointing down. It stood on four stout legs that affixed themselves to the concrete around the hatch. The legs supported a cannon that fired pulses of magnetic energy. Anya-Jacana had all kinds of devices like this in her secret storehouses. The respirator that Rail wore was from the same place.

They ran through to Rail's room, to get away from the hatch before it caved in. Moa was still trying to get the artefact off, but it was stuck fast. Rail slapped his hands flat against the blank metal wall in frustration. The whine of the magnetic ram began again. It would only take a couple more hits and they would be through.

It was hopeless. He knew it was hopeless. But still he searched for a way out.

The ram fired, this time so hard that the bunker shook. Moa, obsessed with trying to remove the Fade-Science device, stumbled and tripped against the wall. She threw out her hands instinctively to protect herself –

– and fell
through
the wall.

Rail couldn't believe what he had seen. Suddenly, he was alone. Moa was gone. He had seen her pass through solid metal as if she were a ghost. He pressed his hands against the place where she had disappeared, and it was hard and unyielding.

The ram began to power up again. The hatch was buckled now, and its hinges were about to give way. Rail knew that the next blow would break it open, and in would come Finch and his cronies.

But she got away
, he thought, though he couldn't imagine how. It seemed like a miracle, but the people of Orokos were used to miracles.
At least she got away.
And she took that thing with her
.

He gave in at last, and stopped struggling. Maybe, when she didn't find the device on him, the thief-mistress would be merciful. Maybe she wouldn't kill him. He didn't care too much. Wherever she was, Moa was out of Anya-Jacana's reach. That was all he was concerned about.

The ram pounded again, and there was a crash in the other room as the entrance gave way. He turned around to face the boys who would come clambering through.

Come and get me
, Rail thought.

And then a hand grabbed him from behind, and he was pulled roughly backwards. There was a split-second when he expected to collide with the metal wall, but he went through it as if it were not there. Beyond was a dank metal tunnel, dimly lit by fizzing tracklights, brown with decay. And Moa, holding on to him with her right hand. The other one – the one with the artefact attached – was held against the side of the tunnel.

He looked back in amazement. The metal where Moa was touching it had become transparent, a hole filled with swirling, gentle colours. Through it, he could see the first of the thieves coming through the hatch.

Moa pulled away, and the colours sucked back to surround her hand again. The wall was solid once more.

“It opens
doors
, Rail,” she breathed. “It opens doors anywhere.”

He wanted to hug her, but he didn't dare. Not while she was wearing that thing. Instead, he looked both ways up the corridor and picked a direction. They had none of the things they had packed, except the satchel full of loot that he had taken from Anya-Jacana. It didn't matter.

“Let's go,” he said. And they ran, leaving the thieves in their den to puzzle over how their targets could have vanished into thin air.