Philip Reeve - Predator's gold

“We certainly fell on our feet when we landed on Anchorage, Tom, dear boy!” he said when Tom came visiting one night-dark arctic afternoon. He waved a bejewelled hand around his huge sitting room, with its ornate carpets and framed paintings, its fires aglow in bronze tripods, its big windows with their views across the rooftops to the passing ice. Outside, a fierce wind was rising, driving snow across the city, but in the chief navigator’s quarters all was warmth and peace.

“How is that airship of yours coming along, by the way?” Pennyroyal asked.

“Oh, slowly,” said Tom. In truth, he had not been near the air-harbour for several days and did not know how the work on the Jenny Haniver was progressing. He didn’t like to think about it too much, for when the repairs were complete, Hester would want to leave, dragging him away from this lovely city and from Freya. Still, he thought, it’s kind of the prof to show an interest.

“And what about the journey to America?” he asked. “Is everything going well, Professor?”

“Absolutely!” cried Pennyroyal, settling himself on a sofa and rearranging his quilted silicone-silk robes. He poured himself another beaker of wine and offered one to Tom. “There are some excellent vintages in the chief navigator’s cellar, and it seems a waste not to get through as much as we can before… well…”

“You should keep the best to toast your arrival in America,” Tom said, sitting down on a small chair near the great man’s feet. “Have you decided on a course yet?”

“Well, yes and no,” Pennyroyal said airily, gesturing with his beaker and slopping wine over the fur throws on his sofa. “Yes and no, Tom. Once we get west of Greenland it’ll be plain skating all the way. Windolene and Scabious had planned something very complicated, wiggling between a lot of islands that might not even be there any more, then running down the west coast of America. Luckily, I was able to show them a much easier route.” He indicated a map on the wall. “We’ll nip across Baffin Island into Hudson’s Bay. It’s good, thick, solid sea-ice and it stretches right into the heart of the North American continent. That’s the way I came on my journey home. We’ll whizz across that, hoist up the stern-wheel and simply roll on our caterpillar tracks into the green country. It’ll be a doddle.”

“I wish I was coming with you,” sighed Tom.

“No, no, dear boy!” the explorer said sharply. “Your place is on the Bird Roads. As soon as that ship of yours is better you and your, ah, lovely companion must return to the sky. By the way, I hear Her Heftiness the margravine has lent you a few of my books?”

Tom blushed at the mention of Freya.

“So what do you make of them, eh?” Pennyroyal went on, pouring himself more wine. “Good stuff?”

Tom wasn’t quite sure what to say. Pennyroyal’s books were certainly exciting. The trouble was, some of the Alternative Historian’s history was a little too alternative for Tom’s London-trained mind. In America the Beautiful he reported seeing the girders of ancient skyscrapers jutting from the dust of the Dead Continent — but no other explorer had described such sights, which would surely have been eaten away by wind and rust aeons ago. Had Pennyroyal been hallucinating when he saw them? And then, in Rubbish? Rubbish! Pennyroyal claimed that the tiny toy trains and ground-cars sometimes found at Ancient sites weren’t toys at all. “ Undoubtedly, ” he wrote, “ these machines were piloted by minute human beings, genetically engineered by the Ancients for unknown reasons of their own. ”

Tom didn’t doubt that Pennyroyal was a great explorer. It was just that when he sat down at a typewriting machine his imagination seemed to run away with him.

“Well, Tom?” asked Pennyroyal. “Don’t be shy. A good writer never objects to constrictive crusticism. I mean, consumptive cretinism…”

“Oh, Professor Pennyroyal!” cried the voice of Windolene Pye, blaring from a brass speaking tube on the wall. “Come quickly! The lookouts are reporting something on the ice ahead!”

Tom felt himself grow cold, imagining a predator city lurking out there on the ice, but Pennyroyal just shrugged. “What does the silly old moo expect me to do about it?” he asked.

“Well, you are chief navigator now, Professor,” Tom reminded him. “Perhaps you’re supposed to be on the bridge at a time like this.”

“ Honorararary Chief Nagivator, Tim,” said Pennyroyal, and Tom realized that he was drunk.

Patiently he helped the tipsy explorer to his feet and led him to a small private elevator, which whisked them up to the top floor of the Wheelhouse. They stepped out into a glass-walled room where Miss Pye stood nervously beside the engine district telegraph while her small staff spread charts out on the navigation table. A burly helmsman waited at the city’s huge steering wheel for instructions.

Pennyroyal collapsed on the first chair they passed, but Tom hurried to the glass wall and waited for the wiper-blade to sweep across so that he could catch a glimpse of the view ahead. Thick flurries of snow were driving across the city, hiding all but the nearest buildings. “I can’t see — ” he began to say. And then a momentary break in the storm showed him a glitter of lights away to the north.

In the emptiness ahead of Anchorage, a hunter-killer suburb had appeared.

Freya was trying to sort out a guest list for dinner. It was a difficult business, for by long tradition only citizens of the highest rank could dine with the margravine, and these days that meant just Mr Scabious, who was nobody’s idea of good company. The arrival of Professor Pennyroyal had cheered things up no end, of course — it was quite acceptable for the city’s chief navigator to sit at table with her — but even the professor’s fascinating stories were beginning to wear a little thin, and he had a tendency to drink too much.

What she really wanted (although she tried not to admit it to herself as she sat there at her desk in the study) was to invite Tom. Just Tom, alone, so that he could gaze at her in the candlelight and tell her how beautiful she was; she was sure he wanted to. The trouble was, he was only a common aviator. And even if she broke with all tradition and asked him, he would bring his nasty girlfriend, and that wasn’t the sort of evening she wanted at all.

She slumped back in her chair with a sigh. Portraits of earlier margravines gazed down kindly at her from the study walls, and she wondered what they would have done in a situation like this. But of course, there had never been a situation like this before. For them the ancient traditions of the city had always worked, providing a simple, infallible guide to what could and could not be done — their lives had ticked along like clockwork. Just my luck to be left in charge when the spring breaks, thought Freya gloomily. Just my luck to be left with a load of rules and traditions that don’t quite fit any more.

But she knew that if she took off the armour of tradition she would have to face all sorts of new problems. The people who had stayed aboard her city after the plague had done so only because they revered the margravine. If Freya stopped behaving like a margravine, would they still be prepared to go along with her plans?

She went back to her guest list, and had just finished doodling a small dog in the bottom left corner when Smew burst in, then burst out again and gave the traditional triple knock.

“You may enter, Chamberlain.”

He came in again, breathless, his hat back to front. “Sorry, Your Radiance. Bad news from the Wheelhouse, Radiance. Predator, dead ahead.”