Philip Reeve - Infernal Devices

Freya knelt down so that her face was level with the children’s. “No,” she said. “No, I’m sorry, we’re not.”

“But our mummies and daddies are coming, aren’t they?” whispered another child.

“There was a message…”

“They said they were near,” said a little boy, tugging at Caul’s hand and looking up earnestly into his face. “They said we should go to them, and a lot of the big boys wanted to, even though Uncle said not to…”

“And when the other boys tried stopping them, they fought them and killed them dead!”

“And then they went anyway. They took all the limpets.”

“We wanted to go with them, but they said there wasn’t room and we were only newbies…”

“And there were explosions!” said a girl.

“No, that was later, silly,” said another. “That was the depth charges.”

“Bang!” shouted the smallest boy, waving his arms about to demonstrate. “Bang!”

“And all the lights went out, and I think some water got in…”

All the children were talking at once, crowding into the light from Tom’s lantern. Hester held her hand out to one of them, but he backed away and went to snuggle against Freya instead.

“Is Wren here?” Hester asked. “We’re looking for our daughter, Wren.”

“She’s lost,” Tom explained. “She was aboard the Autolycus.”

Small faces turned toward him, blank as unwritten pages. The older girl said, “ Autolycus ain’t come back. None of the limpets that went out these last three weeks has come back.”

“Then where’s Wren?” shouted Tom. He had been terrified that he would find Wren dead. The prospect of not finding her at all was almost as bad. He stared from one bewildered little face to another. “What in Quirke’s name has been happening?”

The children backed away from him, frightened.

“Where’s Uncle?” asked Caul. Freya smiled at him to let the children see that he was a friend and they should answer his question.

“Maybe he left too,” said Hester.

Caul shook his head. “Don’t be stupid. Uncle wouldn’t leave Grimsby.”

“I think he’s upstairs,” said one of the boys.

“He’s very old,” said another doubtfully.

“He doesn’t ever leave his chamber now,” agreed a third.

Caul nodded. “Good. We’ll talk to him. He’ll be able to tell us what’s happened, and he’ll tell us where to find Wren.” He could feel the others staring at him. He turned to them and smiled. “It’ll be all right. You’ll see. Uncle Knows Best.”

They made a strange procession, climbing the cluttered stairways of Grimsby, where salt water dripped from hairline fractures in the high roof and ran in rivulets from step to step. More bodies lay on the landings, forming dams that the dirty water pooled behind. Overhead, crab-cameras clung to ducts and banisters. Now and then, one turned to follow the newcomers with its Cyclops eye.

Hester went ahead. Behind her, Tom, Caul, and Freya were surrounded by children, small hands clutching theirs and reaching out to touch their clothes as if to reassure themselves that these visitors from the world above were real. They were especially drawn to Freya. In shocked, whispery voices, they told her all sorts of secrets. “Whitebait picks his nose.”

I do not!

“My name’s Esbjorn, but the big boys at the Burglarium said I had to be called Tuna, only I think Tuna’s a stupid name, so can I change back now that all the big boys have got killed dead and run away?”

“He sticks his finger right up there. And he eats the boogers.”

“I don’t!”

“Children,” asked Freya, “who was it who blew up the Burglarium? How long ago did it happen?”

But the children couldn’t answer that: A few days, said some, a week, reckoned others. Their chatter faded as they neared the upper floors. They looked into an enormous chamber, new since Tom and Caul were last in Grimsby, made by knocking a dozen of the old rooms together. It was stuffed with fine furnishings: plunder from burgled town halls and looted statics. Huge mirrors hung on the walls, and swags of silk and velvet curtained the colossal bed. Clothes and cushions were strewn across the floor, and mobiles made from beach stones and antique seedies hung from the ducts on the ceiling.

“This was Gargle’s quarters,” explained the children. “Gargle ran things from here.”

“Remora made the mobiles,” said a little girl. “She’s pretty and clever, and she’s Gargle’s favorite.”

“I wish Gargle would come back,” a boy said. “Gargle would know what to do.”

“Gargle’s dead,” said Hester.

After that, the only sounds were the pad of their feet on the wet carpets and a faint voice somewhere ahead, tinny and fizzing, as if it were coming through loudspeakers. It said, “We only want a chance to see our dear lost boys again…”

Up a final stairway to the chamber of screens, where Grimsby’s founder kept watch over his underwater kingdom. The last time Tom had been here, it had been guarded; this time the guards were gone and the door was not even locked. Hester kicked it open and went through it with her gun out.

The others crowded in behind. The chamber was large and high-ceilinged, lit blue by the ghostly glow of the screens that covered the walls. They were of every shape and size, from giant public Goggle Screens to tiny displays ripped from Old Tech hospital equipment, all linked together by a jungle of wires and ducts. Up above, in the dark dome of the roof, hung a portable surveillance station: a midget cargo balloon dangling a globe of screens and speakers. And every screen was showing the same picture: a crowd of people on the windswept observation platform of a raft city. “Children of the deep,” the voice from the speakers pleaded, “if you can hear this message, we beg you, come to us!”

“Why did they fall for it? Why did they go? Did they prefer a bunch of old Drys to me?”

In the middle of the chamber an old man stood with his back to the door, shouting at the recording on the screens. In his hand was a remote-control device; he raised it and pressed a switch that made all the screens go blank and silent, then turned to face Hester and the others.

“Who are you?” he demanded petulantly. “Where’s Gargle?”

“Gargle’s not coming back,” said Tom as gently as he could. He had bad memories of Uncle, but that did not stop him feeling sorry for the stooped old man who was shuffling I48 toward him in a pair of threadbare bunny slippers. The tortoiselike head, poking out from layer upon layer of moldy clothes, blinked shortsightedly at him. Uncle’s eyes were clouded with age, and Tom noticed that many of the screens that surrounded him had big magnifying lenses bolted in front of them to make their pictures clearer. He suspected that Uncle was almost blind. No wonder he had come to depend on Gargle.

“Gargle has passed on,” he said.

“What, you mean… ?” Uncle came closer, peering at him. “Dead? Gargle? Little Gargle what gave himself such airs and graces?” His face showed grief, then relief, then anger. “I told him! I warned him not to go looking for that rotten book. He wasn’t cut out for burgling, Gargle wasn’t. More of a planner. He had brains, Gargle did.”

“We know,” said Hester. “We saw them.”

Uncle recoiled from the sound of her voice. “A woman? There’s no females allowed in Grimsby. I’ve always been very strict about that. Gargle always backed me up on that. No girls allowed. Bad luck, that’s all they bring. Can’t trust them.”

“But Uncle…” said Freya gently.