Philip Reeve - Infernal Devices

Grike’s eyes, on maximum magnification, watched Dr. Zero show her pass at the checkpoint and followed her until she was lost to him among the barracks and banners of Tienjing. Why was she so frightened? What scared her so? What was she doing? What was she planning to do?

Grike owed her everything, but he still knew that it was his duty to find out.

Down through the steep, stepped streets Oenone Zero went hurrying in her silicone-silk cloak, hood up, head down. The sky above the city was full of the running lights of carriers and air destroyers taking off from the military air harbor, carrying yet more young men and women away to the west, where their deaths were waiting for them on the Rustwater salient.

Guilt welled up inside Oenone, but she was used to it. Every morning she tended the Stalker Fang’s joints and bodywork, and placed her instruments against the Stalker Fang’s steel breast to check on the strange Old Tech power source that nestled where Anna Fang’s heart had once been. Every morning she told herself, I should do it now, today.

She would not be the first to try. All sorts of fanatical peaceniks and die-hard supporters of the old League had attempted to destroy the Stalker Fang, only to have their knives snap on her armor or watch her walk unscathed from the ruins of bombed rooms and the wrecks of airships. But Oenone Zero was a scientist, and she had used her scientist’s skills to devise a weapon that could destroy even the Stalker Fang.

The trouble was, she hadn’t the courage to use it. What if it didn’t work? What if it did work? Oenone was sure that without the Stalker to lead it, the Green Storm regime would fall apart—but she doubted it would fall apart so quickly that the Stalker’s supporters would not find time to kill her, and she had heard rumors about the things they did to traitors.

Lost in her thoughts, she did not notice that she was being followed as she crossed Double Rainbow Bridge and turned onto the Street of Ten Thousand Deities.

Over the centuries, Anti-Tractionists from all over Europe and Asia had fled into these mountains, and they had brought their own gods with them. Packed side by side, the temples seemed to jostle one another in the dying light. Oenone pushed her way past two wedding processions, a funeral, past shrines decked with lucky money and clattering firecrackers. She passed the Temple of the Sky Gods, and the Golden Pagoda of the Gods of the Mountains. She passed the Poskittarium, and the grove of the Apple Goddess. She passed the silent house of Lady Death. At the end of the street, sandwiched between the temples of more popular religions, stood a tiny Christian chapel.

She checked to make sure that no one was watching her before she stepped inside, but she did not think to look up at the rooftops.

Oenone had found the chapel by accident, and was not certain what kept drawing her back to it. She was not a Christian. Few people were anymore, except in Africa and on certain islands of the outermost west. All she knew of Christians was that they worshipped a god nailed to a cross, and what on earth was the use of a god who went around letting himself get nailed to things? It was small wonder that this place had fallen into disuse, its roof gone, weeds growing through the rotting pews. But on nights like this, when she felt that she must get out of the Jade Pagoda or go mad, this was where Oenone came to calm herself.

Snowflakes sifted down on her through a sagging sieve of rafters, settling on her green hair when she threw back her hood. Running her hands over the walls, she read with her fingertips the texts carved in the old stone. Most were illegible, but there was one that she had grown fond of. It was an old fragment from before the Sixty Minute War, and Oenone was not sure what it meant, but there was something consoling about it.

Oenone knelt before the bare stone altar and bowed her head. She didn’t believe in him, this ancient god, but she had to talk to someone.

“Help me,” she whispered. “If you are there at all, give me strength. Give me courage. I’m so close to her. I could use the weapon now, if only I were brave enough. And it wouldn’t be murder, would it, to kill someone who is already dead? I would only be smashing a machine, a dangerous, destructive machine…”

She spoke softly, barely moving her lips. No human ear could hear her. But her prayer was heard, just the same. Crouched like a gargoyle on the chapel’s ruined steeple, the Stalker Grike listened carefully to every word.

“Have I the right to do it? It all seemed so clear before, but now I have seen her; how clever she is, and how strong… Maybe it would be murder. Or am I just making excuses for myself? Am I just looking for a reason not to do it so that I can live? Send me a sign, God, if you’re up there; show me what I should do…”

She waited, and Grike waited with her, but no sign came. The noisy, popular gods of the neighboring temples seemed to dish out comfort and counsel like advice columnists, but the god of this place was less scrutable; maybe he was asleep, or dead. Maybe he was busy with some better world off at the far end of the universe. Oenone Zero shook her head at her own foolishness and stood up, making ready to leave.

Grike climbed quickly down the chapel wall and waited in an alcove by the entrance, where perhaps a statue of the Christians’ nailed-up god had once hung. His suspicions had been right. Dr. Zero was a traitor, and although he had grown fond of her in his Stalkerish way, he knew that he must eliminate her before she could harm his mistress. His circuitry hummed and tingled at the prospect of a kill. She had taken his claws from him, but he was still strong, and merciless. One blow from his fist would end her easily.

A footstep on the threshold. The young woman stepped out of the chapel, pulling up her hood against the cold wind. She did not see Grike. She went past him and walked quickly away along the Street of Ten Thousand Deities, hurrying back to her quarters in the pagoda before the curfew bells were rung.

Grike lowered his fist, feeling startled and slightly foolish. What had happened to him? He was a Stalker, a killing machine, and yet, when his quarry’s eggshell skull had been in reach, he could not strike.

I must warn the Green Storm’s secret police, he thought, jumping down from the alcove and following Oenone out into the crowds on the street. He would let the Once-Borns deal with her themselves, down in their white-tiled torture rooms beneath the Jade Pagoda. But after a few strides he halted. He simply didn’t have it in him to betray Oenone Zero.

She has done this to me, he thought, remembering all those lonely night shifts in the Stalker Works. Somehow, the young surgeon-mechanic had built a barrier in his mind that made it impossible for him to harm her, or tell anyone what she was planning. He had been part of her plans all along. She had given the Stalker Fang a bodyguard who was not capable of guarding her.

He should have hated Dr. Zero for using him like that, but he did not have it in him to hate her either.

He barged through a festival procession outside the shrine of Jomo and climbed homeward through the darkness and the snow. He was not the puppet of Oenone Zero. He could not harm her, but he would keep her from harming his mistress. Somehow he would learn the nature of her plan, and put a stop to it.