Philip Reeve - Infernal Devices

Late October. In Vineland, Wren thought, the grass would be white and stiff with frost until midmorning; fog would blanket the lake, and perhaps the first snow was already falling. But here on the Middle Sea it was still as warm as midsummer, and the only clouds in the sky were small white fluffy ones that looked as if they’d been put there for decoration.

Brighton had cruised slowly along the southern shores of the Hunting Ground for several weeks. Then, with Moon Festival drawing near, it headed south to its appointed rendezvous. Boo-Boo went with her handmaidens to watch from an observation balcony at the edge of Cloud 9 as the land came into view. “Look, girls, look!” she cried happily, indicating the coastline with a theatrical sweep of her hand. “Africa!”

Wren, standing at the mayoress’s side with an enormous parasol, tried to be impressed, but it was quite difficult. All she could see was a line of low reddish bluffs rising out of a landscape the color of biscuits, with a couple of big, ragged mountains lost in the haze beyond. Wren knew from things her father and Miss Freya had told her that Africa had been both the birthplace of mankind and its haven in the centuries of darkness that followed the Sixty Minute War, but the civilizations that once thrived upon those shores had left no traces—or, if they had, they had long since been snaffled up by hungry scavenger towns.

One of the towns that might have done the snaffling came into view soon afterward. A small three-tiered place, it was rumbling along on broad, barrel-shaped sand wheels, trailing a swirl of red dust like a wind-blown cape. Wren glanced at it without very much interest. It felt strange to remember how, two weeks before, she had deserted her post in the middle of Mrs. Pennyroyal’s hairstyling routine to run and stare in wonderment at a little townlet trundling down onto the shore. She’d seen so many towns and even small cities since then that they seemed quite ordinary now, and certainly not the fabulous things that she had imagined when she’d lived in Vineland.

And then she looked again, and felt as silly as she had on that long-ago day when she’d first seen Brighton through the Autolycus ’s periscope and mistaken it for an island. The things she’d thought were distant mountains were not distant at all. Nor were they mountains. They were Traction Cities so large that, when she’d first looked at them, her brain had simply not understood what her eyes were showing her.

They were lumbering seaward, and through the dust and the drifting exhaust smoke Wren could see that each had nine tiers bristling with chimneys and spires.

“The one on the left is Kom Ombo,” the mayoress told her girls. “The other is Benghazi. Mayor Pennyroyal has contracted to meet them here so that their people may taste the delights of Brighton this Moon Festival. They have been hunting sand towns in the deep desert, poor things, so you can imagine how they will relish good food, fine entertainment, and a refreshing dip in the Sea Pool.”

To Wren, the approaching cities looked at first just like the pictures she remembered from her dog-eared copy of A Child’s Guide to Municipal Darwinism back in Anchorage. Then, as they drew closer, she began to make out differences. These cities were armored, the exposed buildings on the edge of each tier screened with steel plates and antirocket netting. And although the land around their massive tracks was dotted with small, scurrying towns and suburbs and Traction Villages, these cities were making no attempt to swallow them.

“Moon Festival is a sacred time,” said the mayoress when Wren pointed this out. “A time when, according to tradition, no city hunts or eats another.”

“Oh,” said Wren, feeling disappointed, for it would have been thrilling to watch a good old-fashioned city chase.

“Of course,” Boo-Boo went on, “with the war on and prey so scarce, not every mayor abides by tradition nowadays, but if any of those cities tries to eat another, Ms. Twombley and her friends will sort them out. It’s high time that aerofloozy made herself useful.”

Right on cue, the Flying Ferrets went tearing through the sky toward the cities, rolling and tumbling and firing off colored rockets to demonstrate how they would deal with any predator that threatened to break the Moon Festival fast. One peeled off, trailing lilac smoke, to write WELCOME TO BRIGHTON across the sky. As the thunder of their engines rolled away across the desert, Wren heard the rattle of heavy chains drifting up from Brighton. The city was dropping anchor.

“I have a feeling that this will be a wonderful MoonFest!” said Mrs. Pennyroyal brightly as the girls around her oohed and aahed and applauded the aviators’ daring. “Now, come on, all of you; I wish you all to be photographed in your costumes for the mayor’s ball.”

She turned back toward the Pavilion, and Wren, with a last glance at the towering cities, hurried after her. All the other girls were busy talking about tomorrow night’s ball, and about the charming costumes the house slaves were to wear. Listening to their excited chatter, Wren found herself feeling almost sorry that she was going to miss the fun. But miss it she must. Tonight, while the household was asleep, Wren meant to creep down to the boathouse and steal the Peewit. By the time the sacred moon rose, she would be a long, long way from Brighton.

The Pavilion echoed and rang to the sound of preparations for the MoonFest ball. In the ballroom under the central dome, painters and curtain fitters were hard at work, and musicians were practicing, and electricians were covering the ceiling with hundreds of tiny lights. Crates of wine and hampers of food came creaking up from Brighton in the cable car, and the militia drilled in the Pavilion gardens.

It was all costing Pennyroyal a fortune, which he thought rather unfair. The people of Brighton surely wanted their mayor to put on a good show for Moon Festival; it seemed a bit rich that they expected him to pay for it all out of his own pocket. So he felt not the tiniest pang of guilt about inviting Walter Plovery to an informal dinner party he was holding that night. Between dessert and coffee, while the other guests were discussing their plans for MoonFest and the latest scandals in the Artists’ Quarter, Pennyroyal led the antiques dealer off to take a look at some of the precious antiques in the Pavilion’s collection. Together the two men wandered from room to room, studying Stalkers’ brains and ground car grilles, fragments of circuit boards that looked like careful embroidery, flattened drink cans, and suits of ancient armor. They made notes of pieces that Plovery thought might fetch a tidy sum from some collectors he knew in Benghazi, and that Pennyroyal reckoned nobody would miss.

Over coffee, Mr. Plovery mentally totted up the commission he stood to make on all these sales and found that he was going to do very nicely. Full of Pennyroyal’s food and charmed by the wit and sophistication of his fellow guests, the antiques dealer regretted that he had ever made that deal with Shkin about the Tin Book. But Mr. Shkin had promised him a very great deal of money, and Plovery, whose aged mother lived in an expensive nursing home at Black Rock, needed all the money he could get. When the evening ended and the other guests made their way noisily back to the cable car, he doubled back and hid himself in one of the Pavilion’s galleries.

The night air made Wren shiver inside her silver lame nightgown as she stepped out through the servants’ entrance into the cold of the garden. She could hear the sea far below, the wind soughing through the rigging, and someone burbling a drunken song down in the streets of Brighton. Clutching the bag of food she had stolen from the kitchens, she hurried across the damp lawn toward the boathouse and the lights of the Flying Ferrets’ aerodrome.