Chris Wooding - The Black Lung Captain

'I'll get it right,' Crake said firmly.

Plome mopped his brow and licked his lips nervously. 'I want to be there.'

'No. It's far too—'

'I insist!' he said, his voice shrill. 'It's my sanctum!'

His small eyes shone with fervour. Crake knew that look. He'd worn it himself once. Plome might maintain the facade of a businessman and a politician, but like Crake he was a daemonist first and foremost. The secrets of the other side were an addiction. Crake suspected that the tragedy attached to his name, far from appalling Plome, had actually increased his respect for his guest. Crake had been blooded in a way that Plome hadn't. He'd made a terrible sacrifice to the Art, and he was still coming back for more.

Plome admired him. The thought made Crake feel even worse.

'You'll handle the second line of defence,' Crake said. 'If it gets past me, we can't let it out of the sanctum.'

Plome nodded eagerly and sprang out of his chair. 'Shall we get started, then?'

'One more thing,' said Crake. 'Do you have a gun?'

Plome frowned. 'I do. Why?'

'I want you armed.'

'Armed? Whatever for?'

Crake stood up and walked past Plome towards the door. 'Because if things go wrong, I want you to shoot me.'

Plome's sanctum lay underneath his house, in a hidden basement accessible through a daemon-thralled door which employed a strong mental suggestion to turn away casual snoopers. It was well organised and laid out like a laboratory. Electric bulbs hummed behind their shades. Complex chemical apparatus stood on a workbench near a chalkboard covered with scribbled formulae. Shelves were loaded with forbidden books. Resonators and modulators were fixed to frames and trolleys. The equipment here was the best: bigger and more powerful than the portable gear Crake used. Plome was not short of cash, and not afraid to spend it on his passion.

A globular brass cage had once dominated the room, but now it had been relegated to the corner along with a few portable oil lanterns. The new prize piece stood in the centre, amid a mass of heavy cables. The echo chamber. Crake felt his stomach tighten at the sight.

It looked like a bathysphere: a ball of riveted metal, two metres in diameter, with a single porthole in a door on one side. It stood on a low plinth, braced by struts. Cables were plugged into it all over its surface.

Crake stared at the porthole, and the darkness within.

You could still turn back. Tell them you couldn't do it. They'd understand.

But back to what kind of life? What would he be to his crew, after this? Dead weight? Someone to be pitied and tolerated? No, he'd had enough of that from his family, when he was a younger man. He'd borne it from them because he didn't like or respect them. But he couldn't bear it from Frey, or Jez, or Malvery.

He refused to be pathetic. Better to be dead.

He set to work. He checked the cables to the echo chamber, making sure everything was plugged in properly. After that, he familiarised himself with the control console, which differed in small ways to the one he knew. Lastly, he pulled over a resonator and connected it to a sequence of inputs on the echo chamber.

Plome was occupied with his own preparations, constructing a three-tiered defence of oscillation spheres, pulse pods and resonator masts. Crake approved of his thoroughness, but privately he wasn't at all sure that any conventional methods could contain a daemon capable of breaking out of an echo chamber.

Crake was studying formulae from a book when Plome came over to him, mopping his brow. 'Boning up on echo theory, eh?' he asked nervously. 'I thought you knew all about that stuff?'

'I do.' Crake snapped the book shut. He'd just needed something to stop his anxiety getting the better of him. He had it all by heart anyway. Not that it had done him much good last time. 'I'll assume this place is soundproofed? Things will get loud.'

'Oh yes. Daemons thralled to the walls and ceiling. We could have an orchestra down here and you wouldn't hear it in the sitting room.'

'Good,' said Crake. He'd used similar methods himself, in the wine cellar where he'd built his own sanctum.

'Shall we, then?'

'Activate the perimeter,' Crake told him. 'And whatever happens, stay out there. There's no telling what might come through.'

Plome nodded. 'Good luck, Crake,' he said. He scurried away a few steps, then stopped and looked over his shoulder. 'For what it's worth, you're a braver man than I.'

He retreated to the edge of the sanctum, where he'd connected up a series of control consoles to manage the defences. Crake felt a low vibration build in the air around him. Gradually a high-pitched whine slipped in, just at the edge of hearing. Soon the air was alive to his finely honed senses, a mass of sonic whorls and eddies. The invisible discord would confuse, repel or destroy any daemon that ventured outside the echo chamber.

At least, that was the idea. But the idea was based on the weak, dim daemons that could be snared using conventional methods of daemonism. Echo theory gave access to the deeper realms, where dreadful beings lay. Creatures of craft and cunning. Whether or not they were susceptible to the crude science of their human adversaries depended on the strength of the daemon.

Not for the first time, Crake wondered if he could have done this another way. Maybe he could have created a tracking device, like Frey's ring, that would lead them to the sphere? He could have done that using simpler, less dangerous techniques that he was comfortable with.

But no, it wouldn't have worked. He'd have needed the sphere with him, so he could bind an identical daemon to both tracker and target in the same procedure. And if he had the sphere with him, there'd be precious little point looking for it. Perhaps, with time, he could have refined his methods and come up with a way to do it. But that was time they didn't have. So there was only one option left: to find a daemon smart enough to ask. And to be smart enough himself to get an answer from it.

But there was another reason, too. It came from a bloody-minded, angry, stubborn place inside him. He wanted to face the echo chamber again, because he was damned if he'd be afraid of it any more.

'Ready,' said Plome.

Crake went to the resonator that was attached to the echo chamber. He tuned it carefully, according to the readings he'd scribbled down in the dreadnought. He'd noted the frequencies given out by the sphere while he was trying to determine if it was dangerous or not. Those frequencies formed a unique fingerprint that could be used to identify it.

'Ready,' Crake agreed. He threw a switch on the side of the console. A bass hum came from the echo chamber, growing louder as it powered up.

Crake closed his eyes. That sound. Just like last time. The feeling of retracing his steps towards disaster was inescapable. He knew what lay at the end of this path.

Her.

Slowly he started to turn the dials, seeking frequencies. He'd calculated and memorised the range he intended to search in. It was a space where, historically, there had been several notable successes and relatively few disasters. The knowledge did little to reassure him. He'd played it safe last time, too, and look how things turned out.

No, he reminded himself. That was your fault. You found a monster and you didn't let it go. You wanted to be a pioneer.

He worked the dials, beginning at the upper and lower ends of the range and narrowing in. He closed his eyes and tried to relax. It wouldn't be any of the five conventional senses that told him when he found a daemon.

The sudden, oppressive sense of being watched came upon him. The kind of feeling a mouse must get when it knows it's been spotted by a cat.