A Web of Air (5 page)

Fever looked uphill again. Held up the glider in case its owner was up there looking for it. “Hello?”

No answer. Only the distant bickering of the angels, the soft snore of the sea.

She looked down at the thing in her hands. It was no toy. Even by moonlight she could see how well it had been made. And that place there between the wings; was not that where a pilot would lie, if the whole thing were made twenty times bigger? Big enough to carry a human being aloft?

In her girlhood she had often heard old Dr Collihole, her fellow Engineer, describe his dreams of flight. She had even flown herself, in the balloon that he had built from scrap paper and filled with hot air on the roof of Godshawk’s Head. She had listened to him recount the legends about heavier-than-air flying machines built by the Ancients, and dismiss them, sadly, as mere fairy tales, because all his experiments had led him to believe that heavier-than-air flight was impossible. But it seemed to her that someone in Mayda did not agree. Someone in this city was designing a flying machine, or at least a glider. And now a model of it had flown into the hands of one of the few people in this quarter of Europa who could understand what it was…

Which seemed to Fever to be such an unlikely coincidence that she did not think it could be a coincidence at all. But whoever had launched the glider, from those dark terraces above her, did not seem to want to show themselves, and it was late, and the moon was dipping behind the shoulder of the crater, and so, clutching the white glider to her chest, she went walking thoughtfully back into the city.

The angels had lost interest in her. But from the shadowed terraces above, someone watched her go.

ook,” said Fern. “That house is moving!”

It was morning, and the light of the rising sun was just starting to slant into Mayda. The company did not usually rise at such an hour, but AP had decided that the backdrops and props looked weather-worn and needed to be repaired before the
Lyceum
opened its curtains again that evening. So one by one the bleary-eyed actors and actresses were rising from their beds and making their way up the companion ladders to the open upper deck, where Fever, Fern and Ruan were eating breakfast and trying to ignore the breeze which flapped their napkins about and speckled their clothes with croissant-crumbs. Cloud shadows scudded across the harbour and the bright house fronts on the western side of the city.

“Look, Fever! A moving house!”

“That is an optical illusion, Fern,” said Fever patiently. She was feeling thick-headed after her late night on the cliffs, and did not have time for Fern’s make-believe. “It is the shadows which are moving, not the houses…”

But then she turned to look where Fern was pointing and saw that the little girl was right. High up on the crater’s western wall, where the ground was so steep that even the Maydans had not tried to terrace it, a large house was descending gracefully through a long, vertical garden. As it went down, so the building next to it went up, windows flashing in the sunlight. Further along the cliff another pair of houses did the same, and as Fever looked quickly across the city she saw that dozens of structures were in motion.

“See?” said Fern, with great satisfaction. She couldn’t recall ever proving Fever wrong before.

“The locals call them
funiculars,”
announced AP, coming up on to the sun-deck in his dressing gown, a mug of coffee in his hand. “I remember them from when Mistress Persimmon and I last came to Mayda, more years ago than I care to say. Mansions, restaurants, whole hotels on the smarter levels move up and down the cliffs.”

“But to what purpose?” Fever asked.

“Oh, just for the fun of it, in the case of the restaurants and hotels.” AP slurped his coffee and watched the buildings rise and fall without much interest. “As for the rich men’s mansions, well, their masters like to rise each evening into sunlight and clear air, then descend again at dawn into the city’s heart where they do their business.”

Fever shook her head. Mobile theatres, mobile mansions, mobile fortresses… Why were the people of her era not content to live in places which just stood still? Was it the same urge that drove the nomad empires on their ceaseless travels, and had made her grandfather dream of fitting wheels to London? Was it a leftover from the Downsizing, when plagues and earth-storms had kept the ragged remnants of Mankind forever on the move? Maybe, deep down, people just didn’t feel
safe
if their home was anchored to the earth. It was deeply irrational.

And yet the Maydan funiculars
were
fascinating. She sat and watched as more and more started to move, whole neighbourhoods sliding up and down the crater walls like the shuttles of some enormous, pointless loom. She wondered what it would be like to ride in a funicular, and thought again of the glider which she had brought back from her midnight walk. She had imagined that Mayda would be a backward place, but so far it seemed full of wonders…

“Fever,” said Ruan, nudging her. “There’s someone calling for you.”

Fever looked at him, and realized that the annoying noise which had been intruding on her thoughts for the last half-minute was a human voice, and that it was shouting, “Miss Crumb!”

AP went to look over the handrail at the edge of the deck. Fever joined him. Below, on the cobbled harbourside, she saw a man in travel-stained blue robes and a broad-brimmed hat looking up at her. “Miss Crumb?” he called when she appeared. “Miss Fever Crumb? Of London?”

“That man was at Master Squinter’s stall aboard the
Stone
last night!” said Ruan.

“’Ere, Fever,” said Lillibet, coming to join the growing crowd at the handrail, “that chap was ’ere last night after the show, asking after you. Dead good-looking he is. I told him he should call again today.”

“Oh, you didn’t?” said Fever. Lillibet and Dymphna were always trying to find her a boyfriend, and never believed her when she told them that she simply didn’t want one. She frowned down at the stranger, wondering how she could get rid of him. But just then he pulled off his hat. He
was
good-looking, which of course meant nothing to Fever, but his head was as bald as a sea-stone, and that did. She had grown up surrounded by men who looked like that. She had looked like that herself until she came to live aboard the
Lyceum
and let her hair grow.

“Miss Crumb?” the stranger called. By his accent she guessed he came originally from one of the Scottish city states; a refugee, perhaps, from ice-drowned Edinburgh or Aberdeen.

“May I speak with you?” he asked. “I am Dr Avery Teal, of London. I arrived just yesterday, aboard the
Rolling Stone.
I’m on official business. I was delighted to learn that I am not the only Engineer in Mayda.”

An Engineer? Here?
He’s lying,
thought Fever. She had grown up amongst the Order of Engineers in Godshawk’s Head and she was certain that she had never seen Dr Teal before. Then she recalled that Godshawk’s Head had burned, and that two years had passed since she fled London.

“Wait here,” she said to Fern and Ruan, and she hurried down the barge’s winding companionways and out through the stage-left hatch.

The stranger stood waiting for her. He did not try to shake her hand (an irrational, insanitary greeting) but made a small and Engineerish bow. “You don’t know me, Miss Crumb,” he said. “I am a recent member. Quercus needs all the Engineers and men of science he can get to help him transform London. And what true scientist or Engineer could resist the chance to help set a whole city moving?”

I did, for one,
thought Fever, and then wondered if that was what Dr Teal had meant; that because she’d turned her back on London she could not be a true Engineer. She blushed, and felt suddenly ashamed of her hair and the odd cut of her coat. But Dr Teal was smiling kindly at her, and she saw that he was not rationally dressed himself. No doubt he had travelled far, and had learned, like Fever, that an Engineer’s standards sometimes had to be adjusted, out here in the world.

“I watched the play last night,” he said. “Enjoyed it hugely.”

“It is a foolish story,” said Fever. “The moon is 240,000 miles away; it’s most unlikely that the Ancients could have flown there. And if they did, I’m sure they did not find the goddess Selene waiting for them.”

“Nevertheless, it makes a good play, and your lighting was ingenious. The smoke and flames when that chariot took flight…!”

Fever thanked him, and glanced up at the curious faces of her friends, which were ranged along the handrail above her, waiting to see whether she would hit it off with her gentleman caller. For a moment she thought of asking him aboard, but she felt suddenly wary. How would Fern and Ruan react to this reminder of London and all that they had lost? And what would Dr Teal make of the chaos and clutter backstage, of the shrine to Rada, dusty with the ash of incense-sticks?

The Engineer seemed to sense her unease. “Perhaps you would like to walk down to the harbour with me?” he suggested. “There is a place nearby which serves fine African coffee. Or boiled water, if you prefer.”

It was unsettling for Fever to meet a fellow Londoner, having turned her back on London so decisively. On the other hand, it was not often that she had a chance of talking with someone truly rational. She waved up to her friends and called, “I’ll be half an hour…”

“Take all morning if you like,” urged AP. “But make sure you are back in time to run through the lighting arrangements for tonight. I am making some changes to Act 2, Scene III. And my soliloquy just before the first-act curtain could use a little more illumination…”

Dr Teal was already turning away, putting his hat back on to shield his shaven scalp from the sun. Fever did not take the arm he proffered, but walked beside him away from the
Lyceum.
Each time she glanced up at him she found him watching her with a look of faint amusement, so after a little way she stopped glancing up and kept her eyes on the cobbles instead. Crumpled programmes from last night’s production blew about underfoot, and beneath a nearby barge a pair of angels was squabbling over a dropped pie.

“Are you to be long in Mayda?” he asked.

“Only two more nights; then we are to travel south to Meriam, where there is some sort of festival. We shall return to Mayda for a longer stay after that.”

“Ah, Meriam!” said Dr Teal. “Yes, they celebrate the Summer Tides in great style down there. More of a carnival than a festival…”

Carnival or festival, it didn’t seem to Fever like the sort of thing two Engineers should be discussing, so she said, “I hope that all is well in London?”

“Oh aye,” agreed Dr Teal. “At least, it’s some months since I left, but everything was proceeding according to plan when I last looked. You’d scarce recognize the place, Miss Crumb. Everything south of Ludgate Hill has been cleared to make way for the new forges, the rolling sheds, the furnaces. Night and day the new factories roar and rumble, belching out their smoke. While I was waiting to take ship at Brighton harbour I could see the glow of London lighting up the sky from fifty miles away! And all the roads in that part of the world are crammed with land-hoys carting materials Londonward, and the sleepy south-coast ports like Brighton and Chunnel have come alive again with cargo ships. Quercus has had to construct steam-powered warships to keep the convoys safe from pirates. It will be some years yet before the city moves, but already he has transformed the world.”

Fever said nothing. She did not like thinking about London’s transformation.

“Your father is well,” Teal went on. “He is busy, as we all are. Doing good work. He speaks of you often. I wish I had known that I was going to run into you; I would have offered to carry a letter…”

“And what of the other Engineers?”

“All well. We are a Guild now, not just an Order; you can imagine how that pleases them.”

“And my mother?” asked Fever.

“Wavey? Oh,
she’s
well enough.” There was something odd about the way he said it, and she saw something knowing in his expression that she did not quite like, but didn’t understand. Confused, she looked away again. They were passing a barge called the
Travelling Museatorium,
decorated with gaudy paintings of freaks and monsters. She thought how tawdry Bargetown must look to Dr Teal, and how foolish he must think her, squandering her skills aboard a theatre. All the excuses she made to herself, her vision of herself as a scientific missionary spreading the light of reason among the fairground crowds, seemed foolish and threadbare now. She was no better really than an out-country technomancer, and she was sure that Dr Teal must despise her.

“I expect you are wondering what brings me to Mayda-at-the-World’s-End?” he asked.

She hadn’t been, but he told her anyway, while they walked together along the harbourside. “I am on a mission for the Guild. The new London will be a city much like this. Convex rather than concave, but a vertical city; a city of tiers. Quercus wants me to see how the Maydans manage it. In particular, he is intrigued by their moving houses. In the new London the different levels will be linked by elevators, and the Guild believes we may have much to learn from these funiculars. I must make some drawings. I’ll be sending regular reports back to London. If you have any message for Dr Crumb or Wavey Godshawk just let me have it. I’m staying with London’s representative here, a merchant called Hazell.”