Ironheart (6 page)

‘I am quite all right, thank you, India,’ he said. ‘And I am programmed to have no fear, otherwise I might hesitate in my duty.’

‘Then it’s true what Mehmet said?’ she asked. ‘You
are
a military droid?’

‘I was once,’ he corrected. ‘But I no longer carry weapons and I have no wish to be remembered as a war machine.’

‘What would happen if you were ordered to kill someone?’ she said. ‘Androids have to follow their programming, don’t they?’

‘That,’ he said, stoking the fire thoughtfully, ‘is a very interesting question.’

A long silence followed. India thought it might be polite to change the subject. ‘Where did you meet Mrs Brown?’ she said.

‘She found me in a factory, where I had been buried in the mud for over a century. She reset my base codes and repaired my damaged parts.’ He tapped the steel sheet in his chest,
which rang hollow. ‘She is really quite talented, you know.’

‘Are there any others like you?’ India thought again how cool it would be to have your own android.

Calculus made a noise that might have been a sigh and began to tidy away the tea things. ‘No,’ he said brusquely. ‘there are no more like me.’ He turned his back and
began to pack the bags. India wondered again whether she had offended him in some way. Just then, Verity returned from the water’s edge, cheerfully dragging the mended tyre.

‘So what do you think of this baby?’ she said, slapping the side of the bike. ‘She’s over a hundred years old. I borrowed her from a friend of mine and I think I’m
getting used to her. When we get paid in Angel Town I might see if he wants to sell her to me, provided I can get the gas. God damn it!’ She swore loudly as the spanner slipped, skinning her
knuckles.

‘Will Mr Stone pay you for the journals when we get there?’ said India, wondering how much money was twenty per cent.

Verity laughed. ‘I doubt it – I’ve never even met the man. I just deliver the goods to his office and his minions give me the cash.’

‘But aren’t you interested in how he’s going to feed the world and do all those other things you said?’

‘My job is to find the stuff,’ said Verity. ‘I’m not paid to ask questions.’ She stopped working and looked at India with a serious expression. ‘When we get
to Angel Town I need you to do exactly as I say Tech-hunting attracts the worst lowlifes, murderers and cut-throats. I need to get the money and get out as quickly as possible without attracting
attention. Do you understand?’

India nodded.

Verity went back to work on the wheel. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said from under the bike, ‘as soon as we get the cash, you’ll get your share and then you can do as you
please. Once you’ve got a bit of money to your name, creeps like Clench won’t be able to touch you.’

‘Perhaps, after I’ve found my dad, I could buy a scav-boat and go looking for salvage,’ said India. ‘Maybe I could even drill my own well.’

‘Smart plan,’ said Verity, giving the wheel one last tightening. ‘OK, we’re ready to go.’ She wiped her hands on a greasy rag. ‘Now where the hell is the
Aurora Queen
?’

They sat beside the water with chattering teeth and scanned the skies. After half an hour India jumped up and pointed excitedly to a silent, blue-white line scratching its way across the
sky.

‘That’s just a shooting star,’ said Verity. ‘The ice people believe every person in the world has their own star, and when you die, it falls to Earth.’ India
watched the fading streak and shivered.

‘Twin engines,’ said Calculus suddenly, ‘approaching from the east.’

At first India could hear nothing, but then she caught the faintest hum of an engine carried towards them on the breeze.

Verity turned on the bike’s headlamp. ‘Get ready to move quickly,’ she said. ‘They won’t want to stay down long in this neck of the woods.’

The noise was constant now, an unmistakable droning of aircraft engines. A bright light pierced the cloud and the dark shape of the plane appeared. Its broad body was shaped like the hull of a
fishing smack with two big outriggers under the propellers.

‘Flying boat,’ said Verity with a grin. ‘The only way to travel in a flooded country.’

The plane hit the water in a burst of spray and foam, and the smell of aircraft fuel wafted over the water. Verity lit another cigar while it taxied into the shallows, and India stared
open-mouthed at the enormous machine.

Two men with oil-black hair and greasy overalls climbed from the cockpit and waded towards them. India guessed that they were the Smiley Brothers but they looked sullen and dangerous. They
conversed with Verity in low voices, all the while casting suspicious looks at India. They were clearly unhappy at having to take another passenger but, after Verity passed them some money, it was
agreed. With the help of Calculus, they started to manhandle the bike into the hold of the aircraft.

‘Let’s get a move on,’ said Verity. ‘The engine noise will have attracted every bandit within five miles of here.’

India gathered the bags and climbed the short ladder to the plane. She had never seen a plane up close before and she was utterly captivated by the
Aurora Queen.
The fuselage was
painted a vibrant red and white and the cabin smelled of leather and polish. Verity led her to a functional canvas seat and showed her how to fasten her seatbelt.

The take-off was thrilling. The engines vibrated powerfully and the plane bounced across the water, breaching the waves like a porpoise, making greater and greater leaps until they were suddenly
airborne. India’s stomach dropped away as the plane climbed hard and banked into the night sky.

She was disappointed that there was little to see in the darkness apart from the fires of the tyre-burners strung out along the estuary shore. Verity was busy making notes and Calculus was
sitting quietly with his hands folded in his lap. She reached into her bag and pulled out one of the journals. It was battered and dog-eared and filled with dense notes written in an
engineer’s copperplate script. She had often thumbed through the books, fascinated by the descriptions of remote landscapes and the diagrams showing cross-sections of the land and the inner
workings of pump systems. But she had never seen anything in them that talked of a hidden ark, or nomads, or any of the other exciting things Verity had mentioned.

‘You should let Calc take a look at those,’ said Verity, reading her thoughts. ‘If there’s anything useful in there he’ll find it.’

India shut the book with a snap and looked at Verity suspiciously. ‘If I give them to you now, you’ll have what you want and you won’t need me any more.’

Verity sighed. ‘And what do you think I’m going to do when I get my hands on your journals, India? Throw you out of the plane? Look, if you’re going to be my business associate
you’re going to have to start trusting me because when we get to Angel Town, me and Calc are going to be the only friends you’ve got. Now, how about you let him have a look at those
journals?’

India couldn’t help grinning. ‘Is that what I am then, your
business associate
?’

Verity laughed. ‘Sure thing, kid. So how about it, can he have a look?’

‘OK, but I want to look at them myself first,’ said India. ‘He can read them when we land.’

She returned to the book in her lap and tried to imagine a land filled with wild creatures, ice people and oil prospectors where the wind of adventure might blow across the ice at any moment and
carry you away.

Then something caught her eye. Tucked away, at the bottom of a dull page describing rock strata, was a single sentence that her father had underlined. Her blood chilled when she read the words:
‘
There’s something wrong with the sky.
’

She struggled to pull her feet free of the thick mud as the southsiders chased her across the tidal flats. They leered and snarled through yellowed teeth and reached for
her with bony, spidery fingers. But the more she looked back at their scowling wicked faces the more they looked like Thaddeus Clench and Roshanne Bentley dressed in wedding clothes.

Just when it seemed certain they would catch her, the picture changed. Instead of the shoreline she now stood in a wide valley surrounded by tree-covered slopes. The mud was gone and the
ground was covered in pure, unbroken snow.

She saw him then at the top of the hill. Too far away to see his face but something about the way he stood, hunched against the cold, felt so familiar. She heard her name carried softly on
the wind and he beckoned her to follow him. But when she reached the top of the hill he wasn’t there. She turned every way, desperate to catch a glimpse of him, but he was nowhere to be
seen.

It was as though the very ground had opened up and pulled him in.

‘Dad!’ She sat up with a start.

‘Sleep OK, kid?’ Verity was awake, pulling a brush ferociously through her long hair.

India sat up and blinked. ‘Uh, yeah. Just a dream, that’s all.’

Verity leaned across her and looked out of the window ‘We’ll be there in about an hour. We’re going to land on the river, which means you’ll get a great view of Angel
Town.’

The early sun streamed through the plane windows and cast a fresh-washed brilliance across the sky Far below, a scattering of icebergs sailed on foam-flecked waves and an iron-red cargo ship
plunged through the swell, the seas washing her decks. India peered at the horizon as a dark coastline emerged from the morning mist and she had her first glimpse of Angel Town.

From the air, the town was an untidy collection of wooden buildings and pitched roofs covered in thick snow The muddy streets converged on a busy harbour lined with bleached timber warehouses
and skeletal cranes.

‘That’s where they bring in the raw materials from the rig yards to be processed,’ said Verity, pointing to a row of blackened factory buildings sending pencil lines of smoke
into the crisp air.

‘Where are the rig yards?’ said India. She was anxious for a glimpse of one of the giant prospecting vehicles her father had told her so much about.

‘On the other side of the mountains, in Salekhard,’ said Verity, ‘about a day’s journey from here. It’s cheaper to bring the stuff over the mountains by barge and
rail.’

The
Aurora Queen
dipped her nose towards a strip of water and landed in another burst of spray before taxiing to the dockside. They spilled from the plane on to a busy harbour-front
market where the air was thick with the smell of meat and wood smoke. Stout women argued over the price of plucked chickens and wet fish while gulls wheeled overhead like scraps of paper on the
breeze. A group of men with brown faces and skin like creased leather stood apart at the end of the harbour. They wore thick jackets and boots and tended some shaggy-looking beasts. India stared at
them, remembering her father’s descriptions of the tribal people in Siberia.

‘Are they ice people?’ she said in hushed tones.

‘Yes – although they call themselves reindeer people,’ said Calculus. ‘They live out in the eastern wilderness mostly and sometimes they bring their animals here to
trade. I don’t remember seeing so many of them in Angel Town before.’

‘And who is he?’ She pointed to an old man wearing a metal disc around his neck engraved with fierce creatures. Although poorly dressed, he looked proud and noble.

‘He’s a shaman,’ said Calculus, ‘a holy person. They say a powerful shaman can take the shape of a bird and fly across the land or even control a man’s
dreams.’

‘Control dreams?’ she said. ‘That’s just superstition, isn’t it?’

‘There are many things that cannot be explained,’ said the android, ‘but that does not mean they are not true. The shamans are greatly respected and feared in this
country.’

India looked back at the old man and was disconcerted to find he was staring directly at her. She turned away quickly to follow Calculus.

They caught up with Verity outside a noisy bar. Even though it was early morning, the sounds of laughter and an out-of-tune piano spilled on to the street. A sign above the door read: ‘Mrs
Chang’s Fine Dining Rooms and Guest House – Licensed to sell intoxicating liquors and explosives’. Underneath, another sign declared ‘NO ROBOTS’ in large red
letters.

‘Perfect!’ said Verity. ‘Why don’t you guys go ahead and get checked in and I’ll see about getting us an appointment at Trans-Siberian.’

‘We’re going to stay here?’ said India. ‘It sounds like they’re actually fighting in there.’

‘It’s just high spirits,’ said Verity. ‘Half of them are getting drunk because they’re about to leave town and the other half are getting drunk because they just
got back.’

A gunshot inside the building made India jump but the music continued without stopping. ‘Is it always like this?’ she said.

‘Hell, no!’ shouted Verity over her shoulder as she disappeared down the street. ‘You should see it on pay days. That’s when it gets really wild!’

India looked up at the ‘No Robots’ sign. ‘Maybe we should try somewhere else?’ she said.

‘There is nowhere else,’ said Calculus. ‘Unless you wish to sleep in the stables?’