Predator's gold

26

If you could look down on the world from somewhere high above — if you were a god, or a ghost haunting one of the old American weapon platforms which still hang in orbit high above the pole — the Ice Wastes would look at first as blank as the walls of Hester’s cell; a whiteness spread over the crown of the poor old Earth like a cataract on a blue eye. But look a little closer, and there are things moving in the blankness. See that tiny speck to the west of Greenland? That is Anchorage, a screen of survey-sleds spreading ahead of it as it wriggles its way between glacier-slathered mountains and across uncharted stretches of sea-ice. Wriggles carefully, but not too slow, because everyone aboard carries with them the memory of the parasite which stole poor Tom away, and the fear that more might erupt at any moment through the ice. Watches are set in the engine district now, and patrols inspect the hull each morning, searching for unwelcome visitors.

What no one aboard suspects, of course, is that the real danger comes not from below but from another speck (larger, darker) which is creeping towards them from the east, skids up, tracks down, hauling its great bulk across the hummocked spine of Greenland. It is Arkangel. In its gut Wolverinehampton and three small whaling towns are being torn apart, while deep in its Core, in the ivory-panelled office of the Direktor, Piotr Masgard is urging his father to increase the city’s speed.

“But speed is expensive, my boy,” the Direktor says, rubbing his beard. “We caught Wolverinehampton; I’m not sure it’s worth crashing on westward after Anchorage. We may never find it. It may all be a trick. They tell me the girl who sold their course to you has vanished.”

Piotr Masgard shrugs. “My songbirds often fly away before the catch. But in this case I have a feeling we’ll see her again. She’ll be back to claim her predator’s gold.” He brings his fists down hard on his father’s desk. “We have to get them, Father! This isn’t some scruggy whale-town we’re talking about! This is Anchorage! The riches of the Rasmussens’ Winter Palace! And those engines of theirs. I checked the records. They’re supposed to be twenty times more efficient than anything else on the ice.”

“True,” admits his father. “The Scabious family has always guarded the secret of their construction. Scared a predator might get hold of it, I suppose.”

“Well, now one will, ” says Masgard triumphantly. “ Us! Imagine, Soren Scabious could soon be working for us! He could redesign our engines so that we need half as much fuel and catch twice as much prey!”

“Very well,” his father sighs.

“You won’t regret it, Papa. Another week on this course. Then I’ll take my Huntsmen out and find the place.”

And if you were a ghost, up there among the endlessly tumbling papers and pens and plastic cups and frozen astronauts, you might use the instruments of that old space-station to peer down through the waters into the secret halls of Grimsby, where Uncle sits watching on the largest of his screens as the Screw Worm pulls out of the limpet pens, Caul at the controls, Skewer for crew, carrying Tom Natsworthy away to Rogues’ Roost.

“Zoom in, boy! Zoom!” snaps Uncle, savouring the glow of the limpet’s running lights as it fades into the underwater dark. Gargle, seated beside him at the camera controls, obediently zooms. Uncle pats the boy’s tousled head. He’s a good boy, and will be useful up here, helping him with his archives and his screens. Sometimes he thinks he likes them best, the little helpless, gormless ones like Gargle. At least they’re no trouble. That’s more than can be said for soft, strange boys like Caul, who has been showing the nasty symptoms of a conscience lately, or for rough, ambitious ones like Skewer, who have to be watched and watched in case one day they turn the skills and cunning Uncle has given them against him.

“It’s gone, Uncle,” Gargle says. “Do you think it’ll work? Do you think the Dry will make it?”

“Who cares?” Uncle replies, and chuckles. “We win either way, boy. It’s true I don’t know as much as I’d like to about what’s going on in the Roost, but there have been some clues in Wrasse’s reports. Little things, but to a man of my genius they all add up. A London Engineer… That coffin arriving from Shan Guo, packed in ice… The girl Sathya mithering on about her poor dead friend. Elementary, my dear Gargle.”

Gargle stares at him with wide, round eyes, not understanding. “So… Tom?”

“Don’t worry, boy,” says Uncle, ruffling his hair again. “Putting that Dry inside is just a way of distracting the Green Storm’s attention.”

“Distracting it from what, Uncle?”

“Oh, you’ll see, boy, you’ll see.”