Superior Saturday

ELEVEN

AS DARTBRISTLE HAD claimed, the flood channel did not suddenly fill with rushing water as Arthur half-feared it might. All the way along he listened carefully for the sound of an approaching deluge, and was ready to race back to the ladder and the warehouse. Then, when he caught sight of a ladder ahead, he had to hold himself back from trampling over the Raised Rat to get to it and climb out.

Maybe all my worries have made me claustrophobic, Arthur thought with some concern. But then he told himself it was perfectly normal to be concerned when walking along what was basically a big underground drain, in the middle of a heavy rainstorm. People got drowned all the time doing stupid stuff like that, and as he had thought before in the Border Sea, Arthur was particularly concerned that the Key would keep him sort of alive underwater and he might take a long time to die.

However, he managed to stay calm, and didn’t streak up the ladder like a rat up a drainpipe. Instead he remembered what Suzy had said about his looks, and paused to pick up some mud, which he smeared on his face and front. After that he climbed out slowly, and so had time to adjust to the light and noise that was filtering down the access shaft to the channel.

The chamber above was very different from the warehouse. It was smaller, sixty feet square, and had thick stone walls without any windows and only a single door, which was shut and barred. But it was full of light, from the dozens of lanterns that hung on wires of different lengths from the arch-beamed ceiling high above, and it was full of noise, from the thirty or so grease monkeys who were sitting on simple wooden benches at six old oak tables – or not sitting, since a good number of them were jumping over the tables as part of a dozen-person game of tag, or doing cartwheels along them, or playing shuttlecock with improvised shuttles and bats, or constructing curious pieces of machinery. Or completely monopolising a tabletop by lying asleep on it, as one nearby grease monkey was doing.

As Dartbristle helped Suzy out and she and Arthur stood at the rim of the trapdoor, all this activity ceased. The children stopped their games and activities and turned to look at the new arrivals.

‘Wotcher!’ said Suzy, and went to tip her hat. She got halfway to her head before she remembered it wasn’t there, and so had to be satisfied with a wave.

The grease monkeys didn’t wave back. They stood there, staring, until the one who was apparently asleep on the table rubbed her eyes and sat up. She looked like a typical Piper’s child, with her ragged, self-cut hair, dirty face and oil-stained coveralls. But from the way the other grease monkeys’ eyes shifted toward her, Arthur could tell she was the boss.

‘Mornin’,’ she said. ‘Dartie here says you’ve been demobbed and sent back, with a washing between the ears behind you.’

‘That’s right,’ said Arthur. ‘Uh, I think.’

‘I’m Alyse Shifter First Class,’ said the girl. ‘I’m gang boss of this bunch, the Twenty-seventh Chain and Motivation Maintenance Brigade of the Upper House. What’re your names and classifications? Don’t tell me your House precedence – we don’t bother with that here.’

‘Uh... I can’t quite... remember,’ said Arthur. ‘I think my name’s Ray.’

‘Got your paperwork?’ asked Alyse, holding out her hand.

‘Lost it,’ muttered Arthur.

‘Somewhere,’ added Suzy vaguely. ‘Think my name’s Suze, though.’

‘Suze and Ray,’ said Alyse. ‘Well, what’s your classification?’

‘Uh...’ Arthur let his voice trail off as he looked around in what he hoped was a gormless manner, till he spotted a long line of coats and other items hanging from coat hooks down the far wall. Each hook held a duckling-yellow peaked rain-cap, a rubberised yellow rain-mantle and a broad leather belt loaded with pouches, tools and a holster that held a long, shining silver shifting wrench.

‘I think I used to do up nuts,’ he said. ‘For bolts?’

Alyse looked at him.

‘You got long enough arms for it,’ she said. ‘Nut-turner, I guess. Maybe First Class. What about you?’

‘Dunno,’ said Suzy. ‘Forget. Reckon I could turn my hand to anything, though.’

Alyse looked her up and down and shrugged.

‘Nice under-belt,’ she said. ‘Blue-sky wisher, are you? You must be a Wire-flyer?’

‘Maybe,’ agreed Suzy guardedly.

‘What’s a Wire-flyer?’ Arthur asked.

‘You did get scrubbed good and proper,’ said Alyse. ‘Try and remember! I’m talking installation, not maintenance. A Wire-flyer flies the guide wires up, so as the Rail-risers can put up the rails for the Chain-runners and the Hook-’em-ups can slot in the desk unit and the Nut-holders and Bolt-turners make it fast and the Shifter gives the word. Only if we’re not building up, the Wire-fliers do odd jobs, help out the Chain-oilers, stuff like that. Coming back to you now?’

‘A... a bit,’ said Arthur. He didn’t need to act confused by her explanation.

‘Have to see it, I reckon,’ said Suzy. ‘Picture paints a thousand words. Is that tea over there?’

‘It’ll come back to you,’ declared Alyse, ignoring Suzy’s question. She held out her palm, spat in it, and offered her hand to Arthur. ‘Welcome to the Twenty-seventh Chain and Motivation Maintenance Brigade, or as we like to call it-’

‘Alyse’s Apes!’ roared the assembled grease monkeys.

Arthur shook hands, and Alyse spat again. Suzy spat on her own hand and Arthur thought he should have spat on his too, and hoped his recently washed-between-the-ears state would let him be forgiven for this lapse in Piper’s child etiquette.

‘Tea’s in the pot,’ said Alyse, pointing to the huge teapot that was simmering on a trivet above a glass spirit burner in the corner. She then pointed to a large and decrepit-looking cuckoo clock that had half-fallen off the wall and was slumped just above the floor at an odd angle. Its hands still moved and Arthur could hear the quiet thock-thock-thock of its inner workings. It said the time was seventeen minutes to twelve.

‘Help yourself. Shift starts at twelve, so get a cup down you while you can. Don’t forget to check your gear before noon.’

Alyse yawned and began to lie back down on the tabletop, but one of the other grease monkeys called out, ‘Alyse! Which pegs do they get?’

Alyse scowled and sat back up again.

‘Never a moment’s rest,’ she sighed, though Arthur was sure she had been sound asleep when he arrived. She opened one of the pockets on her coverall and drew out a thick and well-thumbed notebook. ‘Let’s see. Yonik was the last one to fall, so his peg’s free – that’s number thirty-three. Before that was Dotty-’

‘But Dotty didn’t fall; she just got her leg crushed,’ said one of the grease monkeys. ‘She’ll be back.’

‘Not for three months or more,’ said Alyse. ‘So her peg and her belt are free. Them’s the rules.

‘Number twenty,’ she added to Suzy, pointing halfway along the line of coat hooks. ‘You’re lucky – Dotty kept her gear very nice. Better than Yonik, which goes to show. He wouldn’t have fallen if he’d kept his wings clean.’

‘And his nose,’ added someone, to general laughter.

‘Was he badly hurt?’ asked Arthur.

‘Hurt?’ Alyse laughed. ‘When you’re working on the tower, as we was, if you fall off and your wings don’t work, you don’t get hurt. You get dead. Even a Denizen can’t survive that fall. Twelve thousand feet, straight down. We were lucky to find his belt and tools, and his wrench had to be replaced. Bent like a crescent, it was.’

Arthur shook his head. He’d always thought Suzy was quite callous, but these Piper’s children were even worse.

I suppose when you’ve lived a very, very long time, you feel differently about dying, he figured. I wonder if I will feel the same... not that I’m likely to live that long...

A tug at his elbow interrupted his thoughts.

‘I have to go,’ said Dartbristle. ‘Got work to do, and there’s a flood due through right after twelve.’

‘Thank you,’ said Arthur. ‘I really appreciate your help.’

He offered his hand, and bent down close to shake the Raised Rat’s paw and whisper in his ear, ‘If you hear anything about Part Six of the Will, send word to me.’

‘Aye,’ said Dartbristle. ‘Goodbye, Ray and Suze.’

‘Thanks, Dart,’ said Suzy with a wave.

Once the Raised Rat was gone, she added, ‘Come and get yer tea, Ray,’ as she searched out two good-sized mugs from the dozens of chipped and damaged porcelain teacups and mugs that lay in disorganised piles around the spirit burner. Several grease monkeys who were gathered there to drink tea started to say hello, and Suzy poured tea with one hand as she spat and shook with the other.

‘I’m going to check my stuff,’ Arthur called out, which was probably the wrong thing to do. The other grease monkeys went back to their activities, and none came to introduce themselves as he went over to his peg.

Arthur put on his rain-mantle, which was like a sleeveless raincoat with a hood that went over his peaked cap. The cap had a buckle to fasten under the chin. Beneath the cap on the peg was a pair of clear goggles, which Arthur tried on and adjusted to fit. In the single large pocket of the rain-mantle there was a folded pair of dirty yellow wings. Arthur took them out, shook them so they expanded to full size, and spent ten minutes plucking out pieces of grit and dirt before folding them back up again.

The utility belt was very heavy. One of the six pouches held several different sizes of nuts and bolts. Another had a mouldy apple core in it, which Arthur removed. The next had a small grease gun, which was leaking until Arthur tightened the nozzle. The fourth pocket contained a pair of light leather fingerless gloves, which he put on. The fifth had an apparently unused cleaning cloth, a small cleaning brush and a cake of soap that had BEST QUALITY WATERLESS PERPETUAL SOAP stamped on it.

The sixth pouch was empty. Arthur tested its strap, then quickly slipped his elephant and the Fifth Key inside.

He looked around to see if anyone had seen him, but it looked like he had managed to be surreptitious. That done, he took the soap back out of the fifth pouch and tried it on an oily patch on his coveralls. Part of the stain was erased with surprising ease. Arthur was about to clean it off completely, but paused to look once more at the other grease monkeys, most of whom were now putting on their gear.

All of them had stained coveralls, and Alyse’s coveralls were the most splotched of all, with at least a dozen different-coloured oil stains.

Arthur quietly put the soap back in its pouch and put the belt on. Suzy was putting her belt on too, farther down the line. She waved at him and smiled.

Having fun as usual, thought Arthur. She lives in the moment. I wish I could.

He smiled a slight smile and waved back, then drew out his shifting wrench and hefted it, slapping the head against his palm. It was very shiny and very heavy. The screw-wheel that opened and shut the mouth of the wrench was gritted up, so Arthur quickly cleaned it with the brush and applied a spot of grease from his grease gun, not noticing that Alyse was watching him with approval.

‘They can scrub us between the ears,’ she said, ‘but good workers never forget to look after their gear.’

She climbed up onto one of the tables and waited expectantly. The last of the grease monkeys finished putting on his belt, and they all turned around to face their leader. Arthur and Suzy followed a beat behind.

‘Are we ready?’ asked Alyse.

‘Ready!’ called the grease monkeys.

‘Then let’s go!’ Alyse jumped off the table and took her place at the head of the line. The grease monkeys did a right turn that would have made Arthur’s old drill instructor Sergeant Helve start screaming at the informality and slovenliness of it. Completely out of step, they marched to the door.