Engine City (27 page)

“Good morning,” she said to a fat, anxious-looking middle-aged man with bags under his eyes and a cigarette between his knuckles, ash drifting on to a greasy plate. His greying hair was tied back in a ponytail and his coat and weskit were rumpled. “Mind if sit down?”

“Go ahead.”

“Thanks. My name’s Susan, I’m a journalist, from the—”

He held up his hand. “Don’t tell me. The Dorian
Daily News
, right?”

“Yes,” she said. Doria was one of the smallest and most remote of the lesser republics of the Genean League. It seemed a safe enough cover. “How did you guess?”

The fat man wagged a finger. “Your accent, young lady. Can’t hide it. And I doubt if Doria can support more than one paper.”

“True enough,” she said, sounding regretful. She smiled brightly. “And your name, sir?”

“Horace Kamehan,” he said, sticking out a hand. “And what can I do for you?”

She waved a battered black notebook. “I’d like to, uh, wire back a few comments from Junopolitans about the latest events.”

Kamehan pushed his empty plate away and sipped his coffee. “Oh, right,” he said. “Well, I don’t think you’ll find much disagreement. We should hit the bastards with everything we’ve got.”

“How can we be certain that they
are
bastards?”

He blinked and frowned. “Maybe it’s easy to be all even-handed if you’re sitting out there on your rocks in Doria, but from where I’m sitting it’s not. It’s quite clear who’s making the threats, and frankly I don’t think our government should stand for it. Which I don’t think we will, I hasten to add. The Duke’s got a bit of spine, thank the gods.”

Susan struggled to hide her confusion by nodding, smiling, and scribbling a note of what the man had said.

“And if it comes to it,” Kamehan went on, “I’m not too old to bloody sign up myself.”

“Sign up?”

He gave her another puzzled look. “For the army—maybe you don’t have that expression in Doria? Not surprising.”

“But Mr. Kamehan,” she said, “how do you expect to fight aliens?”

“Aliens?” He stared at her as though she’d just come from outer space. “Aliens? The Spiders? Who believes in this palpable nonsense? Not even you lot, I hope.”

“But the papers—”

“The papers? Don’t you listen to the bloody radio?”

“Of course, of course,” said Susan desperately. “It’s all very disturbing.” She stood up. “Well, thank you, Mr. Kamehan, for your comments. All the best.”

“Gods look after you,” Kamehan said. “Because gods know, you need them to.” He muttered something under his breath about fishermen and foreign correspondents.

“Thank you,” she said, and retreated as fast as she could to the table where Telesnikov sat mulling over the papers. On her way she noticed something that the fashion for long hair had concealed—almost everyone was wearing earphones. She sat down, nodded to Mikhail, and worried her own earpieces in. She set the little radio on the table in front of her and thumbed the dial slowly. The fingers on a wall clock were climbing to third before noon—the cafe was not emptying, although it seemed a likely time for office hours to begin, and people were looking at the clock or at their watches, listening intently. Susan kept tuning, trying to identify the sound of a program coming to an end, or some hint that an hourly news bulletin was about to—ah, there it was.

She turned the radio toward Telesnikov and pointed to the spot on the dial, and to her ear. He took the hint.

There was a sound like a series of splashes, which puzzled Susan until she realized that it was the station’s signature, intended to represent an archaic water clock. The announcer’s voice was grave, his Trade Latin more formal than the spoken dialect or the fretful rancorous rant of the press.

“Junopolis Calls, third hour before noon, eleventh day of Frugora, Anno Civitas ten thousand three hundred and forty nine. Reports are coming in of serious damage and an unknown number of deaths and injuries in the coastal town of Palmir. Witnesses have described a ‘bolt from the sky’ followed by fires and explosions. The Duke’s Minister of Defense has just stated that emergency assistance is being rushed to the stricken town. An urgent investigation is to begin immediately. He refused to comment when asked whether the disaster is linked to the warning issued earlier this morning by New Babylon. More information will be available from Palmira shortly.

“Meanwhile, in a further deterioration of relations with our southern neighbor, the Ducal Palace has made public a note delivered to the Consul of New Babylon. Junopolis Calls is authorized to read the note in its entirety:

“
Your Exellency: The warning issued by the Senate of New Babylon, and reported on your country’s radio stations at six before noon today, is viewed with great concern by Us, Our Ministers, and Our People’s Representatives. We reject, in the strongest terms, any suggestion that hostile forces are operating in or above Our nation’s territory, and will
regard any action taken by your esteemed and respected country’s forces on, around, or above that territory as an attack upon Our sovereignty and upon the sacred and inviolable territory of the Free Duchy of Illyria. In the presence of the indifferent gods and in the shadow of Our ancestors, We remain, your Excellency’s humble correspondent, Duke Leonid the Second.
”

The roar that followed from the customers in the cafe—and the passengers in the terminal—drowned out whatever was said next.

VEE—DOO! VEE—DOO!

“What are they shouting?”

“Long live the Duke, I think,” said Telesnikov. “Doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, it means war. Let’s get out.”

They gathered their armful of now-outdated but possibly still-useful papers and made their way through the standing, chanting crowd. Their path to the door was suddenly blocked by Kamehan. Two younger men stood shoulder to shoulder with him.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Kamehan demanded.

“Excuse me,” said Susan. “We have a story to file.”

“I’ll bet you do,” said Kamehan. “With the Dorian
Daily News
, huh?”

“Yes,” said Susan.

“Now ain’t that odd?” said the young man at Kamehan’s right. “ ’Cause I’m the
News’s
Junopolis correspondent. Maybe you’d do better filing your story with my friend Mr. Kamehan, of the Junopolis—”

Telesnikov slugged him in the stomach, punched Kamehan in the face and shoved both of them hard against the third.

“Run!” he shouted.

Susan pushed through a sudden domino-effect of people flailing and stumbling and ran out the door onto the concourse. Telesnikov caught up with her a moment later. He had dropped the papers and was clutching his radio.

“Nearest open space,” he gasped, and sprinted for the tramline marshalling yard, which opened onto the two open sides of the terminal. Susan followed. Behind her she heard someone yelling “Spies!” and the cry being taken up. Diagonally across from her she saw a man in uniform running to head them off. Telesnikov saw him too and swerved. Susan took the opposite direction and the man dithered and lunged ineffectually. Then they were past him and in an area of metal grooves and overhead sparks and quietly gliding death that could come from any direction.

A tram loomed in front her, blue paint and polished brass, the startled face of a driver. She leapt across the parallel tracks and spun around on her next step, then grabbed a stanchion and swung onto the running board. The driver had just released the brake and hadn’t seen anything beyond the fact that he hadn’t run her down. She glanced back along the track. Telesnikov, with the uniformed man a few meters behind in hot pursuit, raced behind the tram and with a surge of speed caught up with it and jumped onto the rear platform.

The driver heard the thump and glanced in his mirror. The brakes squealed again. Susan felt a terrific wrench in her shoulders. She clung on, to see Telesnikov tumbling past as he was sent sprawling down the vehicle’s aisle. As the tram slowed the policeman caught up and jumped aboard at the back. He ran forward just as Susan came through the open central door. She had time to see that he was not stopping—the deceleration pulled him forward—just before she ducked across his path. He tried to jump over her and succeeded only in kicking her in the ribs as he tripped over her back.

Telesnikov scrambled to his feet at the same moment as she did. The driver, almost thrown against the front of the cab, turned around and grabbed for him. Telesnikov caught his arm and slammed it on the half-door at the side of the driver’s seat, then jumped down out of the door at the front, Susan following via the one she’d just come in by.

They both barely avoided stepping in front of another tram. When it had passed they saw they were outside the back of the terminal on a wide-open space of tarmac. Gleaming lines snaked to low sheds between rusty mounted wheels with coils of metal cable, like fishing reels for Leviathan, paired bare levers, buffered barriers. Telesnikov rounded the obstacles to the least-cluttered area, waving his arms above his head. Susan ran behind him, glanced back over her shoulder and saw the persistent policeman being helped to his feet by the driver. A few more uniforms ran in from various directions.

She turned her head forward again. Telesnikov had disappeared. Then she saw him, uncannily suspended a meter up in the air right in front of her, and Mr. Blue behind him. He was crouched down and reaching out. She jumped, they caught each other’s forearms, and he hauled her into the skiff. They ended up sitting on the bench with their backs to the engine fairing. The sounds from outside abruptly ceased. The pursuers had stopped, and were looking at each other and at where they were. From the side of a wall about twenty meters away an old man in a bundle of rags staggered forward, pointing and shouting.

The scene changed to sky and the blue and white levels of air.

Telesnikov laughed harshly. “I’d like to see how they report
that
in tomorrow’s papers.”

Matt was indulging in one of his rants. For the Multipliers, he said at some length, speech was a distinctly secondary mode of communication. They shared knowledge through their fingertips. They tended to assume, he suggested, that more had been shared than had actually been said. As for the saurs, they volunteered so little about themselves that getting information out of them was like getting blood from a fucking stone.

The humans in the crew listened with embarrassment. The Multipliers formed a big circle and quivered and fingered each other. The two saurs stood together and shuffled occasionally. The day’s missions had been hastily recalled. The sun was high and the hangar’s interior was all in shadow. In the background a radio prattled away. Skiffs were still being sighted all over the place, and here and there were being chased by New Babylonian jet fighters or zapped by New Babylonian space-based plasma cannon, to the evident annoyance of every other power from Illyria to Doria. More details were coming through of extensive destruction in Palmir, apparently from a plasma-cannon bolt.

“So,” said Matt in a chillingly reasonable voice, “do any of you have anything to tell us that you might not have thought worth mentioning?”

Salasso stepped forward and turned to face the others.

“There is something,” he said, “which I hesitate to mention, but it may be relevant. Some of the very old legends of my people say that when they first came to the worlds of the Second Sphere, they met saurs who were
already here.
Saurs who flew in skiffs and behaved in . . . an enigmatic fashion, both intrusive and elusive. The rational explanation, which is usually given to the young of the species when they are told of these legends, is that different parties of saurs arrived on the various planets at different times, perhaps separated by centuries or millennia, and their first encounters were confusing on both sides. But I must admit that these stories . . . came to my mind when Susan described her encounter.”

“Very good,” said Matt. He laid a hand on Salasso’s shoulder and looked down at the saur with a sort of troubled affection. “So you guys have Greys and flying saucers too, huh? Well, there’s something nobody told me before. And, ah, just in case you’ve missed something out—have such stories been told about more recent events?”

“No,” said Salasso. “These legends are of a time tens of millions of years ago. No such stories are of more recent date.” He paused. “Other than literary pastiches, of course.”

“Of course,” said Matt. “Literature too, huh? We’re advancing by leaps and bounds here.”

“That is all I have to suggest,” said Salasso.

“Thank you,” said Matt. “Anyone else?”

Mr. Orange detached himself from a busy tangle of limbs and scuttled over.

“We do not understand and are distressed by the anger of the Matt Cairns. The invasion is proceeding according to plan. The mind of the world New Earth is responding as we expected it to. The humans of the world New Earth are misdirecting their defenses and in conflict with each other. Soon it will be possible to—”

“Excuse me,” said Matt, waving a spread hand up and down. It was a way of getting the Multipliers’ attention that often worked. “What was that about the mind of the world?”