The Black Lung Captain (19 page)

'What do you mean?'

'The door in the dreadnought. The one you popped open.'

Crake thought about that. 'It felt good,' he said. 'I felt useful.'

'You like al that daemonist stuff, don't you?'

'I wouldn't be a daemonist if I didn't,' Crake replied. He ran his fingers through his scruffy blond hair. 'Obsession comes with the territory. Once you've seen the other side . . .'he trailed away.

'And how much have you done, these last couple of months?'

'Excuse me?'

'How much
daemonism,
mate? New stuff, I mean. Testing your boundaries, learning your craft, al of that.'

'I don't see what you're driving at.'

Malvery leaned forward on his elbows. 'I see the stuff you've made. Frey's cutlass, your gold tooth, those little ear thingies the pilots wear, that skeleton key you've got. Some of those things are real damn clever.'

'Thank you.'

'Now how many of them did you make in the last six months?'

Crake opened his mouth to reply, then shut it again.

'I expect you've been al tied up in research, trying out some new method or something, ain't you?' Malvery prompted. 'Maybe you're working on something realy special?'

Crake glared at him. Malvery- sat back and folded his arms. Point made.

Crake took a resentful swalow from his mug. Being caled an alcoholic was easy enough to take, but he didn't like having his commitment to the Art questioned.

And yet, he couldn't deny Malvery had a point. He didn't have any excuses. He'd stopped practising daemonism almost entirely of late. The thril of it, the alure of new discoveries, had disappeared.

For a while, he'd rather enjoyed the chalenge of working aboard the
Ketty Jay.
Being without a sanctum forced him to think of creative ways to get the best out of his portable, sub-standard equipment. But as the weeks passed there were fewer and fewer hours in the day when he was clear-headed enough to study the formulae he needed. He seemed to be always hungover or drunk, and it became a huge effort to turn his brain to the complex problems of daemonism. Easier to leave it until the next day. He told himself he'd do some work then. But the next day was the same as the last, and somehow it just never happened.

He looked at the bottle on the table. It was the first time it had occurred to him that his drinking was affecting his Art. Without that forbidden knowledge to set him apart he was just another layabout aristocrat, no better than Hodd. The idea appaled him. He considered himself better than that. Yet the evidence indicated otherwise.

Then an idea occurred to him. A drunken, stupid, furious idea born out of frustration at being faced with his own inadequacies. Something he never would have dared consider when he was sober. But he was keen to prove Malvery wrong, keen to show the doctor -and himself - that he was stil worth something. He was more than a privileged idler with a hobby; he was extraordinary. So he said it aloud, and once said, he was committed.

'I think I know a way we can find that sphere.'

'How?'

'I'm going to ask a daemon.'

Fourteen

An Unexpected Visit —

Crake's Request — The Summoning

Crake raised his hand to knock on the door, hesitated, and let it fal. He looked both ways up the winding, lamplit aley.

Narrow, elegant, three-storey dwelings were crammed shoulder-to-shoulder along the cobbled path. The air was fresh with the salt tang of the sea. There were voices coming from beyond the end of the aley, but nobody he could see. It was an innocuous, out-of-the-way house that he'd come to, and that was exactly how its owner liked it.

Crake turned up the colar of his greatcoat and raised his hand again, knuckles bunched to rap on the wood. His skin was clammy and his palms were damp.

Everything felt closed-in and unreal, as if seen through a camera lens. The taste of whisky stil lingered in his mouth. His heart skipped a beat now and then. It was a distressing new development that he'd noticed lately, usualy when he was hungover.

I shouldn't have come here.

He thought about making up an excuse. He could rejoin the crew in the morning and tel them he'd tried and failed. No harm done. Maybe it was better they didn't find Dracken anyway.

But he wouldn't lie like some common scoundrel to his friends. That would be too much of an injury to his pride.

Pride? A failed daemonist, drinking himself numb? Where's the pride in that?

Self-disgust spurred him on. He knocked on the door.

'You told them you'd do this,' he murmured to himself. 'What's a man, if he doesn't do what he says he wil?'

He heard footsteps, and the door was opened to reveal a short, round man in a brocaded jacket, wearing a pince-nez. He was bald on top of his head, but a thin fringe of grey hair fel to his colar. His eyes bulged at the sight of Crake.

"Rot and damnation, wil you get out of sight!' he snapped. He grabbed Crake by the arm and yanked him inside, then looked both ways up the aley and shut the door.

'A pleasure to see you too, Plome,' said Crake, smoothing out his coat and admiring the halway. 'How have you been?'

'You can't keep turning up on my doorstep like this!' Plome spluttered. 'There are procedures for this sort of thing! A letter, a clandestine rendezvous, disguises!

Be more circumspect, won't you?'

'Noted, Plome,' said Crake. 'But I'm here now, and nobody saw me. Wil you please relax?'

Plome produced a friled handkerchief and mopped his brow. 'I'm running for the House of Chancelors, you know,' he said.

'I didn't,' Crake replied. 'Congratulations.'

Plome harumphed and flounced into the sitting room. 'The slightest whiff of scandal, do you understand? The slightest whiff could ruin me.'

Crake folowed him in. The sitting room, like the halway, was paneled in dark wood and hung with portraits. Two armchairs sat to either side of an unlit fireplace, with a lacquered side table between them. Plome went to the liquor cabinet and puled the stopper from a crystal decanter.

'I'm sorry,' said Crake. 'I wouldn't have come if I wasn't in desperate need.'

Plome poured two glasses of brandy and held one out to Crake. He'd intended to resist the temptation of alcohol - he'd need a clear head for the night's work -

but his resistance crumbled at the sight of it. A clear head was no good without steady nerves, after al, and he didn't want to risk causing offence by refusing. He took a sip, and felt a bloom of warmth and wel-being.

'As you see, we have electricity in Tarlock Cove at last,' said Plome, indicating the light fixtures. 'And a great improvement it is too.'

Crake made an admiring noise. It wasn't news to him; he'd seen it mentioned in a sidebar in the broadsheets months ago. He wouldn't have come otherwise.

Last time he'd visited, Tarlock Cove had run exclusively on gas. The portable generators that provided many remote settlements with electricity had been outlawed. They were too noisy for a picturesque coastal town, and they put out unpleasant fumes. Instead, the town's founders had built a smal, quiet power plant, and now charged the residents for their supply. It was the way it was done in the cities, and it was rapidly spreading to smaler settlements as the technology became cheaper.

Crake was al for progress in that regard. He needed a steady flow of electricity for what he had in mind, and using a generator would be risky. Generators broke down too easily.

Plome settled himself in an armchair with a nervous glance at the windows to make sure the blinds were secure. Crake sat in the other, the brandy glass cupped in his hand.

'So you're to be a politician?' Crake prompted.

'I hope so,' said Plome. 'I have the support of the Tarlocks, and they have been most thorough in introducing me to other aristocracy in the Duchy. I'm the horse they're backing, so to speak. The incumbent has proposed some unpopular motions to the House and al indications are that he's on his way out.' He took a sip. 'I stand in good stead, but it's stil two months to the balot.'

'Isn't it dangerous to put yourself in the public eye like that? I thought you were trying to keep out of sight?'

'A calculated risk,' said Plome. 'I hope to obtain enough leverage to quieten anyone who might discover my less socialy acceptable activities. At the very least, I should escape the galows if I'm caught.' His tone changed, became wary and grave. 'They say things about you, Crake. What you did. Why you're on the run from the Shacklemores.'

Crake looked at his reflection in the lapping surface of his brandy. He swirled the liquid to break it up. 'It didn't happen the way they say.'

Plome shook his head. 'Spit and blood, Crake. If it happened at al . . .'

'It wasn't me!' said Crake sharply. 'At least ... it was my body doing it, but I wasn't there. You understand? I reached too far, Plome. A procedure got out of control.'

Plome left his seat and paced the room in agitation. Crake stared at the fireplace. What would come next? Accusations? Recriminations? Would he be thrown out? It would be less than he deserved. At least then he wouldn't have to go through with this il-advised plan of his.

Plome returned holding the crystal decanter. He topped up Crake's glass and his own, then put the decanter down between them and sat.

'I don't have the words,' he said. He shook his head. 'The price we pay for our caling is sometimes . . . terrible. Terrible.'

Crake swalowed as his throat tightened at the unexpected sympathy.

'What do you need?'

'I need to use your sanctum.'

Plome studied him. 'You want to use the echo chamber, don't you?'

Crake held his gaze.

'I've never dared use it,' Plome confessed. There was a tremor of excitement in his voice.

'I've used one,' said Crake. His tone left Plome in no doubt as to the result.

'After what happened, you stil want to try again?'

'I'l get it right this time.'

'What if you don't?'

'I'l get it right,' Crake said firmly.

Plome mopped his brow and licked his lips nervously. 'I want to be there.'

'No. It's far too—'

'I insist!' he said, his voice shril. 'It's my sanctum!'

His smal eyes shone with fervour. Crake knew that look. He'd worn it himself once. Plome might maintain the facade of a businessman and a politician, but like Crake he was a daemonist first and foremost. The secrets of the other side were an addiction. Crake suspected that the tragedy attached to his name, far from appaling Plome, had actualy increased his respect for his guest. Crake had been blooded in a way that Plome hadn't. He'd made a terrible sacrifice to the Art, and he was stil coming back for more.

Plome admired him. The thought made Crake feel even worse.

'You'l handle the second line of defence,' Crake said. 'If it gets past me, we can't let it out of the sanctum.'

Plome nodded eagerly and sprang out of his chair. 'Shal we get started, then?'

'One more thing,' said Crake. 'Do you have a gun?'

Plome frowned. 'I do. Why?'

'I want you armed.'

'Armed? Whatever for?'

Crake stood up and walked past Plome towards the door. 'Because if things go wrong, I want you to shoot me.'

Plome's sanctum lay underneath his house, in a hidden basement accessible through a daemon-thraled door which employed a strong mental suggestion to turn away casual snoopers. It was wel organised and laid out like a laboratory. Electric bulbs hummed behind their shades. Complex chemical apparatus stood on a workbench near a chalkboard covered with scribbled formulae. Shelves were loaded with forbidden books. Resonators and modulators were fixed to frames and troleys. The equipment here was the best: bigger and more powerful than the portable gear Crake used. Plome was not short of cash, and not afraid to spend it on his passion.

A globular brass cage had once dominated the room, but now it had been relegated to the corner along with a few portable oil lanterns. The new prize piece stood in the centre, amid a mass of heavy cables. The echo chamber. Crake felt his stomach tighten at the sight.

It looked like a bathysphere: a bal of riveted metal, two metres in diameter, with a single porthole in a door on one side. It stood on a low plinth, braced by struts. Cables were plugged into it al over its surface.

Crake stared at the porthole, and the darkness within.

You could still turn back. Tell them you couldn't do it. They'd understand.

But back to what kind of life? What would he be to his crew, after this? Dead weight? Someone to be pitied and tolerated? No, he'd had enough of that from his family, when he was a younger man. He'd borne it from them because he didn't like or respect them. But he couldn't bear it from Frey, or Jez, or Malvery.

He refused to be pathetic. Better to be dead.

He set to work. He checked the cables to the echo chamber, making sure everything was plugged in properly. After that, he familiarised himself with the control console, which differed in smal ways to the one he knew. Lastly, he puled over a resonator and connected it to a sequence of inputs on the echo chamber.

Plome was occupied with his own preparations, constructing a three-tiered defence of oscilation spheres, pulse pods and resonator masts. Crake approved of his thoroughness, but privately he wasn't at al sure that any conventional methods could contain a daemon capable of breaking out of an echo chamber.

Crake was studying formulae from a book when Plome came over to him, mopping his brow. 'Boning up on echo theory, eh?' he asked nervously. 'I thought you knew al about that stuff?'

'I do.' Crake snapped the book shut. He'd just needed something to stop his anxiety getting the better of him. He had it al by heart anyway. Not that it had done him much good last time. 'I'l assume this place is soundproofed? Things wil get loud.'

'Oh yes. Daemons thraled to the wals and ceiling. We could have an orchestra down here and you wouldn't hear it in the sitting room.'

'Good,' said Crake. He'd used similar methods himself, in the wine celar where he'd built his own sanctum.