The navigator (20 page)

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"We'd better get back," Contessa said, but still they stared into the snow with the Raggies, who had not moved, the snow starting to settle on their hunched shoulders, gazing after the vessel that carried the hopes of the world that had been and the hopes of the world to be.

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Owen also woke early, if he could have been said to have slept at all. The cellar was half flooded and he had felt around in the dark until he found a low stone shelf above the water. He huddled on it miserably, half dozing, until daybreak, a thin, cold light coming through the high window. He pulled his sodden clothes round him and stood up on the narrow shelf, pacing up and down for warmth, until at last the door at the top of the stairs opened. It was Passionara.

"Get up out of the mire, Pretty Rat," he jeered. "There's rat grub for you."

His limbs barely working from cold, Owen hauled himself up the stairs, shivering uncontrollably. Passionara

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lost patience with him and grabbed him by the hair, lifting him off his feet and slinging him into the corridor. At the same instant, he slammed the door of the cellar shut. As the door closed, a weak beam of sunshine crept through the high window, shining across the dark cellar to the far corner, where the black water was deepest, glancing off something as white as bone. The sunlight seemed to disturb something in the dark, and after a moment, a large dark rat crossed the deep water, jumping lightly across what appeared to be smooth stepping-stones. But, as the uncertain sunshine strengthened, it became apparent that they were not stepping-stones but skulls, their dead eyes staring unseeing into one more cold dawn.

There were delicious smells in the corridor. Owen was pushed into the kitchen. Mariacallas, the cook, was standing at the stove with a spatula in his hand, watching anxiously as a tray of scrambled eggs with smoked salmon, toast, Earl Grey tea, and grapefruit was hoisted shoulder high and carried toward Johnston's room.

"Spill one drop, I cut your liver out. I fry her for eat," Mariacallas screamed at the man carrying the tray as he left the room.

"You got feeding for Pretty Rat? Johnston says feed the rat," Passionara said.

"No time for feed rat!" Mariacallas screamed furiously.

"Is very pretty rat," Passionara said, "Johnston wants to keep it fresh for Harsh." Mariacallas scowled but

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opened a cupboard and threw some hard bread and cheese on the table.

"There!" he said. "Food for rat."

Owen was ravenous. Despite the fact that the bread was stale and the cheese was hard, he wolfed it all down, drinking water from someone else's dirty cup that had been sitting on the table. He thought with longing about the tea bags he had left in the Den.

As he ate, Johnston's men came and went, carrying supplies. For the journey north, Owen thought with a shiver. He wondered how they would be traveling and how long it would take. From the quantity of supplies he knew that it was going to take some time.

As the men worked, Mariacallas screamed at them for leaving the door open or muddy footprints on his kitchen floor. One man left a trail of flour from the cooker to the door. When Mariacallas saw it, he whipped a long sharp knife from his belt. Owen did not see his hand move, but the knife whirred through the air. The man, without looking back, ducked and the blade struck the door just above his head and stuck there, quivering.

Passionara seemed to have wandered off. Mariacallas was preoccupied with packing spices and condiments for the journey. Owen eyed the door. He thought about making a bolt for it, but each time he did, his eyes returned to the long knife, which was now back in Mariacallas's belt. It was warm in the kitchen. After the sleepless

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night in the cellar, Owen could feel his eyes starting to close. The sounds of the kitchen grew distant. He put his head on the table and slept.

Passionara woke him by the simple means of grabbing him by the hair again and pulling him to his feet. Owen had been dreaming about the Workhouse, of sitting in the warm kitchen with Cati, and he looked around him bewildered before he remembered what had happened.

"You ready for big trip north?" Passionara said, grinning. "Holiday!"

"Winter holiday!" Mariacallas exclaimed, and the two men hooted with laughter.

"Hurry," Passionara said, clipping Owen on the back of the head. "Mustn't be late."

"Johnston will leave without you."

"He hopes!" Once again the two men screeched with laughter. Owen didn't think there was anything funny about their jokes at all, but he thought it best to smile politely, in case they took offense. A shove from Passionara took him to the back door, and another shove propelled him through it.

"Watch step," Passionara said. "Johnston never find no Mortmain. Not in good mood."

The world he fell into bore no resemblance to the place he had been the previous night. Snow whirled through the air so that you could barely see twenty meters away. The scrap and the tent village had all been

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covered, and the manor looked like something from an old painting. There was a sense of anticipation in the air as well, with men hurrying to and fro. Owen thought he could make a bolt for it now, but he wouldn't know which way to go. Besides, as soon as the thought entered his head, Passionara seized him and dragged him off toward the sheds at the back of the Manor, leading him down a bewildering warren of stone-cut buildings, containing forges, armories, workshops of all kinds. Owen had no idea that the Johnston operation was so big. He thought about the sparsely manned defenses of the Workhouse and the casualties they had taken, and wondered how long they could hold out.

At last they turned the corner into a large cobbled space. Passionara halted. "There," he said, "is how travel to north."

It took a moment for Owen to take in what he was looking at. It was the oddest vehicle he had ever seen. It had a wheel at each corner, but they weren't ordinary wheels. They were a bit like bicycle wheels, he thought, thin bicycle wheels with spokes, but the astonishing thing about them was their height. Each wheel had to be twenty meters tall, almost as high as a three-story building. And between them, halfway betwen the ground and the tops of the wheels, was slung what Owen supposed you would call a pod. It looked like the body of an airplane without the tail or wings, but with the same round windows and windscreen at the front. A long, narrow ladder led from a door in the side to the ground.

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"Q-car," Passionara said happily. "Skip up ladder, Pretty Rat." He swung a boot lazily in Owen's direction. Not needing to be told twice, Owen grabbed the bottom rung of the ladder and hauled himself onto it. He felt Passionara get on the ladder after him and he climbed hurriedly upward, knowing that he was liable to get a thump if he didn't move quickly enough. The ladder swayed as Owen climbed, and the snow blew down his collar and into his eyes, rendering him half blind by the time he got to the top of the ladder. He felt for the outlines of the door and pulled himself through, blinking the snow out of his eyes as he did so.

The interior was wider than it appeared from outside. Comfortable leather seats were grouped round tables. The interior walls were also covered in leather. There was one seat where the pilot would have sat on an airplane, and a set of complicated-looking controls that looked more like those of a ship. There was a copper-bound wheel and a series of brass levers and pedals. At the rear of the fuselage was a small galley.

"When are we going?" he asked.

"Shut up, Pretty Rat," Passionara said, and threw himself down in one of the chairs. Owen decided that he wouldn't risk any more questions.

They waited in silence for twenty minutes, Owen feeling more and more tense, until at last he felt the whole body of the Q-car begin to dip and sway, as if somebody extremely heavy was climbing the ladder. Probably

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Johnston, Owen thought, almost with relief. At least Johnston would end the terrible silence.

But it wasn't Johnston. After several minutes Whit-washisberd's head appeared in the doorway. He was breathing heavily and he had his ledger under his arm.

"Take book! " he shouted to Passionara, who did not move. "Take book, foul flower wearer!" the man shouted again. But Passionara did not stir. It was Owen who darted forward and took the heavy ledger so that the man could climb through the doorway.

"That'll earn you no favors from the maker of records," Passionara said sourly. "If there's a skull to put beside your name, then a skull it will be."

Whitwashisberd took the ledger back from Owen and went to the back of the craft. He sat down heavily, opened the ledger on the table in front of him, took out a pen, and waited.

He didn't have long to wait. The craft lurched again and Mariacallas climbed on board, closely followed by Johnston.

"Snow gets bad," Mariacallas said.

"We'll follow the Harsh Road," said Johnston. "No need to stray off it, Passionara."

Passionara nodded and moved to sit down at the controls. Owen tried to sidle past Johnston to get a better look at what Passionara was doing, but Johnston caught him round the neck with a huge hand. Owen couldn't breathe. He struggled helplessly.

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"Just because the Harsh want me to make a present of you doesn't mean that I have to. You could get killed trying to escape."

"Accidentally on purpose," Mariacallas said, and roared with laughter. Passionara joined in. Even half strangled as he was, Owen was tiring of their terrible sense of humor. Johnston's grip tightened even more. Owen's vision was blurred but he thought he could see Whit-washisberd's hand hovering over the last page of the ledger.

"Where is the Mortmain?" Johnston bellowed into Owen's face.

"In the car," Owen gasped. "When it went into the water. My dad's car ..."

"Maybe he's right," Johnston said, stroking a long sideburn thoughtfully, seeming to forget that he was strangling Owen with the other hand.

Abruptly Johnston dropped Owen to the floor, where he lay fighting for breath. Johnston went up to Passionara and stood over him while he performed what seemed to be last-minute equipment checks. Owen heard murmurs about "barometric relativity frequencies" and "temporal torque." Still gasping for air, he half walked, half crawled to the back of the cabin. He crept onto a chair that was as close to Whitwashisberd as he dared. There seemed to be no love lost between him and Mariacallas and Passionara, so Owen hoped they would keep away.

From nearby, Owen was able to study the ledger. It

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was very old and enormously thick, and its pages were incredibly thin. There must have been thousands of pages in it, perhaps even tens of thousands. He wondered if his father's name was in it. He wondered if there was a skull beside it. Owen decided that, if the chance arose, he would try to get his hands on the book. Meanwhile, he had to think about escape. At that moment he glanced up and saw that Johnston was looking straight at him, a mocking smile on his lips, as though he had read Owen's mind. Fortunately, Johnston was distracted just then. There was a faint humming noise and a crackle, and Johnston whirled around.

"Did anybody stow the ladder?" he yelled. Mariacallas dived toward the open door, avoiding a fist the size of a turnip aimed at his head as he did so. Quickly he pressed a lever. Owen peered through the door and saw the ladder folding itself into sections, then rising until it was out of sight under the belly of the Q-car. Just as the last of the ladder clattered out of sight and Mariacallas slammed the door, the pod seemed to rise and sway between the four giant wheels. Owen saw Passionara ease the lever forward and the Q-car lurched into motion. At the same time loud music began to blare from speakers mounted under the pod.

Johnston was standing with one hand on Passionara's shoulder, and with the other he conducted the music furiously. The big wheels turned slowly, yet still they were covering a lot of ground. Owen moved to one of the

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round windows. Through the snow he could see Johnston's men, hundreds of them, cheering the great machine as it moved through the camp. Owen looked to his left. Whitwashisberd was painstakingly writing: "Departure 8:34 a.m. Conditions: snow."

The snow eddied and flurried, and momentarily Owen caught a glimpse of the Workhouse towering grim and defiant over the river, the tottering pillar of the Nab clearly visible, the Skyward glittering at the summit. Then the weather closed in again. The wind threw snow against the Q-car with renewed ferocity, obliterating not only the Nab but also the faces of the cheering men below. Owen looked out of the window but could see only whiteness.

On the other side of the river Pieta kissed each of her children gently on the cheek. The older child, the girl, blinked a little, as if emerging from a dream, and threw her arms round her mother's neck, but the boy only smiled a vague, secret smile. Contessa stood with a hand on each child's shoulder as Pieta walked off. As the snow began to obscure her, the girl called out. Pieta turned and spoke the child's name into the wind and snow, then turned again and disappeared into the blizzard.

She reached the river and walked carefully down the bank. The snow did not seem to concern her. She examined the tree bridge, then moved on. After twenty minutes she reached the pine tree where Owen had crossed. She examined the base of the tree in silence for a moment,