Wrath of the Lemming-men (7 page)

The next morning, a man came to collect them with a password and a car. He was a small, nondescript creature, and had he not been in the doorway it would have been easy to forget that he was there.

He stood in the airlock and declared, ‘My aubergine is prickly.’

Smith consulted a scrap of paper glued to the underside of his chair. ‘Birds fly south in the winter,’ he replied.

‘The car’s outside,’ said the man. ‘I’ll have my people watch your ship.’

Paragon was coming to life. The roads were full of cars and autocabs: little trains crawled between great buildings on rails like stitches across the sky. A thousand chimney-stacks were belching smoke as they drove by.

‘Magnificent,’ Smith said.

As they rounded the corner, a row of warbots strode past, all racing green and polished brass, dwarfing the cheering citizens around them. ‘Siege units,’ the driver grunted. ‘Heading to the spaceport. Grand things.’

‘Worthy enemies,’ Suruk said, his tusks bumping gently against the window. Ponderous and vast, the Empire was going to war.

The car drew up in front of the Great Museum. It was the size of a cathedral, studded with pterodactyls instead of gargoyles. The statue of a bearded man stood over the entrance, gazing across the mighty city from the fortress of learning: it could have been Darwin or God, Smith thought, or perhaps W.G. Grace.

Their guide flipped a switch and the car doors opened.

‘Go on in,’ he said. ‘Your contact’s waiting in the reading rooms.’

The museum was cavernous: its entrance hall could have housed a battleship. They bought tickets and ices from a bored man in a box like an oversized Punch-and- Judy stall, and strolled through the vast hall, licking their ice creams.

The reading rooms were at the rear of the building: to reach them, they had to pass through British Natural History, British Military History, British Social History, and Abroad. Natural History was full of dinosaur skeletons – some of the biggest dinosaurs came from Woking, Smith was pleased to note – and led up to a mural carved into the wall six times man-height. It showed an ancient warship ramming an Aresian death-walker on one side of the doors, and on the other, great figures of history being told about the Empire by a Common Man.

The historical section showed how great citizens had helped lead humanity forward. Here was a section on Henry V and his peasant archers, there Cromwell and Disraeli.

‘I don’t know about all these exhibits,’ Rhianna said. ‘All history seems to be about Britain.’ She peered through the glass at a robotic model of Francis Drake, busy playing bowls against other robots. ‘I don’t think it’s right somehow.’

At her side, Suruk nodded. ‘I agree. They should let him out for food.’

‘That’s not what I meant, Suruk. It’s not the real Francis Drake.’

Suruk looked shocked. ‘Do his captors know?’ He pointed. ‘Look, Mazuran!’

The alien stepped over to a large glass case, and as one they gazed upon the portly, striped-suited man inside. He stood behind a desk, a map of Europe spread before him, his face a mask of determination, a cigar jammed between his teeth.

‘The greatest warlord of the First Empire,’ Suruk said, awed. ‘The mighty Alfred Hitchcock.’

‘I think you’ll find that’s Churchill, actually,’ Smith said.

Suruk nodded. ‘He looks rather fat to have fought in so many different places,’ he said. ‘Did they carry him from the beaches to the landing grounds?’

Smith glanced at Suruk, annoyed. The alien was spoiling the atmosphere: the presence of such noble history, along with Rhianna in that white dress, was making him feel rather keen. He felt like blasting hell out of a bunch of filthy Ghasts, then getting Rhianna to dress up as one of the Bronte sisters and giving her a damned good—

Someone coughed, and he looked round and returned to reality. Rhianna wasn’t his, there were no Gertie within range, and a tall, thin man with a teacup in one hand was smiling at him. ‘Ah, Smith,’ W said. ‘Come to look at the exhibits?’ He stepped forward and shook hands with them. ‘Rather pleasant here, for a city. Come along. We’ve got a lot to do.’

They followed him through the last hall to the reading rooms. Statues of great authors lined the way: Shakespeare, Milton, W.E. Johns. They passed through the main reading room, past shelves and computer screens displaying images of shelves, to a small door at the back marked ‘Warning: raw sewage – danger of drowning’.

‘Helps put people off,’ W explained, and he opened the door.

He ushered them into a cupboard. There was a coat hanging from a peg in the wall: W pushed it aside to reveal a lens. He put his eye against the lens and the room shuddered and sank into the ground.

The spy turned to face them, which was difficult in such a small room. ‘What you are about to see is absolutely secret,’ he rasped. ‘You must never, ever, tell anyone about this. Were information to be leaked about this facility we would have to kill you. I can’t even tell you why it would be necessary to kill you, but even if I did tell you why it was necessary to kill you it would then be necessary to kill you just because I had told you it was necessary. So keep it under your hat, alright?’

‘Righto,’ said Smith.

The lift hit the bottom with a rough clang. W nodded, and Smith pulled back the mesh door and they stepped into a dark industrial corridor. The air smelt of grease and burning. Something whirred and hummed behind the walls.

There were windows leading off the corridor, and as they passed them, Smith caught glimpses of the rooms behind. One showed a plush little study: in a leather chair sat a suited man, his head swathed in bandages. In the next, two scientists were connecting sensors to a wardrobe.

As they reached the end of the corridor there came an odd rushing, roaring sound, and a shimmering white balloon bigger than a man rolled past, chased by three scientists. ‘Heel!’ one of them called, but the thing rolled on, and they were lost to view.

‘Up here,’ said W. He opened a door and led them into a cluttered office. A full-length picture of the king and queen with their pet lion hung behind a messy desk, at which sat a fat man doing a crossword. As they entered he stood up and put out a podgy hand.

‘Good to see you!’ he said. ‘Very glad you could make it, gentlemen.’ He wore a dark coat and striped trousers, like an undertaker. ‘Please, do take seats. Not that one,’ he added, indicating a curious armchair on the far side of the room, festooned with dials and quartz rods.

W sat down and folded his arms and legs as if he were made of hinges. ‘This is Isambard Smith and his crew: Polly Carveth; Suruk the Slayer; and this is Rhianna Mitchell, of whom I’m sure you’ll know much already.’

‘Hello all,’ the fat man said. ‘Gary Sheldon, pleased to meet you. I’m head cogitator here, which means that I run the Empire’s department of Psycho-futuro-neuro-history.’

Smith and his crew exchanged glances.

‘It’s the science of telling people what they’ve just done just before they’re about to go and do it, enabling us to predict what large numbers of foreigners will do at the whim of their tyrannical masters. Here, we use all manner of science and trickery to stay one step ahead of Gertie Ghast and predict his every black and sordid deed, enabling our plucky chaps to confound the ant-man’s crooked schemes before they even come to pass. We also deal with telephone queries.’

‘Look,’ said Smith, ‘that’s all very well, but what’s this all about, eh? If I’m going to help you, I could do with this business being a little less cloak-and-dagger. You could tell us what’s going on.’

‘Unless you have to kill us afterwards,’ Carveth said.

‘Feel free to try,’ Suruk added helpfully.

W exchanged a look with Sheldon. ‘Gentlemen, we have uncovered perhaps the most serious threat to the human race since the beginning of this war. The file you recovered during Operation Bargepole proves what we’ve suspected for some time – that the Ghast Empire intends to make its soldiers invincible.’

Smith shrugged. ‘They said that about Urn. The only Ghast that got to stay on Urn was the one we used as a hatstand.’

‘True,’ W said. ‘But they have been planning something different – something especially evil.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh yes. The file you found lists a number of experi-mental procedures for splicing non-Ghast DNA into the dirty double-helix of our enemies. The Ghasts mean to cross their own troopers with the Vorl.’ His dark eyes flicked from face to face. ‘The Vorl are undoubtedly deadly opponents, if somewhat secretive. The only contact with the Vorl we know of tends to end in people having their heads popped by psychic force. A crossbreed would have the mental powers and gaseous form of a Vorl and the ruthless lust for power of a Ghast. Such a creature would be almost impossible to defeat.’

‘Then we must stop them,’ Smith said.

‘Absolutely. But that will be no easy task: the Ghasts have their best ants working on it. The last time they tried to kidnap Miss Mitchell: this time they mean to use a pure Vorl. We know the Vorl can interbreed with other races, Miss Mitchell here is an example.’

‘Hi,’ Rhianna said.

‘She has the human form of her mother, and some of the powers of her Vorlian father. This file suggests that the Ghasts intend something similar – but as the culmination of precise gene-splicing, rather than the result of a pot-addled shag. The papers you captured suggest that the Ghasts have all the machinery they need to carry out the genetic manipulation. All they need is a Vorl – and it is vital that we get to the Vorl and warn them before the Ghasts can carry out their evil plan.’

‘Then we know what we must do!’ Smith exclaimed. ‘This vile scheme must be stopped. The safety of Britain and therefore the entire human race rests on thwarting this alien plot. With me, crew!’ he cried, leaping to his feet. ‘Let’s load up the ship, fly out to wherever the Vorl are, get them on board, go and find Gertie and kick the floor with him and wipe his arse!’ There was a moment’s pause. He looked around the room. ‘That sort of thing,’

he said, sitting back down.

Carveth raised a hand. ‘Um, not wanting to fart in anyone’s lunchbox here, but where
are
the Vorl, exactly?’

The two spies exchanged another look.

‘Thomas and Alan?’ said Sheldon.

W nodded.

The cogitator stood up from the desk, reached to the painting of the King and Queen and pulled the side. It swung open like a door. ‘Please,’ he said, gesturing for them to go through.

W stood up. ‘That’s the problem,’ he said. ‘We can’t figure out where the Vorl are. But we can ask someone who can.’

It was as though they had stepped into the workings of a gigantic clock. They were in a hall thirty yards wide, the ceiling impossibly high. Vast cogs with teeth the size of doors broke the floor, rotating slowly. The walls were Racing Green, the machinery polished brass. The air was full of the whirr and clank of distant belts, the stink of oil and the rattle of paper spooling from slots mounted in the wall. Above them, electricity crackled and pulsed.

Goggled engineers hurried between banks of levers and dials, white coats flapping. ‘Ruddy ‘ell, Barry!’ one woman called. ‘Gearing’s all out on t’mechanical brain!’

‘What
is
this?’ Carveth whispered.

‘Miss,’ Sheldon replied, ‘this is science.’

A great chain clattered down from the distant roof and deposited a tray of bacon sandwiches on the ground. The workers snatched at them, munching as they studied the machinery, racked levers back and forth and shouted into pneumatic speaking-tubes.

Sheldon checked his pocket watch. ‘Prepare to consult!’ he yelled into a tube, and the workers became frantic, throwing switches, tuning knobs, flicking fingers against dials. Pistons hammered back and forth, fans whirled, the whole room shuddered.

With a grinding roar two colossal doors swung open at the far end of the room. Steam blasted from vents. Two great machines rumbled into the chamber on rails set into the floor. They were bigger than juggernauts, armoured in black steel, shaped like loaves of bread. Sheldon turned to his audience.

‘Gentlemen, you are about to witness the brain of the Imperial war machine: Psycho-futuro-neuro-history at its finest. If Gertie comes up with a scheme, we have a scheme and a wheeze to stop him.’

The armour slid back from the front of the machines.

Behind it they saw gears, spinning wheels and hammering pistons of brass and, in the centre of each machine where the face of a clock would be, a human face with eyes and mouth, a great grey smiling disc.

‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ Sheldon cried. ‘I give you the finest computer in the galaxy – Thomas, the Difference Engine!’

‘Hello, fat cogitator,’ Thomas the Difference Engine said.

‘And Alan, the Analytical Engine!’

‘Hello,’ said Alan the Analytical Engine.

‘Hello,’ said Smith and the others.

‘Hello, Space Captain Smith,’ the computers said. ‘How are you?’

Smith realised that he was addressing the finest minds in the known universe. ‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘And you?’

‘Mustn’t grumble,’ Alan said.

‘Pretty good, thanks,’ Thomas said.

It went quiet.

‘We need to find an alien race known as the Vorl,’ Smith announced. ‘They are semi-gaseous, psychic beings of immense power. The Ghast Empire wants to harness their strength for the evil end of galactic domination. The British Empire needs to harness their strength for the good end of civilising the galaxy.’

Thomas’ eyes moved left, then right, like those of a haunted picture. ‘Gosh, that’s difficult,’ he said. ‘The Vorl are extremely elusive. Almost no confirmed sightings exist: everything known is through secondary evidence.’

‘Having had a shufty at the papers,’ Alan put in, ‘your best bet is to track former human attempts to contact them. There are legends, of course, stories that the Vorl have made contact with secret societies, but. . . well, they’re nonsense, really.’

‘Go on,’ Smith said.

The eyes of both engines swung towards each other.

‘Well, you asked for it,’ Thomas said, and he simulated taking a deep breath. ‘The Vorl are rumoured to have made contact with a medieval guild of brewers called the Holy Legion of Hospitable Tipplers. In 1320 on the outskirts of York, they reported mass visions of a ghostly being that struck them with terrible head pains and vomiting, shortly after the three-day feast of Saint Armand. The Tipplers passed the secret of alien contact down through the ages in mystic ceremonies involving Morris dancing, and are rumoured to have included Pitt the Younger, Buddy Holly and the Montgolfier brothers among their number, although that may just be hot air. It is thought that the handkerchiefs of modern Morris dancers symbolise the wafting bodies of the Vorl.’