She scrambled out under the loosened grille and peeked around the corner of the hut. The guards were sitting on the doorstep, bored and sleepy; one was already snoring, and the other’s head was nodding. Wren tiptoed away, then ran between the silent shacks and huts and out of Crouch End. The ruins of London were a maze of stark moonlight and inky shadows. Eastward, a figure showed for a moment on the spiky skyline.
Wolf! Wren started after him, relieved that at least he was not heading for the Jenny. So what was he doing? Snooping about, she guessed, just as she had been planning to snoop. It annoyed her to think that he had beaten her to it. She had wanted to learn London’s secrets herself, and impress him with her discoveries over breakfast…
She started to go after him, up the track that she had taken earlier. She told herself there was no reason to be afraid; the Londoners were softies, and even if they caught her, they would do nothing worse than return her to her prison and screw the window grilles down tighter. But she could not help feeling tense, and when a shape suddenly stepped out of the shadows beside the path to grab her, she cried out loudly and shrilly.
An arm went round her middle, and a strong hand covered her mouth. She twisted her head around and saw Wolf Kobold’s face above her in the moonlight. “Shhhh,” he said softly. His hand left her mouth, but lingered for a moment on her face. “Wren … what are you doing out here?”
“Looking for you, of course,” she said, her voice wobbling slightly. “Where are you going?”
Wolf grinned and released her. He pointed along the moonlit road to the enormous segment of wreckage that lay ahead. In some of the openings lights were moving about, bobbing like marsh lanterns.
“Listen!” he said.
Across the wastes of moonlit metal came a low rumbling noise, rising and falling, then cutting out altogether. White light flashed and flickered out of the openings in the hulk.
“Sprite?” asked Wren.
Wolf shook his head. “Machinery of some sort. The same sound I heard two years ago.”
“Engineers come up here at night,” she whispered. Wolf just nodded. “I’ve seen them too. And I’ve seen people bringing crates up here; crates filled with salvage from the debris fields. And Engineers poring over plans. Why? What are they building in there, Wren?”
Wren felt a little annoyed that he had found out more than her. Milly Crisp never had this sort of competition. She tried to look as if his findings came as no surprise to her.
“Let’s find out, shall we?”
Side by side they hurried on, and soon reached the Gut segment. It really was immense; a sea cliff pitted with countless caves where ducts and corridors had once linked it to the rest of London. Wolf clambered in through one of them, and reached back to haul Wren up behind him. “It looks like some kind of factory from London’s Deep Gut,” he whispered. “It seems to have survived almost intact.”
They moved deeper. The floors were tilted at a slight angle, making walking tricky. Metallic noises echoed along the drippy corridors. They reached a bolted door, retraced their steps, climbed a flight of sloping metal stairs. They passed a wall stenciled with the symbol of a red wheel and the words LONDON GUILD OF ENGINEERS: EXPERIMENTAL HANGAR 14. The higher corridors were lit by shafts of stuttering white and orange light that grew brighter as Wren and Wolf crept on into the heart of the building. The steady, reassuring glow of argon lamps shone through hanging curtains of transparent plastic.
Wren felt more excited than afraid now. She let her hand brush against Wolf’s, and he gripped it and squeezed it reassuringly as he pushed the curtains aside.
Together, hand in hand, they looked down into an immense open space at the center of the hangar.
“Great Gods!” Wren whispered. “So that’s it!” said Wolf.
“Put your hands up, Mr. Kobold,” said another voice, quite close behind them. “You too, Miss Natsworthy. Both of you, put your hands up and turn around very slowly.”
Chapter 23
The Childermass Experiment
Hester?” mumbled Tom, waking slowly. He had been dreaming of the old London Museum again, but this time it had been Hester who was leading him through the dusty galleries. In his dream, he had been happy to see her.
Now someone was crouching beside his bed, shaking him. He remembered that it could not be Hester and sat up. A lantern dazzled him. He turned his head away and saw a couple of Garamond’s boys in the doorway. The person who had woken him was Clytie Potts.
“There’s a problem, Tom. It’s Kobold and your daughter. Oh, they’re quite all right, but—I think you’d better come.”
Out across the ruins. Moonlight and scrap metal. Clytie walked with Tom, the two of them surrounded by silent Londoners, some carrying guns.
“What has Wren been doing?” he asked as they hurried him along.
“Spying,” said Clytie. “She and Kobold were found … where they should not be.”
“Wren’s just a girl!” Tom protested. “She may be inquisitive and foolish, but she’s not a spy! What was she spying on, anyway? What is this place you found her in?”
“Easier to show you than explain,” said Clytie.
Tom pulled his coat more tightly around him. It wasn’t just the cold that made him shiver. He had a feeling that he was close to learning the secret of his city. Had Wren discovered it already for herself? Was that was this was all about? He felt proud of her bravery, but worried too, in case she was in danger.
In an open doorway at the foot of a wall of wreckage Dr. Childermass and five of her fellow Engineers stood waiting; six bald heads like a clutch of eggs. “Mr. Natsworthy,” said the Engineer with a faint, weary smile, “you may as well see the project. No doubt your daughter and her friend will tell you about it anyway. As long as we can dissuade our more excitable colleagues from shooting them, that is.”
Up a stairway, through a plastic curtain, and out onto a narrow metal viewing platform where Garamond and a gaggle of his people stood around Wren and Wolf Kobold. They had both been made to kneel, and their hands were tied. Dr. Childermass said, “Oh, don’t be such a twerp, Mr. Garamond!”
“They were in a restricted area! Spying!” Garamond complained.
“Only because you let them come here,” retorted the Engineer. “Really, Garamond, your people are appallingly slack. Now let them go.”
Garamond and his young followers reluctantly freed their prisoners and let them stand. Tom ran to hug Wren, intending to tell her how foolish she’d been, but just as he reached her, he noticed what lay below, filling the hangar, and surprise drove all the words out of his head.
It was a town. Not a large town, nor a very elegant one (most of the buildings on its upper deck were missing, and there were no wheels or tracks) but a town nonetheless. It had no jaws, but in most other ways it seemed to Tom to match the basic blueprint of a London suburb: those small places like Tunbridge Wheels and Crawley that London had built to carry her excess population during the golden age of Municipal Darwinism.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” asked Clytie, gazing down with a look of awe and affection at the unfinished town.
Dr. Childermass said, “The fruit of many, many years of hard work, now nearing completion.”
A big saw was at work somewhere beneath the town, which was resting on a cradle of rusty stanchions. A spray of sparks scattered across the hangar floor like boisterous glowworms.