The Wonder - Deep Blue

Chapter 11-2

Crossing the slideway on the canoe had been terrifying enough for Teddy, especially when he had been told that if any part of him were to touch the ice, then it would be ripped off like the tender meat from a boiled chicken. But to sit on these leather encased round sleds that didn’t even have sides to keep you in, launch oneself onto the ice at a ship at least seven floors high, surely that was suicide, pure and simple. Jobby had assured them that the crew of the Bester would throw down netting for them to climb up, as they expected the traders to be there, and were keen for them to board for a cut of the profits, a cut the traders were happy to share as they had already made a profit when Laurel had provided them with the Trade ponies in return for their carriage across the ice.

The ginger trader on whose iceboard Teddy had been placed grunted through his scarves at him, and Teddy decided this meant he should ready himself.

The ice yacht thundered across the ice into view, its sails furled and Red Wonder pumping to slow the behemoth. The netting was cast through the smoke over the side and suddenly they were off, crackling across the ice with a loud swish. Teddy clung to the trader’s enormous back besides an enormous duffle bag that tinkled as though it were full of glass. The boy had premonitions of the iceboard flipping over, catapulting him onto the ice, strips of him being torn from his bones as shards of glass shaved off chunks of skin, the passengers of the yacht pointing and laughing.

But then they were alongside the yacht and slowing as the trader grabbed at the bottom of the netting until they were slowed enough to hold on and let the netting go taut. He tied the board onto the ropes and hauled himself upwards. Teddy’s hand was engulfed by the grip of the trader’s enormous mitt and he was heaved onto the netting, which the boy grasped with all his might.

“Good luck,” said the trader from beneath his scarves and hood and he was off, scaling the netting. The ropes swung and bounced against the side of the yacht as the man climbed, and tears crept from Teddy’s eyes as he was slammed against the freezing metal of the hull.

As the trader ascended into the red smoke above, Teddy stole himself to take a look. To his left he saw Pinkerton helping Rickenbacker up the ropes towards the first open walkway that could provide entrance. They had agreed to let the traders head up to the top decks so that they could display their wares to the first class with money to spend, while Rickenbacker and the others would enter the lower decks under cover of the red smoke. Steerage was found in the freezing bowels of the yacht, and the passengers were unlikely to report stowaways to the crew, so it was the best place for them to start. To Teddy’s right he could see Hilt struggling with his one hand to get up the ropes, ignoring Laurel’s offer of help so that she could concentrate on Brennan. Seeing the two old men, the woman and the man with one hand should have inspired him, he was sure, but Teddy still couldn’t get his legs to move and his body seemed to be getting heavier by the second.

“Mister Elephantine?” he whispered, “Are you there?”

But there was no reply, in his ears or mind. He could hear nothing but the whistle of the wind, the clattering of the sled against the ice, the ropes buffeting the hull and his own ragged breathing.

“Mister Elephantine?” he tried again.

“Teddy!” he heard, and looked up to see Rickenbacker calling to him from over a barrier, “Come on, Teddy, you can do it.”

“Get a move on, boy,” called Pinkerton.

Teddy looked up through a gap in the smoke and saw the traders clambering onto the top deck and felt a wave of nausea as the yacht’s height seemed to tilt towards him. So Teddy closed his eyes again and decided to die there, hanging on the side of this yacht that he couldn’t remember the name of, heroism and chosen one be damned. He’d eventually fall and his body and the stupid box holding Mister Elephantine would stick there until they were minced into the ice by the next yacht and that would be the end of it.

Then the ropes started juddering again. Teddy’s arms, legs and fingers started to quiver with the strain and he decided death would definitely be much easier. The decision seemed to free him and he held his breath, preparing to let go as the netting shook more violently. Then he felt a strong arm around his waist and opened his eyes to spy the whiskers and ruddy skin of Pinkerton beside him.

“Let me give you a hand,” said the big man, and they started to ascend together, the bulk of Pinkerton behind the boy. They reached the walkway and Pinkerton put his shoulders beneath Teddy’s feet to launch him to safety, feeling his wound open once more.

The Trade platoon had lost a third of its men in the Glasslands, and almost all its ponies. Quine and Axelrod took mounts and rode behind the men as made their way down the gravel path of the Gleave family lodge.

“I could holiday here, you know,” Quine said to the others, waving his hand over his shoulder. “No children, no women, a decent lounge.”

“Perhaps you should return here and renovate it, Colonel,” Axelrod suggested.

As they emerged back onto the road through the woods, Quine saw Franks on a steed ahead and called him over.

“What are you doing on a pony, Franks?”

“Riding, sir.”

“Get off that animal at once. I want you to lead the men on the march from the front,” Quine commanded, and he turned his pony to trot away.

Axelrod smirked at the little man’s horrified face and followed the colonel to the rear of the platoon as they formed up. Franks felt tears come to his eyes as he dismounted, not due to his embarrassment at being chastised in front of the men, but at the idea of marching miles back to Chinsey in a pair of knickers much too small for his girth and groin.

Laurel, despite the cold, had found herself breathless with excitement at the sled ride across the ice. After the oppressive murkiness of their journey beneath the Cathedral, it was a thrilling relief to feel the wind in her hair, to see people who were definitely real and not trying to kill her. And the opportunity to take a trip on the Spirit of Bester, one of the most well known and luxurious yachts of the Grand Quillian merchant fleet made her heart race as she envisioned a hot bath, a well cooked meal and clean clothes.

But as they stepped from the walkway into the dark stinking steerage decks, her heart sank.

The stench of rotten food, curdled milk, sweat, s**t and piss hung in the air, filling her nostrils, throat and lungs like a thick soup. Icicles hung from the ceiling, from the ragged sheets hanging between the hard wooden bunks and the bunks themselves. The wretched passengers, men, women and families, accompanied by the occasional cat, dog, and one lone parakeet, shivered in the cold, their breath hanging in the air. Parents clung to their children beneath thick fur coverings, while a few small fires burned in old food cans, warming foul stews and broths. A vague red glow throbbed in the air from the nearby Wonder generators, with extra illumination provided by smelly candles crafted from the fat of animals that could never have smelt this bad when they were alive.

Large eyes peered out from dark sockets in sallow faces, yellow skin hanging from their skulls. Their clothes were frayed and filthy, some hinting at Sunday best, the poor reaching for the finery they hoped to attain in the new world.

“This is heart breaking,” Laurel mumbled, as they picked their way through the detritus of humanity.

“Welcome to real life,” Hilt said, and she wanted to hit him.

She had lived the life of an orphan, she thought, looking at the children wrapped in their parents’ arms. These people were trying to look after each other while they headed somewhere they hoped would offer them the chance to better themselves. She had sold herself when she was barely a teenager, sold her body and not just dancing either. And then she had tried to make things better, make people better. She had sown other people’s bodies back together with sheep intestines on the battlefield, young soldiers yet to shave who had signed up because life offered them nothing else but crime. She looked around and saw her real family, not her blood relatives, the mysterious Gleaves who had left her to rot until they were in the ground themselves. These were her kin who clung to each other for support, picked each other up and dragged each other back down again.

“Is there anything we can do for them, Professor?”

Rickenbacker reached into his bag to retrieve a scrap of material smeared with a gluey concoction of Wonder.

“This might help,” he said, handing it to Laurel. “Just knot it tightly and it should provide some warmth. It can be undone and used again.”

Laurel looked at the scrap and then looked deep into the gloom, spying a gaggle of children attached to one another under a stained cotton sheet. She approached them slowly, the material in her hand and they cowered away from her.

“It’s alright,” she assured them, “I have something that can help you warm you up.”

She took the two ends of the material and tied a loose knot, unsure how hot it would get in her fingertips. She pulled it tight and it immediately flooded the area with a fresh warmth, like morning sun, without burning her hand. One of the braver children crept forward, reached out tentatively and snatched it from Laurel’s grasp.

“There you go,” she said, smiling.

“So much for keeping a low profile,” Hilt said, looking at the wide eyes turning towards them.

“That’s nothing,” said Pinkerton, before climbing onto the nearest bunk. “Listen up. If any of you take that scrap of warmth from those children, I will personally freeze you to death myself. Is that understood?”

Everybody turned away from the group and Pinkerton decided to take this as a good sign.

“Are we quite finished do-gooding?” Hilt asked, “as I would like to find some food that won’t kill me and a bed that won’t give me crabs.”

And with that, Hilt led the others through the huddled masses towards the only door they could see, hoping it would lead upwards.

The crow network was another backbone of the Empire, and it generally followed wherever the slideways went, so that the crows could follow them to other Imperial centres. Using Green Wonder to control their minds, crows would be given a message letter by letter that would be translated into caws, the language of the crows. Crows had been chosen as the birds were essentially pack animals, aggressive with crows from other areas and flocks, known as Murders, so the message could be kept within the Grand Quillian Murder. As the crow did not migrate too far, the Green Wonder enabled the already intelligent birds to pass the message on, and due to their incredible hearing, this meant the crows could pass on the message between each other across extraordinary distances.

Within the Empire, the crow network was known as the Murder and the phrase “as the crow flies” did not always mean the straightest distance between two places, as they followed the slideways, but it did generally mean the quickest, as there was no faster way to send a message within the Empire than via the Murder.

The message sent by Axelrod to the Chinsey Trade Headquarters took twenty minutes to arrive at the Headquarters’ Murder Exchange, and then took another twenty minutes moving up three floors into the A.I.R. office.

The Alien and Insurgent Research department was often seen as a law unto itself, especially in the colonies that were run by the Trade, as they reported directly to the Grand Quillian government as opposed to the Trade. Therefore most Trade officers and their ECOs were not very forthcoming in sharing information with them until they had to. Their bureaucratic powers were absolute, their physical and Wonder powers had never been advertised, but everybody in the know knew they were the concealed strong arm of the Empire. AIR was only aware of Rickenbacker due to their meeting with him at the Necropolis dig four years previously, when they had closed him down. His history as a troublemaker had only been of local interest, and they were therefore happy for him to be managed by the Trade in the area. But the news from Doctor Axelrod about Rickenbacker’s infiltration into the Cathedral of Tales and his pilfering of a Gargoyle Key, coupled with his knowledge of the mass grave at the Necropolis, troubled AIR. So they contacted two agents via the Murder who happened to be in the area of the Glasslands and told them to command the Spirit of Bester to stop for refuelling where they would board the ice yacht and detain this local problem named Rickenbacker, who seemed to have ideas above his station.