Philip Reeve - Hungry City Chronicles 03 - Infernal Devices.pdf

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Infernal Devices
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Infernal Devices (The Hungry City Chronicles, Book 3)
Philip Reeve
For Sarah, as always
For my editors, Kirsten Stansfield and Holly Skeet, with thanks,
And for Sam Reeve, Tom Skeet, and
Edward Stansfield, one day.
CONTENTS
PART ONE
1. The Sleeper Wakes 3
2. At Anchorage-in-Vineland 8
3. The Limpet Autolycus 20
4. The Legend of the Tin Book 30
5. News from the Sea 45
6 We Are Making a New World 50
7. She's Leaving Home 59
8. Kidnapped 72
9. The Message 79
10. The Parent Trap 88
11. Four Against Grimsby 96
12. Business in Great Waters 101
13. Dr. Zero 112
14. Sold! 121
15. Children of the Deep 138
16. Those Are Pearls That Were His Eyes 145
17. The Chapel 153
18. The Naglfar 160
19. The Wedding Wreath 177
v
PART TWO
20. A Life on the Ocean Wave 183
21. The Flight of a Seagull 196
22. Murder on Cloud 9 206
23. Bright, Brighter, Brighton! 222
24. The Requiem Vortex 235
25. The Pepperpot 239
26. Waiting for the Moon 246
27. The Unsafe Safe 260
28. The Air Attack 274
29. The Unexploded Boy 289
30. Captives of the Storm 304
31. The Moment of the Rose 309
32. The Flight of The Arctic Roll 318
33. Departures 327
34. Finders Keepers 335
35. Marooned in the Sky 340
36. Strange Meetings 349
PART ONE
Chapter 1
The Sleeper Wakes
***
A t first there was nothing. Then came a spark, a sizzling sound that stirred frayed webs of
dream and memory. And then--with a crackle, a roar--a blue-white rush of electricity was surging
through him, bursting into the dry passages of his brain like the tide pouring back into a sea cave. His
body jerked so taut that for a moment he was balanced only on his heels and the back of his armored
skull. He screamed, and awoke to a sleet of static, and a falling feeling.
He remembered dying. He remembered a girl's scarred face gazing down at him as he lay in wet
grass. She was someone important, someone he cared about more than any Stalker should care about
anything, and there had been something he had wanted to tell her, but he couldn't. Now there was only
the afterimage of her ruined face. What was her name? His mouth remembered.
"H ..."
"It's alive!" said a voice.
"HES ..."
"Again, please. Quickly."
"Charging ..."
"HESTER ..."
"Stand clear!"
And then another lash of electricity scoured away even those last strands of memory and he
knew only that he was the Stalker Grike. One of his eyes started to work again. He saw vague shapes
moving through an ice storm of interference, and watched while they slowly congealed into human
figures, lit by flashlights against a sky full of scurrying moonlit clouds. It was raining steadily. Once-Borns,
wearing goggles and uniforms and plastic capes, were gathering around his open grave. Some carried
quartz-iodine lanterns; others tended machines with rows of glowing valves and glea ming dials. Cables
from the machines trailed down into his body. He sensed that his steel skullpiece had been removed and
that the top of his head was open, exposing the Stalker brain nested inside.
"Mr. Grike? Can you hear me?"
A very young woman was looking down at him. He had a faint, tantalizing memory of a girl, and
wondered if this might be her. But no: there had been something broken about the face in his dreams,
and this face was perfect: an Eastern face with high cheekbones and pale skin, the b lack eyes framed by
heavy black spectacles. Her short hair had been dyed green. Beneath her transparent cape she wore a
black uniform with winged skulls embroidered in silver thread on the high black collar.
She set a hand on the corroded metal of his chest and said, "Don't be afraid, Mr. Grike. I know
this must be confusing for you. You've been dead for more than eighteen years."
"DEAD," he said.
The young woman smiled. Her teeth were white and crooked, slightly too big for her small
mouth. "Maybe 'dormant' is a better word. Old Stalkers never really die, Mr. Grike...."
There was a rumbling sound, too rhythmic to be thunder. Pulses of orange light flickered on the
clouds, throwing the crags that towered above Grike's resting-place into silhouette. Some of the soldiers
looked up nervously. One said, "Snout guns. They have broken through the marsh forts. Their
amphibious suburbs will be here within the hour."
The woman glanced over her shoulder and said, "Thank you, Captain," then turned her attention
to Grike again, her hands working quickly inside his skull. "You were badly damaged and you shut down,
but we are going to repair you. I am Dr. Oenone Zero of the Resurrection Corps."
"I DON'T REMEMBER ANYTHING," Grike told her.
"Your memory was damaged," she replied. "I cannot restore it. I'm sorry."
Anger and a sort of panic rose in him. He felt that this woman had stolen something from him,
although he no longer knew what it had been. He tried to bare his claws, but he could not move. He
might as well have been just an eye, lying there on the wet earth.
"Don't worry," Dr. Zero said. "Your past is not important.
You will be working for the Green Storm now. You will soon have new memories."

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