The Merlin Conspiracy Read online

  Klaptico looked swimmy and greasy and gray. Nipling was white and had a sort of look of mashed potatoes. It looked filling, so I chose that. She poured orange colly over it and then snatched my token away and stamped it with a huge black stamp.

  “So don’t think you can use it twice,” she snapped, sticking the token into the nipling like an ice-cream wafer. She handed me the plate, token and all. “Spear and spoon on the tray at the end.”

  The eating implements were a sort of spike and a minishovel. I picked up one of each and took my plate to a free table. All the other people sort of bent away from me as I went. Then they bent away again when I went to get myself a drink. Yes, I thought, working the spigot, I’m a vagrant. You don’t know where I’ve been!

  I was really puzzled by the drink. It tasted rusty and sweetish. “What is this stuff?” I asked the woman at the nearest table, as politely as I could.

  She looked at me as if I was mad. “Water,” she said.

  “Oh,” I said.

  I turned back to my plate and took a look to see how other people were using their spike and shovel. They were spiking and shoveling, so I did that, too. And after one shovelful I was wishing I’d had klaptico instead. Nipling was hot, like horseradish, and colly was another kind of hot, like salty chili. I had to keep going for more of the weird water, wondering each time if it was poisoning me, but I was so hungry that I ate every scrap. I swear I could taste nipling for the next twenty-four hours.

  I put my plate and my glass in the bins near the counter and left, thankfully. Then, feeling a good deal better but a bit fiery around the middle, I went along the black, blocky arcade until I came to a long brown building with hardly any windows and a large door covered with blue-and-white enamel notices. PUBLIC WORKS OFFICE. OPENING HOURS 08.00–16.00. DO NOT DISTURB NIGHT SHIFT UNLESS AN EMERGENCY. NO LOITERING. NO MONEY EXCHANGED FOR TOKENS, and scads of others. I stared at them all for a while until I saw one notice all by itself in the doorjamb. INSERT PW TOKEN TO OPEN DOOR, it said, and underneath it was a slit like a letterbox.

  I thought, I don’t want to do this. But I thought that Important was bound to have phoned up to this place and told them I was on my way. I thought of the prison under the trains. And I got out my nipling-coated token and posted it into the slit.

  It went down with an almighty clanging crash. It made me jump.

  It made me jump so hard that I realized that I’d been half asleep until then. I’d been doing what I was told like a zombie. Now I was wide awake all of a sudden and quivering. And angry. Why should I be sent to work in a cloth factory like a slave when all I’d done was mistake someone for Romanov? And I still hadn’t found Romanov. I was supposed to help two more people before I could find him, and after that I’d promised to help that girl. Roddy. It dawned on me that I’d have to mean to help her or she wouldn’t count as one of the people I’d helped. Instead I was letting myself be stuck in this awful place. And that was stupid. Pathetic, really.

  I turned away from the notice-studded door and ran back along the arcade, past the caffs, until I came to the stairs. I knew they’d look for me going down them. So I dived up the next flight, under the notice that warned about RADIATION.

  TWO

  My plan was quite simple. I was going to sit on those stairs, just high enough to be out of sight, until I heard the police come up. Then, when they went back down looking for me, I was going to follow them and be behind them when they thought I was in front.

  It didn’t work out that way. That set of steps turned out to be quite short. There were no lights in the roof, and the stairs were made of cracked and slippery white tiles. Unlike all the other flights, they curved, and as soon as I had climbed round the curve and was feeling pleased that I was out of sight already, I saw sunset light up ahead. I realized I must have come to the very top of the cliff.

  After that I was too interested to stop. I wanted to see what was causing the dangerous radiation. I went on up.

  The first thing I saw, before I was really at the top, was a tall wire fence quite a long way overhead and another of those enamel notices fixed to it, beautifully lit by the flaring sun. AIRFIELD KEEP OUT. As I climbed slowly and cautiously up the last steps, I could see that the fence was actually on top of rows of small houses that backed onto the last piece of the cliff. The houses were all different and all sort of cottage-sized. After the buildings on the lower levels, they struck me as more like doll’s houses or dog kennels, and the paint on them was blistered and peeling.

  This must be where the poor people live, I thought. I went up the last few steps and saw the poor people.

  There were crowds of them, all sitting out on the flat rock in front of the little houses. Every one of the grownups was working away at embroidery, so that the place sort of heaved and flashed as far as I could see both ways, with arms moving and needles catching the light. Kids were darting about, bringing things. Every so often someone would say, “We need more number nine red,” or, “Bring me the one-two-five flower pattern,” and a child would dart off to get it. There wasn’t room to walk among the busy people and the spread-out cloths they were sewing at, so the kids mostly had to run along the very edge of the cliff. There were no pillars here and no wall. It looked terrifying.

  I stood where I was or I would have trodden on someone, or put my big, dirty shoe in the middle of a bright flower pattern on one side or a wreathing green-gold embroidery on the other. And I had hardly stood for a second when a plane of some kind took off from the airfield with a huge tinny whirring. I could tell it flew by quite different methods from the ones I knew. It zoomed right over our heads and I nearly fell back down the steps, trying to duck. A boy standing with his toes curled round the edge of the cliff never even swayed. He gave me a jeering look.

  I pretended not to see him and watched the plane go whirring away across the flat and sandy tops of all the cliffs. It looked almost like unbroken desert from up here, with just a few dark, wriggly cracks to show where the city canyons were. In the distance, where it seemed to turn into solid desert, I could see something shining orange in the sunlight. The plane seemed to be making for this shining thing.

  “Do you mind if I ask you a question?” I said to the man beside my right leg. He was old, and I didn’t really like to look at him, because he had a growth of some kind down one side of his face. It blocked one of his eyes and went on down to mix with his straggly beard.

  He seemed quite friendly. He went on sewing away and said, “Ask away, lad,” in what sounded like a strong country accent.

  “Then, is the radiation from the planes in the airfield?” I said.

  “No, no, that’s from the sun,” he said, and bit off his blue-green yarn and threaded his needle with more, all in one movement like a conjuring trick.

  He bent to the embroidery again, and a woman just beyond, sewing at the same cloth—only she was using golden green—said, “You shouldn’t really be up here before sunset, my dear.” She had a growth, too, an oozy one, on her sewing arm.

  “Yes, but they arrested me for a vagrant,” I said.

  “Ah, they do that,” someone else said, from the flower embroidery on my other side. “They’re always needing workers to make cloth for us.”

  By this time everybody seemed friendly. A lot of children who weren’t fetching things at that moment came scampering along the edge of the cliff and balanced by the top of the stairs to stare at me. “Where are you from?” a girl asked me.

  “Earth,” I said.

  They all laughed. “Silly!” said the girl. “This is Earth, and you’re not from here!”

  “Yes, but,” I said, “there are a lot of Earths. I think I’ve been on at least three lately.”

  “Ooh!” said a little one right behind me. “You mean, like Romanov?”

  That made me jump. I came out in gooseflesh with excitement. “Romanov?” I said. “Has Romanov been here?”

  “Yes, indeed,” said the old man beside my leg. “He was he
re earlier today. He comes through quite often, you know—to gain altitude, he says. In the other worlds he goes to, the ground is higher than Level Eleven, so he comes in at Eleven and leaves from here.”

  “Romanov’s been very good to us,” said the woman with the growth on her arm.

  “Surely has,” the old man agreed. “He brings a new sunshield spell for us every time he comes by. My grandchildren can grow up without getting something like this.” He left off sewing for an instant and tapped at the growth on his face. It sounded like someone patting a crusty loaf. “A good man, Romanov. Do you know him well?”

  “I only met him this morning,” I said. “At least—I think it was morning, but it may have been yesterday. I’m trying to find him again. Do you know where he went?”

  The old man shrugged as he sewed. “Back home by now, I’d think. You want to go back down to Eleven and go from there.”

  “You should go back down anyway, dear,” the woman with the bad arm said. “The sun’s doing you no good, even low as it is.”

  “You can do ten minutes!” the girl balancing beside me asserted. “Romanov told me.”

  Ten minutes, I thought. I want to find out everything I can in those ten minutes. I pointed up at the wire fence. “How do they manage up in the airfield, if the radiation’s that bad?”

  A chuckle ran round everyone near. “They come up through trapdoors in fat white suits!” someone called out, three embroideries over.

  “They do most of the flying by night,” someone else said. “Loggia people do a lot by night. It’s safest.”

  I looked over at the bright speck of the plane in the distance. It was coming down to land near the shiny things. “Brave pilot,” I said.

  “Oh, no. The planes are all protected,” the old man said. “Prayermasters put spells on them.”

  “Oh,” I said. “And what’s that shiny place over there where the plane went?”

  “Those are called xanadus,” a kid behind me said.

  “Though don’t ask us why,” the old man added. “They’re the domes where they grow all the vegetables and suchlike.”

  “Nipling?” I asked.

  Everyone laughed and groaned. “That stuff!”

  While we were laughing, the sun went down. Just like that, it was blue dark. Lights came on the next second, fixed to the houses. To my surprise, everyone bent over the embroidery and went on sewing as if nothing had happened, including the old man, who was laughing so hard that the growth on his face jiggled. It looked like a rat clinging to him.

  A second or so later hooters sounded from below, all over the city, lots of loud, howling noises like a herd of unhappy cows. That’s it! I thought. I’m illegal now.

  “That nipling!” the old man said, speaking through the howling. I could tell he was so used to the hooters that he hardly noticed them. “I tell you, they have a hard job stopping nipling growing! Comes up all over in their flower pots, whatever they do. They keep trying to give it away. But we won’t have it, workers won’t touch it. I heard they feed it to the prisoners these days.”

  I shuddered. I could still taste the stuff. I thought of jail under the railways and a diet of nipling, and I suddenly felt very anxious indeed. “What do you think I should do?” I said. “You said I’d need to go down to Level Eleven, but I’ll be arrested now the hooters have gone.”

  “They give you half an hour’s grace,” the woman with the bad arm said.

  The old man chuckled again. “Didn’t tell you that, did they? They like to keep you frightened in Public Works. But you’d be surprised how many curfew people seem to get held up on the stairs, getting back to their workhouses. I’ve known some who get delayed for whole nights.” He raised his head for a moment. I think he was winking, but he did it with the eye that was mixed up with the growth and I wasn’t sure.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Thanks for telling me.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said. “But before you go, do you mind if we ask you a question—me and my sons and daughters?” His hand went out, with the needle in it, and he wasn’t sewing, for a wonder; he was pointing to the six other people round the green embroidery, including the woman with the bad arm.

  “Fine,” I said. “Go ahead.”

  I supposed he was going to ask me what I was doing here. I told you, I’m very self-centered. But he said, “This big square we’re doing, it’s a new idea of mine. It’s not finished yet, but take a look at it. Think of yourself as a very rich man, and tell me if you’d want to spend good money on it, and why.”

  Actually, I am pretty rich. Very rich, really. But I was ashamed to tell him, and I didn’t think he’d have believed me anyway. I looked down at the square. I’d been admiring it out of the corner of my eye even before the sun set. Now the lights were on it, it was like something alive and growing, all greens and golds and coils that seemed almost to move. There were still white patches all over it where they hadn’t embroidered yet, but I could see the main design, and it was fabulous.

  “It’s fabulous!” I told them. “I’d pay a lot. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.” It came into my mind that Dad would love it. He’d been talking about wanting something to hang on the wall of his study. He said he was sick of staring at a blank wall. If I could have thought of a way to pay for it and get it home, I’d have put in an order for it then and there.

  The old man said, “Now, here’s our question. If you were this rich man, what would you do with our square when you’d bought it?”

  “Hang it on the wall,” I said. “Just have it there and stare at it. It would be different every time I looked at it, I know it would.”

  The old man banged his knee delightedly. “There, you see!” he said. It was clear they’d had a few family arguments about his new idea. Everyone else sewing on it glanced up at me and beamed, looking relieved.

  “Well, it’s good to know we’re not working for nothing,” the woman with the bad arm said. “I’d hate to think of it cut up for clothing.” Then she called out to the smallest kid balancing beside me. “Sibbie, go down and tell him when there’s no one about on Fourteen. But go careful. I don’t want you ending up in a factory.”

  This made everything much simpler. I waved good-bye and followed Sibbie down the slippery tiled stairs to the bend. When she beckoned from the bottom to show it was all clear, I scudded down and across the tarry floor of Fourteen and went galloping away between the drifts of rubbish on the next lot of stairs.

  There were a lot of people on the stairs below those, and more the further down I got. Voices and footsteps and loud music sounded from nearly every level I came to. What they’d told me was true: people did a lot at night here. I suppose it was safer not to come out in the sunlight, even on the lower levels.

  When I met the first crowds, around the Sex, Drugs level, I was quite scared. But I noticed that there was not a single policeman about on the stairs. If I were them, I’d have patrolled the stairs all the time, but that must have seemed like too much hard work to them in those curly yellow boots. So I kept a look on my face that said, “I’m not important, and I know just what I’m doing,” and went on pushing and galloping my way down. Nobody even looked at me.

  I went a bit more cautiously when I got to the House of Prayer notice. There was loud, droning chanting coming from there, which gave me a sort of fizzing feeling. Magic being done, I thought. Must be official magic. Go carefully. Anyway, my knees were aching by then. I went down the last flights very sedately and slowed right down when I got near Level Eleven. Easy to do. That last stretch was pretty crowded. I slid slowly down with my back against the wall and looked over people’s heads at the Level Eleven archway below.

  Before long I saw a couple of policemen parade past down there, parting the crowd like butter. Good. I knew they wouldn’t parade back for at least five minutes. I put on speed and hurried out under the massive arch, along the way that I’d been coming from when I’d thought I’d seen Romanov. I still coul
dn’t see how I made that stupid mistake.

  It was really lively along that arcade. People were laughing, talking, strolling along, listening to a group of musicians, applauding, and rushing in and out of the brightly lit shops. Some of those were still selling embroidered cloth. I saw the identical patterns I’d seen being sewn up on Level Fifteen. But some shops seemed to have turned into dance halls or places to drink, and I had real trouble recognizing the one opposite where I’d first come out. I worked out that it had been a bit along from one of the hoists, and in the end I was sure it must be the one where people were sitting out at tables, pouring drinks from big, fancy teapots and eating sticky cakes.

  I looked for the path, sort of sideways on from everything. And there it was, dark and steep and rocky, and glistening faintly with rain. It was just the shop that had changed. I shot into that path like a rat up a drainpipe.

  I was in pitch dark the next second and stumbling about on that rocky surface, where I found myself sort of replaying in my mind those last instants before I shot into the darkness. It seemed to me that I had seen some familiar faces staring at me as I went. One was definitely Mizz Jocelyn, only she had changed for the evening from pink and mauve into beige and violent green. Another was a man in a suit embroidered like a flower bed. He had this big, fluffy mustache, and it seemed to me that he could have been Important having an evening out in ordinary clothes—if you could call a bed of dahlias ordinary. There was another one, too, a sharp-faced boy about my own age. I thought he might just have been that Prayermaster’s elder son....

  But they were there in that mad city, and I was here, now, in the path. I felt my way over to the left-hand wall and kept my hand trailing along the gritty, wet rockface until I felt the promontory that had divided the two branching paths. I swung round into the right-hand fork there in triumph.

  Or modified triumph anyway.

  It was wet and pitch dark, and I couldn’t seem to make another of those blue flames whatever I did. The drunk had only given it to me. He hadn’t told me how to do it myself. I fumbled my way on, feeling less and less triumphant. I still had two people to help before I could get anywhere, and as soon as I remembered that, I began feeling really tired. I almost lay down on the wet rock and went to sleep. The only thing that stopped me was a strong notion that if I did, I wouldn’t get up again. The slitherings and flappings were back again. They sounded hungry to me.