“Don’t wait for us,” Lorraine said to Paul. “Show them the lab. We’ll join you there.” She led Stanley to the stairs and they both went down together. He took one look back at us. His face was a strange thing to see, full of strong feelings that was hard to tell apart, each from other – like he was scared and sorrowing, angry and full of spite all at once.
“What kind of treatment is the boy on?” Ursala asked Paul, once they was gone down out of our sight. “I’m trained in medicine, as you’re aware. It may be I can help.”
Paul didn’t seem to hear the question. “The place you sailed from,” he said, picking up the talk as if nothing had happened. “What did you say it was called again?”
“Many Fishes. It was on a headland right where lost London used to be.”
“London is gone, then,” Paul said.
“Completely. It’s at the bottom of a lagoon that’s at least thirty miles in diameter on its long axis and maybe eighty feet deep.”
Paul looked off out of the windows for a while, tapping his thumb against the side of the table. “That’s a hard thing for me to assimilate,” he murmured. “They said, even if emissions stopped overnight, there was no way of saving the east coast, but I didn’t believe anything could ever…” His words trailed off.
“You talk as if you actually remember it.” Ursala couldn’t keep the surprise out of her face, or out of her voice. “But that’s impossible, of course. These are things that happened centuries ago.” She give Paul a long and thoughtful stare. “Tell me, Mr Banner, how long has The Sword of Albion been at sea?”
“Oh, it’s been a while,” Paul said. “You lose track, in the day to day, but it’s definitely been a fair while now.”
“And where did you sail from?”
Paul throwed up his hands, holding that question off like it was running at him too hard. “I don’t mean to be awkward, but our operational parameters are classified. Yes, I know I’m out of touch when it comes to recent events. We’ve had our own business to tend to out here – important business. Moreover, we’ve had to limit our contact with the land. Our orders are very specific on that point.”
“Orders?” Ursala repeated.
Paul pushed his plate away with his hand, like he was too full to take another bite though he hadn’t touched any of the food at all. He stood up from the table. “We’re out here on a mission,” he said. “And the mission comes before anything. It always has. The damage we sustained when we were attacked has set us back a little, but that’s all. We carry on. Our goals haven’t changed.”
Ursala spoke up again. It seemed to me that she was weighing her words very carefully. “From what I can see, the damage is considerable,” she said. “Both inside and out. How did it happen?”
Paul lifted up his arms as if to say the meal was finished and we should all get up from the table. I done it without thinking. Ursala and Cup stayed where they was.
“I’d like to show you something,” Paul said. “It may go some way towards offsetting any bad impressions we’ve made.”
Ursala tried again. “We were talking about your ship. It seems to have been through some sort of—”
Paul didn’t wait no longer, but walked across the room to the stairs. The drone followed right behind him, keeping the same distance from his right shoulder the whole time. We didn’t have no choice but to follow, though Cup done it as slow as she could manage and hung back from the rest of us as we went down the stairs.
6
I thought we was going back into the shaking room, but we didn’t. There was more stairs, and we went down and down. It seemed we had to be going deep into the ground, except that there wasn’t no ground under us here but only water – and we was not under the water yet, for whenever we went by a window I seen the light outside.
By and by we come to a big door that opened in front of us. Paul led the way and we kept right on following, through a lot of rooms that was all of them strange to see. The first was full of white metal cupboards with signs of the before-times on their doors. The next was full of shelves, and all the shelves was stacked with what looked like narrow boxes, all more or less the same size. I wondered what was in them.
Then there was a room that had tech in it, but I couldn’t tell what the tech was for. There was just too much of it, and all of it was strange. My eye couldn’t rest on nothing for long without being pulled away to stare at something else. I’ll tell you just one thing, and let it stand for all the rest. There was a machine that looked like you was meant to ride it, for it had a seat and a place for your hands to hold onto, and a wheel like a wagon wheel at the front end of it – but there wasn’t no wheel at the back and the whole thing was set inside of a thing like a sawhorse, so it couldn’t go nowhere.
All of these rooms, no matter what was in them, was like the room I waked up in. There was a great deal of stuff piled up on the floor all around, and most of the stuff seemed to be broke. Broke furniture, broke tech and things so broke you couldn’t even tell what they used to be a part of.
At last we come to a room I somewhat recognised. It was like the workshop in my mother’s mill, with tools hung up on the walls and a big bench to work at. I knowed they was tools because some was ones I used in woodsmithing, like screwdrivers and pliers, but the rest I couldn’t guess at.
On the bench was a great sprawl of tech, more than I ever seen together in one place. Right in the middle of it was Ursala’s dagnostic. My eye went there first, because the dagnostic was so big, but I seen straight after that the DreamSleeve was sitting next to it. I give a yell – I couldn’t keep it in – and I run and picked it up. I wanted to call out to Monono to ask her if she was okay, but I didn’t. I guess I was already thinking it might be better not to let Paul and Lorraine know all the things there was to be knowed about us.
“Oh yes,” Paul said, walking up next to me. “You’re welcome to take that. I wouldn’t sync it with anything else though, if I were you. It has a virus.”
“It’s got a what?” I asked him.
“Malware. At least, I assume it’s malware. There’s a lot of code on the chip that doesn’t have any business being there. If the device is glitching, or showing you inappropriate content, that would be why.”
I nodded like I knowed what he meant. And since I didn’t have the sling I had made, I tucked the DreamSleeve into my belt. I didn’t want to let go of it after, and kept my thumb resting on the top of it to make sure it was still there. I wished I could turn it on right then and there, and ask Monono if she was all right, but I made myself wait.
Ursala wasn’t paying no attention to any of this. She had gone in a straight line towards the dagnostic and now was pressing the buttons on the sides of it one after another, making lights of all colours go on and off across it. I guess she was making sure it still was working properly. Paul watched her close, but he didn’t say nothing.
By and by, Ursala turned from the dagnostic to the other bits of tech that was on the table next to it. She picked up one piece and then another, looking at them in wonder.