Part 15 (2/2)

Jethro smiled. 'Of course, why would there be?'

'Old man Sworph was killed for this and there isn't even a code in it?' said Chalph, disbelievingly.

'Not a steganographic code,' continued Jethro, 'which makes a strange kind of sense to me. What did you do with the last part of the G.o.d-formula, William? Where did you hide it?'

'I'm glad this affair makes sense to you, Jackelian,' said Chalph. 'Because the only thing that makes sense to me right now is getting off Jago before one of the locals skins me for a rug.'

'This painting is blank,' explained Jethro, 'because if it wasn't, our murderous adversary would have all three parts of the code in his possession and would have already used it to transmigrate, to ascend towards the G.o.dhead.'

'Is it possible that the Inquisition destroyed the third part of the G.o.d-formula?' asked Boxiron. 'If they were only keeping the G.o.d-formula as a potential counter weapon, then could not two thirds of it have served that purpose? Destroying the third component would ensure the G.o.d-formula was never used.'

'That is so,' admitted Jethro. 'But I rather fear the Inquisition was only holding onto two parts of the G.o.d-formula because that is all they ever had. The third part has been lost to them, to the world, since its creator was killed.'

'Your logic is faultless, yet I have to concur with our Pericurian friend,' said Boxiron. 'What do you owe the Inquisition that would mean we need to stay here on Jago? It is time, as your people say, to let discretion be the better part of valour. We should leave the island.'

'This isn't for them anymore. No, I need just a little longer,' said Jethro, almost pleading. 'Just long enough to slay a G.o.d.'

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Hannah tried to ignore the young navvy's cries as the heat seeped through the pressure gate and scalded his back. She climbed over the fallen suit to reach the transaction engine. Time to find out if she had fixed it as well as she believed she had.

'What are you doing?' cried Rudge, his head barely able to follow her from his position wedged under the suit's leg. 'I told you to get back up the shaft. I ordered-'

'Be quiet,' retorted Hannah. 'The charge-master sent me down here because I've got a brain and I'm going to use it.'

'You're not going to think a couple of tonnes of suit off me, grub. You've done the job we came down here to do, so get out of the shaft now!'

She was at the controls of the primitive steam-driven thinking machine, ignoring the navvy's shouts while she put the small portable punch-card writer to good use. One more card. One last chance. There was another creak from the gate underneath them. It was getting noticeably noisier the pressure building up below. 'T-face,' Hannah shouted down to the ab-lock pacing behind his fallen master. 'Get ready to pull him out.'

'You're not going to do what I think you...?'

Hannah inserted the punch card. 'What do you care? You're going to die anyway if this doesn't work.'

The drums in the transaction engine on the wall began to rotate as her punch card instructions were received and processed. Please, let there still be enough steam left in its reservoir to do the job.

Rudge was tearing the sleeve off his body suit, wrapping the material around his eyes. 'Cover your face, grub.'

Hannah ripped a line of cotton material off her own body suit, bundling the makes.h.i.+ft sweat-soaked bandanna around her eyes.

The tolerances. It was all down to the tolerances now. Her best guess at the weight of the suit and the intense pressure of the steam tap below the gate, and...

The blast came like a lightning bolt cast from the gates of the h.e.l.l they denied.

...how wide the opening of a single vane would have to be to s.h.i.+ft the suit, and...

Hannah was thrown back into the wall, blind behind her bandanna, deafened by the crash of the displaced suit.

...how long to leave it open without cooking the three of them...

Hannah yelled as she realized she had fallen forward onto the oven-hot pressure gate, the thick iron burning into her hands as she pushed herself up and tore off her blindfold. It was like being inside a surface mist, now, but she could see that T-face was dragging Rudge away his fallen suit s.h.i.+fted over to the other side of the shaft by the force of the volcano of steam Hannah had briefly allowed through that single open vane.

Some piece of gear on Rudge's suit had smacked him when it had s.h.i.+fted, though. Rudge was bleeding from the head and unconscious. Hannah climbed back up to the transaction-engine platform, closely followed by T-face bearing the weight of his master's body, and she was about to reach for the single dangling rappel line attached to her suit, when she realized that it had vanished. Oh, sweet Circle. It was on the metal gate below her her line must have become dislodged when she steam-blasted Rudge's suit away from his broken body. Hannah's suit was still lodged far above them, though. Far enough that there was no way she was going to be able to climb up the shaft's smooth walls to reach it. T-face was s.h.i.+fting from foot to foot, moaning as he took in their hopeless predicament. Hannah fought down the sense of mounting panic. How to get out? She couldn't signal the turbine workers with the transaction engine to call for help. That was the whole point of it. An independent steam-driven node with only one purpose, controlling the gate. Could she open the pressure gate again, blast herself, Rudge and the ab-lock up to her suit, using Rudge's suit as a lifting platform? No, that was suicide. Just a second with a single vane being opened had nearly killed them both. She might reach her suit, but it would be without her skin.

'd.a.m.n you!' Hannah yelled up the shaft. 'd.a.m.n you for sending me down here to die.' Was that for Vardan Flail? For the master of the turbine halls? For everyone on Jago who needed the dark energy that was going to end up killing her? It hardly mattered anymore. Rudge was starting to wake, but not to full sensibility, drifting in and out of a s.h.i.+vering half-awareness. He was muttering something, and Hannah bent down to hear him better.

'Winch.'

She looked up at her suit, its flickering lantern signalling teasingly to her. There was a winch hook on the right leg of the suit. It was designed for dragging broken turbines out of the way on the floor of the halls above, but if she could get it to lower itself down, then they could s.h.i.+mmy up the line. The winch's activation lever was up there too. Thirty feet above her head, but it might as well have been in the clouds for all that she could reach it. Unless...Leaping down onto the burning hot gate, Hannah retrieved Rudge's tool kit and brought it back to her ledge. She rifled through the contents of until she found it, a lone signal flare.

'One shot,' mumbled Rudge. mumbled Rudge.

One shot. She had better make it a good one. Hannah pointed the red tube up at the winch lever, aiming it as well as she could without a sight, and pressed down on the trigger, the recoil of the escaping firework nearly sending the tube leaping out of her sweating fingers. Arcing up, the flare hit near the winch drum and went spinning off to the side of the shaft, a useless sparking comet.

Hannah growled through gritted teeth. 'Missed!'

But Rudge didn't hear her, he had pa.s.sed out again. If he was lucky, maybe he would stay unconscious through their deaths too. T-face howled in surprise as the hook of the winch came plummeting down from the suit's leg and bounced off the pressure gate as the metal line whipped dangerously across the pa.s.sage. Hannah stared up in amazement. She had missed the winch lever, missed it by a country mile, she could have sworn she had, and yet it had...the stories of the suit-ghosts came back to her.

She looked at the ab-lock, who seemed as spooked by the winch activating as she was. 'Can you carry him up to my suit? You'll need to hold onto him as I climb up the shaft the cabin only fits one.' Did he understand her? To emphasize the words, she pointed at Rudge and then mimicked climbing up the rope with the young man tossed over a shoulder.

Hannah realized how desperate she sounded and how dangerous the situation was. What did she know of ab-locks and their taming? If T-face turned feral now, she didn't even have a suit whip to lash him into line.

T-face responded by slinging the pa.s.sed-out navvy across his back, his leathery scarred face wobbling from side to side as he emitted a stream of growls. It almost sounded as if the creature was trying to say something back to her, the noises from its mangled throat rising and falling in a mockery of speech. The ab-lock seemed to grasp what was needed for them all to survive, though, seizing the winch line and s.h.i.+nning back up with his master.

Below Hannah's ledge the gate gave a hungry antic.i.p.atory shudder.

Hannah leapt off the transaction-engine platform and caught the winch cable, clambering up the line after T-face and Rudge, abandoning the mobile punch-card writer, Rudge's tools and his fallen suit down below. How far did the steam tap travel towards the centre of the earth? Hannah didn't intend to be around to find out when the gate retracted.

Hannah pushed her suit out of the steam tap, into the turbine hall, the clangs of a dozen retracted pressure gates still ringing in her ears. Her hands were so sweaty now that the control cage inside her suit's cabin had begun slipping off her skin. The chimney door was shutting behind her when the lights on the vault's wall began to flash, the steam tap returning to operation. Blast doors pulled into the ceiling at the other end of the vault and a mob of suited workers returned from the safety of the adjoining turbine hall. She had done it. All around Hannah, the turbines were spinning back into life, the eerily silent hall filling with the racket of rotating blades. Fingers of vapour were already leaking from the pipes. Soon, the hall would once again be the steam-filled h.e.l.l she had stepped out into earlier in the day.

T-face leapt down from the perch moulded onto the suit's back, landing on the floor with the still-unconscious navvy.

At the head of the gang of returning guildsmen was the red chequerboard-patterned hull of the charge-master. 'You're down a suit.' His bluff voice echoed from Hannah's earphones.

'A steam spill sent Rudge's suit cras.h.i.+ng down the shaft, well below the electric limit of its circuits, charge-master.'

The head of the turbine hall grunted and turned to one of his retinue. 'Do you slackers think you're still on a break? Take our lad down to the infirmary before the field begins to build back up.' The charge-master swivelled his head dome down to stare at T-face and made a jabbing motion back to the other end of the chamber. 'Return to stables. Chop-chop. a.s.signed to another hand while boss man in infirmary.' He ejected his whip in case the ab-lock hadn't got the message, T-face bent his head sadly and trotted off.

Hannah thought she saw the charge-master's eyes staring at her through the dome on top of his suit. 'Adequate for your first day. For a coder coder.'

He walked off, leaving Hannah unsure whether she was meant to go back to the suiting hall or continue her training with the rest of the workers out here.

Something about the charge-master's words stayed with her. Our lad. Our lad.

Young Rudge never had got round to telling her who his father was in the turbine halls.

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