Traction City Read Online Free PDF Page A

they’ve got in there for loosening Anti-Tractionist tongues. Literally, sometimes.”
    Luckily the streets are almost deserted. The only people they pass are harried engine-minders hurrying from one emergency to another, with no time to wonder where two policemen are going, or why the girl they have with them is handcuffed. They pass down Shallow Street, which isn’t shallow at all tonight but canted at an angle that makes them shuffle and stagger like comedy drunks. At the street’s end, litter that has slid down from higher districts near the city’s prow has collected in drifts against the plinth of the statue of Charles Shallow himself, one of London’s first and least-favourite Lord Mayors.
    At Sternstacks they step out of the iron shadow of the tiers above into air that’s cold and almost fresh. Fang tilts her face up hoping to see stars, but she’s out of luck. All around her the huge exhaust stacks of the city rise, taller than any tower she’s ever seen, some striped like garter snakes, some so fat that lesser stacks and flues twine round them like ivy round a giant tree. From their high snouts the smoke and smuts and filthy gas of all the city’s engines fume, forming a cloud that blots out the sky.
    â€œI found a whole parasite town up there in that lot once,” says Nutter. “A little flying place called Kipperhawk. They’d anchored it to London’s stern with hawsers and it was hanging in the smokestream, sieving out minerals and such. Cheeky cloots.”
    â€œIt’s a town-eat-town world,” says Anders.
    They walk past darkened offices and workshops to the place where the little railway track emerges from Mortlake. A line of trucks is being unloaded there by men in the orange jackets of the fuel corps, the fuel emptied into hoppers which will feed the ancient Godshawk engines which still stand here, too old and feeble to power London’s usual travels, but still useful when there’s a big push on. Anders goes over to the foreman. “Seen anyone come out of Mortlake tonight?”
    â€œMortlake?” The man looks at him like he’s crazy. “What’s up? Costa’s boys causing trouble?” He peers past Anders, trying to ogle Fang through the ripple of hot air escaping from his engines. “Who’s the girl?”
    â€œPolice business,” says Anders.
    â€œSuit yourself. But if you see my ’prentice on your travels, send him to me, would you? I haven’t seen him since last tea break.”
    â€œIt’s here,” says Anders, when he gets back to where Nutter and the girl are waiting. “An apprentice from that fuel gang has vanished. The Collector has collected himself another hand.”
    Even Fang has the decency to look a little nervous as they head sternwards. There is no one about. Walkways lead aft between huge horizontal ducts. The ducts steam, filling the air with mist. Smuts drifting down from above swirl in the mist like snow gone bad. Sometimes there’s actual snow as well. By the time they get near to the high barriers at the stern, visibility is down to a few yards. Anders stumbles over the body of the fuel-team apprentice before he sees it. It lies where the collector left it, in a sticky dark puddle in the middle of the street.
    â€œSo much for your theory,” Anders tells the girl. He takes out his handkerchief and spreads it over the dead boy’s face. “He’s younger than you, and your Stalker didn’t show him any pity.”
    â€œWhat now then?” asks Nutter.
    Men appear silently and all around; their rubber-soled shoes make no sound on the deck plates and their long, white rubber coats blend perfectly with the drifting steam. Four Engineers with pale bald scalps and the red cogwheel symbol of their Guild tattooed on their foreheads. Two carry sleek guns; a third is weighed down by something vaguely gunlike but so huge, and so encrusted with