And she was right. The thing that had changed was us. Something had sent Sword of Albion out here into the deep ocean in the first place, and kept it here all this time. But now we was come – or rather Ursala was come, with her dagnostic – and what she was going to do had made the great big boat turn itself around and head for land. That was not a thing I liked to think about.
“We’ve got to make our move,” I said to the both of them. “There’s nothing else for it.”
Cup cut her hand sideways through the air. She’d started to learn Franker after we come to Many Fishes village, and this was the Franker sign for no. “We can’t go nowhere before Ursala has finished her work. She won’t come with us until she’s good and ready.”
“That could be any time though. And we can’t wait till she tells us, because we don’t ever get to talk to her. We got to do it and hope she’s ready.”
“You’ll need to get rid of the drones,” Monono said. “Otherwise the Banners can track you in real time.”
“I got an idea for that. Well, half of an idea anyway. Cup, slip me the door-opening thing. If I can do it, I’ll come to your room tonight and we’ll go from there.”
“Don’t get yourself killed on the way though,” Cup said.
I told her I would do my best.
24
After we went to our beds that night, I lay awake a long time waiting for the ship to go quiet. It was not like a house, where the wood settles as it cools with a deal of creaking and snapping. There wasn’t no wood here, except for broke bits of furniture. But Sword of Albion hummed to itself, and the humming changed as the day got late.
I had told my idea to Monono and she liked it. She said it was clever enough that she might have to stop calling me dopey boy.
“What’s dopey then? Does dopey mean stupid? Have you been throwing insults on me all this time?”
“Little bit.”
“Well then, when we’re out of this, we got to have words between us. If you got such disrespect for me, I don’t think we can be friends.”
“Koli-bou, are you teasing me?”
“Little bit.”
“Uwa sugoi! The disciple has become the master!”
It might sound strange that we was making jokes, but I was only doing it so as to hide how scared I was. As for Monono, I think she knowed well enough how I was feeling and was helping me along.
When I thought it had got to be late enough at last, I slipped out of my bed. The lights lit up as soon as I moved, and I put my boots back on in a big hurry. The brightness made me feel like eyes was watching me. All the rest of my clothes I had kept on, so now I was ready. I turned and faced the door.
“Be brave, Koli-bou,” Monono whispered in my ear.
I didn’t feel brave at all, but it was good she said it. Whenever she talked to me on the induction field, it felt like she was as close to me as my own skin. I needed that closeness right then.
I took the opener from out of my pocket and pressed it into the middle of my palm, where I had seen Lorraine carrying it. It stuck there by its own self like it was glued to me. I was scared it might be stuck to me for aye and ever, but when I picked at the edge with my thumbnail it come away at once. I guess it was just made that way, to stay where it was put as long as was needful.
I put out my hand towards the door, but I stopped short before I touched it. “Monono, what if you was right about the cameras? What if they’re watching us right now?”
“Then we lost before we started, dopey boy. But there’d have to be someone monitoring the cameras too. And they’d have to think you were worth the trouble. Let’s hope they underestimated us.”
I touched the opener to the handle of the door, and I heard a click, loud enough to make me flinch. But Sword of Albion was so big, I told myself there wasn’t no way anyone would be close enough to hear. I tried the door and it opened. The hallway outside was dark as pitch, but in the little square piece of light that shined through the doorway I seen the silver drone sitting there in the air, watching and waiting. It turned its red eye on me, not quick, but smooth and deadly.
I lifted up the DreamSleeve in my hand.
“Perimeter,” Monono said. But she said it in Paul Banner’s voice.
For a half of a heartbeat, it seemed like it wasn’t going to work. Then the drone wheeled round again and shot away down the hallway. I lost sight of it in the dark before it had gone ten steps, but it was going at a fast lick and it didn’t seem like it would stop any time soon.
This was what I had asked Monono about after we decided we’d try our luck that night. I knowed she could remember voices and make them sound out again. She had done it with Sword of Albion’s signal when we was back in Calder, and at Many Fishes she had made me and Cup laugh by borrowing the voice of Rain Without Clouds, who was the Healer there. I was hoping when the drones heard Paul Banner’s voice they would do what they was told to, and I was proved right.
I stepped out into the hallway, and the lights come on – not the whole way along, but just in the part that I was in. The light moved with me as I walked from my own room to Cup’s, coming up bright as day in front of me and fading back to midnight blackness again behind me. It was like one of them days when there’s heavy cloud all over but the sun breaks through in just the one place and comes down like a spear. Hunters in deep woods have been killed by such a thing, when the trees waked right next to them, and though I needed to see my way I was not happy to be picked out so clear.
I had tried to remember the way from my own room to Cup’s, but I wasn’t sure I had got it right until I turned a corner and seen the yellow drone standing right in front of her door. Monono said “Perimeter” again and off it went. I knocked on the door, then I pressed the opener to it with one hand and shoved with the other. The door swung open all the way with just that one push.
Cup was on the other side of it. She had a knife in her hand, lifted up to chest height and with her other hand open behind it to drive it in hard. I stepped back with a yelp like a whipped puppy. “Cup, it’s me!”
“I know it’s you,” she said, lowering her hands. “But I thought I heard Paul’s voice just now.”
“It was Monono borrowing his voice. That was a part of my plan.” I looked down. “Where’d you get the knife though?”
“Breakfast table,” Cup said. “They got so many there, they didn’t miss this one. It didn’t have any kind of an edge to it when I took it, but I done the best I could, sharpening it on the side of a rusted pipe. I guess it’ll do if it comes to it. It’s better than empty hands anyway.”
“Come on,” I said. “We got a lot to do and not much time to do it in.”
The ruined hallways and broke-up rooms of Sword of Albion was very different in the full dark than they was when we walked them by day. They didn’t stay dark for long though, for we brung the light with us wherever we went. And my trick of remembering worked. Ever and again, I catched sight of something I knowed and had give a name to, so though I got lost oftentimes I still could find my way again a little bit further on. Remembering what Cup had said about empty hands, I picked up a piece of pipe in one of the rooms. It was cold and heavy and solid. I didn’t know whether I meant to throw it or hit out with it, but I felt better for having it.