'Hurry!'
Arthur crouched, ready to jump. Then he remembered the Key and drew it out. The last thing he needed was to spear himself with that when he landed.
With the Key in his hand, he felt suddenly more confident. He crouched again, then leaped far into space, and drifted down like a feather to land on the balcony, hardly needing to bend his knees. Suzy Blue was already gone, the door banging behind her. Arthur got up and followed, once more tucking the Key through his belt with his shirt over it.
The room behind the balcony was set up like an old-fashioned office, which didn't surprise Arthur much. There were low, wide desks of polished wood with green leather tops, all strewn with papers. There were bookcases laden with more papers as well as books. What appeared to be gas lanterns burned in each corner, and under one of these lights, on a small table, Arthur saw his first sign of any food at all in the city, a bronze hot-water urn with many taps and spigots, a silver teapot, and several china cups.
There were also people at work. They looked up as Suzy and Arthur ran past, but they didn't say anything or try to stop them. Even when Arthur knocked a large pile of parchments off one corner of a desk as he zoomed past, the man behind it remained silent and kept scratching away with his quill – though he did look up and frown.
Suzy bounded out of the office and down the central stairs. At the bottom, she turned away from the main door, went through a narrow hall, opened the door of what appeared to be a broom closet, and went in. Arthur followed her and discovered it was really a broom closet. Or a mop closet, to be strictly accurate, as there were several mops sitting in buckets. It smelled dank and musty.
'Shut the door!' whispered Suzy.
Arthur shut the door, and with it went the light.
'What are we doing here?'
'Hiding. The Commissionaires will go through every house in Lost Street after the Nithlings. We'll wait 'em out here.'
'But they'll find us for sure!' protested Arthur. 'This is a pathetic hiding –'
'You've got Monday's Key, ain't you?' asked Suzy. 'Half of it, anyway. Or so I've been told.'
'Yes,' confirmed Arthur.
'Well, use it!'
'Use it how?' asked Arthur.
'I don't know,' said Suzy. 'It is a Key, so why not lock the door?'
Arthur took out the Key. It glowed in the dark, this time with a faintly green phosphorescence. He'd used it to lock the library doors on the Fetchers, and to release the straps in the ambulance, but he didn't really know what else he was supposed to do with it.
'How exactly do I –?'
'Shhh!' ordered Suzy urgently. Then in that weird deep voice, she added, 'Touch the door handle and tell it to lock.'
Arthur touched the Key to the curved iron handle and whispered, 'Lock!'
At the same time he heard the crash of boots in the corridor outside. His heart hammered in his chest almost as loud as the footsteps that came towards their hiding place. Then the handle rattled once . . . twice . . . but did not turn.
'Locked, Sergeant!' bellowed a deep voice. It sounded a bit weird, as if the speaker had a metal funnel stuck on his mouth. Sort of tinny, Arthur thought. The footsteps retreated, and a few seconds later Arthur heard several heavyset people going up the stairs.
He opened his mouth to whisper something to Suzy, but she held up her hand – mostly covered by a moth-eaten woollen glove – and shook her head.
Several minutes passed. They stood silently in the closet, listening to the footsteps and occasional shouts. Then there was a clattering on the stairs, a sudden rush, and the handle was tried again.
'Locked, Sergeant!' boomed the same voice. Then the footsteps went away and Arthur heard the front door slam.
'They do near everything twice,' said Suzy. 'At least the metal ones do, the ordinary Commissionaires. They're pretty stupid. Sergeants are a different trouble. They're not Made, and most of 'em have fallen from up above and been demoted to Commissionaire Sergeants as a punishment. Come on – we should be able to sneak out now. Unlock the door.'
Arthur touched the door with the Key and said, 'Open.'
The door sprang open with sudden violence, slamming against the wall. Suzy stepped out first. Arthur was following when her surprised cry gave him just enough warning to whip the Key behind his back.
'Oh! Sergeant!'
A Commissionaire Sergeant stood in the hall, all eight feet of him, though on closer examination a foot of that was from his top hat. He had a waxed moustache, which he was stroking, and a very sharp, long nose under piercing blue eyes. The gold stripes on his blue sleeves gleamed in the gaslight.
'Well, well, well,' he said. His voice was deep, but not tinny like the other Commissionaire. He pulled a notebook out of his coat pocket, flipped it open, and took a pencil stub out from a thin sleeve on the side of the notebook. 'I wondered why that closet would be locked. What have we here? Your names, numbers, rank, and business.'
'Suzy Turquoise Blue, 182367542 and a half in precedence, Ink-Filler Sixth Class, on ink-filling business.'
Halfway through her answer, Suzy's voice changed into the very deep, scratchy tone Arthur had heard before.
The Sergeant's pencil stopped.
'Your voice. What's happened to it?'
'I've got a bit of a frog in my throat,' said Suzy, still in the same deep voice.
'A frog? Where'd you get that?' asked the Sergeant enviously.
'Present,' said Suzy in her normal voice. 'Floated in nice as you like, 'ardly damaged. Might even last a year if I'm lucky.'
'I've never had a frog in the throat,' said the Sergeant sadly. 'Had a small nose tickle once. Confiscated it from a Porter who had it from a Flotsam Raker. Went for a twelvemonth before it wore out. Very distinctive. Not as flamboyant as a sneeze, but very nice . . . Where was I? Who's this other lad?'
'Ah, I'm –'
'He's one of our lot,' interrupted Suzy. 'Arthur Night Black. Got dropped on his head in a pool of Nothing down below a couple of hundred years ago and hasn't been right since. Always getting lost. That's why we was in that closet. I was looking for him –'
'Papers!' ordered the Sergeant, looking at Arthur.
'He's lost them,' said Suzy quickly. 'Got frightened by the Nithlings, wriggled out of his coat, and went hiding. Expect the Nithlings et 'em right up.'
'Ate them up,' corrected the Sergeant. He peered down at Suzy. 'Now I haven't got anything against you Ink-Fillers, but orders is orders . I'll have to take him to the Inquiry Clerk.'
'Inquiries!' Suzy snorted. 'He could be there for years. They'll dock his pay – and him with a new coat to get and all. Can't we sort this out gentlemanly-like? You ain't written anything yet, have you?'
The Sergeant frowned, then slowly pushed the pencil back into its sleeve and folded his notebook.
'What do you suggest, Miss Blue?'
'This frog,' said Suzy. 'You want it?'
The Sergeant hesitated.
'Free gift,' said Suzy. 'And it's not as if you'll get cribbed for it. When was the last General Inspection?'
'Ten thousand years and more,' said the Sergeant softly. 'But I've made mistakes before. I wasn't always a Commissionaire. Once I was . . .'
'Go on,' said Suzy, her voice even deeper and more authoritative. 'Take a look.'
She held her hand in front of her mouth and spat into her palm.
'Gross!' exclaimed Arthur, for it wasn't spit that came out, but a small and very beautiful emerald-green frog. It sat in Suzy's hand and emitted a deep, poignant call.
'Give it a try,' encouraged Suzy. She took a rather dirty handkerchief from her pocket and gave the frog a quick polish. It didn't seem to mind.
The Sergeant was quite mesmerised by the frog. He looked around, then reached out and picked it up. He stared at it in his hand, then gulped it down as if he were eating a mint.
His mouth closed, and he froze in place.
'That's him sorted,' said Suzy in her normal voice. 'And me free, so no hard feelings, Arthur, but I was impressed on this duty and I 'ave a very urgent ointment –'
She dashed away on the last word, but the Sergeant's hand shot out and grabbed her coattails. Suzy tried to shuck off her coat, but couldn't manage it before the Sergeant transferred his grip to her neck.
'Ow! Ow! Leave off!'
'The Will has need of you, Suzy Blue,' said the Sergeant, but once again it was not his voice, but the deep voice that had previously come out of Suzy. 'There may be rewards.'
Suzy stopped struggling.
'Rewards? Only may be don't sound so certain . . .'
Arthur stepped forward. 'Look, I don't know what's going on here, or what the Will wants with me, but it is very important that I find out what's going on. I think . . . I think a lot of people might die if I don't. So I need your help, Suzy.'
Arthur spoke with passion. He could feel the fear and tension trapped inside him, like steam in a kettle. Back in his world, in his town, the quarantine zone would be expanding. The hospitals would be crowded, possibly overflowing, already unable to cope. Arthur could almost see his mother and her team in the lab, working feverishly . . . feverishly . . . perhaps they were already sniffling, sneezing with the colds that marked the onset of the plague . . .
'People? Die?' asked Suzy. 'You mean you really are from outside the House? From the Secondary Realms?'
'I'm from outside the House,' said Arthur. 'I don't know what you mean about the Secondary Realms.'
'You're a mortal?' asked Suzy. 'A real live mortal?'
'I suppose so,' confirmed Arthur.
'So am I, sort of, or I used to be,' said Suzy. She hesitated, then said, 'Will you help me get back? Help all of us get back?'
'Who?' asked Arthur. 'Everyone in the city?'
'No!' replied Suzy scornfully. 'Everyone grown belongs here. They're wots called Denizens of the House. I mean us. The children. The ones that followed the Piper all those years ago.'
'That is a trivial matter,' intoned the Sergeant, or whatever it was that spoke through him. 'Arthur must find a way to bring back the Will. All else will follow.'
'I'm not helping unless you help us,' said Suzy. 'Is it a deal?'
'I suppose so,' said Arthur. 'I mean, if I can help, I will. Yes.'
Suzy smiled and held out her hand. Arthur took it and she shook vigorously.
'Danger,' said the Sergeant, cupping a hand to his ear. 'Commissionaires approach. There is also a great likelihood that Monday's Noon or Dusk knows Arthur has come through the Front Door and has taken charge of a search. We must be away at once.'
'Well, you'd better leave this great lunk behind,' said Suzy. 'Can't take him with us.'
There was no answer, but the Sergeant's mouth opened and the green frog climbed out, leaving the man frozen like a statue. The frog jumped over to Suzy's shoulder and started to climb up to her mouth, but she caught it in her hand and stuffed it in an inside pocket that she buttoned shut.
'Not anymore, froggy,' she said. 'Once caught, twice careful. Come on!'
'Where are we going?' asked Arthur. He felt quite confused. So much had happened so quickly he wondered if he was ever going to get a chance to sit down and ask some questions. Or more importantly, get them answered.
'The Office of the Efficiencer General of the Lower Atrium.'
'The where?'
'The Efficiencer General is in charge of making everything work efficiently in the Lower Atrium,' explained Suzy as they exited through a back door into a lane. 'Only there ain't one. An Efficiencer General, that is. Apparently the last one never got replaced when he moved up. And there's no staff neither. So that's where I live, off shift, of course.'
'Is it far away?'
'Thirty-nine hundred floors,' said Suzy, pointing straight up.
Eleven
WE 'LL TAKE A GOODS elevator,' Suzy said as they carefully loitered on a street and slipped into place behind a procession of bearers carrying bundles of linen rags that would ultimately be made into paper. 'There's one in the Instrumentality for Rapid Dissemination of Excess Records.'
'The beams of light,' said Arthur, discreetly pointing at one of the nearer ones. 'They're elevators?'
'Not exactly,' replied Suzy with a frown. 'They mark the path of an elevator. When you're inside it's just like being in a little room. Very boring.'
'Oh, good,' said Arthur. He was relieved that he wasn't going to be turned into a stream of photons or something. Or if he was, he wouldn't know about it.
'Some of them have music,' added Suzy. 'But only the big ones that can fit in a few minstrels or a band. We won't be going in one of those. They're for the big nobs.'
'The what?'
'The high-ups. The executives. Officers of the Firm.'
'The Firm?' asked Arthur as they crossed the street, ducking under a very long rolled-up parchment that was being carried like a carpet between a very short fat man and a very tall thin woman.