the lid off two drum-like chemical batteries, Coppertracks’ drones observed the mixture bubbling inside and pronounced themselves satisfied. It was always dangerous, using wild energy, the power electric, but nothing else would do for throwing a pulse across the heavens. Luckily for the inhabitants of Tock House, scanning the heavens for a reply didn’t require a discharge, or their orchard would soon resemble Lady Amazement’s Lightning Gardens down at Makeworth Park. As distant as Molly’s neighbours were behind the ground’s high walls, Tock House had already seen a number of petitions circulating in the village as a result of Coppertracks’ unorthodox scientific interests.
A spectral moaning along the iron girders warned Molly that the pulse of exotic waves Coppertracks intended to direct towards Kaliban was about to be released. She moved back beyond her card table as emerald energy lit the girders, sparks raining down over the ruined gazebo. With a bacon-like sizzle the dish vibrated at the top of the tower, a couple of holding pins blowing out, followed by a dying whine as the apparatus powered down. Coppertracks’ mu-bodies were back over the tower instantly, like ants on a picnic basket, checking it for signs of damage and resetting it to its receiving configuration.
‘Excellent,’ said Coppertracks, checking the signal readings on a bank of dials at the foot of the tower. ‘A clean send with very little leakage this time. Tight and focused. Each time we do this, it gets easier to calibrate the tower for an optimal transmission.’
Molly took a step back – the line of crystals running up the far side of the tower was starting to vibrate, the grass under her feet trembling with the force of it. Dials twitched violently across the board on Coppertracks’ instrument bank. ‘I think that might have been a pulse too far, old steamer. Should we start running and take cover now?’
Coppertracks’ stacks whistled in excitement as he momentarily lost control of his boiler function. ‘By the beard of Zaka of the Cylinders, that is no feedback loop! It’s a signal. Molly softbody, someone is answering my communication!’
His mu-bodies rushed to the tower from wherever they were standing in the glade in a fury of coordinated action, the steamman desperate that this message should not be lost. For all his practice in sending transmissions over the past year, he was a virgin at the art of receiving anything other than the occasional internal test.
‘This is odd,’ said Coppertracks, checking his equipment bank.
To Molly the whole thing felt odd. She was actually present at the receipt of the first communication from another celestial body within their solar system. Who would believe that she hadn’t just invented the whole tale for publicity? ‘What is it?’
‘This can’t be a reply to my communication, it’s the same message repeating on a loop, over and over.’
‘A loop?’ said Molly. ‘Who would want to put a message on a loop?’
‘The logical inference would be someone who needs assistance, possibly someone who has long been deactivate and unable to switch their transmission off.’
‘How long do you think it will take you to translate it?’
‘No time at all,’ said Coppertracks. ‘The message is in binary mathematics and transmitted using something similar to crystalgrid code, dashes and dots that any station operator in the capital could understand. It carries a table key at the front based on the periodic table with the translation of their language.’
Molly hardly dared to ask the next question. ‘And it says …?’
‘They are coming,’ said Coppertracks. ‘That is all it says. Over and over again. They are coming.’
The steamman and Molly stared up at the Kingdom of Jackals’ grey cloudy sky, Molly imagining that she could see Kaliban as it appeared in the images from King Steam’s observatory. Plains of red sand and barren mountains. Vast dead valleys. A world that now conclusively harboured enough life to send them a message. Possibly their last.
A tear welled in Molly’s eye. ‘Hello.’
Molly saw Commodore Black fiddling with the rusty lock to the roof of Tock House, but Coppertracks was nowhere to be seen in his laboratory.
‘Where’s the old steamer gone now?’
‘Have you checked the orchard, lass?’ asked the commodore.
Molly looked at her crates of periodicals, news sheets and journals, hardly touched, despite her protestations to Coppertracks about the Hexmachina’s warning. Did the steamman still believe her vision of the ancient god-machine was a result of stress and fever? ‘That was the first place I checked, but he wasn’t there.’
‘Then perhaps he has finally had a bellyful of that message of his, repeating over and over again like a parrot trapped in a cage.’
It was a mystery, right enough, yet as much as the steamman analysed the message for hidden patterns or deeper clues, there appeared to be no other information forthcoming from the signal. Molly sighed. ‘I dare say he’s gone to the crystalgrid station to transmit word to King Steam of his lack of progress.’
‘There’ll be no progress in this mortal matter,’ said the commodore. ‘His tower of science has found nothing but a message in a bottle, cast off by some poor wretch. The Circle knows how long that signal has been rattling around up there. I found as many when I was master and commander of my beautiful u-boat. Bottles lying on the seabed, their paper washed of blessed meaning by the waters and the ages and the changes in language. Half of them from bored sailors tossing away sheets of their diaries in empty rum bottles for a jape.’
‘Coppertracks is certain the message originates from Kaliban.’
The commodore shrugged. ‘Well, we’re never going to know.’
Molly rattled one of the crates, frustrated at the lack of progress. ‘Then what good are these newspapers to me? I can’t use them to help me find Oliver Brooks. Meanwhile stars are disappearing, a comet is heading back towards us to take up residence as a new moon, and I’m not even sure if the warning I got from the Hexmachina wasn’t just the result of a slip on the curb and a bump on my head.’
‘The first of those questions I can answer for you.’ The commodore waved a page torn from a news sheet in front of her. An advertisement.
For your delectation, a circus of the extreme – the famous troupe of Dennehy’s Divers – will be launching from Goldhair Park. Cannons, rocketry and sail riders, in a dumbfounding display of daring unrivalled in the realm. Discover why Jackelia still rules supreme over our dignified skies.
Molly read the small print. ‘That’s today. You’ll never get to the park in time. The streets will be packed.’
‘Aye, as will the park. But I have no intention of paying tuppence for a chance to be jostled, have my pocket picked, and get hot rocket ash falling in my eyes if the wind changes course.’ He pulled open the door to the stairs to their roof. ‘Not when I have a fine view of proceedings from afar for free.’
Free, the commodore’s favourite price. Molly followed him up the small winding stairs to the house’s battlements. The top door opened with a squeak, and Molly emerged from between the two smoke stacks of their furnace room to stand by Tock House’s balustrade.
‘I have heard of these mad boys of Dennehy’s Circus and I have always wanted to see them.’
Molly looked out. Below Tavistead Hill, the gardens and trees of Goldhair Park could just be seen as a splash of green far beyond in the centre of the capital. Sail riders were a mad breed at the best of times, taking to the air with their silk sails and kite frames. Any jack cloudie in the Royal Aerostatical Navy would tell you jumping from a wrecked airship was not something you did lightly. If the sail folded, failed to open or you landed badly, you were dead. Then add to that risk by being shot out from a cannon or having yourself strapped to an oversized firework to reach the giddying heights they sailed down from – well, that was plain madness.