The Great Troll War
- Автор: Ффорде Джаспер
- Серия: The Last Dragonslayer #4
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: Hodder & Stoughton
- ISBN: 9781444799958
- Жанр: Фэнтези
Электронная книга - «The Great Troll War». Краткое содержание книги:
I took a deep breath, placed the picture back in my pocket and returned to the captain’s cabin, where Feldspar eventually persuaded me to play poker. As we played, we talked about the enduring mysteries of the Trolclass="underline" why they had never invaded until now, what did they eat when not eating humans, and crucially, their numbers. All the Troll Wars had been started by humans, usually through fear, a need to try out weaponry or even, as the Princess suggested, to keep the orphan-based economy supplied with free labour. On the issue of size, the estimated number of the invading forces was around two million, but given Trollvania was mostly rock and heather and without visible structures of any sort, it was difficult to see where they came from.
‘Caves?’ suggested Feldspar.
‘They’d all be pasty and squinty and looking like mole-rats if that were the case,’ I said. ‘As far as I can see they’re all very tanned and healthy looking.’
‘Molly might know.’
‘I asked her,’ I said. ‘Numerical values don’t mean much to them.’
‘Counting is overrated,’ said Feldspar. ‘I know that you have an above-average number of legs, and I can know that without doing any counting at all.’
‘I have two legs,’ I said. ‘That’s the average number, surely?’
‘Someone, somewhere, is missing a leg,’ he said, ‘perhaps both. Which changes the average. You have the mode of human legs – that occurring most often in a data-set. The average number of legs on a human is somewhere around 1.99999 recurring, but without counting everyone and their legs, which is both futile and time-wasting, we’ll never know for sure.’
‘That’s true,’ I said, ‘but if I asked all the Dragons on the planet whether they liked rice pudding, and fifty per cent said they didn’t, that wouldn’t really be very helpful, would it?’
‘It would be correct,’ said Feldspar, who hated rice pudding, ‘but yes, statistically it’s a little meaningless – when you hear about percentages as the result of a survey, it’s always a good idea to find out the size of the sample. Flush,’ he added, laying down his cards, ‘queen high.’
‘Zambini always said that with surveys it’s useful to find out who paid for it before accepting the findings,’ I replied, also laying down my cards. ‘Pair of nines.’
After several hours of pointless speculation over the Trolls, more chat about hard numbers versus ratios and me losing all the money in my pockets, we were summoned back to the control room.
‘We’re almost there,’ said the captain. ‘Chief geologist?’
The geologist looked up from her Ground Penetrating Sonar screen and told us that Shandar’s building carried on beneath the soil for a good seventy or eighty feet – the normal depth of foundations for a building this size – so the captain ordered us to dive and we felt the sub pitch down as we bored deeper into the rock. Ninety minutes and a game of Scrabble and mug of cocoa later, the geo-navigator reported that the sub-basements were guarded by six feet of reinforced cement and two-inch-thick steel plate.
‘Problems?’ I asked.
The captain replied no, as they had something called a ‘thermic lance’ for just such an eventuality, and had just given the order to halt the main engines when I felt the craft lurch oddly. A warning klaxon went off somewhere and the geologists rapidly consulted their instruments.
‘Speak to me, Number Two,’ said the captain.
‘Exterior temperature is rising,’ she said, twiddling a few knobs and staring at some dials.
‘What?’
‘Twenty-five degrees under the hull and rising.’
‘Impossible! Sensor error?’
‘They’re all reading the same, ma’am.’
‘Explanation?’
‘Working on it now, ma’am.’
I could sense by the urgency in the captain’s voice that this was not something they had experienced before. I looked across at Feldspar, who stared back at me and shook his head resignedly. This felt like magic. The navigation officer pressed a few buttons and the Ground Penetrating Sonar, more usefully directed forward or upward, was now looking directly below, and it seemed as though there was something large beneath us – and quite hot. The craft lurched again and pitched downward. I grabbed hold of a bulkhead to steady myself as several pencils and a coffee mug slid off the navigation table to land with a clatter on the floor.
‘We’re descending,’ said the helmswoman, ‘deck to topside one twenty feet and increasing.’
‘Permission to fire seismic charges, Captain,’ said the chief geologist.
‘Granted.’
The geologist opened a spring-loaded access panel marked ‘Emergency Only’ and pressed four red buttons. There was a pause and we heard two pairs of muffled concussions. To figure out the nature of the rock strata, small charges are detonated and the return echoes studied to give an idea of the underlying geological structure. I figured the charges were used sparingly as they would give away the craft’s position.
‘Full astern both,’ said the captain, and a shudder ran though the craft – but with apparently no effect at all. The craft lurched again and pitched down more markedly, while at the same time several control panels fused in a flurry of sparks and we were plunged into darkness.
‘Captain,’ said the geologist once the red emergency lights had flickered on, ‘sensors indicate the heat below us is a … magma chamber, and we’re heading straight into it.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said the captain. ‘There’s not been any volcanic activity on this island for over fifty million years – the crust here is eighteen miles thick.’
The geologist switched the Ground Penetrating Sonar to the main screens so we could see what lay beneath. It seemed that Shandar had opened up a well that plunged down eighteen miles, and up this channel was rising a steady stream of molten rock, to pool in a large subterranean lake of magma beneath his skyscraper, into which we were now heading, out of control. It didn’t take an expert to realise that when we hit the magma lake, the most sophisticated underground weapon of war would be nothing but molten steel.
‘Deck to topside now two hundred and twenty feet,’ said the helmswoman. ‘Rate of descent now seventeen moles per second.’
‘How long until hull rupture?’ asked the captain.
‘Twelve minutes,’ said the second-in-command, looking at the dials and screens in front of her, ‘but,’ she added, ‘we’re only a minute inside the safe window for escape pod activation.’
‘Very well,’ said the captain, ‘tell the crew to stand down from duties; you are to update the log and fetch Last Letters from my safe. Miss Strange, with me.’
I followed her down the boat, the crew stepping aside to let us past and tipping their caps respectfully. We arrived at the aft cabin where we’d come in and walked to the escape pod hangared in the far bulkhead. The captain pulled a lever and the door popped open. The pod was about the size of a pillar box: there was room only for one. The lack of urgency among the rest of the crew meant only one thing: there was only the one pod. One was all that was needed – smallest out, pinpoint the stricken craft, call in an excavator or a group of miners, depending on depth. If that failed, the crew could fire torpedoes and climb out through the voids made by those. But with the exterior rock now the consistency of toffee and the temperature rising by the second, none of those options was possible.