by Tim Powers
The boy shook his head incredulously. “You’ve sure gone to hell since that summer. Look, I live just over there, so I’m gonna go, but if you follow that lane it’ll get you to Ratcliff Highway. You ought to be able to get a cab there.”
“Thank you, lad.” The man began to walk unsteadily in the indicated direction.
“Take care of yourself, eh?” called the boy. “And thanks for helping me with the bag!” His bare feet slapped away into the darkness.
“You’re welcome,” the man muttered. What was the matter with him? And what actually had happened? Now that he’d had time to catch his breath and consider the problem, the explosion idea made no sense. Had he been waylaid on the way home and tossed into the river, and shock erased the memory of everything since that bout at Angelo’s? But no, he never left Angelo’s before ten, and the sky in the west wasn’t even completely dark yet.
As he was about to round the corner of the warehouse he noticed a window set into the brick just below the lantern, and he glanced into it as he walked past… then halted, walked back, and stared into it.
He raised a hand to his face, and was horrified to see the figure in the reflection do the same, for it was not him. The face was not his face.
He leaped away from the glass and looked at his clothing—no, he hadn’t noticed it before, one set of wet clothes on a dark night being very much like another, but these weren’t any jacket and trousers that ever belonged to Adelbert Chinnie.
For an insane second he wanted to dig his fingers into this face and peel it away; and then he considered the notion that he wasn’t and never had been the Admirable Chinnie, but was just a—God knew what, beggar, apparently—who had dreamt it.
He forced himself to walk back to the window and look into it again. The face that peered fearfully out at him was thin, sagging and deeply lined, with, he noticed when he tilted his head back, a network of crazy wrinkles around the eyes, and though the thick tangle of hair was dripping wet, he could see a lot of gray in it. And when he pushed the hair back he nearly burst into sobs, for he had no right ear at all.
“Well, I don’t care,” he said in a voice as tense as a stressed glass pane. He was so wet, and the body’s sensations so unfamiliar to him, that he really didn’t know if the wetness in his eyes was tears.
“I don’t care” he said. “I’m Adelbert Chinnie.”
He attempted—and quickly abandoned—a brave smile but nevertheless squared his narrow shoulders and strode resolutely toward the Ratcliff Highway.
CHAPTER 12
“O death, where is thy victory?”
—The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians
With the war against France going on, and its attendant embargoes and black markets and rumors of a proposed invasion of England by Napoleon, the financial and mercantile situations in Threadneedle Street were in perpetual turmoil, and a man who was in the right place at the right time with the right commodity could become wealthy in hours, while a fortune that in other times would take decades to lose could now evaporate in one morning at the Royal Exchange. And though only someone who kept an extra sharp eye on the market would have noticed, there was one speculator who had a hand in nearly every area of commerce, and invariably managed to be standing on the winning side of every surprise, disaster and reverse.
Jacob Christopher Dundee, as J. Cochran Darrow now called himself, had only begun his investment career on the twenty-second of October, but within one month he had, by an inspired series of shiftings and reinvestments and possibly extra-legal international currency exchanges, increased his initial capital tremendously. And though his antecedents were of the vaguest, such was the charm of the handsome young Dundee that on the fifth of December the London Times announced his engagement to “Claire, daughter of the successful importer Joel Peabody.”
In his office over a defunct depilatory parlor in Leadenhall Street, Jacob Dundee irritably waved away a cloud of tobacco smoke that issued from the pipe of his elderly companion, and then squinted again at the notice in the Times. “Well, they seem to have spelled all the names correctly, at least,” he said, “Though I could have done without the reference to ‘the shrewd newcomer on the London market scene.’ A low profile is essential in this kind of work—already I’ve got people watching me and riding along on deals.”
The old man glanced curiously at the paper. “Nice girl?”
“Adequate for my purposes,” Dundee said impatiently, waving away more smoke.
“Your purposes? And what be they, pray?”
“To have a son,” said the young man softly. “A boy that I can set up with a fortune, and a solidly established background, and perfect health. My medical lads say that Claire is as healthy and intelligent a marriageable young lady as can be found in England today.”
The old man grinned. “Most engaged young gentlemen look forward to somethin’ a little less philosophical, but more fun, eh? And I’ve heerd this Peabody piece is a comely one. But no doubt you’ve already ridden around the course a few times, familiarized yerself wi’ the turf?”
Dundee reddened. “Well, I—no, I’m not in any—damn it, I’m not a young man—I mean, I am, but all that sort of thing will have to—” He coughed. “Damn it, do you have to smoke that stuff? How do you think you got cancer in the first place? If you need nicotine, settle for chewing tobacco in my presence, okay?”
“Okay,” said the old man. “Okay, okay, okay.” He’d only learned the word recently, and still relished it. “Why do you care, anyway? Part of the bargain was a new one any time you like.”
“I know.” Dundee rubbed his eyes and ran his fingers through his curly brown hair. “It’s like a new car, that’s all,” he muttered. “Until it gets the first dent you worry about everything.”
“For such a healthy young sprout yer lookin’ distinctly wilted,” observed the old man, putting his black clay pipe on the floor and reaching out to snag the brandy decanter instead. He sucked down an awesome amount of it.
“Yeah, I’m not sleeping too well,” Dundee admitted. “Dream I keep having… “
“You’ve got to get away from dreams, laddie, get some distance. I suppose I dream all the time, and if I ever paid attention to ‘em I’m sure I’d be stark mad right now. I’ve kind of… split off a little bit of me mind to watch the dreams, so I don’t have to be bothered.”
“That sounds healthy,” said Dundee with a despairing nod. “Yeah, that sounds fine.”
His companion, missing the irony, nodded complacently. “Okay, you’ll get used to it. After a couple more jumps you’ll pay no more mind to dreams than to the dust your wheels raise on the road behind you.”
Dundee poured himself some brandy, added some water from a nearby carafe, and took a sip. “Have you decided where you’ll go from,” he waved vaguely at the old man, “here?”
“Aye. I think I’ll oust Mr. Maturo—yer Mister Anonymous. He dines there very frequent, and it ought not to be any trouble sifting the unhinging herbs into his stew some night a week or so hence.”
“Maturo? The guy who hangs you? From the account in Robb’s Journals he sounds like he’s about fifty years old.”
“Aye, he is, and I won’t stay in him more than the necessary week—but I will so enjoy the expression on his face when, in the moment before he kicks that barrel away, he finds himself up there standing on it with the rope round his neck, and me in his body grinnin’ up at him.”
Dundee shuddered. “God rest ye merry, gentlemen,” he said.
* * *
Down the relatively snow-free gutter in the middle of the street the short man jogged energetically, puffing white clouds like a laboring steam engine as he forced himself to carry the ten-pound box of raisins in one hand at arm’s length. After twenty paces he switched the box to his other hand and flailed the now-free one to unstiffen it. His solid shoulders and unfatigued pace were evidence that physical exercise wasn’t just a fad he’d taken up this afternoon.
It was
only five days before Christmas, and in spite of the snow a number of people were out on the street, bundled up in coats and hats and mufflers, and a couple of boys and a dog were romping about with a sled. Occasionally a costermonger’s cart would rattle and jingle past, smoke pluming from the driver’s pipe and steam from the horse’s nostrils, and the jogger would have to move out of the way. When they came from behind he never seemed to hear the carts until they were almost on top of him, and he’d been shouted at so many times that when he heard another insistent call behind him he just moved aside without looking back.
But the cry was repeated. “Hey, Doyle!”
The short man glanced over his shoulder and then let himself slow to a walk and finally a halt, for a skinny, moustachioed street boy was waving at him and plodding through the street edge snowbank toward him.
“Doyle!” the boy called. “I found your William Ashbless! He had a poem published in this week’s Courier!”
The man waited until the boy caught up with him. “I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong fellow,” he said. “My name’s not Doyle.”
The boy blinked and stepped back. “Oh, sorry, I—” He cocked his head. “Sure it is.”
“I’d know, wouldn’t I? It’s not.”
Jacky frowned dubiously at him for a moment, then said, “Excuse me if I’m wrong—but don’t you have a knife scar running down across your chest below your collar-bone?”
The man’s response struck Jacky as peculiar. “Wait a minute!” he gasped, then pressed his palms to his chest. “You know this man?”
“You mean… you?” asked Jacky uncertainly. “Yes. What, have you lost your memory?”
“Who is he?”
“He’s… you’re Brendan Doyle, a… one-time member of Copenhagen Jack’s beggar guild. Why, who do you think you are?”
The man watched Jacky carefully. “Adelbert Chinnie.”
“What, the prize fighter? But Brendan, he’s a lot taller, and younger… “
“Until two months ago I was taller and younger.” He cocked an eyebrow sternly. “Is this Doyle of yours by any chance a magician?” Jacky had been staring at the man’s head, and now said, unsteadily, “Look at your shoes.”
The man did, though he looked up again when he heard a gasp. The boy had gone white, and seemed for some reason to be on the verge of tears. “My God,” Jacky whispered, “you’re not bald anymore.”
It was the man’s turn to be mystified. “Uh… no… “
“Oh, Brendan…” A couple of tears spilled down Jacky’s cold-reddened cheeks. “You poor innocent son of a bitch,… your friend Ashbless arrived too late.”
“What?”
“I wasn’t,” Jacky sniffed, “talking to you.” She wiped her face with the end of her scarf. “I suppose you really are the Admirable Chinnie.”
“Yes, I am—or was. You find that… credible?”
“I’m afraid I do. Listen, you and I have got to get together and compare notes. Are you free for a drink?”
“As soon as I deliver this to my boss I’m due for a supper break. It’s just around the corner here, Malk’s Bakery in St. Martin’s Lane. Come on.”
Jacky trotted along beside Chinnie, who resumed his exercises. They turned left into St. Martin’s Lane and soon arrived at the bakery. Chinnie told Jacky to wait for him, then pushed his way through the gang of little boys that had been drawn by the warm plum pudding smell to cluster around the windows, and disappeared inside.
A few moments later he came out again. “There’s a public house down Kyler Lane here where I frequently stop for a pint. Nice people, though they think I’m barmy.”
“Ah, it’s the Admirable!” the aproned landlord said cheerfully when they pushed open the pub door and stepped into the relative dimness. “With his pal Gentleman Jackson, I perceive.”
“A couple of pints of porter, Samuel,” said Chinnie, leading Jacky to a booth on the rear. “I got drunk here once,” he muttered, “and was fool enough to tell them my secret.”
When the mugs of black beer had arrived and been tentatively sipped, Jacky asked, “When—and how—did the body switch occur?”
“When was a Sunday two months ago—the fourteenth of October. How…” He gulped more of the beer. “Well, I was fencing at Angelo’s, and just as I was about to do a particularly clever disengage, I—I suddenly found myself at the bottom of the Thames with no air in my lungs.”
Jacky smiled bitterly and nodded. “Yes, that’s how he works. Leaving you that way, I guess he wouldn’t have to chew the tongue to bits before he left.” She looked at the man with some respect. “You must be Chinnie—he’d never have left you in that position if it was at all likely you’d survive.”
Chinnie drained his mug and signalled for another. “I damn near didn’t. Sometimes, lying awake nights in my bed by the bakery oven, I wish I hadn’t.” He gave Jacky a hard stare. “Now you talk. Who’s this he you’re referring to? Your friend, this Doyle? Is he in my real body?”
“No, Doyle’s dead, I’m afraid. He obviously got the same treatment you did, but I can’t see him swimming up from the Thames bottom. No, it’s a… magician, I guess… known as Dog-Face Joe, who can switch bodies with people at will—and has to frequently because for some reason he starts growing thick fur all over himself as soon as he’s in a fresh body.”
“Yes!” said Chinnie excitedly, “right! I was all hairy when I climbed out of the river—even had whiskers between my fingers and toes. One of the first things I did was buy a razor and shave most of my body. Thank God it doesn’t seem to be growing back.”
“I guess it wouldn’t, after Joe’s moved on. I—”
“So this magician is walking around in my body. I’m going to find him.”
Jacky shook her head. “Not after two months, I’m afraid. I’ve been trying to find him for quite a while, and he never stays in any one body for more than a week or two.”
“What do you mean? What would he do with it?”
“The same thing he did to poor Doyle’s when it started to get furry—get into a position where death is only seconds away, then switch with someone else who’s maybe miles distant, and just walk off in the new body while the man he evicted finds himself dying before he even knows where he is. The cast-offs never live long, and I think you’re probably the only one to actually survive.”
The landlord brought Chinnie a fresh mug of porter. “Th-thank you,” Chinnie said, and when the man had returned to the bar he stared at Jacky out of Doyle’s eyes. “No,” he said firmly. “He wouldn’t just abandon that carcass of mine. Listen, I’ve never been vain, but that was one hell of a fine… v-vehicle, in his terms.” Chinnie was obviously maintaining his composure only with considerable effort. “Handsome, young, strong, agile… “
“—And hairy as an ape—”
“So he’ll have to shave then, won’t he?” shouted Chinnie loudly enough to make everyone else in the pub turn toward them. There were tolerant chuckles when they realized who it was.
“‘At’s right. Admirable,” called the host, “shave ‘im bald as an egg. But keep the racket down, eh?”
“And,” the blushing Chinnie went on more quietly, “there’s these places, aren’t there, where people go to have hair removed? What’s to say he’d not go to one of those?”
“I don’t think any of those places really—”
“Do you know? Have you been? You ought to, you know, that m-moustache looks like—” His voice had been rising again but abruptly he stopped, and rubbed his eyes. “I’m sorry, lad. There’s tensions involved.”
“I know.”
For a moment they just sat and drank beer.
“You say you’ve been looking for him?” said Chinnie. “Why?”
“He killed my fiancé,” Jacky said evenly.
“And what’ll you do if you find him?”
“Kill him.”
“What if he’s in my old body?”
“I’ll still kill him,” said Jacky.
“Face it, man, you won’t get the body back.”
“I’m… not resigned to that. What if I find him, and tell you where he is—will you, in return, help me get him to … switchback?”
“I can’t imagine the circumstances.”
“Never mind imagining them. Will you?”
Jacky sighed. “If you can find him, and set it up—sure, if I can be certain of killing him afterward.”
“Very well.” Chinnie reached across the table and they shook hands. “What’s your name?”
“Jacky Snapp, at one-twelve Pye Street, near Westminster Cathedral. What name are you using?”
“Humphrey Bogart. It came to me in a dream I had, the first night I was in this body.”
Jacky shrugged. “It might be a name that meant something to Doyle.”
“Who cares? Anyway, you can reach me at Malk’s Bakery, St. Martin’s Lane. And if you find him, will you let me know?”
Jacky hesitated. Why should she take on a partner? Of course a strong companion could be useful, and Joe would certainly be in another body by now, so Chinnie’s concern for his ex-body’s welfare wouldn’t be a hindrance… and certainly nobody had a better claim to share in her revenge. “All right,” she said finally. “I’ll take a partner.”
“Good lad!” They shook hands again, then Chinnie glanced at the clock. “I’d better be moving on,” he said, getting to his feet and throwing some change on the table. “The yeast is working, and time and dough wait for no man.”
Jacky drained her beer and got up too.
They walked together out of the pub, though the landlord tapped Chinnie on the shoulder and, when he paused, said, “You’re right about what Jackson’s moustache looks like. If I you can’t get him to shave it off, I advise you to give him an exploding cigar.”
The laughter of the patrons followed them out into the street.
* * *
On Christmas Eve the taproom at the Guinea and Bun in Crutchedfriars was already fairly crowded by three-thirty in the afternoon. Aromatically steaming cups of hot punch were being handed, free, to each patron after he’d beaten the snow from his hat, hung his cloak or coat on one of the hooks along the south wall and hurried, shivering, over to the bar.