by Kim Newman
Moriarty, however, was usually more calculating.
The spy master would get into the worm somehow, and I’d face him in its belly.
The interior of the Kallinikos was cramped, certainly not designed for comfort. Also, stifling and malodorous. Canvas straps hung everywhere. I couldn’t stand up straight without bumping my head on the ceiling. Gauges, batteries, dynamos and dials took up too much space. Charts and graphs were pinned to a draughtsman’s table. Electric light bulbs hung from a thick central wire, pulsing with inconsistent current.
I pushed Berkins off the train, with some pleasure. He fell on his fat arse.
There was a shot. Sabin, firing at the ground as Lucas finally wrenched the wheel. With the points thrown, the Kallinikos could roll onto the main line – off the branch it had been using in the trial manoeuvres. If the spy master took command, he could burn the whole county to cover his escape and plunder the machine’s secrets at his leisure.
All three Moriarty brothers crammed into the aperture like Siamese triplets, jostling to board the war train. The Professor established seniority with sharp elbows, and was inside the Kallinikos ahead of the Colonel and the Stationmaster. None of them needed to be on the worm, but no James could have borne it if another were on board and they were left behind. Brothers, eh?
In the present pickle, I’d have found Sophy the Knives more useful than the Moriarty boys, but she was still apache dancing with Ilse. There was a reason the Professor employed me to handle the rough stuff – it wasn’t that he couldn’t take care of himself when there was blood on the floor, but he saw the wisdom of delegating to experts. In battle, that meant me. Still, I could have done without worrying over an arithmetic tutor, a desk soldier and the family idiot.
‘Keep out of my bloody way,’ I told the brothers, ‘and I’ll find our bloody imposter.’
They showed identical, stricken faces. None cared to be told what to do. All chewed over any sleight with eventual retribution in mind. Scratch any of ’em, and there was Moriarty marrow underneath.
‘Carnacki the Ghost Finder,’ I shouted, ‘is there anybody there? Do I sense a presence in the aether?’
Our spy master had got into the Kallinikos, I’d no doubt. One of the plates hung loose, showing a sliver of the outside through the hide of the worm. The hole didn’t seem big enough for a grown man to squeeze through, but this customer had more than proved his slipperiness today.
I saw a shadow and fired. Something exploded. A cloud of sulphurous flame puffed, burning brighter than natural fire. A couple of canvas straps were incinerated. A wave of intense heat rolled at me. I nipped behind a bulkhead. If Greek Fire got on flesh, it would sizzle through to the bone. The puff burned out quickly, but left a residue of acrid fumes. They might be lethal, too. This contraption was as dangerous to the operators as the enemy.
‘This is a delicate system,’ the Colonel said. ‘It’s not advisable to use firearms in here.’
Heaven forbid anyone should shoot a gun in a war machine!
The Colonel’s face and hands were soot-blackened. The Moriarty brothers were a music hall act. I supposed I could join in too. I’d lost my eyebrows to the flame.
Flares of light popped in my vision, even if I rubbed fists into my closed eyes.
Someone screamed further down the worm – inside one of its heads.
There was a lurch. The machine began to move.
VII
A whistle shrilled.
I found out what the canvas straps were for. The brothers Moriarty clung to the appendages, but still swung like human punching bags. I saw why the charts were pinned down and the equipment bolted to frames fixed to the interior walls.
‘Who is this man?’ the Colonel demanded. ‘The one who isn’t Carnacki.’
We all looked at Stationmaster Moriarty. He had issued the invitations.
‘He’s supposed to be Paul Finglemore, alias Colonel Clay, alias many others,’ Young James admitted. ‘The man who never wears the same face twice...’
The Professor pooh-poohed that. ‘But he’s not Finglemore, is he? This is an unknown, a shadow man, a ringer. He learned of your auction of secrets, James. Your net for spies, if you will. He saw a way to exploit it. A man who acts for himself.’
The Professor should know about that.
‘He’s a damned anarchist,’ the Colonel declared.
At present, I didn’t care who our shadow man was or what cause – if any – he espoused. I just thought it past time to stop him. He’d blacked all our faces. I was thirsty for a little evening up of the scores.
The Kallinikos picked up speed.
‘Colonel,’ I said, ‘who else is on board?’
‘That’s not information I can share with anyone outside the Department of Supplies,’ he replied.
‘Don’t be an ass, James,’ said his brothers.
‘Colonel,’ Colonel Moriarty said, ‘you’re to swear on your honour not to reveal anything you might learn of this machine...’
It was all I could manage not to laugh in his face. I held my hand up as if pledging a solemn oath – which I’m breaking by writing all this down. Dearie me, I’ll be sent to bed without supper.
‘...there’s Lampros, supervising the Greek Fire tests... Major Upshall... we call him the pilot, you might think he’s an engine driver... Berkins – no, wait, you threw him out... two assistant technicians from the Royal Engineers, don’t know their names... a recording clerk, Philip Gould... and Ram Singh, my immediate junior in Supplies.’
‘They’re all almost certainly dead.’
‘That’d be a nuisance.’
The Colonel had the traditional Moriarty reverence for the lives of his fellow men. Not that I’m any different.
‘Except Lampros,’ said the Colonel. ‘He’ll need Lampros.’
‘Your alchemist hasn’t given you his formula, then?’ I asked. ‘He mixes up his own batches of Liquid Inferno, and your stinks profs can’t work out the recipe?’
The Colonel nodded. ‘Bright boy. Preserve a secret since 672 AD and it’s hard to let go. Once you’ve shared, you’re not special any more. Not essential to the program. And if you’re not essential, you’re surplus.
‘We need that formula and we need Lampros,’ the Colonel continued. ‘More than the Kallinikos, it’s what this project is about. The train is a moving platform for the fire weapon. A replaceable prototype.’
‘I’ll remember you said that,’ I said.
The next compartment contained sighting and firing mechanisms for the fire nozzles. I found three dead men, trussed and hanging from the canvas straps. Not a mark on them, but faces twisted enough to indicate their last moments had been unpleasant. These were the two sappers whose names the Colonel hadn’t bothered to learn and the recording clerk, Gould. All wore overalls and rimless caps. Gould had a green eye shade and an inky right hand. Whatever he’d been keeping records in – a logbook or ledger – was missing.
I peered through a periscope-like apparatus, and saw Cornish fields whiz by. Some sort of green-tinted, see-in-the-dark lenses were involved. Fiddling with the thing in the hope of sighting a road sign or landmark, I twisted the wrong knob.
A bright, burning stream arced across the countryside and scattered like twenty gallons of flaming puke. We sped on, so I don’t know if I awoke some rustic by burning the thatch over his head or harmlessly set fire to a pile of rail-side gravel.
Beyond the firing compartment was the currently leading engine. Our shadow man must be at the controls. I had my revolver up, determined to put bullets into soft living flesh rather than dangerous combustibles.
My inadvertent test-firing of the flame cannon must have drawn attention.
The compartment door – a concertinaing, semi-transparent sheet of something chitinous like isinglass – was crinkled aside. A dark silhouette stood in the breach, eyes angry in mask-slits, gun in hand.
I shot first and a ragged red hole opened in his chest. My ears rang from the r
eport. My kill collapsed, in a mess. No, not a kill. I’d plugged a decoy. Tumbling to the mistake, I threw myself to one side.
I heard a puff. A six-inch nail juddered in a bulkhead, a breath away from my ear.
‘Nice bit of kit,’ I said. ‘But only at close-range. For a distance shot, an air rifle can match any gun. But air pistols are one-shot toys.’
The dead man’s gun – empty, I’ll be bound – was fastened skilfully to his hand with twine. His skin was white, so he wasn’t Ram Singh. That made him Upshall. The shadow man had put his clothes on the pilot, but kept the chest armour which had saved him earlier.
I stepped through the door, into the worm’s head.
The ringer hadn’t had time to pump his pistol again. Of course, I’d have come a cropper if he’d had a brace of the things... but he hadn’t. He carried a back-up gun, but that was tied to the late Major Upshall’s hand.
There was a stench in the air, worse even than the foul smell elsewhere on the Kallinikos. A dead body lay across the floor, face smashed into a contraption of glass tubes, tanks and copper wires. Acid was eating through his head. So much for Ram Singh of Supplies.
In command of the train was the fake Finglemore, the fake fake Carnacki. The shadow man now showed another face. Beaky nose, high brow, hawk eyes. He could have been anyone. He wore Upshall’s overalls.
He had one hand on what I took to be the throttle of the Kallinikos, and the other about the throat of a stocky, olive-skinned gent. This could only be George Lampros: Keeper of the Flame, Greek patriot, political naïf, valuable item.
‘Stay back, Colonel Moran, or I’ll kill him.’
His fingers squeezed the Greek’s plump neck, thumb working up around the ear for a snapping grip.
‘Let me take care of that for you,’ I said, and shot Lampros in the face.
VIII
I’d just killed the only man in the world who knew the secret of Greek Fire. We’d have to make do with all the other ways of setting light to each other’s houses. I recommend a bucket of coal oil poured through the letterbox, some rags shoved in afterwards to soak it up a bit and a slow taper to give you time to be somewhere else when the blaze catches. No doubt a new, even-more-devastating method of burning half the world would come along in a minute.
The shadow man was surprised, though. Hawk eyes a-goggle. I had a warm thrill – as if I’d lost every hand for an afternoon and evening, but a single turn of the cards had put me back in chips.
I took aim, again. It would have to be another head shot, since he still had armour under his overalls.
Forestalling his execution, he chucked Lampros at me.
He had a caber-tosser’s strength. The heavy Greek landed on me like a sack of melons. A lot of blood from the grapefruit-sized hole in his face got in my eyes.
The ringer wrenched the throttle-handle loose and stood over me with the broken-off iron bar raised like a club. I tried my best to shift the dead Greek so I could kick the spy master in the shins. He brought the handle down, but I got Lampros’ head in the way.
He didn’t try that again, but turned his club to the controls of the Kallinikos. He battered a brass panel, smashing dials and knocking off switches. Sparks cascaded from a broken meter. Then he grabbed a canvas strap, pulled himself up like an acrobat and disappeared through a hole in the roof.
I freed myself from the corpse and assessed the controls. Even if they hadn’t been ruined, I wouldn’t know how to toot the whistle let alone throw the brakes. On recent experience, I’d be likely to yank the wrong chain and blast us all to flinders.
I peered through the green-tinted, eye-shaped portholes which studded the worm’s head. The Kallinikos was making express time. It was also tipping from side to side alarmingly. I had doubts it was up to anything but a straight stretch. Lighter, and more flexible, than an ordinary train – those scale-like armour plates rattling against each other – it might come off the rails at any moment.
I went back to share the news with the Moriarty brothers and found them bickering. It might have all gone back to the unsettled matter of who scoffed the last picnic pastry on that outing to the Great Exhibition for all I knew.
‘James, James, James,’ I shouted. ‘Everyone on the crew is dead. The ringer’s on the roof. He wrecked the controls; I assume he took the brakes. The train’s going to crash.’
‘Lampros?’ the Colonel asked anxiously.
‘Moran said everyone on the crew, James,’ the Professor said. ‘Further elucidation is neither necessary nor, in the circumstances, desirable.’
That put Moriarty medius in his place.
‘There’s a swing bridge ahead,’ the Stationmaster said. ‘At this time of night, it’ll be open. Boats come up the Ross for the china clay.’
‘Thank you for that touch of local colour,’ I said. ‘Open – that doesn’t mean open for railway traffic, does it? It means we’re hurtling towards a bridge that won’t be there?’
Young James nodded.
‘Tell me something useful,’ I said. ‘How soon will we reach this open bridge?’
‘How fast are we going?’
‘No bloody idea. Fast.’
‘Impossible to tell, then. Soon.’
Jumping off the Kallinikos was not an option. It would mean, at best, getting smeared along the side of the track like breakfast marmalade.
‘Our present enemy does not strike me as bent on self-destruction,’ the Professor said calmly. ‘He will have a safe way out.’
‘At this speed, he can’t grab a low branch without breaking his fool neck,’ I said.
‘The Kallinikos has two engines,’ the Professor responded. ‘Two complete sets of controls. He will be making for the other set. Does he know how to drive the train?’
‘He was making a fair fist of it before I barged in on him.’
‘Then, he will reverse our direction.’
‘That can’t be done unless the other engine is disengaged,’ the Colonel said. ‘If its controls are smashed, then that is not possible.’
‘Can the engine be decoupled?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Then, he will free himself from the Kallinikos and effect an escape...’
Young James spelled out the obvious ‘...leaving us to go into the river!’
The Colonel made his way, monkey-like, from strap to strap to the rear of the carriage. He tried to wrench aside the door. It was jammed shut.
The Professor went to the hole through which the shadow man had got onto the train, and set about enlarging it enough for me to get through.
I reloaded my revolver.
‘He’ll know you’re coming,’ Moriarty said.
‘Of course,’ I replied, handing him my hat.
I stuck my head through the hole. A rush of air hit me like a wave full of pebbles. The Kallinikos was racing through a deep cutting. A wall of banked-up earth was barely two feet away from the train. If I touched it, I’d be scraped loose and mangled. So I took care to hug the worm’s metal hide as I crawled up on top.
I threw myself flat on the train roof and dragged myself towards the rear engine. By touch, I found the hole where the shadow man had got inside – a long cut made between plates. Typical of the Department of Supplies. For all its armour and revolutionary design, the war-worm was more pregnable than the average third-class carriage on the 8.15 to Dog-Walloper’s Bottom.
I was not fool enough to plop through the hole, and get a knife in my ribs for my pains.
There was a porthole above the controls, offering a glow like a skylight. I made my way there, inch by thorny inch. I didn’t let my head show, but got a glimpse below. The spy master was throwing switches and pulling levers. Electric lights burned. Dials came to life. He was getting his engine running before decoupling the rest of the train.
He kept looking around, alert.
I rose to a crouch, struggling to keep balance. The rushing wind would blow me off the roof if I presented too broad a back. Keeping s
teady, resisting an impulse to go too quickly, I stood. I let seconds pass, to get used to the slipstream. I took out my revolver and aimed at the porthole.
I fired, then stepped into the hole I’d made.
I intended to drop neatly down into the cabin in a rain of glass.
Instead, the train’s impetus slammed me into the rim of the porthole at waist height. Jagged glass shards ripped through my coat. I fell badly, on top of the ringer.
He got a knife – something small, like a scalpel – in my side, but I smashed my revolver-butt into his nose. It squashed and bled. I didn’t know how badly I was stuck, but got up off him. I kicked the shadow man several times, in the head and kidneys. He rolled away from my boots, and sprang up – agile as a big cat.
I shot him in the chest again, knowing it wouldn’t kill him. At close range, the impact must have broken some ribs. He yelled and fell again.
I saw the wedge – a wrench – that was keeping the door to the compartment shut, and kicked it free.
‘In here,’ I called to the Moriarty brothers.
I hauled the ringer up, took away his knife, and put my gun to the soft part under his chin. No chain mail there. Give him credit, he was already recovering from the equivalent of a sledgehammer blow to the chest. He was scouting for new means to vex me.
The Professor, the Colonel and the Stationmaster entered the cabin. The space was not really large enough to accommodate us all.
‘Why haven’t you killed him?’ the Colonel asked.
‘Can you drive a train, James?’ I said.
‘No.’
‘Can you, James, or you, James?’
Twin headshakes.
‘Then we need him alive, for the present. Can any of you at least decouple this locomotive?’
‘That’s simple,’ the Stationmaster said.
Young James took the loose wrench and used it to open a hatch in the floor. He twisted a lever below. There was a ripping sound, as plates parted. We were free of the rest of the Kallinikos, but still travelling in the same direction – fast.