by Damien Love
Alex found what he was searching for: a full glass saltcellar his grandfather had pushed on him before leaving Harry’s house, just in case. Unbuckling his seat belt, he wound down his window, grabbed the doorframe, and pulled himself halfway through, leaning out as far as he could.
As he hung out there, balanced precariously on the vibrating door, the long, sheer drop racing a few feet away, the shocking realization of what he was doing suddenly hit him. Then it was blown away by the stinging blast of freezing air and grit howling into his face. The life-sizer’s legs trembled just below him.
Gripping tighter, he stretched farther out, planning to scatter salt over the machine, then drew back. It was useless: the speed they were traveling, the wind would blow it away before it got anywhere near the robot.
The life-sizer continued hammering the front wheel, by now seriously mangled. Black smoke poured out around it.
“Unscrew the lid,” a voice shouted in his ear, over the wind’s deafening roar.
Alex twisted to look. Has grandfather’s head hung above him against the gray sky. The old man was lying spread-eagle on the car’s roof, whipped by the wind. Alex wondered stupidly how his bowler hat stayed on.
“What?” Alex hollered.
“Don’t try to pour it out. Take the lid off,” his grandfather shouted back. “Then chuck the whole thing. Like a grenade. Try for its mouth.”
Quickly pulling himself back inside the car, Alex did as instructed, swung out again. Taking careful aim, he threw the glass as hard as he could.
It bounced off the life-sizer’s silvery cheek without doing any damage, but when it hit the road, it shattered. The three small robots beneath its left shoulder were caught in the explosion of salt and glass and fell instantly away, shooting stupidly off over the edge of the road.
The life-sizer lurched down to one side, its unsupported shoulder scraping the ground, sending up a shower of sparks, vivid white against the black smoke in the morning gloom. The big robot slowed as the smaller machines beneath it raced to regroup, redistributing its weight between them.
“Just the ticket,” Alex’s grandfather shouted.
His head disappeared from view. Then immediately returned.
“By the way, you should never hang out of a car window like that,” he shouted at Alex. “Awfully dangerous.”
He vanished again. Then Alex froze in horror as he reappeared, traveling through the air above him, cane held high, leaping from the roof of the speeding car.
Landing in a crouch on the big robot’s chest, he brought his cane down violently, driving it like a stake through the machine’s grill-like mouth. Standing there, leaning hard on the cane, he twisted the silver tip viciously inside the struggling life-sizer’s head.
Alex heard the sound of throwing up behind him. Von Sudenfeld must be bringing up the key, he suddenly realized. But he didn’t turn, transfixed by the sight of his grandfather racing along the road on the robot, like an old man riding a huge, monstrously bizarre motorized scooter. From time to time he leapt lightly as the machine tried to swipe him off, but the life-sizer was clearly weakening, slowing, dropping back.
“Blummy Moses!” Harry cried out. “Alex!”
Alex turned.
Von Sudenfeld, still bent over, was being sick. But even as he threw up, he was grinning, a weak, evil smile. With one more convulsive retch, something long and blue dropped out of his mouth.
Alex looked on in revulsion and confusion. Threads of drool dripped from the man’s mouth to his lap, where shone a small puddle of watery sick. Tiny footprints now led away from it, up the back of the seat in front. And on top of the seatback, still covered in a sheen of vomit, stood a small, smooth blue robot, slowly unfolding spindly arms that ended in serious needlepoints.
As Alex stared, the little thing jumped onto Harry’s shoulder, then started clambering rapidly up his head.
The road went into another sharp turn. Harry battled to steer around it. The vicious little machine was hauling itself through his hair, jabbing at his scalp, moving toward his face.
Alex shot into the front, grabbing at the thing just as it seemed poised to take out Harry’s eyes. He got one hand around it, repulsed to find it still slippery and warm from von Sudenfeld’s sick. It sliced maniacally at him as he struggled to get his window open enough to fling it out.
“Alex!” Harry shouted, pulling furiously at the wheel. “The tablet!”
Alex looked up, too late. In the back, von Sudenfeld had his rucksack. He already had the door open. Turning with a leering grin, he jumped out of the moving car like a parachutist, disappearing straight over the edge of the road.
Alex scrambled to the rear seat, braced himself in the door to leap after him. He lurched backward as Harry fought another curve. The road hurtled inches beneath his feet in a lethal gray blur. The drop beyond looked deadly now. He tensed himself to jump.
The blue robot stabbed down hard between his thumb and forefinger, setting his hand spasming open. As he dropped it, the thing immediately pounced for Harry again, needles knifing. Alex hung torn in the doorway for a second, then launched himself into the front seat, catching the machine with both hands, wrestling it away as Harry finally brought the car to a long, careening halt.
He stared dumbly at Alex. Alex stared dumbly back. Then he let out a cry as the robot in his hand stabbed him again.
Flinging open the door, he rushed to the edge of the road and threw it as far as he could. It went sailing down, dashing off a rock, spinning out of sight. Farther off down there, he could make out von Sudenfeld, still in one piece, descending the long, steep slope toward the road below in reckless jumps and staggers. Alex started frantically to follow, until Harry’s big hand grabbed his arm and pulled him back.
“Even if you didn’t break your neck, you’d never catch ’im now, son.”
“But—” Alex started. He stopped. Harry was right. The slope at this point was almost vertical.
As they watched, the headlights of the dark car that had been chasing them reappeared around a distant bend below. A high, unhinged sound carried up on the sudden quiet: von Sudenfeld shrieking with joy. In the dull blue morning, the white cardboard box that held the toy robot seemed to glow in his hand.
“Am I right in thinking ’e actually brought that thing up? I mean . . . from ’is stomach?” Harry asked quietly.
“I think so.” Alex nodded.
They stood watching the final leg of von Sudenfeld’s descent in silence. The car had drawn to a halt beneath him.
“That’s disgusting,” Harry said after a while.
Alex nodded again.
The waiting car’s back door opened. A small figure emerged, looking up in their direction, her pale face bright in the dim light. The wind picked up.
Alex slumped and sat. Back along the road, he dimly noticed his rucksack, discarded a few feet down the slope. Familiar items lay scattered in the dirt around it. He should slide down and gather it all up, he thought. But he didn’t move. He didn’t particularly feel like moving again. His head throbbed from trying to process far too many things.
What looked like a piece of white card came tumbling gently toward him, caught by the fading breeze. He trapped it with his foot, picked it up, and turned it over. The photograph. His mum and dad, forever at their party. His dad forever just out of focus. The morning was growing steadily lighter, but the light was cold, blue.
“What you got there?” Harry said, bending to see. “Ah, yeah.”
“Harry?” Alex said.
“Yeah, son?”
Alex gestured vaguely at the car far below. “That girl. The tall man. Do you know who they are?”
“Uh.” Harry suddenly became absorbed in studying the dust between his feet. “Ah, well, see . . .”
“It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want. I’m getti
ng used to it.”
Harry sighed. He went back to gazing down the hillside. After a moment he spoke.
“No, lissen, Alex, you’re right. None of this is fair on you. But, see, you need to remember, your grandad, ’e ’as ’is reasons, son. ’E really is tryin’ to do right by you. Me an’ ’im, we go back a long, long way, an’ I’d trust ’im with me life. In fact, I ’ave done, more times than I want to remember.” He snorted a sudden laugh. “’Ere, did ’e ever tell you ’bout the time we were robbin’ the Louvre, right, and . . .”
Harry coughed as Alex stared at him.
“Eh, no. No, ’e wouldn’t ’ave. I prolly shouldn’t . . . uh. It was a long while back, anyway. An’ there was a good reason for that, an’ all. To begin with. Though ’e kind of got into the whole art thief thing for a while. It was just a fad. It was the sixties, you know. But, anyway . . . I’m not much good at talkin’, Alex. What I’m tryin’ to say is, you should give ’im the benefit of the doubt, son. Trust ’im. ’E’s been tryin’ to shelter you and your mum from a lot. But, no, you’re right, it’s not really fair. I’ve told ’im as much. But then, see, it’s not really my place to tell you. One thing I’ve learned, Alex, is to never get involved in people’s family business—”
He broke off abruptly, wincing as though he had said too much. Alex took a breath, held it in, blew it out. Time to push.
“Harry?”
“Uh-huh?”
“You used to know my dad?”
“Uh . . . yes, son. I did.”
“What was he like?”
“Well . . . Blimey. ’E was a bit like you. I liked ’im a lot.”
“He was tall, wasn’t he?” Alex turned, squinted up at him. He gestured with the photo. “About as tall as that tall man down there. About as tall as my grandad. They’re about the same height, aren’t they?”
Harry frowned, looking off down the hill. His eyes widened. He stared down at Alex as if seeing him for the first time. “Oh, Gawdammit,” he muttered, after a long pause. He screwed his eyes shut. Alex sensed him struggling to make a decision, fighting himself.
“Look, Alex,” he finally said. “Things . . . things is complicated. There’s things . . . It’s up to your grandad to tell you what you need to know. But I’ll tell you one thing. Rather, I’ll show you something.”
He dug into his pocket, pulled out a large and worn black wallet, began rifling the contents.
“’Ere we go.”
He held out a small black-and-white photograph, creased at one corner.
Taking it, Alex saw a picture of two people. One, he instantly recognized: his grandfather, only younger than he had ever seen him. Perhaps twenty years younger, in his early fifties or so, his hair dark, but already heavily peppered with silvery flecks.
He stood grinning, wearing what looked like a smart army uniform. In one hand, he held a cap with a shining peak. The other hand clasped the shoulder of a thin little boy who stood proudly beside him, maybe about six years old, smiling at the camera with a cheeky face. They posed cockily together in a ruined, chewed-up landscape, standing on a mound of pale rubble. The phantom wrecks of burnt-out buildings hung in the grainy air behind them, wrecked facades, broken windows. It looked cold and smoky there.
“Wow,” Alex whispered. “This is the only photograph I’ve ever seen of him. He always said he hates getting his picture taken. Where’s this from? Who’s that boy?”
Harry let out a sad-sounding sigh. “That’s me, son. That’s not long after we first met. London. Just after the war. I was orphaned, y’know. Living in the bombsites, bit of a toe-rag. ’E found me and kind of took me under ’is wing.”
Alex looked at Harry, looked at the picture. He felt his battered brain buckling.
“But . . . Hang on. It can’t . . .” He looked at Harry again, thinking furiously. “How old are you, Harry?”
“I’m seventy-nine, son.” Adding, to himself, “’Ow did that ’appen?”
Harry watched him staring at the photograph a few more seconds, then lifted it gently, tucking it carefully back inside his wallet.
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Alex stumbled, gesturing uselessly after the picture. “You two are about the same age today.”
“There you go,” Harry said. “Uh-oh, speak of the devil. Shtum, now.”
Alex’s grandfather came wandering casually around the curve, cane at a jaunty angle over his shoulder.
“Hallo!” He nodded down over the edge of the road. “Saw old Willy leaping his way down there. Who’d’ve thought he had it in him? Look at him go! Like a mountain goat.”
“That’s not all ’e ’ad in ’im,” Harry muttered.
“Eh?” Alex’s grandfather said.
“The robot,” Harry said. “’E’s got it.”
“Oh. Ah. I see. That’s not so good, is it, Alex? Alex? Are you okay?”
Alex stood staring at him, trying to make himself see his grandfather as though he had never seen him before, furiously turning over the question of how old he looked.
The old man joined them gazing down at the road below.
“Maybe we should’ve tied him up at that.” Alex’s grandfather pushed back his hat and scratched his head. “Ah, well. Can’t be helped.”
Alex looked down. He could just make out von Sudenfeld and the tall man in animated conversation. It seemed as if the girl waved cheerily up to them. Then the distant sound of a door closing sounded flatly across the morning. The car turned and sped off, back the way it had come.
“That’s it, then,” he murmured in a monotone.
“Hmmm? How’s that?” his grandfather said.
“Well, that’s it, isn’t it?” Alex said, bleakly regarding the picture of his father in his hand. “He’s got the robot, he’s got the tablet, he’s got the key. He’s got it all. It’s finished. We’ve lost. They’ve won.”
“Oh, pshaw,” the old man said. “Chin up. Don’t be such a defeatist.”
“But what can we do?”
“Well, we’ll, y’know, just take the robot back.”
“And how do you plan to catch them?” Alex said, gesturing at the empty road below, then toward their car, where Harry knelt examining the wrecked wheel.
“Oh, Harry’ll patch up something to get us moving, won’t you, old chap?”
“Er, maybe,” Harry called back. “Great thing about this car is it can limp along on three wheels. What they call”—he cleared his throat—“hydropneumatic suspension.”
“We’ll never catch up,” Alex said.
“Oh, well, we don’t want to catch up with them so much,” his grandfather said, tapping his cane at his shoe to dislodge some dirt. “We want to get ahead of them.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, you’re right—he’s got the robot and the key and all that. But we know where he’s going with it, don’t we?”
Alex tucked the photograph inside his jacket and gazed blankly at him. Despite the cheer he tried to force into his voice, the old man looked very grim as he stared out over the low world.
“The golem, Alex. They’re off to see the golem. All we have to do is get there first.”
His face darkened.
“We’ll have to get a plane. I don’t like planes.”
XIX.
A PROWL THROUGH PRAGUE
THE OLD MAN spent the flight staring fixedly at the back of the seat in front of him, muttering occasionally like a mantra under his breath:
“I don’t like planes.”
Alex sat by the window. Nothing but clouds. The whole world hidden.
The memory of Harry’s impossible photograph had joined the unreliable gallery of images in his mind, swaying in the fog alongside his glimpse of the tall man’s face, his vivid impression of the girl’s. One second he was certain what he’d seen. The next he d
oubted he remembered it clearly at all.
He pulled out the picture of his parents, wrinkled now.
If this tall man was his father—
As soon as he thought it, he flinched away from the idea again. Yet it was the only thing that made sense, if anything made any sense anymore. The resemblance he’d registered almost as a physical sensation. His grandfather’s determination to keep the tall man’s identity hidden. He glanced to his side, struck by the queasy notion the old man could overhear his thoughts. He put the photo away.
His dad had died before he was born. An accident. A car in Germany. He was on a job. His grandfather had been visiting him there. That was what he’d always been told, what he’d always accepted. He’d had lots of other questions—a million, all boiling down to one, what was he like?—but he realized he’d been waiting for the right time to ask, and the time had never quite come.
A million new questions buzzed now. If this tall man was his father . . . why had he never come for him? Why had he gone away? Why had they told him he was dead? He stopped on that one, unconsciously rubbing his finger hard back and forth against his lips.
Did his mum know he was alive? No. She couldn’t. There was no way. Her grief, her pain all those years was unmistakable, unmistakably real. Even as a little boy he’d understood it. It was with her still, a dim scar that would never fully fade. She wouldn’t want it to. What would this do to her?
His grandfather had kept them both in the dark, then. To shelter them, Harry had said. Alex knew about that, about keeping quiet to keep the trouble away. Pieces of people . . . voodoo . . . golem . . . name of God.
Strange and desperate schemes. Violent . . . horrific . . . evil.
He considered that word. What was he like? Was that his answer? Had he discovered his dad was alive only to discover he was a monster? What kind of cruel miracle was that? Then he thought again of his mum’s sadness. Her love. There had to be more. Some reason he might have gone away from them to do these things. A purpose. Maybe if they could talk—the very notion stunned him as he thought it: maybe they could talk. Maybe there was some mistake, some misunderstanding. Something else. Something missing. There was so much his grandfather hadn’t told him.