The Neutronium Alchemist

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “Louise,” Genevieve said forlornly, “I don’t like this. Those people with Daddy were really peculiar.”

  “I know. But Mother will tell us what to do.”

  “She went inside with them.”

  “Yes.” Louise realized just how anxious Mother had been for her and Genevieve to get away from Daddy’s friends. She looked around the yard, uncertain what to do next. Would Mother send for them, or should they go in? Daddy would expect to talk with them. The old daddy, she reminded herself sadly.

  Louise settled for stalling. There was plenty to do in the stables; take the saddles off, brush the horses down, water them. She and Genevieve both took off their riding jackets and set to.

  It was twenty minutes later, while they were putting the saddles back in the tack room, when they heard the first scream. The shock was all the more intense because it was male: a raw-throated yell of pain which dwindled away into a sobbing whimper.

  Genevieve quietly put her arm around Louise’s waist. Louise could feel her trembling and patted her softly. “It’s all right,” she whispered.

  The two of them edged over to the window and peered out. There was nothing to see in the courtyard. The manor’s windows were black and blank, sucking in Duke’s light.

  “I’ll go and find out what’s happening,” Louise said.

  “No!” Genevieve pulled at her urgently. “Don’t leave me alone. Please, Louise.” She was on the verge of tears.

  Louise’s hold tightened in reflex. “Okay, Gen, I won’t leave you.”

  “Promise? Really truly promise?”

  “Promise!” She realized she was just as frightened as Genevieve. “But we must find out what Mother wants us to do.”

  Genevieve nodded brokenly. “If you say so.”

  Louise looked at the high stone wall of the west wing, sizing it up. What would Joshua do in a situation like this? She thought about the layout of the wing, the family apartments, the servants’ utility passages. Rooms and corridors she knew better than anyone except for the chief housekeeper, and possibly Daddy.

  She took Genevieve by the hand. “Come on. We’ll try and get up to Mother’s boudoir without anyone seeing us. She’s bound to go there eventually.”

  They crept out into the courtyard and scuttled quickly along the foot of the manor’s wall to a small green door which led into a storeroom at the back of the kitchens. Louise expected a shouted challenge at any moment.

  She was panting by the time she heaved on the big iron handle and nipped inside.

  The storeroom was filled with sacks of flour and vegetables piled high in various wooden bays. Two narrow window slits, set high in the wall, cast a paltry grey light through their cobweb-caked panes.

  Louise flicked the switch as Genevieve closed the door. A couple of naked light spheres on the roof sputtered weakly, then went out.

  “Damnation!” Louise took Genevieve’s hand and threaded her way carefully around the boxes and sacks.

  The utility corridor beyond had plain white plaster walls and pale yellow flagstones. Light spheres every twenty feet along its ceiling were flickering on and off completely at random. The effect made Louise feel mildly giddy, as if the corridor were swaying about.

  “What’s doing that?” Genevieve whispered fiercely.

  “I’ve no idea,” she replied carefully. A dreadful ache of loneliness had stolen up on her without any warning. Cricklade didn’t belong to them anymore, she knew that now.

  They made their way along the disconcerting corridor to the antechamber at the end. A cast-iron spiral staircase wound up through the ceiling.

  Louise paused to hear if anyone was coming down. Then, satisfied they were still alone, she started up.

  The manor’s main corridors were a vast contrast to the plain servant utilities. Wide strips of thick green and gold carpet ran along polished golden wood planks, the walls were hung with huge traditional oil paintings in ostentatious gilt frames. Small antique chests stood at regular intervals, holding either delicate objets d’art or cut crystal vases with fragrant blooms of terrestrial and xenoc flowers grown in the manor’s own conservatory.

  The outside of the door at the top of the spiral stairs was disguised as a wall panel. Louise teased it open and peeped out. A grand stained-glass window at the far end of the corridor was sending out broad fans of coloured light to dye the walls and ceiling with tartan splashes.

  Engraved light spheres on the ceiling were glowing a lame amber. All of them emitted an unhealthy buzzing sound.

  “Nobody about,” Louise said.

  The two of them darted out and shut the panel behind them. They started edging towards their mother’s boudoir.

  A distant cry sounded. Louise couldn’t work out where it came from. It wasn’t close, though; thank sweet Jesus.

  “Let’s go back,” Genevieve said. “Please, Louise. Mummy knows we went to the stables. She’ll find us there.”

  “We’ll just see if she’s here, first. If she’s not, then we’ll go straight back.”

  They heard the anguished cry again, even softer this time.

  The boudoir door was twenty feet away. Louise steeled herself and took a step towards it.

  “Oh, God, no! No, no, no. Stop it. Grant! Dear God, help me!”

  Louise’s muscles locked in terror. It was her mother’s voice—Mother’s scream—coming from behind the boudoir door.

  “Grant, no! Oh, please. Please, no more.” A long, shrill howl of pain followed.

  Genevieve was clutching at her in horror, soft whimpers bubbling from her open mouth. The light spheres right outside the boudoir door grew brighter. Within seconds they glared hotter than Duke at noon. Both of them burst apart with a thin pop, sending slivers of milky glass tinkling down on the carpet and floorboards.

  Marjorie Kavanagh screeched again.

  “Mummy!” Genevieve wailed.

  Marjorie Kavanagh’s scream broke off. There was a muffled, inexplicable thud from behind the door. Then: “RUN! RUN, DARLING. JUST RUN, NOW!”

  Louise was already stumbling back towards the concealed stairway door, holding on to a distraught, sobbing Genevieve. The boudoir door flew open, wood splintering from the force of the blow which struck it. A solid shaft of sickly emerald light punched out into the corridor.

  Spidery shadows moved within it, growing denser.

  Two figures emerged.

  Louise gagged. It was Rachel Handley, one of the manor’s maids. She looked the same as normal. Except her hair. It had turned brick-red, the strands curling and coiling around each other in slow, oily movements.

  Then Daddy was standing beside the chunky girl, still in his militia uniform. His face wore a foreign, sneering smile.

  “Come to Papa, baby,” he growled happily, and took a step towards Louise.

  All Louise could do was shake her head hopelessly. Genevieve had slumped to her knees, bawling and shaking violently.

  “Come on, baby.” His voice had fallen to a silky coo.

  Louise couldn’t stop the sob that burped from her lips. Soon it would become a mad scream which would never end.

  Her father laughed delightedly. A shape moved through the liquid green light behind him and Rachel.

  Louise was so numbed she could no longer even manage a solitary gasp of surprise. It was Mrs Charlsworth, their nanny. Variously: tyrant and surrogate mother, confidante and traitor. A rotund, middle-aged woman, with prematurely greying hair and an otherwise sour face softened by hundreds of granny wrinkles.

  She stabbed a knitting needle straight at Grant Kavanagh’s face, aiming for his left eye. “Leave my girls alone, you bloody fiend,” she yelled defiantly.

  Louise could never quite remember exactly what happened next. There was blood, and miniature lightning forks. Rachel Handley let out a clarion shriek. Shattered glass erupted from the frames of the oil paintings down half the length of the corridor as the blazing white lightning strobed violently.

  Louise crammed her hands o
ver her ears as the shriek threatened to crack open her skull. The lightning died away. When she looked up, instead of her father there was a hulking humanoid shape standing beside Rachel. It wore strange armour, made entirely of little squares of dark metal, embossed with scarlet runes, and tied together with brass wire. “Bitch!” it stormed at a quailing Mrs Charlsworth. Thick streamers of bright orange smoke were belching out of its eye slits.

  Rachel Handley’s arms turned incandescent. She clamped her splayed fingers over Mrs Charlsworth’s cheeks, teeth bared in exertion as she pushed in. Skin sizzled and charred below her fingertips. Mrs Charlsworth mewed in agony. The maid released her. She slumped backwards, her head lolling to one side; and she looked at Louise, smiling as tears seeped down her ruined cheeks. “Go,” she mouthed.

  The grievous plea seemed to kick directly into Louise’s nervous system.

  She pushed her shoulders into the wall, levering herself upright.

  Mrs Charlsworth grinned mirthlessly as the maid and the burly warrior closed on her to consummate their vengeance. She raised the pathetic knitting needle again.

  Ribbons of white fire snaked around Rachel’s arms as she grinned at her prey. Small balls of it dripped off her fingertips, flying horizontally towards the stricken woman, eating eagerly through the starched grey uniform. A booming laugh emerged from the clinking armour, mingling with Mrs Charlsworth’s gurgles of pain.

  Louise put her arm under Genevieve’s shoulder and lifted her bodily.

  Flashes of light and the sounds of Mrs Charlsworth’s torture flooded the corridor behind her.

  I mustn’t turn back. I mustn’t.

  Her fingers found the catch for the concealed door, and it swung open silently. She almost hurled Genevieve through the gap into the gloom beyond, heedless of whether anyone else was on the stairs.

  The door slid shut.

  “Gen? Gen!” Louise shook the petrified girl. “Gen, we have to get out of here.” There was no response. “Oh, dear Jesus.” The urge to curl into a ball and weep her troubles away was strengthening.

  If I do that, I’ll die. And the baby with me.

  She tightened her grip on Genevieve’s hand and hurried down the spiral stairs. At least Genevieve’s limbs were working. Though what would happen if they met another of those … people-creatures was another question altogether.

  They’d just reached the small anteroom at the bottom of the spiral when a loud hammering began above. Louise started to run down the corridor to the storeroom. Genevieve stumbled along beside her, a low determined humming coming from her lips.

  The hammering stopped, and there was the brassy thump of an explosion.

  Tendrils of bluish static shivered down the spiral stairs, grounding out through the floor. Red stone tiles quaked and cracked. The dimming light spheres along the ceiling sprang back to full intensity again.

  “Faster, Gen,” she shouted.

  They charged into the storeroom and through the green door leading to the courtyard. Merlin was standing in the wide-open gateway of the stable block, barking incessantly. Louise headed straight for him. If they could take a horse they’d be free. She could ride better than anyone else at the manor.

  They were still five yards short of the stables when two people ran out of the storeroom. It was Rachel and her father (except it’s not really him, she thought desperately).

  “Come back, Louise,” the dark knight called. “Come along, sweetie. Daddy wants a cuddle.”

  Louise and Genevieve dashed around the gates. Merlin stared out at the yard for a second, then turned quickly and followed them inside.

  Globules of white fire smashed into the stable doors, breaking apart into complex webs which probed the woodwork with the tenacity of a ghoul’s fingers. Glossy black paint blistered and vaporised, the planks began to blaze furiously.

  “Undo the stall doors,” Louise called above the incendiary roar of the fire and the braying, agitated horses. She had to say it again before Genevieve fumbled with the first bolt. The horse inside the stall shot out into the aisle which ran the length of the stable.

  Louise rushed for the far end of the stables. Merlin was yapping hysterically behind her. Fire had spread from the doors to straw bundled loosely in the manger. Orange sparks were flying like rain in a hurricane. Thick arms of black smoke coiled insidiously along the ceiling.

  The voices from outside called again, issuing orders and promises in equal amounts. None of them were real.

  Screams were adding to the clamour in the courtyard now. Quinn’s disciples had inevitably gained the upper hand; Cricklade’s few remaining free servants were being hunted and possessed without any attempt at stealth.

  Louise reached the stall at the end of the stables, the one with Daddy’s magnificent black stallion, a bloodline geneered to a perfection which nineteenth-century sporting kings could only dream of. The bolt slid back easily, and she grabbed the bridle before he had a chance to arrow into the aisle. He snorted furiously at her, but allowed her to steady him.

  She had to stand on a bale of hay in order to mount him. There was no time for a saddle.

  The fire had spread with horrendous speed. Several of the stalls were burning now, their stout old timber walls shooting out wild sulphurous flames. Merlin was backing away from them, his barking fearful. Over half a dozen horses were milling in the aisle, whinnying direly. Flames had cut them off from the stable doors, the noisy inferno pressing them back from their one exit. She couldn’t see Gen.

  “Where are you?” she shouted. “Gen!”

  “Here. I’m here.” The voice was coming from an empty stall.

  Louise urged the stallion forwards down the aisle, yelling wildly at the panicking horses in front of her. Two of them reared up, alarmed by this new, unexpected threat. They began to move en masse towards the flames.

  “Quick!” Louise yelled.

  Genevieve saw her chance and sprinted out into the aisle. Louise leaned over and grabbed her. At first she thought she’d miscalculated the girl’s weight, feeling herself starting to slide downwards. But then Genevieve snatched at the stallion’s mane, causing it to neigh sharply. Just as Louise was sure her spine would snap, or she’d crash headfirst onto the aisle’s stone flagging, Genevieve levered herself up to straddle the base of the stallion’s neck.

  The stable doors had been all but consumed by the eerily hot fire. Their remaining planks sagged and twisted on the glowing hinges, then lurched onto the cobbles with a loud bang.

  With the intensity of the flames temporarily reduced, the horses raced for the door and their chance of freedom. Louise dug her heels into the stallion’s flanks, spurring it on. There was an exhilarating burst of speed. Yellow spires of flame splashed across her left arm and leg, making her cry out. Genevieve squealed in front of her, batting frantically at her blouse. The stench of singed hair solidified in her nostrils. Thin layers of smoke stretching across the aisle whipped across her face, stinging her eyes.

  Then they were through, out of the gaping door with its wreath of tiny flames scrabbling at the ruined frame, chasing after the other horses.

  Fresh air and low sunlight washed over them. The hefty knight in the dark mosaic armour was standing ahead of them. Streamers of bright orange smoke were still pouring from his helmet’s eye slits. Sparks of white fire danced across his raised gauntlets. He started to point a rigid forefinger at them, the white fire building.

  But the posse of crazed horses couldn’t be deflected. The first one flashed past stark inches from him. Alert to the danger they presented, even to someone with energistic power, he began to jump aside. That was his mistake. The second horse might have missed him if he’d stayed still.

  Instead, it struck him almost head on. The screaming horse buckled on top of him, forelegs snapping with an atrocious crack as inertia sent it hurtling forwards regardless. The knight was flung out sideways, spinning in the air. He landed bonelessly, bouncing a full foot above the cobbles before coming to a final res
t. His armour vanished immediately, revealing Grant Kavanagh’s body, still clad in his militia uniform. The fabric was torn in a dozen places, stained scarlet by the blood pumping from open wounds.

  Louise gasped, instinctively pulling the reins to halt the stallion.

  Daddy was hurt!

  But the flowing blood swiftly stanched itself. Ragged tears of flesh started to close up. The uniform was stitching itself together. Dusty, grazed leather shoes became metallic boots. He shook his head, grunting in what was little more than dazed annoyance.

  Louise stared for a second as he started to raise himself onto his elbows, then spurred the horse away.

  “Daddy!” Genevieve shouted in anguish.

  “It’s not him,” Louise told her through clenched teeth. “Not now. That’s something else. The devil’s own monster.”

  Rachel Handley stood in front of the arched entrance to the courtyard.

  Hands on hips, aroused wormlet hair threshing eagerly. “Nice try.” She laughed derisively. A hand was raised, palm towards the sisters. The awful white fire ignited around her wrist, wispy talons flaring from her fingers. Her laugh deepened at the sight of Louise’s anguish, cutting across Merlin’s miserable barking.

  The bullet-bolt of white fire which caught Rachel Handley an inch above her left eye came from somewhere behind Louise. It bored straight through the maid’s skull, detonating in the centre of the brain. The back of her head blew off in a gout of charred gore and rapidly dissipating violet flame. Her body remained upright for a second, then the muscles spasmed once before losing all tension. She pitched forwards. Bright arterial blood spilled out of her ruined, smoking brainpan.

  Louise twisted around. The courtyard was empty apart from the woozy figure of her father still clambering to his feet. A hundred empty windows stared down at her. Faint screams echoed over the rooftops. Long swirls of flame churned noisily out of the stable block’s wide doors.

  Genevieve was shaking violently again, crying in convulsive gulps.