“Ah, now you’ve hit the nail on the head. Why would two eminent and trusted physicians work to bring about the collapse of the empire?”
“That’s what I’m asking you?”
“Answer me this,” the disembodied voice went on, “why do you believe Miranda Gallowglass was kidnapped?”
“Blackmail, pure and simple. Somebody felt compelled to force him to complete his work?”
“Very good. Meaning...?”
“Meaning that Gallowglass was working on the Caliban weapon against his will.”
“Precisely.”
“So it is possible that Dr Doppelganger was in the same position.”
“You might think that; I could not possibly comment.”
“But what could anyone have over her? And who is this mysterious blackmailer anyway?”
“That, as they say, is the sixty four thousand guinea question.”
Ulysses had the distinct feeling that there was only so much Hermes was prepared to divulge and that he was probably pushing his luck probing much further. But there was still one more aspect of the mystery that puzzled him.
“The Ripper,” he said. “It murdered Gallowglass, it tried to kill me, then it didn’t and then it ended up saving my life. What was all that about?”
“Gallowglass had blown his cover and had to be silenced.”
“By the blackmailer, you mean?”
“You might think that; I could not possibly comment.”
“And he was trying to confuse the killer – and whoever set it on him – by apparently destroying the bio-weapon when he had in fact sent it to me. But that still doesn’t explain how it changed its tune so suddenly when it had me up against a wall, as it were.”
“You have friends in high places, Mr Quicksilver –”
“I know that.”
“– and you are useful to them.”
“How high are we talking here?” Ulysses asked, fingers steepling before his face.
The speaker remained silent.
“Hello? Are you still there? I said, how high?”
Still nothing. Realising that the interview was over Ulysses rose and left the room without further ado. It was only as the door click shut behind him again that Hermes’ voice whispered from behind the mirror, “Higher than you could ever know, my boy.”
“I THINK WE can say that the trial was a complete success, don’t you?” Lord Octavius De Wynter said as he peered through the inches thick glass panel at the cyborg, secured within its harness and in a state of near suspended animation once more.
“Yes, sir,” the chief technician replied.
“And it appears to have come through relatively unscathed.”
“Yes, what damage it sustained was relatively superficial.”
“And with our new measures in place, we won’t be having any more potentially embarrassing repeat performances with regard to the offing of street-walkers now, will we?”
“No, none whatsoever,” Xavier Sixsmith assured him.
“I wonder why it did that in the first place.”
“Old habits die hard,” the technician said. “It was following previously established patterns of behaviour. You can hardly blame it really. After all, that is why the subject was chosen for this venture.”
“How right you are,” De Wynter said. “Aberline did a good job with that one. Just a shame the world will never know that the inspector really did always get his man.”
“What about Quicksilver?” Sixsmith interrupted.
“What about him?”
“He must have his suspicions. He’s not going to let this one lie, is he?”
“Leave Quicksilver to me.”
Sixsmith opened his mouth to speak again and then caught the look in De Wynter’s eyes and thought better of it.
The towering presence of a man turned to the technician again. “And the other units?”
“Ten are already in production, sir, with another ten to follow as soon as Dr Doppelganger has been able to cultivate enough cloned cerebral tissue.”
“Brains, you mean.”
“Yes, sir, brains.”
“Excellent.” De Wynter turned and strode away from the vault, leaving the technician and Xavier Sixsmith to their own dark thoughts. “As you were, gentlemen. I must be off; matters of state await.”
SECURED BEHIND EIGHTEEN inches of solid steel, the Ripper slept within its sepulchral vault, while visions of street-walkers danced in its head.
“Slice and dice, little red bag,” it whispered in its sleep as its knife-fingers twitched. “Slice and dice.”
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in’t.
The Tempest, Act 5, Scene 1
The End
WHITE RABBIT
I
1901
THE DOOR OPENED and the single candle within the shuttered room guttered in the breeze. The door was closed again quietly and the new arrival joined the four men already seated around the table.
“What news, doctor?” one asked.
“The Queen is dying, Prime Minister,” the new arrival replied.
“Then it is as we suspected,” said another.
“I fear so.”
For a moment nobody said anything, the silence disturbed only by the ticking of a clock on the mantelpiece above the cold hearth.
“Then the Angel of Death hovers over Osborne House, even now,” said a third.
“Do you have to be so bloody elegiac?” snapped the first.
“Sorry, Prime Minister. But I am Poet Laureate, you know?”
“There are dark days ahead of us; the darkest. The Queen is adored – venerated even. With Her Majesty gone, with the figurehead of our great and honourable nation lost to us, the rot will soon set in.”
“You speak as if she’s already dead, Salisbury,” the second said.
“She is as good as, is she not?”
“There is nothing more I can do, certainly,” the doctor added. “And I doubt there is more anyone could do for her.”
“‘You are old, Father William’,” the second added with a smile.
“Really!” the first fumed. “I hardly think that comments like that are appropriate at a time like this!”
“You do not know your Carroll then?”
“What? You would talk of childhood nonsense at a time like this? What’s wrong with you man?”
“It’s one of Her Majesty’s favourites. Did you not know?”
“And what, sir, is the relevance of this bowdlerising?”
“I was merely making the point that age is nothing but a number, thinking that we might look for inspiration elsewhere.”
“She is an old woman,” the first stated emphatically. “She is eighty-one years old. She has reigned for an unparalleled sixty-three years. She is tired and she is ill. She is not long for this world.”
“And what happens when she is gone?”
“Why, all the nations of the world will be circling the corpse of our once great empire ready to move in for the kill.”
“Precisely. The glory days of the British Empire – our Magna Britannia – will be over. Our noble Queen is not known as the grandmother of Europe for nothing. Her descendants will all consider themselves owed a piece of pie when the greatest monarch the world has ever known goes into the ground at last.”
“That is the future as I see it, yes,” confirmed the first.
“But what if Her Majesty were not to die?” The second left the thought hanging.
“Man, you’re talking nonsense again. This is poppycock! You talk in riddles like your beloved Carroll.”
The second turned to the doctor. “You said that there is nothing more you can do for her, doctor.”
“That is right, sir.”
“I would beg to dispute that fact.”
“I beg your pardon?” the doctor managed.
“Quicksilver,” the second
said, addressing the last member of the party seated at the table, a portly middle-aged gentleman with wire-rimmed spectacles, “would you care to explain?”
“Gladly,” Erasmus Quicksilver replied.
He shuffled to his feet and straightened the front of his frock coat. His moment had come at last.
“Gentleman, during Her Majesty’s glorious reign we have seen advances in science and medicine that we could not have predicted when she first came to the throne. Now we have Babbage’s Analytical Engine, the Lovelace Paradigm and we have even taken the first steps in cybernetics. There are even those who say that, in another sixty years, we’ll all be living on the Moon. Who knows what another hundred years of such scientific advances will bring? Perhaps we will even be able to create perfect replicas of living human beings from the smallest samples of biological tissue.”
“And your point is?” the first fumed.
“My point is that the Queen need not die.”
For a moment nobody spoke.
“But you said it yourself, man,” the Prime Minister managed at last, “that such accomplishments are all in the future. They remain the preserve of writers of fanciful tales and penny dreadfuls. And yet we are on the verge of a national crisis right now. We teeter at the brink of disaster!”
“Be in no doubt; the Queen is dying,” the doctor persisted. “Her lungs are riddled with pneumonia. Her major organs are simply worn out.”
“Gentlemen, things have already progressed far further than the man on the street knows, than even you may have realised. So her lungs are useless – we replace them with something better. Her heart gives out – we fix a steam-powered pump in its place. Gentlemen, the Queen need not die. We can rebuild her – we have the technology. We have the technology available now.”
“Go on,” the first said, slowly.
“Gentlemen, I present to you, a little something of my own invention. I give you, the Empress Engine!”
II
Through The Looking Glass
HE WAS FALLING again.
The gondola dropped like a stone through the freezing fog, stinging ice crystals – like a million tiny knives – whirling all about them as they fell through the white hell of the blizzard.
And then the sensation of falling halted abruptly and he was thrown clear of the shattered wreckage of the hot air balloon’s basket.
He lay in the snow, his whole body numb, dimly aware of the fact that Davenport’s body was lying next to his, the man’s blood freezing black in the sub-zero temperatures of the mountaintop. As the cold took hold, he closed his eyes, welcoming the embrace of oblivion...
HE OPENED HIS eyes.
He was falling again, his view of the dirigible and the noted London landmark expanding as he dropped towards the oily black river. A gaseous flame blossomed like an orange rose above him.
And then he hit the surface of the cloying Thames and the waters closed over his head...
HE OPENED HIS eyes.
He was inside the airlock now, the huge pressurised suit he had been bolted into barely fitting inside the conning tower of the submersible. The smaller sub was closing on the other at last; against all the odds, or so it seemed.
He waited with bated breath, his heart thumping against the cage of his ribs, every sense heightened by the rush of adrenalin surging through every fibre of his being.
It was now or never. His mouth suddenly dry, he punched the emergency eject and the airlock opened in a torrent of swirling seawater and bubbles. The abominable pressures working on the craft sucked out the air, the pressure suit and him within it...
HE OPENED HIS eyes to see the beast rearing above him, its impossible anatomy exposed for all to see. Sticking out of its reptilian flesh was the glinting pommel of his sword. Reaching up, he grabbed the bloodstone hilt and pulled. The blade came free with an obscene, sucking gasp.
Pulling himself upright within the embrace of the abomination, he brought the blade to bear and neatly parried the creature’s own chitinous blade. As the talon slid free of the sword again, he twisted his wrist sharply to deliver a downward cutting stroke and a pallid, pilfered arm flopped onto the windswept grass at the cliff’s edge.
The dreadful screams of the beast suddenly ceased, replaced by a single, breathless cry as it reeled backwards, gouts of thick black blood pumping from the severed limb.
He stepped in again, bringing his blade up in a sweeping arc, the tip making contact once more. The severed stem of the creature’s snaking neck writhed in silent agony, and then the creature’s body began to fall towards him...
HE OPENED HIS eyes, half closing them again almost immediately against the full force of the gale howling through the falling Weather Station. Eyes streaming, he started to run along the sloping corridor, searching for the emergency exit.
At the end of the corridor a framed sign, half hanging from the wall read: “Emergency Lifeboats – THIS WAY.” Beneath the words an illustration of a hand pointed to the right.
He followed the hand’s helpful directions.
The wind grew stronger as the passageway continued to bear right, and then, as he rounded the bend he saw that it came to an abrupt end ten yards further on. Beyond the sheared metal superstructure there was nothing but the cold rushing air and the rapidly approaching Thames.
As the churning brown river-water rushed up to meet the plummeting Weather Station he skidded to a halt. Grabbing the handrail to stop himself tumbling out into the yawning void, he braced for impact...
HE OPENED HIS eyes to see the woman being crushed by the great weight of the beast now on top of her.
There came a sudden, savage snarl and he heard the ghastly, wet ripping sound as the monster tore out her throat.
Slowly, purposefully, the monster rose up on its hind-legs and turned to face him. The beast gave him a bloody smile, its baleful stare burning through the mist and into his own appalled eyes.
Suddenly his sword didn’t seem like it would be enough. And then, with a snarl, the werewolf pounced...
HE OPENED HIS eyes, blinking the crusted sleep away as he tried to focus on the ceiling. He blinked twice and continued to stare hard at the peeling paint and cobwebs as the memories fled from him.
He blinked again. His eyes felt sore – the light in the room was too bright. He could feel the nauseous tide of a rising headache at his temples.
The aroma of antiseptic and urine cloyed the air. It was the smell of bleach and incontinence.
He tried to sit up, fighting to hold back the wave of nausea that threatened to overtake him as he did so, but found he couldn’t move his arms. He had to settle for swinging his legs off the tubular steel cot on which he’d been lying, the momentum helping him sit upright. Then he looked down at himself. His fringe flopped into his eyes and he instinctively went to brush it aside, but once again his arms wouldn’t respond. And then he saw why.
Groggily he got to his feet, wincing as a veritable tsunami of sickness threatened to overwhelm him.
Every step an effort, he walked barefoot across the cushioned floor until he was standing in front of the locked and bolted steel door of the cell.
“Hello?” he shouted at the pane of wire-reinforced glass. “Excuse me! Can anyone hear me? There seems to have been some mistake. For some unfathomable reason I’ve been checked into the rubber room and been given the special jacket with the extra long sleeves to wear. Is this Bedlam? I bet it is,” he added to himself. “Look can you just run along and find Professor Brundle? Tell him that Ulysses Quicksilver would like a word, then we can get this all sorted out in a jiffy.”
Rant over, he listened for a reply, but all he could hear was an asthmatic rattle coming through the grating of a ventilation duct in the ceiling and the distant, tuneless whistling of an attendant as he clattered with his trolley through the corridors.
“Hello!” He called again. “Room service! You appear to have confused my reservation with somebody else’s. I distinctly remember booking the Emperor S
uite! Hello!”
But still there was no reply.
He shuffled away from the door and back to the wire-sprung discomfort of the bed. He stared forlornly at the seat-less lavatory bolted to the wall and couldn’t help feeling that something had gone horribly wrong.
“AND HOW ARE you feeling today, Mr Quicksilver?” the white-coated psychiatrist said without looking up from his clipboard.
“Well, Doctor. I’m as fit as a fiddle, whatever that means. I would even go so far as to say I’m chipper. So I’m glad you’re here, because there appears to have been some mistake.”
“Hm?” the doctor mumbled, his pen scratching across the chart clipped to the board.
“Yes. I mean I’ve been incarcerated in this madhouse when there is patently nothing wrong with me!”
“Really?” For the first time since entering the padded cell, the psychiatrist peered at Ulysses with piggy eyes, sunken into the flabby flesh of his face.
“I’m no medical man, Doctor, but I know whether I’m feeling under the weather or not, and I feel fine. Bright as a button, I am.”
“Really.”
“That’s what I keep trying to tell you. There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“Hm.” The doctor returned to note-taking.
“Look, where am I? Is this Bedlam? It’s Bedlam, isn’t it? Just run along and find Professor Brundle, there’s a good chap, and tell him that Ulysses Quicksilver would like a word with him at his earliest convenience.”
“Fascinating,” the man observed. “Good day to you, Mr Quicksilver,” he said, turning for the door.
“You’ll speak to Brundle for me?” Ulysses called after him.
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