Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl

by David Barnett

  “It’s all right, let him get food. Let them all get food, if they want it,” instructed Reed, and the creature fell back.

  “They obey you,” said Gideon. “They understand you?”

  Reed nodded. “And I them.”

  “Impossible,” said Stoker, helping the weakened Countess Bathory, who hung on to his shoulder. “Their language has not been heard for two thousand years or more. You could not have learned it, no matter how long you have been in here.”

  “I didn’t need to.” Reed smiled. He delved into his satchel and withdrew a small ball shining brightly in the reflected torchlight.

  “The Golden Apple of Shangri-La,” breathed Gideon.

  God gifted mankind the golden apple, which removes the barriers of language. It was kept here in Shangri-La, to which it also gives the bounty of lush protection from the Himalayan winter. When mankind is ready, the golden apple will once again unite the nations of the world in one tongue.

  Reed nodded. “You are familiar with my adventures, Mr. Smith.”

  “And I recall you climbed to the peak of Everest to recover the apple from Von Karloff,” said Gideon. “You didn’t return it to Shangri-La. The valley must have died.”

  Reed looked into the shining apple. “Poor Shangri-La. It was the nearest I will ever come to paradise, I think. And now . . . a snowy wasteland. Once I realized Walsingham had dispatched Von Karloff there, I couldn’t leave the apple in Shangri-La.”

  “Even though removing it would mean the valley would die, and all the people in it?” asked Gideon.

  “Even though they would all die,” agreed Reed, focusing on Gideon and the others. “That was when I knew. When I realized.”

  “Realized what, John?” asked Trigger.

  “Cui bono,” said Gideon quietly.

  Reed smiled at him. “Very good, Mr. Smith. Cui bono. To whose benefit? It was then I realized John Reed was being taken for a fool. And it was not going to continue. Lucian, I expect you have many questions. I owe you answers, at least.”

  “You can tell me on the way home,” said Trigger briskly. “Louis Cockayne and Rowena Fanshawe are waiting up above us with a dirigible. Let’s get you back to London.” He shook his head. “You’ve really been down here all this time? For a year?”

  “A year? Has it been that long?” Reed pinched his nose. “Time seems to pass differently here.”

  “John,” said Trigger softly. “You are . . . you do not seem well. Let us return to London at once.”

  “London, yes,” said Reed. “London, of course.” He smiled. “But I think I shall make my own way. By dragon.”

  Bent shook his head, tearing into a hunk of roasted flesh. “I thought this lot was effing bonkers, but you take the biscuit, Reed.” He chewed thoughtfully. “What is this, anyway?”

  Reed shrugged. “Some kind of lizard, I imagine. The Children of Heqet bring my food.” He paused. “Where to start . . . ?”

  “At the beginning,” suggested Stoker.” I always find that best.”

  “The cycle of life has many beginnings,” said Reed. “But, to choose one . . . I set off from London in search of the fabled Rhodopis Pyramid, and riches beyond my wildest dreams. I could not have guessed what I would find here. I found freedom. The shackles that had been forged for me dropped away, the scales fell from my eyes. I found enlightenment.”

  Reed stood up from the chair and strode toward Maria, still seated in the high-backed wooden chair on the strange boat. He said, “It started off as many adventures do. A journey across the skies with the Belle of the Airways. A chance meeting with a friend, Louis Cockayne, in the mélange of the Alexandria souk. Whispered rumors, introductions. Okoth, and his vows to bring me to the pyramid.” Reed smiled crookedly. “I imagine your reaction to seeing the small peak of the pyramid, poking through the sand.” He looked up, where the sloping walls of the chamber converged in the darkness. “Foiled, I returned to Alexandria, knowing there must be another way inside.”

  “Did you know what you’d find?” asked Gideon. “These creatures? These murderous things?”

  Reed frowned. “They do not act out of malice, Mr. Smith. They merely do what they were created for, what they waited for over long millennia.”

  “Tell that to my father,” said Gideon. “And his crew. Those creatures killed them and picked his bones clean.”

  “I am genuinely sorry if that is the case, Mr. Smith,” said Reed. “The Children of Heqet are very . . . single-minded when it comes to fulfilling their purpose.”

  “Which is?” asked Gideon.

  Reed held up his hand. “My research in Alexandria revealed another possible entrance beneath the surface of the Nile, and I employed Mr. Okoth and his submersible. I found the secret tunnel and avoided the traps.” He smiled. “I see you were resourceful enough to do the same, Lucian.”

  “Others weren’t so lucky,” said Trigger. “We found the body of Walton Jones.”

  Reed raised an eyebrow. “Jones? He always was an idiot. And Walsingham is twice the idiot if he employed him. But even Jones’s failure means Walsingham is getting closer to the pyramid . . . it is fortuitous you arrived when you did.”

  Gideon felt suddenly sick. He had delivered Maria straight to Reed. His stupid thirst for adventure and heroism had ruined everything. But what was Reed planning?

  “You found the Children of Heqet here?” he asked. “Are they the weapon you made mention of in your notes?”

  “You are shrewd and intelligent, Mr. Smith,” said Reed. “No, they are not the weapon. And I did not find them—they found me. In the turning room.”

  Reed’s face darkened. “I have no idea how long I was there. Days, surely. I had no food, and my body ached for that which enslaved me.”

  “The opium,” whispered Trigger.

  Reed nodded. “I had only a ball of kef, procured by Okoth. In desperation, curled on the floor, little more than an animal, I ate it. And achieved my enlightenment. My ascension.”

  “You ate a whole ball of hashish?” said Trigger. “You must have been out of your mind.”

  “I was,” agreed Reed. “I stepped out of my mind, out of the prison I had built for myself. The kef liberated my mind and opened it up to the truth.”

  “Which was?” asked Gideon.

  “That Walsingham, and the Crown, had taken me for a fool. That they had set me to work as if I were little more than a dog.”

  “But you were the Hero of the Empire!”

  Reed grinned without humor. “That’s what I said. Unfortunately, truth and fiction diverged somewhat radically around the time of the Shangri-La incident. For all Lucian’s talent with the quill, he could not write a happy ending for me. Once I realized Von Karloff was in the pay of Walsingham, up there on the frozen peak of Everest, my world came crashing down. If Walsingham could play us all off against each other so easily, sending Von Karloff on one little errand and Walton Jones on another, myself on a third . . . well, what was the point? We thought ourselves free spirits, roaming the globe at will. We were merely puppets. And once I realized that, I saw I was being betrayed at every turn. I gave my life to the British Empire, and traveled the world on Walsingham’s command. And how did they treat me? As though I were a mere errand boy, a foot- soldier in their endless quest to know everything and rule all.”

  Reed paused thoughtfully. “Lucian, before I set off for Egypt, Walsingham called me in to Whitehall. He wanted to retire me.”

  “Would that have been such a bad thing?” whispered Trigger. “To sit at home, with me, in Mayfair?”

  “Retire me,” said Reed. “As though I were merely some employee. Thank you for all your years of service, Dr. Reed. Have a meager pension and the thanks of a nation. Not only that, Lucian, but they sought to impose conditions. I was not, in my retirement, to adventure any further. Not to, in their words, feather my own nest.” He barked a laugh. “They all but called me a buccaneer. Said I no longer fit the sort of image England wanted to project.” He shoo
k his head.

  “So you came here,” said Gideon. “One last hurrah. Fill your coffers with the treasure of the Rhodopis Pyramid for your retirement.”

  “At first, yes.” Reed nodded. “But a . . . bigger picture emerged. Thanks to the Children of Heqet.”

  “Why did they not kill you?” asked Stoker. “Forgive me, but you were a mere tomb robber to them.”

  “Because of this,” said Reed, touching the pendant hanging at his pale chest. “Because they recognized it.”

  So did Gideon. “The amulet from Arkhamville University,” he said.

  Reed smiled at Trigger. “He really is good, isn’t he? Yes, Mr. Smith. The amulet. They recognized it for what it was, and thanks to the Golden Apple of Shangri-La I was able to converse with them.” He paused. “Can you imagine, talking to things that remembered ancient Egypt?”

  “So why not leave?” asked Gideon. “Why sit in here for a year?”

  “In truth, I don’t think they would have let me, even if I had wanted to,” said Reed. “They are simple creatures, with one sole purpose. My possession of the amulet—” He smiled. “Do you know of the ka, which the ancients believed is the life-force inside every man, and continues on his eternal journey once his body is turned to dust? I think the Children of Heqet feel me to be some kind of reincarnation of their master, the Pharaoh Amasis II.”

  “I still do not understand,” said Bathory, her voice ragged. Gideon turned to look at her, leaning on Stoker’s shoulder. She looked pale and weak, her eyes fluttering. “Your creatures . . . they attacked Castle Dracula. Slew my husband. For what?”

  Reed took the amulet from his neck and placed it on a low stone table. He reached into his bag and withdrew a golden scarab. “For this, Countess.”

  He placed it alongside the amulet and took out a small stone idol, fashioned roughly into the shape of a man. Gideon said, “The shabti stolen from the British Museum. By the Children of Heqet, we presume?”

  Reed nodded. “The same one I confronted in Faxmouth. It is dead, now, battered against Cleopatra’s needle.” He paused. “A fitting death, I suppose.” His eyes narrowed. “That was you, wasn’t it?”

  “It attacked us,” said Trigger.

  “As I said, driven by a sole purpose,” said Reed. He took a small box made of some precious metal, engraved and inlaid with jewels, from his bag. “Hidden beneath the rocks on the Yorkshire coast,” he said.

  “And for that my father died,” said Gideon.

  Finally, Reed removed a ring, inset with a huge ruby. He held it up to the light, turning it as it caught the flickering flames. “Taken from the finger of a mutilated body on the banks of the Thames.”

  Maria gasped and Bent said, “Annie Crook!”

  Reed shrugged. Gideon said, “But what are all these things? What do they mean?”

  “Together with what is in the clockwork girl’s head, they mean everything,” said Reed. “They mean I can finally leave this place.”

  Reed laid the ring down and surveyed them all. The ring, the shabti, the amulet, the scarab, the box. He sighed and said, “You will have to indulge me. Allow me to tell you a story.” Reed stroked his beard. “Mr. Smith, you echoed the words of my erstwhile colleague Jamyang earlier. Cui bono. To whose benefit?”

  “Walsingham,” said Gideon. “Walsingham‘s benefit. That’s what you discovered in Shangri-La. That’s why you’re here now. Why we’re all here.”

  Reed nodded. “That was the answer. Things have changed.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Gideon.

  “To whose benefit?” asked John Reed. “Mine, Mr. Smith. It is all to my benefit now.”

  29

  The Tale of Rhodopis

  Toward the end of the Twenty- sixth Dynasty of Egypt (said John Reed), five hundred years before the birth of Jesus Christ, when Egypt was about to fall to the Persian hordes, a slave girl from Greece worked in the house of an old man. During the precious time she got to herself, Rhodopis would steal away among the olive trees and sway to music she heard in her head, perhaps the tunes of her long-lost home in Greece. One day, the elderly master, walking in the olive trees, saw Rhodopis dancing. He was entranced, and when she had finished he applauded her most enthusiastically. The very next day he presented her with a gift: a pair of ruby-red slippers in which she could dance to her heart’s content.

  One day, scrubbing laundry on the rocks on the banks of the Nile, her beloved slippers got wet, and she placed them on a rock to dry. A huge falcon swooped down from the sky and snatched up one of her slippers. Unknown to Rhodopis, the falcon was actually Horus, most ancient and noble of all the Nile gods. He flew with the slipper to Sais, and the court of the Pharaoh, Amasis II, and dropped the slipper from a great height into his lap.

  Amasis had yet to take a wife, and he recognized this as a message from the gods. Whoever the slipper fitted he would marry. All the maidens of the region were invited to the celebrations at Sais, and each one eagerly tried the slipper throughout the course of the festivities. Rhodopis, of course, had not gone to the festivities, because the other girls, jealous of their master’s attention to her, had locked her in a cupboard. Failing to find anyone whom the slipper fit, Amasis decreed he would travel the land and find every maiden, and she would try on the slipper. Eventually his search led him to the house of the old man, and Rhodopis was revealed as the maiden whose foot fitted the slipper, and Amasis joyfully took her to his palace in Sais to be his bride.

  “Cinderella,” said Gideon. Reed had been seduced by a tale for children.

  Reed nodded. “But this was no fairy story; there was no happy ever after. It is the story behind the story that counts.” He paused, as though gathering his thoughts, then said, “These were dark times, and the Persian hordes were massing under the conquering Xerxes, who swept all before him. Amasis knew it was only a matter of time before the Persians overran Egypt, so he set his scientists and theologians the task of creating a weapon so powerful and destructive that it would save Egypt from the invading armies.

  “They worked on this, and at the same time Amasis ordered a pyramid built to honor Rhodopis, and to provide both a sepulcher for the couple when they died and a place for this terrible new weapon to be developed in secret, away from the eyes of the Persian spies.

  “Amasis called upon Heqet, the goddess of the Nile, to provide an honor guard for what was to be kept within. Heqet is the goddess of fertility and childbirth. She selected fifteen women to give birth to her children, which were nurtured and raised to adulthood in Heqet’s temple in Sais. When the pyramid was completed they were put to the sword and embalmed, given eternal undeath by the frog-mother, and placed here to help Amasis’s plans come to fruition.

  “And there they lay for nigh on two and a half thousand years. The rising waters of the Nile during particularly heavy rains caused the sepulcher to flood; one of the mummified bodies of the Children of Heqet was carried out into the river, and thence it was found by Professor Reginald Halifax, who took it to the New World.

  “Halifax had found, during prior excavations, this jewel. The proximity of the amulet to the mummified Child of Heqet revived it, and the guardian of the sepulcher knew its time had come to live again. It attempted to return the jewel to the pyramid, but I intervened, and it left empty handed. It returned to the pyramid and woke the others, to begin their work in preparation for the return of Amasis.”

  Gideon pointed to the items on the stone table. “Then these . . . and the artifact in Maria’s head . . .”

  Reed nodded. “They had been scattered across the world; they were being transported from Sais when bandits attacked and made off with them, and from there they were traded and stolen and transported across the globe. The Children of Heqet, once awakened, set out on their task to locate them all.”

  “It seems a lot of trouble to go to for some trinkets,” said Bent, looking around. “This pyramid’s stuffed with treasures. Haven’t you got enough here?”

  “Do yo
u not understand, Mr. Bent? They are merely disguised as jewels and treasures. They are, in fact, ancient Egyptian technology, indistinguishable from magic to our modern minds. They are the weapon, or at least what powers it.”

  “What manner of weapon is this thing?” asked Gideon. He truly feared Reed’s sanity had ebbed away, with only the company of those foul mummies. It would drive anyone insane.

  “Like nothing the ancients had conceived of before,” said Reed. If he was insane, thought Gideon, he was like no raving lunatic Gideon had ever imagined. There was a coldness to him that seemed to make even the torch-flames shiver. “It required the best minds and philosophers of the ancient world to create it. But time was running out. Once the Persians attacked the caravan, the weapon was rendered useless. The pieces had been forged in science and magic in temples and laboratories. A single day more, and they would have arrived here, and the weapon would have been completed. The Persians swarmed over Sais, and both Amasis and Rhodopis died in the conflict. They were taken into the pyramid and embalmed, and the sands of time conspired to hide them. The treasures were scattered across the world over the subsequent centuries.”

  “Until now,” said Gideon.

  Reed stood from his throne. “Finally the pieces are assembled, and the weapon is ready to be activated.”

  Reed gathered up the artifacts and walked to where Maria sat patiently, listening. Gideon moved forward, but the Children of Heqet closed the gap between him and Reed.

  “Not long now,” said Reed soothingly to the mummies. “Not long, then eternal sleep can be yours.”

  “I won’t help you,” said Maria. “Whatever is in my head isn’t yours, Dr. Reed.”

  “You’re lucky you have a head at all,” said Reed. “I wanted the artifact, not you. You can thank the Children of Heqet you aren’t headless at the bottom of the ocean. They knew more than I, that the artifact had to be aligned to a living brain. Two thousand years ago it would have been a slave; today it would have had to be some innocent stolen from the hinterland of Alexandria, I suppose. You have saved me from what I imagine would have been some rather amateur and painful surgery upon a stranger, Maria.”