by Dan Vyleta
Thomas wrinkles his nose at this. “What was it we saw, exactly? That had you running scared? The ledger? The cage?”
But Charlie knows different. “We saw the blueprints. London’s new sewer system, though we did not recognise it for what it was. There was a name on it: Aschenstedt. I thought it was the name of a city. But it is a man. Aschen-Stadt. Ash-town. Taylor, Ashton and Sons. Renfrew would have seen it in a heartbeat.”
Lady Naylor sighs. “Stupid, isn’t it, this play on names? Dangerous. But he’s a silly man sometimes. There is a child in every genius.”
As she says it, a key turns in the flat’s front door and Sebastian Aschenstedt steps through, cheeks ruddy from the cold.
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They talk in the hallway, Sebastian and Lady Naylor. It appears he is too excited to sit down. Charlie watches him closely while he listens in on their conversation. A clean-shaven man, the skin young and chafed where the razor has touched it. When he smiles, dimples dig themselves into the corners of his mouth.
“I did the tests. Three separate blood samples, all negative. He’s unspoiled.”
“When do we start, then?”
“The sooner the better. I’ll go in to him now.”
It’s Thomas who blocks Sebastian’s path. Always Thomas: the one amongst them least afraid to start a fight. Livia draws close to him, chin drooping, false-meek, edgy, small hands curling into fists.
But it’s Charlie who speaks.
“What are you going to do to the child?”
Sebastian turns to him, answers frankly, guilelessly, his hands busy sorting through the contents of his doctor’s bag.
“We will take off his György respirator. The mask. He needs to breathe freely and to eat. He has had a rough voyage. No sunlight, liquid food, sedated for much of the time. Now he is anaemic and showing early signs of scurvy. We can fix all that once the respirator is off.”
“It’ll infect him.”
“Why yes. In fact, we’ll make very sure he’s infected before we take it off. You object? He was bound for infection the moment he left his jungle tribe. It took severe precautions to preclude it until now.”
“Once he’s infected—he won’t be able to go back.”
Sebastian seems surprised by the comment, as though Charlie has said something he has failed to consider. But before he can answer, Lady Naylor intervenes.
“Before the week is out, the world will have changed. Not just London, or England, but the world! None of our truths will hold anymore.”
“Then he will be able to go back?”
Her answer is raw with emotion. “We will all be free for the first time in our lives.”
Without saying a word, Livia pulls Thomas out of Sebastian’s way. He lets her do it, his eyes on Charlie, soliciting his thoughts.
Sebastian is through the door and has locked it long before Charlie has puzzled out what his thoughts may be.
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One glimpse is all they get before the door closes: a little creature with an outsize head, the mask bulbous up front and smooth around the back, rubber-coating his skull. A proboscis dangling from the jawline. Eyes ringed in metal, portholes to the child within. He is sitting on the ground not on the bed, squatting really, bum on heels. His fingers are busy with an insect, pinning one of its legs to the floor, watching the bug’s body march itself around this pivot. The boy looks up when Sebastian’s shadow intrudes upon him. Then the door falls shut; the lock snaps, the key is removed. Is pocketed, Charlie imagines, the doctor’s bag put down. Thomas takes up position at the keyhole without hesitation, almost shouldering Lady Naylor aside. His report is terse. Charlie and Livia stand close behind him, Charlie conscious of her smell, her presence, and careful not to touch.
“Sebastian is talking to the boy. I cannot hear what he is saying. Now he is tying his hands. No struggle. He is attaching something to the end of the mask, to the breathing tube or whatever it is. A metal disk of some sort, like a tin of boot polish. It screws onto the end. Now he reaches for his doctor’s bag, pulling out a syringe. Big needle. It goes into the tin, not the boy. And now—”
Thomas falters, pales, stands up abruptly and starts hammering on the door. Charlie and Livia both start forward, to the keyhole. He captures it first, greedy for the horror beyond, and afraid, too, wishing to protect Livia from it, his heart beating from the warmth of her cheek next to his.
What he sees is hard to describe. The child is shaking, convulsing. Sebastian’s hands are steadying him, pressing him down to the floor. The mask appears changed, the eyeholes jet black, the rubber tube jerking as though alive. Then, around the edges of the mask, the boy appears to start bleeding: black, sticky Smoke seeping out like oil. Minutes of this, Thomas pounding the door. Then Sebastian takes off the mask, a buckle at a time; takes a handkerchief out of his pocket, dabs it with a liquid from a bottle, wipes down the exhausted child’s face, removing a glossy layer of near-liquid Soot. The boy that emerges is thin, sallow underneath his dark skin, the hair black and vigorous if cropped very short. Crooked teeth and small crinkly eyes. The moment he has regained some strength he starts pummeling Sebastian, biting and kicking. Charlie looks away in anguish. Livia takes his place. They are all speechless. Thomas has stopped attacking the door, his fists swollen. Beyond it the sounds of struggle reach them dimly.
Then Livia says, “He is not smoking. He’s angry and scared, and you’ve infected him, but he isn’t smoking.”
“He won’t,” Lady Naylor says. “There is an incubation period.”
“How long?”
Her mother hesitates. “Several weeks before he starts showing. But in seventy-two hours his blood will begin to change.”
The door opens and Sebastian emerges. Behind him the child is a crumpled figure on the bed; his head lost in its linen, exhausted and still. For a moment Charlie has the urge to hit Sebastian, Smoke black and bitter in his mouth.
But the man’s eyes dispel his anger.
“Poor child. He is exhausted. Best let him rest now. To-ka. He keeps saying To-ka. Perhaps it means Mother.”
When Sebastian locks the door it seems a mercy, not punishment. Though, of course: it also suits his plans.
“What was in the tin?” Thomas asks hoarsely.
“Soot. Very black Soot.”
“Then you found a way to bring it to life.”
“Yes, of course. Soot can be quickened: turned back into Smoke. Temporarily, partially, at great cost. It’s an inefficient process.”
“Like cigarettes.”
“Yes. The technology is decades old.”
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It is hard to sleep after what they have seen, hard to talk even, compare notes. They sit around uneasily, Charlie, Thomas, and Livia, on the floor of the room shared by the two boys, each of them caught in their own thoughts. Livia has pulled a bent cigarette from her pocket, one of Julius’s, and is cutting it open with the edge of a fingernail. After some minutes she stands to get closer to the lamp.
“It’s a mix of Soot and tobacco. But it’s sticky somehow, like it has been treated with some goo.”
“That’s what does it then,” Thomas suggests. “Quickens it. Makes it revert to Smoke.”
“It has a peculiar smell. And the Soot is very dark.” Livia runs her finger through it, raises it up to the eye. “And look: each little particle is different, some black, some grey.” She turns, catches Charlie’s eye, looks back at her finger. “I have never done this before. Study Soot. In school they just told us it was dead. Inert.”
She rerolls the cigarette, sticks it in her mouth, bends to the lamp. At once Charlie is on his feet. His hand is near her shoulder before it occurs to him that he no longer has a right to touch.
“Don’t,” he says.
“Why? Will it turn me bad?” She hides her face by lowering it to the gas lamp, sticks the end of the cigarette into its flame. “One puff, Charlie. We live in London. We are all inhaling fifty puffs a day.”
Charlie retrea
ts a step, sees Thomas rise in expectation. He likes her smoking, it shoots through him before he buries the thought. Livia inhales, exhales, her cheeks flushing dark after some delay. It takes her a moment to collect herself.
“Nasty but weak,” she says. “A tingle of filth. It made me feel angry, imperious. And also a little—” She breaks off, biting her lip. “Animal functions. That’s what it speaks to. A whisper in the blood.
“But look,” she adds, stroking the cigarette’s ashes onto her palm as soon as they have cooled. “There’s no trace of the tobacco. But the Soot remains.”
“Not all of it,” says Thomas, stepping up to her, taking hold of her hand and bringing it up to his eyes. “Look, all this Soot is light. The dark stuff is gone.”
Livia starts, compares the smudge on her fingertip with the base of the cigarette that remains unlit.
“You are right. What does it mean?”
“It means that only black sin can be activated,” Charlie whispers from the sidelines. “Temporarily. Partially. At great cost. The small sins,” he says, taken aback by his own anger, “are as dead as dust.”
Thomas and Livia are still holding hands when he storms out of the room.
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It proves hard to find a place in which to be alone. Charlie is too restless to sit still in some corner; too haunted by the thought of Julius to take to the streets of London at night. So he wanders the flat, its hallway and landing, back and forth past the boy-prisoner’s cell. His fingers brush the walls, the doors, the windowsills, collect specks of London’s Soot grown into the paint and plaster, some chalky grey and coarse, others fine as paint pigments, the soft greys of photography. Irritation, appetite, illicit joy; the sting of want. Everyday vice: the humdrum of life. Once infectious, now sour and dead. He wipes it off against his trouser leg and continues on his rounds; brushes the walls again, searching for something, the side of his leg soon shiny with grey.
It is during these restless rounds that he catches sight of the sewer map. Sebastian and Lady Naylor have spread it on the kitchen table, are poring over it. Or rather there are two maps, one marked “Ashton,” the other “Aschenstedt.” It is hard to tell from a distance, but the second seems a denser web: a replica of the first with added lines. Lady Naylor turns it over when Charlie draws close. He feigns disinterest and fetches the pitcher from the sideboard.
“One word to the authorities,” Lady Naylor calls after him, worried. “That’s all it would take. And nothing about the world changes.”
“How do you know I care?” Charlie replies. And: “You are like Renfrew then. He too wants change.”
“No, he only thinks he does. But all he can imagine is more of the same.”
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Half an hour later Charlie hears her arguing with Thomas. His friend has barged into the kitchen and is demanding answers.
“Talk straight. You swore it to me! On your husband’s life.”
His voice rises further when she does not give him what he wants.
Within an hour of their shouting, milady comes to find Charlie, sitting alone outside the child’s door, listening to the silence beyond.
“I cannot talk to that one,” she says softly, then surprises him by easing herself onto the floor next to him. Baroness Naylor, Dowager Countess of Essex, Marchioness of Thomond, her bottom in the dust. She looks dignified even here.
“He is always angry. Just like my Julius. I suppose that’s the problem. He reminds me of my son.”
Her words take Charlie back to Renfrew’s. Julius’s voice rising from below the floorboards. The schoolmaster’s scream.
“Your son has changed,” he says hoarsely, his head light, chest heavy with his heartbeat. “He’s lost in Smoke. He killed Dr. Renfrew.”
“Killed him?” Lady Naylor is silent for a moment, digesting this. “Poor Julius,” she says at last. “He has been imbibing quickened Soot. Not your ordinary cigarettes but something infinitely stronger. Something he stole from me while you were playing truant.” She smiles a hard little smile. “But it’s my own fault. I introduced him to it. To cigarettes and to sweets. In the summer when he turned fifteen. Wooing him. Like a knowing bride.”
Charlie looks at her, aghast. “But why?”
For the fraction of a second she leans her head against his shoulder. Like a sister. Pleading with him. Winning him over to her side.
“He looks just like his father. My first husband. A weak man. God, how I hated him!” She jerks upright, away from him. “Our fathers had arranged the betrothal. It was good politics; two old bloodlines conjoined. My husband left for the Indies within four months of the wedding and was dead of a fever six weeks after that. Julius’s grandfather took him away from me the day he was born. He raised him to be my enemy. But I needed him.”
“You needed his money!”
“The Spencers are very rich. And I have been running up debts. So I presented Julius with an investment opportunity.”
“You mean you lied to him.”
“Naturally. The Spencers are England’s most prominent family. They have no need for revolution. Still, it’s a fair bargain. If I fail, he will own every scrap of Naylor land.”
She stands up abruptly, then walks away from him, towards the room she has elected as her bedroom. Up until yesterday the Grendels slept in there. It holds the apartment’s only proper bed.
“I should have spoken to you earlier, Charlie. You have a generous soul. One might find forgiveness there. My own children have very little of that.” She stops at the door, looks back. “Perhaps it would be best if we understood one another. Do you want to know where Smoke comes from? How the body generates it?”
“Yes.”
“Then follow me.”
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She makes him close the door. Immediately the room feels too small, the big lumpy bed filling it wall to wall. She sits down on it, smoothing out her skirts in front of her, puts her hands onto a particular place on her right flank. Underneath the fabric of her dress, Charlie can make out the skeleton of her corset, shaping her waist.
“Do you know what organ resides here?” she asks.
He swallows. “The liver.”
“Indeed. A vile thing really, though it makes good enough eating. Do you know what they used to say about sour-faced old women who smoked all day long? ‘She’s got an evil liver.’ This was back when I was young, in Brittany, where we went for the summers. The children used to chant it as a taunt. Many years ago I told Baron Naylor about it—in passing, really, sharing a memory, nothing more. But my husband thought there was more to the phrase than superstition. Before the week was out he had purchased surgeon’s knives. And cadavers. He got to be quite an expert at excision.”
The words sink into Charlie and transport him back to Lady Naylor’s laboratory. A glass vitrine filled with large, lidded jars. Spongy tissue floating in thick liquid, its edges overgrown by something hard and black. Next thing he knows Lady Naylor has started unbuttoning her bodice, her hands working behind her back, wrestling with hooks. Charlie turns to the door.
“Stay, Mr. Cooper. I have no designs on your virtue. Unlike my daughter, perhaps. Here, give me your hand. You may close your eyes if you like.”
He returns to her, both staring and trying not to look. She has not taken off any clothes, but simply loosened them, creating a gap near her spine. Gently, she takes his hand in hers and guides it through this gap, slipping it underneath the corset then forward towards her front.
“Smoke is produced by a gland in the liver. From there it connects to our blood and lymphic system and, ultimately, to the sweat glands and lungs. Our whole bodies are calibrated for Smoke. Unless, that is, you are like that child next door. But even as we speak his body is starting to transform.”
Charlie can hardly listen. All his senses are in his hand. He feels the smooth warmth of silk, then her skin, hot to his touch. They follow the ridge of a rib, then down, towards her stomach. Then they stop, her fingers stroking his acros
s a long, raised, puckered line, tough like gristle.
“For a while my husband came to believe that the answer to Smoke was surgical. That Smoke could be cut off at the root. Not by excising the whole liver, naturally, merely the gland itself. But there was no way he could operate on himself.”
Sick now, Charlie wrestles with Lady Naylor, trying to withdraw his hand. But her grip is firm, pressing his fingers into the scar.
“Please understand that I accepted willingly. You see, I love my husband. More than life itself.” At last she lets Charlie go, watches him jump back and cradle his hand as though it were cut. “And he loved me. Which is to say, he did not go through with it in the end. He opened me up and sewed me shut again. In any case, it would not have worked. Aschenstedt sent us a study. From Romania. A lord there made extensive experiments on his peasants. They either died or continued smoking. All twenty-seven of them.”
Charlie watches her button up her dress again. This time he does not fight his staring. His sense of modesty is gone. All he can think of is the ridge of her scar. His breathing is loud, as though he’s been running; pins and needles down his back.
“Why show me?” he manages at last.
“I need you to understand, Mr. Cooper. What people are willing to do, in the cause of virtue. So you will help us, when the time comes.”
He grapples with this, finds it too large, her revolution, unfathomable. The stakes he understands are smaller. They dwell next door.
“Do you promise that the child will be unharmed?” Charlie asks and surprises himself by the firmness of his voice.
“I can if you like. It is the truth. But you won’t believe me. Why would you? Adults have been lying to you all your life.”
She rises, reaches past him, opens the door, standing so close he sees each tired wrinkle round her eyes.