Homunculus

by James P. Blaylock

  “And the rest of it,” asked Godall keenly. “The other hundred-odd pages - are they as wild as this part?”

  “Increasingly so,” said St. Ives. “The decline was swift - almost from the day he bought the thing in the box.”

  “In the bottle,” put in Keeble, staring out the window at the street. “There wasn’t any box until I built it.”

  St. Ives nodded. “He seemed possessed by the thing - by the idea that he could not only animate the dead, an effect, I gather, that he’d discovered without the aid of the homunculus, but that with it, somehow, he could perpetuate life. Indefinitely. Perhaps that he could create life. And perhaps he could. There’s a reference to a successful experiment in which he spawned mice from a heap of old rags, and another in which he revivified an old man from Chingford, who was dying of general paresis. Sheared forty years from him, according to Owlesby. All of it fearfully alchemical, although, as I say, it’s out of my province.

  “He was certain that the spacecraft belonging to the homunculus was in London, and he hoped to find it in order to sell it, as it were, to the damned creature in exchange for power over death and time. Whether his decline into madness and debasement was a result of scientific greed or of slow poisoning due to contact with the homunculus is impossible to say. Even Owlesby, obviously, didn’t know.

  “Apparently Owlesby was jealous of owning the thing to the point of refusing to let Narbondo at it. Nell’s absconding with it must have infuriated the hunchback. She snatched the secret of life out of his hands, as it were, and gave it to Birdlip …”

  “Who in a matter of weeks might well drop out of the skies on us,” said Godall.

  The Captain frowned. St. Ives nodded.

  “Well,” said Keeble, topping off his glass from an open bottle of ale, “this is all a very sad business, very sad. If I were asked, I’d say meet the dirigible when it lands - and I’ll bet my ape clock it touches down on Hampstead Heath where it launched -and snatch the box. Between the lot of us such a thing would be nothing. Then we tie it into a bag full of stones and drop it off the center of Westminster Bridge when the river’s in flood. The box isn’t tight, I can attest to that. Regardless of the thing’s powers, it’s got to breathe, hasn’t it? It’s not a fish; it’s a little man. I’ve seen it. We’ll drown it like a cat, if only to keep it out of the clutches of this humpback doctor.” Keeble paused, his chin in his hand. “And for what it did to Sebastian. I’ll kill it for that. But there’s no use, really, hashing over this Limehouse business. It’s water under the bridge is what it is. Nothing more than that. And murky water too. So I’ll just change the subject for a moment here, gentlemen, and call your attention to the date. It’s Jack’s birthday is what it is, and I’ve got a bit of something to give him.”

  Jack blushed, disliking, even among friends, being the center of attention. St. Ives grimaced in spite of himself. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been waving Sebastian’s memoirs about so freely. On his son’s birthday, for God’s sake. Well, this was the Trismegistus Club, and the ends they pursued would lead them along grim paths -there was no doubt of that. There was nothing to be accomplished by pretense and timidity. Better to clear the air with the truth straightaway. Far better to do that than to hide things and make them seem even more despicable and terrifying by doing so.

  St. Ives wished, though, that he had known it was Jack’s birthday so as to have some trifle wrapped up. But he could remember no one’s birthday - not even his own most of the time. Keeble produced a square parcel about the size and shape of a jack-in-the-box. St. Ives was fairly certain he knew what it was, that he’d witnessed the rising of its clockwork cayman not too many days past.

  “A toast to young Mr. Owlesby,” said Godall heartily, raising his glass. The rest of the company followed suit, giving Jack three cheers.

  From the shadows of the back room, Kraken raised his own glass - or flask, rather, which was two-thirds empty of gin. It seemed to Kraken to be perpetually in that state. How it could be more often empty than full was an utter mystery. Kraken hadn’t delved particularly widely into the mathematics, and so he was willing to admit that there were forces at work on his gin that he couldn’t yet fathom. He’d be after them though. He’d seek them out. Like beans in a bottle, he said to himself. Facts were nothing more. And mathematics were facts, weren’t they? Numbers on a page were like bugs on a paving stone. They looked a mess, scurrying around. But they were a matter of nature. And nature had her own logic. Some of the bugs were setting about gathering supper - bits and pieces of this and that. Lord knew what they ate, elemental matter, most likely. Others were laying out trails, hauling bits of gravel to build a mound, measuring off distances, scouting out the land, all of them here and there on the pavement - a mess to the man ignorant of science, but an orchestrated bit of music to… to a man like Kraken.

  He wondered if someday he couldn’t write a paper on it. It was… what was it? An analogy. That’s what it was. And it must, thought Kraken, explain the business of disappeared gin in a flask. The beauty of science was that it made things so clear, so logical. The cosmos, that was what science was after - the whole filthy cosmos. He smiled to think that he understood it. He’d only just run across the word in Ashbless. He’d seen it a hundred times, of course. Such were words. You were blind to them for years. Then one reached out and slammed you, and bingo, like lit candles in a dark room, it turned out they were everywhere - cosmos, cosmos, cosmos. The order of things. The secret order, hidden to most. A man had to get down on his knees and peer at the paving stones to see the bugs that hurried there, navigating about their little corner of the Earth with the certainty of a mariner setting a course by the immutable patterns of the stars.

  A thrill shot up his spine. He’d rarely seen things so clearly, so… so… cosmically. That was the word. He shook his flask. There was a dram or so sloshing in the bottom. Why the devil was it more often empty than full? If a quantity could be poured in, the same quantity could be poured out. He’d filled it that very morning down at Whitechapel - brim full. But it hadn’t stayed full for a half hour. It had been mostly empty all day. Hours of emptiness. And if it weren’t for the bottle of whisky under the bed, he’d be powerfully dry by now.

  Kraken grappled with the problem. It didn’t seem fair to him. Like bugs, he reminded himself, screwing his eyes shut and imagining a scurrying lot of number-shaped bugs on a piece of gray slate. It didn’t seem to do any good. He couldn’t quite apply the bugs to the problem of the flask. He squinted through the open door into the room beyond.

  He’d spent the last half hour with his hands over his ears, pressing out the sad business of Sebastian Owlesby’s memoirs. He knew it all well enough - too well. He drained the flask, reached under the bed, and drew out the whisky. He was a gin man, truth to tell, but in a pinch…

  Young Jack was waving some sort of box. Kraken squinted at it. He was certain he’d seen it before. But no, he hadn’t. Here came some sort of business from inside - a beast of some sort, and tiny birds. The beast - a crocodile apparently tore at one of the birds, gobbled it up, then sank out of sight. Kraken puzzled over it, unsure, exactly, of the purpose of it. He sat for a moment, knuckling his brow, then got up off his bed and edged across to the open door.

  Off to his left was another, dark room - the room where lay the sea chest. His heart raced. There was a tumult of talk and laughter as everyone gathered round Jack’s birthday present, Keeble’s engine. Kraken sidled into the dark room, drawn by bleary curiosity. He stubbed his toe into the chest before he saw it, grunting in such a way that he was certain would turn heads in the outer room. But no heads turned. Everyone, apparently, was far too keen on the marvelous toy.

  Kraken bent over the chest, running his hands over the front until he found the flat, circular iron hasp. He fiddled with it, not knowing entirely how the mechanism worked and uncertain, even, what in the world he was after - certainly not the emerald. He’d have to be silent as a beetle. It wouldn’t do to
be heard. Lord knows what the Captain would think to see him rummaging in the chest. The hasp snapped up suddenly, rapping across Kraken’s knuckles. He shoved three fingers into his mouth. They’d suppose him a common thief, of course. Or worse - they’d suppose he was in league with whomever it was they were at odds with.

  Light from the rooms without lay feebly across the contents of the trunk. Kraken rummaged through them, shushing them to silence each time they rattled and swished, and shushing himself for good measure. He shoved his head amid the objects, which he’d managed to push to either side of the trunk. The cold brass of the spyglass pressed his cheek, and the smell of oak and leather and dust rose about his ears - very pleasant smells, in fact. It would be nice to remain so, his head buried like the head of an ostrich among fabulous things. He could easily have gone to sleep if he weren’t standing up. He could hear blood rushing through his head - ebbing and flowing like the tides, as Aristotle would have it - and in among the general roaring of it he could just hear something else, a voice, it seemed, coming from somewhere very far away.

  He puzzled over it, aware that the gash on his forehead had begun to throb. He couldn’t for the life of him determine what to do next. Why am I standing here with my head in the chest, he asked himself. But only one answer was forthcoming: strong drink. Kraken smiled. “Whisky is risky,” he said half aloud, listening to his voice echo up out of the chest. He was mad to drink whisky. Gin didn’t do this to a man - make a fool of him. He was suddenly desperately afraid. How long had he been here, stooped over the chest? Was the room behind him filled with the faces of his friends, all of them stretched with loathing?

  He extricated his head slowly, careful not to start an avalanche of nautical debris. In his hands he held the hidden box. A thrill of fear and excitement rushed along in his veins, washing away all rational thought. There it was again - the voice, tiny and distant, as if someone were trapped, perhaps, in the wall. He could understand none of it. He wasn’t sure, suddenly, that he wanted to understand it, and was smitten with the wild certainty that the voice spoke from within his own head - a devil.

  He was possessed. He’d read Paracelsus. It struck him at once that this was almost certainly a matter of Mumia, that the woman who’d lured him to the den where he’d been beaten was a witch. She’d used him, sensing that he was burdened with Mumia from the bodies he’d carted about London in the night. The sins of his past were rising like spectres, pointing at him. He shook with fear. It was more whisky he required, not less. He silenced the tiny voice, clacking his teeth to shut out the noise, then leaped in sudden horror as the noise turned into a fearful shouting.

  He banged down the lid of the chest and jumped clear. The outer room was a tumult. That’s where the noise had come from! Kraken peered around the doorjamb, only to lurch back into the comparative safety of the dark room. Kelso Drake stood without, in the open doorway of the shop. He’d come at last. Having Kraken beaten and shot hadn’t satisfied him. He’d come to finish the job. Kraken pressed back into the room, bumping against a closed window. He unhooked the latch, swung it open, and crawled out across the sill and slid into the mud of the alley, where he lay breathing heavily. He stood up, casting a glance over his shoulder at Spode Street, then loped away toward Billingsgate. In a few hours the thronging crowd at the fishmarket would hide him and his prize from his enemies.

  SEVEN

  THE BLOOD PUDDING

  The pounding startled the lot of them, except, perhaps, Godall, who wore on his face a look of shrewd curiosity. The Captain took a step forward as if to open the door, but it was thrown open almost at once by Kelso Drake, who smiled benignly and bowed just a bit before striding into the room. Keeble leaped up and threw his coat over Jack’s lap to hide the toy.

  Drake stood just inside the door, bemused in his top hat, looking about him at the shop with the air of a man half baffled that such a place could exist, and coming to the conclusion that perhaps it could, given the quality of the men whom he confronted. He swept an invisible fleck from his sleeve and rolled his cigar to the other side of his mouth.

  “Light?” asked the Captain, holding a long match aloft.

  Drake shook his head and squinted.

  “Rather eat them, would you?” said the Captain, tossing the match into a bowl. Keeble had gone white, a peculiarity Drake seemed to relish.

  He smiled at the toymaker. “You’ve brought it along, then,” he said, nodding at the half-concealed box in Jack’s lap. “It’s good when a man sees reason. The world is too full of unpleasantries as it is.”

  “The only unpleasantry I can see,” cried the Captain, reaching beneath the counter, “is you! Get out of my shop while you can still stand on yer pegs!” And with that he hauled out a braided leather cosh the length of his forearm and slapped it against his ivory leg.

  Drake ignored him. “Come, come, my man,” he said to Keeble. “Hand it across. The machine will do as well as the plans. My workmen can puzzle it out.”

  Jack was bewildered. Only Keeble and St. Ives entirely understood. St. Ives groped beside his chair for the neck of an empty ale bottle. Here was a dangerous man. It quite likely wouldn’t come to blows - that wasn’t Drake’s way. But the man who’d tried to purloin Keeble’s plans was quite clearly the domino player on Wardour Street. They’d best all be cautious. Who could say what sorts of ruffians waited in the shadows outside?

  “You’ve had my answer,” gasped Keeble, shaking visibly. “It hasn’t changed.”

  “Then,” said Drake, removing a chewed cigar from his mouth, “we’ll attempt coercion.” He stood silently for a moment as if lost in thought. The rest of the company was frozen, waiting for Drake’s pronouncement. But instead of threatening and bribing, he merely tipped his hat and turned toward the door, saying, “Very pretty daughter, that Dorothy of yours. Reminds me of a girl I had once... Where was it?” He turned once again toward Keeble with a mock questioning look on his face, only to find Jack catapulting out of his chair in a fury. The box flew, Keeble caught it, and Jack punched wildly at Drake, missing the leering face by a foot and sprawling into Godall, who reached across and grasped the Captain’s wrist as he brought the sap back for a swing that would have left Drake senseless.

  The millionaire had feinted toward the door to avoid Jack’s blow, and saw the Captain’s attempt out of the edge of his eye. The look on his face changed from leering indifference and amusement to black hatred in an instant, and his hat flew off onto the floor as he checked his feint and jerked around in anticipation of the blow. But Godall still held the wrist of the furious Captain Powers, and Drake recovered, edging just a bit toward the door.

  He stooped to retrieve his hat, but the Captain, stepping forward, pinned it to the floor with his peg leg, smashing the crown sideways, then, transferring the cosh to his free hand, flattened the hat utterly with three quick blows.

  “That’ll be your head, swabby, if I catch you around here again. You or any of your bully boys. You’re filth - bilgewater, the lot o’ ye, and I’d just as soon stamp you to jelly as look at ye!”

  Drake’s grin was palsied. He neglected the hat, turned as if to say one last thing to Keeble, but never got it out. The Captain, jerking free from Godall, struck Drake on the shoulder, sending him sprawling through the open door, then crouched, grabbed at the ruined hat and sailed it out into the night like a flying plate, banging the door shut in its wake. He opened a fresh bottle of ale and poured it into his glass with a shaking hand. Godall sat down. The Captain drained half the glass, turned to his aristocratic friend, and said, “Thanks, mate,” then sat down himself.

  Jack was once again possessed of the box. He stared at a spot on the floor, thoughtful or embarrassed. Keeble seemed to be staring at the same spot. St. Ives cleared his throat. “This business is growing curious,” he said. “I don’t half understand why we have to be embroiled in such complications - as if Narbondo’s machinations aren’t enough. Now we have two villains to deal with. We keep the weath
er eye on one of them, and all along the other one’s watching us. And, I’m afraid, gentlemen, that I’ll have to leave you to it - my train departs King’s Cross Station tomorrow morning at ten sharp, now that the oxygenator is finished. I can’t afford to put if off. Conditions are almost right.”

  Keeble waved his hand haphazardly. “Drake is my affair,” he said, sighing, as if he were tired of the whole issue. “I’m not sure I won’t sell him the plans. What difference would it make?”

  “You can’t!” cried Jack, half rising from his chair. And just as he shouted, lightning lit the road as if it were midday and thunder rattled the windows, rolling away for almost a minute before silence fell. Rain thudded against the panes and fell off, then thudded again in a wash of great drops that whirled and flew in the wind. The abrupt arrival of the weather seemed to furl Jack’s sails, for he slumped into his chair and was silent.

  “The lad is right,” said Godall, knocking his pipe against the edge of a glass ashtray. “Drake mustn’t have the engine. He’ll have what’s coming to him and no more - no less, I should say. I’ve come up with a bit of information myself that will, if I’m not mistaken, satisfy all of you on several points. Drake and Narbondo are in league, I mean to say. Or at least the one does business with the other. I’ve taken a room across from the doctor’s cabinet - Drake has visited Narbondo more than once.

  “I followed the two of them yesterday afternoon - not together, mind you; Drake wouldn’t be seen abroad with Narbondo. They met at a public house in the Borough, a low sort of place that appears to have sprung up fairly recently. It’s at the back of one of those old sprawling innyards, long ago fallen into disuse, and even the local people avoid it. There’s rooms, as I say, that back up onto an alley; if there’s a front entrance, I couldn’t find it. Likely enough it lets out into the old inn, which is a regular warren of gables and attic rooms and hallways that seem to lead nowhere. If a man was scouting out an appropriate location for an opium den, he’d have to look no farther. There’s not much else could be done with it, though.